Bear with me, I can explain.

Evolution crawling from the sea

ACME is the second game in this series, following on from 2019’s Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea. It builds on the original with the same system, but some changes. In ACIS there are 10 civilisations, each with their own homeland, but those numbers jump to 17 civilisations and 22 different homelands in ACME.

Let that number sink in. 17 civilisations to choose from. How many games can you think of that come with anything even like that number of different factions, even with expansions? I’ll concede that there are small differences between the civilizations. Usually, it’s just a change or addition to a standard rule which fits with that civilisation, thematically, but combined with the location(s) of their homeland, it results in some really nice asymmetric play.

On top of the bigger numbers, the board itself is different. Land in ACIS is all of one type, whereas in ACME there are four different types, and the types are important. Having settlements in different terrain types adds to the number of ‘Discs for Growth’ you get as income at the start of a turn, and mountains can gain strongholds to bolster your defenses. Turns in ACME represent hundreds of years (500 in the first epoch, 100 in the fourth epoch) and the growth represents your people spreading out across the Middle East. Sometimes into untouched lands, sometimes butting heads against your neighbours, which is where the fun begins.

The other big change is with Wonders from the original game making way for Deities. Deities in this case shouldn’t give religious people much cause for concern as they don’t attempt to use any real ones, to the best of my knowledge. As the design notes in the rulebook state, during the epochs the game takes place in there were thousands of gods worshipped. ACME makes an attempt to distil them down to seven generic deities such as God of War, God of the Skies, God of the Dead, etc.

If you’re new to this series, once you ‘invest’ in a deity you can use its power on every turn, as long as its temple remains in play in your homeland. Some of these powers are really powerful, so choosing when to claim one, and which one you claim, can have a big impact. If you’re coming from ACIS, the biggest differences between Wonders and deities is that each person can only have a single deity, and they get to use it on every turn, not just when placing a disc on it.

Cardplay

There are no dice to worry about in Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East, but there’s a whole bunch of cards. Cards drive the majority of what happens in ACME, and they come in a variety of different flavours. Some get played during the aptly named Card Phase and do things like adding and removing discs to and from the board, changing the balance of the power. Some are investment cards, allowing you to add them to your play area with a few discs on. You get to trade those discs in at different times for different benefits. I particularly like the few Religion cards that turn up, which can only be used if you establish a deity first.

The juiciest cards of the bunch are the competition cards. During the competition phase of each turn each contested area gets resolved. If there are stacks of discs from different civs they duke it out, but each player can choose to play any number of competition cards face-down before they’re resolved. They grant you any number of benefits to help swing things in your favour, and balancing how many you use, and for which areas – that’s where the heart of the strategy lies. You’ve no way of knowing whether the cards someone has in hand are competition cards waiting to trip you up, or just cards they’re hanging onto. They might even be holding a Negate card, which as the name suggests, allows you to negate certain effects too. There’s no denying that combat can be a tense and cagey affair.

Luckily, interaction between players is encouraged. Not happy about the way a situation is developing along your western borders? Make a mutually beneficial deal with someone else. You’re meant to be representing great civilisations after all, so seeing this kind of back-and-forth is the game is great. It can be tempting to try to crush all before you early on, taking what feels like an unassailable position at the top of the pecking order, but it often doesn’t work out like that. It’s one thing to become dominant among the other civilisations, and a very different one to stay in that position. ‘Kill the king’ is alive and well in ACME, and I’m here for it.

Time flies when you’re having fun

ACME is an odd duck in some respects. There’s a maximum of four epochs to play, each with four turns. 16 turns doesn’t sound extraordinarily long, but those 16 turns could quite easily keep you playing for in excess of four hours, especially with the maximum quota of six players. It’s so much fun exploring the game’s systems though, and seeing how the shape of that part of the world changes as the years march on, that it really doesn’t feel like that long. Much in the same way as Sid Meier’s Civilization video games erased hours and hours of my life in the blink of an eye, time just zips along.

The game offers a fairly unique sandbox approach to games. There are a bunch of historically-inspired scenarios in the included Playbook if that’s your thing, but you’re encouraged to decide how you want to play. Don’t have four hours spare? Agree to play just the first two epochs. Only three of you are playing, and you want to keep things tight and aggressive? Add the border discs to carve a usable piece of the map out, leaving the rest forbidden. Maybe there are only two of you but you want to avoid the knife fight in a phone booth feel of just using a small part of the board. So pick a couple of civilisations each, or throw in a few Non-Player civs too. This open-ended feeling will feel like a joy to some and a real sticking point to others.

Some people like to have their game prescribed. The map is a certain size, x civilisations will play, and it will last y turns. There’s a lot to be said for that kind of structure being placed around a game. If that’s what you’re coming from, and that’s what you enjoy, then ACME can feel alienating. It’s the difference between being given a Lego kit and following the instructions to make a car and being given a box of Lego pieces and being told to come up with your own design. Some people love that, some don’t. Just be aware of that going into the game. As I mentioned above, there are preset scenarios, and there are guidelines on how to create your own, but ACME is a game that’s meant to be explored and played with, and you’ll get the most from it if you have a regular group who’ll enjoy that.

Final thoughts

Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East is a pretty unique game. The grand scale of nations rising and falling over the course of thousands of years is somehow contained within a game with a basic ruleset. Trust me, it won’t take long to learn how to play the game. It means that the rules do the most important of things with a game like this though – they just disappear. You don’t have to think too hard about what you can do, or how you do it. You just think about what you want to do. In fact, the only time you ever really need even the player aid, let alone the rulebook, is checking how many growth discs you’re awarded for what areas during the expansion phase.

The cards need a special mention. The artwork on each of them is gorgeous, without exception, and each has a quote from the King James version of the Bible’s Old Testament. The truly remarkable thing is that designer Mark McLaughlin has managed to find a quote for each of the game’s 103 fate cards which matches what the card describes. If you know the King James version, you know how expressive and poetic the text is, and you’ll find yourself quoting the text on the cards as you lay waste to your opponents.

The rest of the components are pretty standard GMT fare. Coloured cubes and discs, a nice board, and thin, card player boards and player aids. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. The coloured discs make it really easy to read the board state at a glance.

One other thing I really, really like about ACME, is the way it gives players who don’t get started well a chance to turn things around. If you find yourself eradicated from the map, or more than 5VPs behind everybody else, you can invoke the Gilgamesh rule. The Gilgamesh rule lets you start afresh with a new civilisation, a new set of discs, and a chance to take vengeance on those who wiped your predecessors from the face of the globe. It’s a really cool thing to do to fight needless player elimination, and I think it’s great.

If you like the idea of a sandbox civ game with a ton of ways to play, Ancient Civilisations of the Middle East is absolutely fantastic. Simple rules, easy cardplay, and enough strategy to keep everyone happy.

Review copy kindly provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East (2023)

Design: Mark McLaughlin, Chris Vorder Bruegge, Fred Schacter
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Mark Mahaffey
Players: 1-6
Playing time: 120-420 mins

The post Ancient Civilizations Of The Middle East Review appeared first on Punchboard.

The first thing to note about Task Force is that it’s an operational-level game. You might command more than one task force during each scenario, but make no mistake that it’s the organisation of your various ships and vehicles that matters. I love the way the game gives each player a board to represent their task forces. There are spaces to identify which vessels belong to which task forces, but the real fun comes from the way you choose which aircraft on each carrier are in which position. It’s not a case of “drop a load of Zeroes on this boat and they can all fly off and fight”. Planes returning from missions can’t just join the front of the queue and take off again, which is great. It forces you to not only be careful with your choices, but also reinforces just how precious your carriers are. When carriers are attacked you roll a die (as you do to resolve most events in the game) which tells you if your planes on the deck, ready to take off, get destroyed. You’ll also determine whether the flight deck gets damaged, which can be a royal pain in the ass when you find out planes can’t take off any more, or worse still, you can’t land the planes you put in the air.

Made in Japan

The first thing that might strike you when you play Task Force is the apparent lop-sided balance. Things seem heavily weighted in Japan’s favour in a lot of places. You’ll take your US F4F fighters up against a squadron of Japanese Zeroes and notice that your planes’ individual 3 strengths are weak compared to the Japanese 5s, and right off the bat you’re looking at the Japanese player using the +2 column of the air-to-air combat table when they roll the die. When you take part in Naval combat, the IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy) always gets a +1 DRM (dice roll modifier). Always. While it seems really unfair, it’s just meant to reflect the difference in the experience of the two battling Navies. It’s not a game-breaking difference, and the balance in redressed in other places, but it’s enough to make you think twice about just charging in and trying to brute force your way through their lines.

If you’re reading this as an experienced wargamer, I don’t think there’s anything I’ve said so far that would cause any furrowing of brows. If you’re new to the genre, however, some of this could seem daunting. DRMs, consulting tables for attack resolution, air-to-air vs ship-to-ship combat. I mention this because VUCA positions Task Force as a game which newbies can enjoy, and I can see how you might not be feeling that so far in this review. It’s an important aim because as a board gamer who is still finding his way into wargaming, I’ve encountered a definite barrier to understanding with some things, so there’s a chance you might be struggling too. If the game is a soft, delicious crème brûlée, the unfamiliar terms and concepts are the hard, caramelised layer on the top.

Tutorials are to wargames as spoons are to crème brûlée. They help break through that hard layer to get to the yumminess lying in wait beneath. VUCA have done the equivalent of loads of smaller, softer crème brûlées in the box, so as to ease you in gently, with a series of easy-to-follow tutorials. It’s tasty stuff.

The tutorials are not as granular as the multitude of mini-lessons that Atlantic Chase used for its tutorials, but it certainly doesn’t throw you in at the deep end either. Being thrown in at the deep end when you’re on a carrier in the middle of the Pacific is a bad thing! I think the very first tutorial might be my favourite in any game, ever. That’s a bold claim, right? The first scenario is the attack on Pearl Harbour and it uses its own special map. It doesn’t even have the hexes which the rest of the game relies on. Instead, it gives you a very visual, easily-understood example of how air-to-surface combat works, completely bypassing any movement rules, and it’s a great way to ease you into things. Taking a specific scenario which even those ignorant of WWII may have an understanding of, and using a special layout which is included in the box for just this one scenario, goes to show just how much VUCA care about increasing accessibility and lowering the barrier to entry.

Cat & mouse

Much of the early game is similar to the aforementioned Atlantic Chase (review here). It’s a game of just trying to figure out where the heck the enemy task forces are. Each player has a cache of fleet marker tokens made up of some designating their task forces, while the rest are dummies. They all begin the game face-down, and each player has twelve tokens on the board. I love how reconnaissance is handled in this game. It’s not as simple as “My plane’s flown over here and it can see a carrier fleet”. Recon is handled by taking a token from a cup or bag and having your opponent look at it in secret, before telling you what the result is. ‘No contact’ is self-explanatory. The scout didn’t see anything. If the result is Detected, your opponent has to be honest with you. A dummy marker is shown if that’s what it was, otherwise, they’ll tell you it’s a carrier TF or a fleet TF.

That seems simple enough, but you can’t be sure they were telling the truth until you attack.

Why? Because there’s a chance you drew a Misdirect token. If that happens Dummies are reported to you as No Contact, carriers are reported as fleets, and vice-versa. The only thing you know for certain is probability and the knowledge that the Detected tokens outnumber the Misdirect tokens 5:2. So they’re probably telling the truth, but what if they aren’t? What if it was foggy when your recon pilots looked down, and they reported the wrong thing back? How certain are you? It’s a brilliant system, and the tension it builds is palpable. You’ll never know for certain until you either send in an air raid or engage in a naval battle, and I love it. It’s not just a case of a mechanism thrown in for the same of spicing up the gameplay, it’s thematic too. We’re talking about small planes making observations over the Pacific in the 1940s. Mistakes happened, I’m sure.

Thematic touches are all over the game’s design, and while they’re the sort of things wargame veterans might take for granted, newcomers – who VUCA have clearly invited to the party with Task Force – will be pleasantly surprised. Little things like nighttime phases altering the way things work. Things can change under the cover of darkness. Fleets can re-arrange themselves, ships can move further, and all ships can engage in combat, regardless of their range designations. Recon missions are a no-go, and you can’t even start one in the last two turns of a day, as the light fades. I really love the way any recon chits you have under a fleet marker get removed and thrown back into the draw cup during the night. It emphasises this feeling of “stuff happens in the dark that you can’t see”.

Final thoughts

Task Force: Carrier Battles in the Pacific is my first game from VUCA Simulations, and if it’s any kind of a marker for what to expect, it won’t be my last. It has the highest production values of any cardboard-based wargame I’ve played. The four double-sided map boards are really well-made, but the shining crown sitting atop its head is that every counter has rounded corners. That means no counter-clipping for the nearly 600 counters and tokens. Can you imagine?? More of this please, publishers. The rulebook and scenario book are really well written, with thorough examples every step of the way. There are a few grammatical errors which I’m sure are a result of translation, things like this excerpt from the section about applying damage – “and if the result is in the range of 1-3, the aircrafts on the flight deck are striken and explode”. It doesn’t really affect the readability or the understanding though, so I’m not about to give it a striken just for that, just be aware that it might not be 100% grammatically correct.

There’s a wonderful feeling of duelling throughout, helped no end by setting the game up with the map in the middle of the table, with each player sitting opposite and their fleet boards in front of them. Trying to find the task forces among the dummies is great. It’s like Battleships, but fun, and I love the way you can obfuscate things during the night turns. Combat is really easy to work through and the excellent player aids give you everything you need when it does all kick off in (or above) the ocean. There’s a decent selection of scenarios, including solo tutorials to help you teach your friends, and ratings of how difficult each scenario is. I’d be happy replaying any of the scenarios due to the sandbox nature of the gameplay, but if you do tire of them there’s a guide at the end explaining how to create your own scenarios, not to mention alternate orders of battle (OOBs) for the supplied scenarios.

I’m a long way from having any kind of authoritative experience in operational-level wargames, but Task Force: Carrier Battles in the Pacific strikes me as being an excellent example of how to do it well. It’s easy to learn, the rules are clear, and the graphic design and presentation throughout are superb. Fleet boards could so easily have been a sheet of card with rudimentary boxes printed on them but instead, they’re bi-fold mounted boards covered in illustrations. It’s just another seemingly small detail which makes the whole package feel a bit more accessible for newcomers. You might think I’m making too big a deal of a small thing, but I’m not. Things like this make a big difference. Task Force is awesome, and if it sounds like your sort of game (and you’re not bored of fighting the Battle of Midway for the hundredth time), then go out and get it. What a fantastic production.

Review copy kindly provided by VUCA Simulations. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Task Force: Carrier Battles in the Pacific (2023)

Design: Ginichiro Suzuki
Publisher: VUCA Simulations
Art: Pablo Bazerque
Players: 1-2
Playing time: 45-90 mins

The post Task Force: Carrier Battles in the Pacific Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Is your brain frazzled yet? No matter, I’m going to plough on regardless.

Interceptions and intersections

So let’s say for argument’s sake that your opponent has a trajectory on the board: a line of pieces which his task force of ships is somewhere along. If you choose to extend your own trajectory and intersect with theirs, then you open up the possibility of using a Naval Search action. After you’ve done the maths associated with the action (there are handy tables printed on the board, as well as player aids) you may well find that you’ve punched a hole in that enemy trajectory. When this happens everything on one side of that hole gets taken off the board, and it’s the player who punched a hold in it who decides which.

To put that into context, let’s say my opponent has a trajectory from Ireland to the coast of North America. The moment I punch a hole in that line, I decide which half of the ocean they’re in. If I remove everything to the west of my own wooden stick, it means their task force has to exist somewhere along the eastern half that remains. I don’t know where exactly, but I’m closing in, and if they were trying to escape that convoy to an American port, I’ve just made their job a whole lot harder.

To the uninitiated, it might seem like a really random way to do naval seek and destroy, but the reality is something much cleverer. This might sound stupid, but oceans are really big, and in comparison, ships are very tiny. The trajectory mechanism is a fantastic way to represent the difficulties these sailors faced in finding one another in the first place, let alone shooting at them.

It’s such an interesting mechanism, and it’s really hard to convey just how thoughtful and strategic it makes the game. It’s like hidden movement, but instead of moving to a place, you’re digging tunnels so that in future turns you could pop up anywhere along it, like some kind of aquatic mole. So we’re dealing with quantum, submarine moles – got it? All of this kiss chase is no good without some fisticuffs once you finally meet up, right? Maybe we played kiss chase differently to you, I don’t know.

Note to self: find better analogies.

You sank my battleship

When battles happen, they’re carried out on the side of the board on a dinky little battle area. It makes sense; the battles really are the side dish compared to the main course of the chasing. Combat is relatively simple as your various vessels push in and out of range taking pot-shots across a dividing line. A bit like a tennis court, with heavy hitters dropping into the net to unleash volleys, before retreating to a safe distance to see what comes back at them.

Battles are really satisfying. There’s loads of room for cunning tactics. For instance, when ships use the manoeuvre ability to change their range, they can produce smoke. When the smoke marker goes on the board it affects both the ships shooting out through the smoke, and those firing in, giving a -1 modifier each way. Not that useful you might think, but there are plenty of times when just surviving is your goal, and sometimes smoke can help you do exactly that.

With those two pieces of gameplay acting as the foundations of the game, everything else just bolsters and adorns it, and adds extra little niceties which pull the whole thing together. The different leaders your task forces can have with their rule-breaking abilities, the crap-ton of scenarios in the accompanying books, the way weather affects the game, and the way certain actions allow your opponent to snatch initiative away from you and interrupt your plans. With the right people, and those people understanding the game, Atlantic Chase is a thing of beauty.

Having the right people and having them understand are just two of a handful of wrinkles in the smooth finish.

Troubled waters

Learning Atlantic Chase isn’t exactly smooth sailing (sorry…). It’s a daunting thing to open a box and find five books and a total of 200+ pages facing you. Some of that is scenarios, some is chapter-and-verse rules, and a chunk is reserved for the tutorial book. Normally I’d have a bit of a moan if I found a game to be too impenetrable with its rules and lack of tutorial. In contrast, Atlantic Chase veers in the other direction. It introduces concepts and parts of actions one tutorial at a time, which means by the time you’ve finished them you’ve setup, played, and put away the pieces for ten separate tutorials, covering 51 pages of that book. I think it’s great that a tutorial goes to this level of depth, but it’s a) very time-consuming, and b) indicative of the level of intricacy and nuance the game dives down to at times. But it’s there in the first place, and it works, and that’s worth a lot in my book. It’s an easier learn than something like Salerno ’43 (review here).

Atlantic Chase isn’t a game to play casually or to teach to someone who might only play once or twice. Learning the game is an investment, make no mistake. To get the most out of the game you need a regular partner to play games with, because it’s a two-player game. There are solo scenarios, and the solo does play a decent game, but it’s the mind games which make this game as much fun as it is, and that’s just not as much fun when it’s only your mind in the game. I can imagine having a wargame-loving friend who I meet up with regularly and having an absolute blast with Atlantic Chase, playing through scenario after scenario. If you go into it with a “dip in, dip out” mindset, you’re not going to get the most from it. I really enjoy playing Atlantic Chase and I’ve had great fun with the scenarios, but you need that wingman. You need that Goose to your Maverick. I’m sad and Gooseless.

I’ll admit right now that I haven’t tackled the campaign, just because I don’t have the time with another person to be able to do it, and that makes me sad. I’m also not keen on some of the random chance events in the game when they crop up. The first scenario for example, has you roll a dice if you manage to get the German cruise ship The Bremen to Murmansk before war breaks out. The scenario ends either way, but on a roll of 1 Russia captures it, and anything else sees it refuel and join the Kriegsmarine as intended. Rolling a 1 would be a damp squib of an ending for the Axis player. A similar thing happens to close some Axis ports in the campaign (hey, I can read it and dream, okay), which could see you get to a port and find out that someone’s rolled a die and it’s shut for the weekend, and you’re stuck there until it opens, like falling asleep in your car after going to B&Q at a retail park on Sunday afternoon.

Final thoughts

What a double-edged sword Atlantic Chase is. On one hand, you’ve got this incredibly tense game of hidden-movement cat and mouse, using what for me is a groundbreaking mechanism. It’s ridiculously good fun, and far more accessible than many hex-and-counter wargames. Yet on the other hand to really squeeze that juice from it, to get all the fun that comes in that cardboard box, you really need the right person on the other side of the table. You could argue that that’s true of any wargame, but the trajectory mechanism, brilliant though it is, takes at least a full game to really start to intuit.

The rule and scenario books are really well-written, and while it might put some people off, I’m a big fan of the conversational style used in them. It’s another little touch which makes the whole thing feel slightly friendlier and more welcoming to newbies. The counters are a decent size too, so when it comes to conducting battles, you don’t need tweezers. It’d be remiss of me not to mention the little wooden trajectory markers. Each country’s task forces use a specific colour of stick for the trajectories, and each colour has three different kinds of stick, for each of the three possible task forces. Each task force’s sticks are differentiated by one or two stripes printed on them, which would be great, but they’re only printed on one side! Flipping them around to see which belongs to which is a royal pain in the backside, and I’d dearly love to see this fixed in future printings (please!!!).

If you’re okay with all of that though. If you don’t mind the learn and the teach, if you have a regular player two, and if you’re smart enough to bag each set of sticks separately (…), Atlantic Chase is an amazing game. The hidden movement is so, so clever, so unique, and so much fun to apply. The choice of how long to make each trajectory is exquisitely painful. Too long and get broken quickly, too short and it takes twice as long to get anywhere. The chase when someone breaks the line and hightails it to safety is brilliant. They’re all things which precious few games manage to evoke in quite the same way. I’ve heard good things said about designer, Jeremy (Jerry) White, and if Atlantic Chase is anything to go by, they’re all correct. A stunning piece of game design, muzzled slightly by its dependencies.

Review copy kindly provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Atlantic Chase (2021)

Design: Jeremy White
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Jeremy White
Players: 1-2
Playing time: 30-120 mins

The post Atlantic Chase Review appeared first on Punchboard.

One of the things I’ve noticed since I started dangling my feet in the historical war game pool, is how absolutely essential the theme of the game is. The pressure to adhere to the facts presented by history pushes in from two directions at once, in a pincer movement. The designers are obsessive in the research of the stories behind the events they recreate, while the players are often fanatical and diligent, and won’t stand for factual inaccuracies or design liberties. Lanzerath Ridge is no exception, and through the designer’s notes alone you can get a real sense of the heroic struggle these soldiers suffered. The game itself adds an additional layer of attachment to the real people involved, who are represented by their photographs, names, and the roles they played. It’s sobering stuff.

Fighting against the tide

Lanzerath Ridge’s board is wide and represents the part of Belgium where the conflict took place. At the top of the board, the US troops have nine front-line defensive emplacements which they must protect at all costs. Behind those are a few other spaces with vehicles used for transmitting radio intelligence and calling in artillery support. Each of the front-line squares is protected with a one-time-use booby trap and some barbed wire further down the path. The German forces advance along six main channels, with a flanking channel on either side.

The gameplay is really easy once you get the hang of it. Flip three attacker cards and resolve them one at a time to see where the enemy forces are advancing, or to trigger machine gun or mortar fire. If an enemy unit is added to a track, all the units in front of him move along the path one space, with their aim to ultimately overrun at least one of the spaces. If they manage that, it’s game over. In reciprocation, you have five actions at your disposal each turn. Actions are either minor or major. Minor actions include things like moving from one space to a neighbouring one, or removing a disrupted token if someone came under fire previously. Major actions include firing your weapons at the enemy, and that’s where things get tricky.

If you choose to attack with one of your units you check their tile to see which die they roll (there are D6, D8, D10 and D12s included), roll it, and compare it to the value of the space the enemy is in. Rolling at least that value results in the enemy being despatched, but whether you hit or miss, it also means your unit is flipped and exhausted, meaning they cannot be used at all in the rest of the round. Not just for the rest of this turn, but until the entire Attackers deck runs out (there are four decks to work through during the game). You don’t need me to tell you that this is a bad thing. Some units can assist others, flipping to their exhausted side in order to refresh someone else and bring them back, but it’s still just a one-for-one trade-off.

The entire game is incredibly harsh. You can’t even use the same unit twice in one turn. If they’ve taken an action – say, moving to a neighbouring square to assist someone – they can’t do anything else until the next turn. You have a few machine guns at your disposal, but precious little ammunition for them. Reloading costs an action, dismounting a gun is another action, moving it is another, emplacing it is yet another – and this is even before you fire it again. Moving machine guns is important, as different defence spaces have different line-of-sight, and can’t shoot at every enemy.

Riding your luck

The very mention of dice in a strategic game like this is enough to make some people turn their noses up at it. There are times in the game when you’ll curse the dice in seven different languages, like when you roll a D12 to take a shot at someone who only needs a three to beat them, as it comes up with a two. Or when you have to roll a D6 to see which path a grenadier is about to come along, and of course it lands on the one path that’s already full, not the lanes you’ve cleared. Moments of anguish like that are more than made up for by the times when lady luck kisses you on the cheek. Rolling a D6 to call in artillery from your damaged jeep in a last-ditch effort, and hitting the only roll which would succeed – a six – is like winning the lottery.

Lanzerath Ridge is a game of trying to stack the odds in your favour in the hope that at least some of your planning comes off. There’s a clever distinction between the different actions available. Things like moving, reloading, assisting others, transferring ammunition – none of these needs a dice roll. These are plans you can make and be sure of at least having what you want, in the places you want it. The problem is that you’ve no control over which cards get flipped this turn. You don’t know where the next German push is coming from. Heck, you don’t even know if you’re going to be able to hit the soldiers you’re aiming at.

As much as the mechanisms at play here create an enticing, captivating game of highs and lows, it’s another thematic tie to the real situation you’re emulating while you play. Whenever fate hands you your backside with bad rolls, remember that this was a group of eighteen young soldiers. They were trying to slow the advance of a 500+ strong German steamroller during a winter’s day on December 16th 1944. Things were never destined to go well.

Final thoughts

Lanzerath Ridge is a brilliant solo experience. There is a competitive two-player mode, but the main game is what you’ll buy it for. Every time you play you’re guaranteed that things will go differently, which is pretty amazing when you consider there’s just one deck for each of the game’s four rounds. It only takes one defender to miss his shot and become exhausted for your best-laid plans to be thrown out of the window. I found myself getting really attached to my units, referring to them all by name as I narrated what was happening to no one in particular. This game removes the layers of abstraction that something like Salerno ’43 (review here) provides by connecting you directly to individual people.

I thought I’d done really well in my first win, scoring enough points for the 2nd highest award, the Silver Star, only to find out afterwards that I’d played on the 2nd-easiest difficulty. There’s a whole deck of Tactics cards to add in, along with additional constraints, which make things even trickier. The biggest problem the game has in terms of longevity is the fact that there is only one board, with one map. You’ll use the same four decks of cards for the attacks, and while the cards will come out in a different order, you’ll know that the fourth deck is full of flanking cards, for instance.

There’s no doubt that Lanzerath Ridge is a great game, filled with beautiful illustration and art, a great rulebook, and comprehensive player aids. You’ll get so much more than just a game from it though. Learning about the people and the battle that took place is not only incredibly interesting, it’s also humbling. You’ll learn to love Lt Bouck for his ability to have the Inspire effect for all units, and his Command ability, but when you look into it deeper, he was only 20 years old when it all happened… I was moved when I watched this video, featuring interviews with some of the soldiers who you control during the game. It just makes me feel so fortunate to be able to sit in my warm home and play this brilliant game, which has been lovingly and respectfully created by David. Wonderful stuff from start to finish.

Review copy kindly provided by DVG. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Lanzerath Ridge (2022)

Design: David Thompson
Publisher: Dan Verssen Games
Art: Nils Johansson
Players: 1
Playing time: 60-90 mins

The post Lanzerath Ridge Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Note that Spruance Leader is my first game in the Leader series, so if anything I say sounds stupid, bear that in mind.

Tactical command

When I learned that the game would have me controlling all manner of destroyers in the North Atlantic, hunting submarines, taking down aircraft, and sinking other ships, I was expecting some kind of map in the box. Maybe a couple of oceans divided up into hexes as if by gigantic submarine bees. Not so. The main board is a tactical display which focuses on where the different vehicles are in relation to one another, and not where the conflict is taking place in the world. The maps, as such, are just representative illustrations of each campaign’s included scenario sheet. They’re only really there to give an impression of where the action’s taking place in each turn, not pinpointing it. It really conveys a feeling of something happening at the operational level.

During the game you’ll play out encounters in the North Sea, while some take you deep into the Mediterranean and Black Sea, as well as East Asian skirmishes around Japan and the Philippines. To do this you need to choose and outfit your fleet before anything else happens, and this could be a game all by itself. Every vehicle and every weapon you load onto your vehicles costs Special Option points, or SOs as the game calls them. The campaign sheet tells you how much you get to spend across your task force, and this is where you’ll spend a lot of time choosing who, and what is going into battle.

This is a good time to segue into the ship cards. They’re extremely detailed, and every time I chose a ship, I felt like I was playing a grown-up version of Top Trumps. Each vessel’s card tells you not only how much it costs, but also which weapons it can carry, and how well it can defend itself against subs, ships, and aircraft. You’ll see how noisy it is, how well it handles the stress of war, its skill level, its hull strength, and there’s even a photo of the real ship. There are two things to note here. Firstly, there’s a ton of extremely valuable information on a small card, which is great. Secondly, it’s a lot to take in and make sense of, especially when you’re learning the game.

Holy chit!

Spruance Leader was my first foray into the Leader series, and as such I didn’t really know what I was letting myself in for. I’m used to games with plenty of chits and sorting them into some kind of meaningful order, but Spruance Leader took it to a whole new level. Every ship has its own counter, as does every other vehicle. There are counters to draw for each encounter, counters for tracks, and counters for every single weapon. You’re going to need something to organise everything into, trust me on this. At least sort the ordnance if nothing else. I used one of the awesome trays from Cube4Me (this one in fact) to do just that. I can’t imagine trying to play the game without some serious organisation.

There are loads of cards too, including three double-sided cards per ship. Ships’ experience levels change throughout the game, giving them more abilities and better stats as they improve, so while you do need the cards, there’s a lot going on. Spending your SOs on these ships is where you’ll spend a lot of time when you play, and there’s a lot to choose from. The game helps to some extent, with the cards showing the year each ship was commissioned (there’s no using a 1990 destroyer in 1982), and also where it can be used, so ships destined for the Pacific can’t be used in the Atlantic campaigns. Even with these constraints, there are still many decisions to make, including not only which vehicles you want, but what experience level they begin the game at (detailed on the campaign’s sheet). Then once you finally settle on what you want, you’ve still got to choose the Commanders you want, and which weapons you’re loading. If you’re someone prone to heavy AP (analysis paralysis), Spruance Leader may well break your brain.,

Here’s the thing though. Some of you have read the above paragraphs and are pale and trembling, wondering how on Earth anyone could find that fun. Others, however, especially those of you who went looking for reviews of the game, are probably licking their lips at the prospect. There’s a certain type of person who loves the decision-making and huge variety of choices the game lays before them. Getting ready to take on a campaign takes time. It’s the equivalent of a ‘Session 0’ for a TTRPG, where you’re getting the story and the players ready to go. A prologue, if you will.

The main course

Once you’ve sorted who and what is going into battle, the game starts proper, and that’s where it shines. Roll dice, draw target cards, and fight the battles. Some areas in your campaigns have enemy task force patrols which add another level of danger, and there’s a see-saw balancing act between opting to face events and combat, and knowing when to choose a different target. Your ships accrue stress during battles, which is a bad thing, but defeating enemies reduces the chances of a difficult encounter, and removes enemy task forces from the map, which are good things. It’s the battles themselves which really define the game, however, and they’re brilliant.

You get to choose which of your ships are in the Screening force; those out in front of the Main and Protected forces. They’ll take more stress, but have increased detection and get to act first. Deciding which ships get attacked by the enemy is a simple process of adding chits to a draw cup, taking one out, and seeing who’s involved in the naval fisticuffs. Ships in the screening force have more chits in the cup, and therefore a higher chance of being drawn, which makes sense, as these guys are your first line of defence. You’ll send your helicopters off to drop sonar buoys in an attempt to detect submarines as the enemy forces inch ever closer, and the tension it creates is amazing. I love the way the board setup represents the battle, and the way the enemy vessels spread out representing both their range and their azimuthal angles. The inexorable creep of the more dangerous enemy ships leaves you with some tricky prioritisation choices to make

Attack resolution is really simple – it’s just a case of taking a base number from the attacker, applying modifiers from various effects, and seeing if that number is more damage than the defender can take. Rather than making combat anti-climactic, it merely makes it feel like the resolution of plans that were set in motion before. Spruance Leader is a game swamped in strategy and tactics, and it’s what it revels in. You start to form real bonds with the ships and commanders as they gain experience and get promoted, which makes losses feel like a punch to the stomach, while victories are truly joyful.

Final thoughts

A month or two back, I didn’t want to review this game. I’d spent well over an hour punching and sorting counters and cards, and I’d made two abortive attempts to dive into the game when I had an hour spare. Both times, I failed. There was just too much stuff. Too many rules, too many cards, too many chits. The rulebook isn’t great either, I found myself jumping back and forth between sections telling me which things I should do, and then how to do them. I tried the easy campaign in the North Atlantic and didn’t get past spending my SOs. From memory, there was something like 31 ships available to me, each with three cards, and I just had no idea what to pick, or why. It was demoralising and made me feel stupid, which I didn’t enjoy, because generally speaking I can turn my hand to games of any difficulty and understand them. Anyone with an interest in the Cold War era conflicts I’m sure would revel in the choices on offer, but I just couldn’t break through that barrier. That might be how you feel on your first play too, but don’t worry, there is a solution!

I was looking at the files section of BGG, because I wanted to print some more campaign tracking sheets (they include one in the box, but you’ll want more), and stumbled on this essential download from the game’s designer, Dean Brown, which contains not only updated rules, but also some great beginner level scenarios. These remove a couple of mechanisms from the main game, but more importantly, give you a suggested load-out of ships and commanders. After that, things went much more smoothly. I went from the deer-in-the-headlights out of my depth feeling of ignorance to understanding what does what, and how it all works, and I had an amazing time.

Spruance Leader is a brilliant game. The whole game revolves around the tactical decisions you make, and the feeling of investment in the choices you make is immense. Don’t kid yourself into thinking it’s something you’re going to play when you’ve got an hour free. The game itself may only last an hour or two at most, but the planning is something you’ll want to take your time over to get just right. If you’re a military nut with an interest in naval warfare, and don’t mind a steep learning curve, this is pretty much a must-buy, it’s as simple as that. For the rest of us, especially if you’ve never played a Leader game before, just be aware of those couple of pitfalls (sorting and organising, not downloading the beginner scenarios) and there’s a great game waiting for you too. The only downside I can see is that I’m probably going to have to buy Thunderbolt Apache Leader and Phantom Leader now.

Review copy kindly provided by DVG. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Spruance Leader (2022)

Design: Dean Brown
Publisher: DVG
Art: Unlisted
Players: 1
Playing time: 90-180 mins

The post Spruance Leader Review appeared first on Punchboard.

It ain’t me, it ain’t me

The Vietnam War has been done in so many ways. From the passive interests of film and books, to agency-laden video and tabletop games. Fire in the Lake takes a fairly novel approach in not tackling the on-the-ground battles between the various factions involved. It adds a safety layer of abstraction by making the game function at the operational level. There are plenty of small differences to previous games, but those of you familiar with the way COIN games work will feel instantly at home with the concepts of control and support/opposition, which represent the political landscape of the conflict.

I love the way control and support work. It’s such a simple concept, but one which comes with multiple layers of nuance. You might think that the faction with control of a region or city would also have the local population in their pocket, but it’s not the case. It’s quite possible for the city to be controlled by the Counter-Insurgents (in this case the US and ARVN), but the VC and NVA’s actions mean that the populace there actively opposes that control. It’s a hallmark of COIN design, and it leads to some really tricky decisions to make. Taking a sub-optimal turn just to wrest control from someone feels like a punch in the guts, but sometimes you’ve just got to take your lumps.

One of the things I especially like about Fire in the Lake is the choice of playing the game in short, medium, or long scenarios. COIN games can be daunting things to learn, and the first game can really drag until the players all understand not only what they’re doing, but why. The why is so, so important, and sometimes difficult to convey. Being able to set up a short game, rattle through it in a couple of hours, and have everyone walk away from the table knowing what to do next time, is great.

It’s time to stop. Hey, what’s that sound?

I mentioned the differences above, and this is the point where I’d be excitedly rambling if you were sat in front of me, like the fervent nerd I am. We’ve got Coup rounds now instead of Propaganda rounds, which represent checkpoints in the game. Coups are essentially the same thing, but each coup brings a new RVN leader who stays in play – with their own ongoing effects – until the next coup. Coups also bring Monsoons, which means that the turn immediately prior to a Coup (you can always see the upcoming card in COIN games) has some restrictions. No sweeps, and restricted airlifts and airstrikes mean that there’s very little pre-coup preparation for players, and I like it.

The VC and NVA factions can create tunnelled bases which act in the same way as regular bases, but are much more difficult to remove. It’s a nice thematic touch, mirroring the tunnels the Viet Cong used during the conflict to not only hide during the days but also acted as supply routes, hospitals and caches for food and weapons. Another new touch is the introduction of Pivotal Event cards. Each faction has its own Pivotal Event which can have powerful impacts on the game state but require that certain pre-requisites are made first. Like spicy chillies just waiting to be thrown into the soup pot to cause havoc.

I nearly forgot to mention the Ho Chi Minh trail too, which represents the north-to-south trail in Vietnam. It’s a track which shows a value, which then determines how many troops the NVA can Rally. Actions can degrade the trail, reducing its efficiency. It’s a nice touch which represents something that doesn’t need to be on the map itself.

Another great thematic touch is the sort of forced symbiosis between the US and ARVN players. The US doesn’t have its own resources in the game, despite needing them for certain actions. Luckily they can just use the ARVN’s instead! This comes with its own restriction in the form of the Econ marker on the score track, meaning that the US can only spend the surplus above that marker. And this is what the COIN series do so well. They weave in forced cooperation between players who each want to win, meaning that these aren’t head-down, navel-gazing exercises in raw strategy. There’s an inherent layer of player interactions, never more evident than when a player desperately tries to steer someone else into a decision which doesn’t scupper their own plans.

War, children, it’s just a shot away

This is the awkward part of the review, because this is where I say “You know what – maybe Fire in the Lake isn’t for you”. I think it’s an amazing game, but I also acknowledge that it’s a deep game, and a complex game. Reading through the rules and setting the game up for the first time gave me flashbacks to when I tried to learn Gandhi for the first time. You can’t learn how to play Fire in the Lake from the rulebook, which sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. The rulebook is more like a technical manual. Trying to play a COIN game from the rulebook is like learning to drive with a Haynes manual. Just because you know the inner workings of a Ford Cortina doesn’t mean you know how to drive one, and the same goes for COIN.

Your friend in learning COIN, or in this weird analogy, your driving instructor, is the Playbook that comes in the box. The playbook walks you through some turns, explaining to you what’s going on, who’s doing what, and why. It’s vitally important to add this layer of context and application to the actions on offer. The thing is, even with that playbook, there’s no denying that Fire in the Lake is still a tricky game. There are a lot of small things that only go to reinforce my assertion that Cuba Libre is the de facto shallow end of the COIN swimming pool. On the giant Vietnam map you’ve got neighbouring countries with their own conditions for who can stay for how long. You provinces with 0 population, meaning securing them does nothing for your win condition. Lines of Communication bisect provinces, but despite looking like borders, they’re spaces you can occupy. The sheer size of the map, especially when compared to Cuba Libre’s board, makes it more difficult to read the map state at a glance.

None of this is to say that Fire in the Lake is bad in any way. Far from it, it’s an exceptional game. It’s just a very dense game, and learning it as your first COIN game may feel like hacking away at the jungle with a butter knife. If any of the points I raised above made you slightly more waterproof with an involuntary butt clench, head for Cuba Libre first.

Final thoughts

Despite my warning shots in the previous section, I’ve got to say that Fire in the Lake is a wonderful game. The COIN games are fascinating to me, because you can see the genealogical traits passed down through the games. I haven’t played all of them yet, but the Lines of Communication are similar to the railways in Gandhi. The NVA leaders are like the British Viceroys in the same game. You still get those lovely player aid cards which list not only the choices for your Operations and Special Activities, but also the win conditions for each player. They feel like menus at a restaurant, and there’s something I can’t quite put my finger on which makes me enjoy using them. It’s a bit like ordering at said restaurant – “Oh waiter, yes, I’ll take a main course of Patrol, with Advise for dessert, thank you”.

If you’re a fan of historical games set during the Vietnam war, then this really is the game for you. I love it when games take on this operational level of detail, instead of dealing with the actual conflict on the battlefield. Truthfully, a part of that is because I know about some of the horrors of war that happened there. That sort of thing is ever-present in the back of my mind when I play a game which tries to simulate a real-life conflict. But even if you took the theme away from the game and replaced it with something fantastical or futuristic, the card-drive gameplay and tidal shifts of power across the board are just a lot of fun.

There is a Non-Player/solo mode which plays a mean game, but it’s also pretty heavy lifting on your part as the NP player. COIN came into its own with simple solo in Gandhi, BUT, there is a new NP method available with the Tru’ng Bot, which is available to buy separately. Unfortunately, I haven’t used it myself, but from what I’ve read and watched, it sounds great. Fire in the Lake just packs so much in the box, it’s a game you could play over and over, and still have a riot each time. The different scenarios, the different ways to play it with the different factions, and the sheer variety of some of the situations you’ll encounter, mean you can get a lot of hours from your purchase. It’d be remiss of me to not mention that the long scenarios really can be looooong (4+ hours), but in the same breath, if a Coup card comes out and you’re setup just right, that 6 hour game just got chopped to a 2 hour one. I think the medium scenario is the best, although your mileage may vary.

Thematic, atmospheric, and beautifully designed. Fire in the Lake is a complex, table-filling beast which needs taming, but rewards you for your investment.

Review copy provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Fire in the Lake (2014)

Designers: Mark Herman, Volko Ruhnke
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Rodger B. MacGowan, Chechu Nieto, Mark Simonitch
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 180-300 mins

The post Fire In The Lake Review appeared first on Punchboard.

“From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli”

If you’ve got no idea what I’m talking about, check out the Marines Hymn. I have no particular affection for the USMC, I just know the song and it gets stuck in my head each and every time I take this game off my shelf. I had to share my earworm with at least one of you. You’re welcome.

The Shores of Tripoli is a two-player, event-driven wargame from Fort Circle Games. It’s set on the Barbary coast of North Africa at the turn of the 19th Century. The young American military wants free passage for their merchant ships, while Tripolitania wants their pirate corsairs to keep wreaking havoc. It’s a fast-moving, streamlined game, and it’s great.

Asymmetry

Many two-player games are straight-up duels where both sides are fighting with the same weapons. In Targi (review here) both players have three workers and the same cards to work with. Lost Cities has five colours of cards to collect, but they’re available to both players. The Shores of Tripoli takes a leaf from Watergate’s book (review here) and gives each player not only different actions, but also very different game-winning conditions too.

Playing the game feels like playing a lighter, two-player COIN game. Each player has their own agenda, but there are some big intersections. The Trioplitanians spend a lot of the game amassing their corsairs and trying to bring other African nations into the war to join their navy. They can send the corsairs out on pirate raids to steal gold from merchant ships. Stealing 12 gold coins from the US player wins the game. To go on a raid they can discard any card, roll one die per boat in their fleet, and each 5 or 6 sinks a merchant and steals a coin. It’s a disjointed action in some ways. During the whole raid nothing actually moves, no merchant pieces are removed (they don’t exist), and the corsairs stay in their harbours. That might sound anticlimactic, but it’s simple and slick.

The US aren’t just going to lie back and take it. Each of the raiding harbours has a patrol zone around it, and frigates in those patrol zones get to roll interception checks, potentially taking out Tripoli’s raiders before they get to the open sea. The US aren’t just there to respond though, they have plans of their own to end the conflict. Wiping out the Tripolitanian navy and the navies of their allies, they can force a US-favourable treaty. Failing that, they can take Tripoli by force with a combined naval and land-based assault. Similarly, Tripoli isn’t forced to go for gold either, they can win by a show of force, either sinking four US frigates or wiping out Hamet’s army in the East.

Turn of events

Each player’s deck of cards determines what they can do. Each card can be spent to perform some basic standard actions, but the majority of the time you’ll use them to perform the events detailed on them. Some are reusable and go to the discard piles, while many of them are removed from the game after use. The events are generally pretty powerful, and plenty of them act as reactive boosts for other events. For instance, the US might play a card which boosts their pirate interceptions, whereas Tripoli can catch a frigate in its patrol zone and force it to run aground.

The Shores of Tripoli goes from being good to being great after you’ve played it a couple of times and know which cards are in each deck. The Assault on Tripoli card is potentially game-winning for the US, but can only be played after Fall of 1805, which is right near the end of the game. If you draw it in the first round, it’s not going to do much for you, and there are a few other examples where it feels like you draw the wrong cards. The skill comes in how best to discard them for standard actions, and when.

When you know what cards someone might have in their hand it raises the tension so much. Trying to second-guess what the other person is up to in that classic mind game fashion, and it works so well in The Shores of Tripoli. It’s rare to win a game in the first few years (rounds). Most games are about posturing and misdirection, trying to set things up for the late game, without being too obvious about it. The Tripoli player has cards which let them bring the other African nations into the war, adding friendly corsairs to go on more pirate raids with. The US can bring Swedish frigates into the fray, and Tripoli can call in reinforcements from Gibraltar. Land armies slowly grow as troops reach the coast. There’s a real sense of something epic about to kick off.

Final thoughts

Trying to learn The Shores of Tripoli from the rulebook isn’t the easiest thing. It’s not that the rulebook is badly-written because it isn’t. Everything is in there, and it’s concise and very clear. It’s just a difficult game to explain in words. You really need that first learning game as each side under your belt so you know what to expect, and how the late game plays out. That said, a game of Shores of Tripoli is done inside an hour, so it’s not an ordeal to get those learning plays done.

I really like the long, thin board. It acts as a perfect natural divide for two people sitting opposite one another, and there’s something more meaningful when the Tripolitian player reaches across the map and takes a gold piece from the US player’s side. It’s personal. The layout is a little unintuitive at first. It feels like a game where your frigates would have a number of spaces to move, but instead, they can just move wherever they like on the board. The islands on the north of the board and the coast of Africa on the south just lend to the setting and theme, and it really feels like a struggle for control of a stretch of water.

The amount of historical research that went into making The Shores of Tripoli is evident not just in the game’s events, but the historical book and designer’s notes that come with the game. It’s fascinating to read Kevin’s insights and motivations too. You get the feeling playing the game as Tripoli that it’s not just a ‘war on terror’, and reading his notes confirms this, which is excellent game design in my opinion. If you’re a fan of two-player games, especially something with some real-world historical context, you must play The Shores of Tripoli. It’s small, fast, clever, and thoroughly entertaining.

Review copy kindly provided by Fort Circle Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

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The Shores of Tripoli (2020)

Designer: Kevin Bertram
Publisher: Fort Circle Games
Art: Cat Bock, Marc Rodrigue, Matthew Wallhead
Players: 1-2
Playing time: 45-60 mins

The post The Shores Of Tripoli Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Is it morally reprehensible? Does it make me a bad person?

Or is it actually okay?

A bit of background

When we talk about war games in the modern context, I’m not talking about abstract games like Chess, Go, or Shogi. I’m talking about tabletop games which simulate conflict in some way. Although we think of wargames as a relatively recent invention, this sort of game has been around since the late 18th Century. Most of the early examples came from Prussia, and in the early 20th Century a certain H G Wells (yes, the same H G Wells who wrote The War of the Worlds) even published wargame rules in a book titled Little Wars.

A lot of the early examples were made as educational simulations for the military, but games weren’t mass-produced until the 1950s. That’s when Charles S Roberts founded Avalon Hill and started producing board game wargames. Boxes which contain everything you need to play games like the one which started it all, Gettysburg. Even if you haven’t played an Avalon Hill game, if you’ve been in the board game scene for any length of time, it’s likely you’ve heard of them. The ripples that Avalon Hill games made can still be felt today, thanks to perennial titles like Diplomacy and Advanced Squad Leader.

Ordinary people like me and you have been simulating war on our tables for the last seventy years. Are we monsters?

The voice of experience

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not an expert in this field. I know what I enjoy, but I’ve never studied game design, I haven’t studied history formally for the best part of 30 years, and I’m not a student of philosophy. With my level of ignorance already established, I reached out to a couple of wargame designers, people who have both a vested interest in wargames, and a lot of experience in the area.

Volko Ruhnke had a hand in many of the COIN games that GMT Games published, including two of my favourite games of all time – Cuba Libre (review here) and Fire in the Lake.

David Thompson can list games like War Chest, Pavlov’s House, and the Undaunted series on his CV.

I asked each of them the same questions, and here’s the short version of their answers.

Q&A

Me: Do you think it’s morally wrong to enjoy a wargame based on real events?

Volko: No, no more so than enjoying a book, article, movie, play, or any other medium of examination of real events, war included. But I would be interested to hear why someone would separate games from those media in regard to morality.

David: My answer to the question is “no,” but with a caveat. It’s all about the word “enjoy” and what aspect of the game you’re enjoying. For me, I play historical wargames to help explore the situation. I study the maps, the units involved, the reason for the conflict, and use the game as a way to help that exploration. The study is what I enjoy, and playing the game (either solitaire or multiplayer) helps that exploration, and thus provides that enjoyment by extension.

However, each person has different limits to that enjoyment. For me, I don’t like designing (or playing!) games that put the player in the role of performing immoral or unethical actions. For example, in my game “Soldiers in Postmen’s Uniforms,” I don’t allow a player to take on the role of the Danzig city police and German attackers because of the atrocities they commit during the game itself.

Me: Do you have a personal cut-off period for when soon is too soon? So for example, wars in the middle-east, Ukraine, etc. Is there a length of time you feel it’s okay to tackle them, after the end of the conflict?

Volko: No, I don’t. I designed the boardgame Labyrinth in 2009, when its setting, the “global war on terror”, was still very much on, and with an uncertain end. The design remains highly popular today, so apparently it is bringing enjoyment to people. And it has spawned to expansions that examine where things went in the real world from the time of the original game’s printing.

I would return to my comparison above to ask, should there be a cut-off period for writing or film-making to tackle wars in the Middle East, Ukraine, etc.? And, if not, why should game designers uniquely muzzle themselves?

Imagine a cut-off period in topics examined by professional wargaming for the US Department of Defense or the British MoD. Would that not be absurd?

David: Yes, absolutely. For me, I don’t work on games about conflicts where there are living combatants. So WW2 is my cut-off (there are still some WW2 survivors of course, but not for any of the games I’ve designed). I’ve been approached about designing games set in more modern periods, and it’s not something I’m comfortable with. But if I did consider it, I wouldn’t feel comfortable working on the game without the consent of the living combatants.

Me: Is there anything you outright do or do not put into your games, because you have strong personal feelings about them?

Volko: I try (with uncertain success) to include the perspectives and intentions of all the major actors in the affair. That is easier said than done, and we could talk about the importance, challenges, and strategies for doing so at some length.

David: I would just point back to my answer for the initial question. It’s not so much something I do, as something I don’t do. I don’t allow players to take on the role of directly committing immoral or unethical actions in the context of the game itself. This can be a bit of tightrope act – the critical element for me is the context of the game itself.

Me: What would you say to anyone telling me, you, or anyone else that they’re a bad person for enjoying a wargame?

Volko: I would ask them to say more about why they think so, and with regard to what games. Individual player motivations, representations in individual game designs, and individual life situations of those who may level ethical critique of wargaming are all decisive to this issue.

David: I think it’s fine for a person to have that opinion. I don’t necessarily agree with it (see above), but I do understand why someone might feel that way. And to be honest, there have been instances of gamers (not just wargamers) who enjoy elements of games that make me feel uncomfortable (fascination with Nazi Germany, colonization, slavery, etc). And for that reason, I can see why people, in general, might think it’s odd to enjoy a wargame. My only request would be that the person tries to expand their viewpoint and perspective, to try to better understand why gamers might enjoy wargames.

The takeaway

David and Volko are both very successful designers, but even they don’t agree on all aspects. In saying that, it’s important to realise that these are very concise answers, and there’s a huge amount of nuance at play. I’ll be speaking to each of them in more detail soon to go into it all more, as I find it fascinating.

The one thing they absolutely agree on is that it’s perfectly acceptable to play a wargame and have fun with it. So let’s have a look at the things which turn them from the glorification of bloodshed to something we can enjoy in good conscience.

Games as an educational tool

When I was at school, history didn’t do anything for me. I liked science and geography. As I’ve grown older, my interest in what came before me has grown, and modern wargames have been a fantastic teacher.

When I started playing these games, I was surprised by the level of depth in the history and background of each of them. Most board games, even those based on a very specific setting, might only have a couple of paragraphs of background. Open a wargame, and you’re in for a very different experience.

The COIN games take an approach of only very lightly covering the scenario in the rulebook, but the playbooks have some great examples and expansions on those themes. I love the way the game delivers the history piecemeal, with each card representing a real-world event from the time. When I first drew the ‘Sinatra’ card in Cuba Libre, it led me to Google, and in turn a rabbit hole of reading about his meeting with the heads of the crime syndicate in Cuba in 1946.

While I was playing Salerno ’43 I spent a lot of time reading the rulebook. Mostly to learn how to play, but also because I found the level of depth that Mark Simonitch had gone into absolutely insane. In the design notes towards the end of the book he has an explanation for why one particular road isn’t on the map of Northern Italy he used:

Why no Amalfi Coast Road?
I left out the coastal road that runs between the towns of Amalfi and Sorrento because some playertesters were using it to supply a multi-division force along the road to rush up the west coast. This famous scenic road which runs along cliffs and through tunnels would never have been used to supply even a single regiment—it was far too vulnerable to sabotage and demolition.

When I reviewed By Stealth and Sea, by DVG, I was honestly taken aback by the level of detail Nicola and David (the designers) had gone to. If you don’t know the game, you play as Italian submariners who ride torpedoes into bays, in an attempt to take down allied ships. Each of the crew members on the torpedoes has a name and a photograph. These aren’t just made-up names and faces, these are the actual human beings who took part in these terrifying missions. Once again, I learned so much about a portion of history I never knew existed, and I couldn’t help but feel a strong emotional connection to each of them, despite them being a part of the Axis. This leads us nicely to my next consideration.

Levels of abstraction

In my limited exposure to the genre of wargames I’ve noticed that the scale of the games can vary greatly. Using a similar size board on my table, I can be controlling huge numbers of soldiers across the entire country of India in Gandhi (review here), or individual, named soldiers in Lanzerath Ridge. I found the difference in scale interesting and found that the different levels of abstraction in wargames have well-known scales.

If you have a look at the BGG category for Wargame, the games tend to get split into one of three sub-categories:

• Tactical – these games are at the sort of scale I talked about before in Lanzerath Ridge, or the Undaunted series. Identifiable individual soldiers or units moving around a map that might only be a few miles across.
• Operational – moving the operational level is the equivalent of ‘zooming out’ on the battlefield. Our counters representing individual soldiers become battalions, brigades, or divisions. Those of you more experienced than me might disagree, but to my mind, this is the sort of scale we’re talking about with Simonitch’s ‘4x series of games.
• Strategic – at the strategic level we’re looking at entire continents at a time, or even the entire world. I don’t have much in the way of experience here unless you’re counting games like Twilight Struggle.

So the scale is a thing. But how does it tie back to the original topic of this article, and why it matters when it comes to enjoying wargames, or not

Some people can feel very uncomfortable when it comes to taking named people into a battle, knowing they may die, and knowing that that person may well have gone into combat and died. Even while writing that, there’s a small something inside me that’s flinching.

Taking a step back from the on-the-ground bloodshed isn’t a case of denying it, or negating the fact that it ever happened. It just makes it more comfortable for some people to enjoy when it’s in the form of entertainment. And it’s understandable. We play games to have fun, most of the time, and if someone adds something to your game which makes you feel uneasy, or straight-up upset, is that something you want? There is definitely a time and a place to bring those things to the fore, but we’re talking about an elective activity, a way to spend your free time.

This is all a round-the-houses way of me trying to say if you feel happier playing a game at the operational level, rather than the tactical, go for it. It doesn’t mean you’re denying the fact it ever happened.

In closing

I want to apologise for the way this article may feel like it’s leading you down a dead end sometimes. It’s been as much an opportunity for internal reflection and resolution as it has been for creating something for other people to read. Right off the bat, I asked ‘Is it okay to enjoy wargames?’, and the answer I’ve come up with is an ambiguous ‘it depends’.

Each of us has our own moral compass, with its North set by our upbringing, education and personal opinions. If the idea of war is so abhorrent to you that you wouldn’t even watch a film or TV series about it, then a wargame isn’t going to be for you. But that doesn’t mean the same applies to everybody else. Enjoying a wargame doesn’t mean you’re glorifying and making light of the sacrifice made by thousands of people, or the atrocities carried out in the name of genocidal maniacs. Quite the opposite.

When I play these games it provides me with entertainment, but also a sense of reverence, humility and appreciation. It’s keeping history alive, and making sure these things aren’t forgotten or twisted by works of fiction, or the minds of people who would seek to obscure them in the fog of time. Thanks to All Bridges Burning (review here) I know about the Finnish Civil War, and the power struggle between the Red and White, with Germany and Russia playing their parts. By Stealth and Sea (review here) taught me about the Italian men who set out on near-suicidal missions with unreliable equipment, all in the name of someone else’s fight. There’s even a free downloadable PDF companion book for the latter. Both are fantastic games, and eye-opening glimpses into a past I didn’t know existed.

Enjoy your wargames for the same reasons you enjoy a good book or film set during a war.

Feedback and disclaimer

Thanks for getting this far. Just a quick note to say that this entire article is based on my opinion, and in some places, the opinions of others. If you have any feedback, questions, or concerns, please just leave a comment, come and find me on Discord, or drop me an email using adam at punchboard dot co dot uk.

I also want to say a huge thank you to both Volko and David for their valuable input, and for taking the time to talk to me.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to read more like this, consider supporting the site by joining my monthly membership at Kofi. It starts from £1 per month, offers member benefits, and lets me know you’re enjoying what I’m doing.

The post Is it okay to enjoy wargames? appeared first on Punchboard.

If you want to look under the hood of the game to see what makes it thrum, instead of just kicking the tyres and nodding with faux understanding, then read on.

Cuba Libre then – what’s it all about? It’s the second, and arguably most famous instalment in GMT Games’ COIN series. If you’ve visited here before, you might have read my reviews of some of the other COIN games – Gandhi and All Bridges Burning. I’m a huge fan of the counter-insurgency games, and I was really excited to take a stab at Cuba Libre, so to hark back to my original question – what’s it all about?

Your primer

It’s 1957. You’re Fidel Castro, and your 26July movement has designs on a revolution, aiming to overthrow the dictatorship currently ruling Cuba.

Actually, no, you’re playing the role of the government, looking to retain control of your island nation.

Then again, maybe you’re a part of the Directorio, the anti-communist movement. This is all getting confusing, isn’t it?

Perhaps we’ll just form a crime syndicate, open casinos across the country, and make some easy money when celebrities like Frank Sinatra visit.

The game is set during the Cuban Revolution, which happened around 1957-1959. You may not know the background and the history of what happened, but there’s a good chance you’ve heard of, or seen Pop Art of, some of the major players. Names like Fidel Castro, Ché Guevara, and Camilo Cienfuegos. If you want a bit more background, there’s a fantastic brief history here.

Playing as one of the four factions, you’ve each got to reach your very asymmetric goals before the other factions do the same, to claim victory. There’s a standard set of operations (actions) that many of the factions share, along with some special activities, which tend to be unique to each. All of the actions take place in the shadow of the deck of event cards, which churns its way inexorably towards the end of the game.

Most actions see you placing more units onto the board, spreading terror, attacking other factions, and trying to wrest control of the various spaces on the map. Most, if not all, factions in COIN games are looking to gain some kind of geographic dominance. That’s what you’re trying to do. That’s how you win.

A turn of events

The event cards are a common feature of COIN games, and they do a great job of putting el gato among las palomas. Each card not only determines the turn order for the current round but also has two contrasting views of an event, based on the real history of the situation.

Let’s look at an example.

The card Radio Rebelde lets the 26July player act first if they’re eligible for that turn. They choose to play the event text that says “Clandestine radio reaches masses: Shift 2 Provinces each 1 level toward Active Opposition.”. Powerful stuff – building opposition is a part of their win condition. But what happens if a rival gets to that event before them? They choose the other option on the card – “Transmitter pinpointed: Remove a 26July Base from a Province.”. That’s a double-blow for the 26July player, as bases not only count towards their win condition but also help them spawn more units onto the map.

The really clever thing that Cuba Libre does is to always show you the upcoming event, as well as the current one. There’s never an excuse for not knowing what was coming next and blaming bad luck. If you take a turn in a round, you’re ineligible for the following round. It means if there’s a powerful event coming up, you can pass to ensure you’re eligible, but then you’re not only skipping a turn but also gifting an opponent the opportunity to take the turn you were going to. It’s the cause of a lot of teeth-sucking, and it’s fabulous.

One of my favourite thing about COIN games, and war games in general, is how educational they are. If you take the time to read the material that comes with them and put the events on the cards into context, you end up with a combination of fun and learning that beats any ‘Edutainment’ CD-ROM you might have played in the ’90s.

Easy does it

If you’ve been looking into the COIN games, trying to decide which one to start with, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Cuba Libre suggested. It’s touted as “the easiest one”, or “the lightest one”, and there’s a grain of truth in there. The map and board are smaller than in some of the other games in the series, and when you see the island and its few brightly coloured provinces, it looks much more approachable than something like Gandhi, with its table-filling map of India.

There’s less intricacy and nuance in the various actions on your bi-fold menus of carnage – otherwise known as the player aids. Three of the factions are essentially trying to put lots of units on the map in order to take control and throw weight behind government support or opposition, wherever their loyalties might lie. It’s only the Syndicate which feels like an outlier, and to put that into context for those of you who have played Root (review here), they’re akin to the Vagabond in the base game. Never looking for outright dominance, instead, just looking to make the most of a bad situation.

What all of this means to you and me, is that Cuba Libre is a much easier game to explain, and it feels more intuitive. You can plan your machinations from turn one, and always have a clear view of what’s unfolding. There are four Propaganda cards shuffled into the event deck, each of which acts as a momentary pause in proceedings, and resets some of the various goings-on on the board – things like abject terror among the Cuban population – which is nice. There’s none of the “posturing and waiting for the Second Act” of All Bridges Burning, and the game state is much more easily intuited than trying to make sense of the Fire in the Lake map, for example.

Final thoughts

I stated that Cuba Libre is friendly in my opening paragraph. Friendly is a relative term when it comes to COIN games. I jumped in at the deep end when I took on Gandhi as my entry point into the series, and to call it daunting would be an outrageous understatement. COIN games do a great job of bridging the gap between heavy Euro and outright wargame, but the referential style of the rulebook, and the fact that there’s a rulebook and a playbook, will seem very alien to many boardgamers. If you’re prepared to invest in the GMT mindset, however, then hoo boy – there’s a heck of a game waiting on the other side.

The designers, Jeff and Volko, have baked an incredible level of balance into Cuba Libre. There are times when you’ll see someone’s victory marker creeping uncomfortably close to their victory position on the score track. Because the game state is so easy to read, they’ll often find themselves hauled back down into the dust-up by the other players, who are acting with an unspoken, collective understanding. Even when you’re the person being knocked back down a peg or two, you’ll still crack a wry smile at how well the game is working.

The non-player (NP) factions are still there, if you’re a solo player, or find yourself down a person or two at your games night, but the NP (AI) actions aren’t as quick and easy as All Bridges Burning, for example. That’s to be expected. We’re talking about a game that was released all the way back in 2013, which is an age in board game terms. It’s still perfectly playable, just be prepared to invest a little more time and mental energy in running the NP turns.

Choosing a favourite COIN game for me is a bit like choosing a favourite child for some people. I want to say I love them all equally, but I secretly love Cuba Libre the most. So much so I even sorted it all into the wonderful counter trays and card holders from Cube4Me. Just don’t tell the other COIN games in my collection, they’ll get jealous.

Review copy kindly provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

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Cuba Libre (2013)

Designers: Jeff Grossman, Volko Ruhnke
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Xavier Carrascosa, Rodger B. MacGowan, Chechu Nieto
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 180 mins

The post Cuba Libre Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Out of my depth

I think it’s best to start with some kind of disclaimer like I did when I tackled Gandhi. I came at that game as a Euro game fan, looking in on the COIN series. With Salerno ’43 I’m doing something similar. I chose this entry in the ZOC games as my first because I did some research. Research which told me this was the smallest map, and the lowest number of units to manage. It’s touted as a good beginner’s game for these reasons, and with the benefit of hindsight, I can see why.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a game suited for wargame newbies like me, however.

I’ll be frank with you and admit that even as someone who’ll happily sit down and learn a heavy Vital Lacerda game like On Mars, I struggled to get to grips with Salerno ’43. It’s not that there’s anything missing in the rules. Everything is in there. It’s just very referential. There’s an example of play at the back of the rulebook, but it still leaves you feeling like you’ve been shoved in at the deep end of a swimming pool after reading the Ikea ‘how to swim’ instructions.

If you’re new to the world of wargames, even just the basic setup can feel quite alien. In a hobby board game you’d expect a list of components, maybe an overview, and then instructions for setup in the first few pages. Setup in Salerno ’43 depends on the scenario you’re playing, and the first time it’s mentioned is on page 23 of a 32 page rulebook. Performing setup relies on some reading between the lines and a little guesswork, but you’ll get there. It’s not necessarily that this style of rules and instructions is wrong, it’s just different, so be prepared for a culture shock.

Swimming to shore

You’d be forgiven for thinking I don’t like Salerno ’43 after that opening salvo. The truth is very different. Salerno ’43 is a great game, once you get your head around the way it works. It’s a scenario-based wargame, based on real events. If you play as the Allies, the game commences with a beach landing, with a long-term goal of forcing your way into Italy. The Axis are just there to try to stem the flow, and to hang on until reinforcements arrive.

It’s a very evocative piece of game design, with so much attention to detail. Take the initial beach landings for example. Uncle Beach was famously where the main resistance came during 1943, and so the dice rolls for the commando units landing there are the only ones that can take any significant damage. The terrain matters, and roads make an enormous difference to how far mechanised units can travel. Rivers aren’t just pretty lines on the map. Infantry slows to a crawl as they wade across, and vehicles won’t cross at all without bridges. It takes some wrapping your head around to have to be able to read a map to figure out your best channels to attack and defend.

If you’re a hex-and-counter newbie, like me, you might think that the stacks of tiny tiles with some numbers printed on them aren’t even as exciting as a meeple, and that’s saying something! The surprising truth is that despite the layer of abstraction on the table, where platoons of men are replaced with small tiles, you get very invested in them. Part of that is the knowledge that they represent real people who fought and died in the conflicts, but as much of it is the attachments you make as you tell your own story.

Push inland

Thanks in part to the smaller number of units in Salerno ’43, losses feel palpable. When one of your commando units is destroyed, it hurts. Not only that, it forces you to sometimes alter your plans very dynamically. Mark’s clever ZOC system creates invisible zones around, and links between, your units. Enemies getting too close have to stop, and woe betide anyone that tries to cross the bonds two of them. This comes to life most noticeably when you’re trying to stop a retreat. Units forced to retreat through a ZOC bond are eliminated.

There are some really clever little things you can do within this system, which take time and repeated play to emerge. A unit surrounded on three sides is effectively useless because those bonds act as fences, penning it in. If another friendly unit moves into one of the spaces, breaking that bond, the trapped unit can sneak out, as if you’ve held the door open with your foot. It all goes towards adding a surprisingly deep, and nuanced level of gameplay.

Combat uses a table of ratios to determine how effective your dice rolls will be. If you don’t like the available outcomes on your 2:1 attack in the table, you can shift a column to the right by throwing in air support, or artillery. When the weather’s bad, you might find things shifting the opposite way. It’s a simple, elegant way to portray combat with just a die and a table on your player aid.

Reinforcements flood the map as the rounds tick by, weather patterns change and affect movement, and the whole thing feels alive. The first time German reinforcements arrive and drive their trucks halfway across the map, using the movement bonuses from roads, is a real eye-opener. I was worried that a game with a standard setup, and what feels like a standard set of first turns, could feel dull quickly. The clever part comes in the small changes that happen in the opening landings, and it can lead to vastly different outcomes and board states.

Final thoughts

If you’ve gotten this far in the review, there’s probably one question that’s prodding your brain. Would I recommend Salerno ’43? The answer is yes, but I need to lay down some caveats first. If you’re an experienced wargamer, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble picking this game up. The smaller map and reduced unit numbers might make the game seem a bit simplified, but Salerno offers up a constricted, meandering maze of mountains and roads which make for stark contrast to the open battlefields of some games. It’s not a game about large-scale combat, it’s a game of shepherding and hindering for the Axis player, and trying to pry open a large, grey walnut for the Allies.

If you’re a board gamer coming at Salerno ’43, looking to take your first step into a world of hexes and tiles, just be realistic about what you’re letting yourself in for. Even the fact that the board is just a folded map – with no actual board – can be a big shock (you can buy mounted boards from GMT). The concept of a unit’s ‘steps’ is terminology you might never have come across, and that’s just the first of many such idiosyncracies of these games. If this sounds like a bridge too far for you, then honestly, you probably won’t have the perseverance to get to the juicy flesh under the thick skin of this game’s fruit.

If you’re still intrigued, then go for it. War games aren’t about glorifying war, and if you take the time to read the supplements in the books, they’re incredibly educational. This is a strategic game which enacts a real-world scenario, and if anything leaves you with a sense of reverence for the people you portray. The gameplay is tight, the player aids are fantastic, and the whole thing is an enjoyable experience. The rules are excellent reference tools, just don’t expect to learn how to play from them. Instead, check out the excellent playthrough of the extended example of play from Stuka Joe and this after-action report from The Players’ Aid, to get some feel for how the game works. It’s a great system, a great game, and I want the rest of Mark’s ZOC games now…

Review copy kindly provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own. All images ©Scott Mansfield .

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Salerno ’43 (2022)

Designer: Mark Simonitch
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Mark Simonitch
Players: 2
Playing time: 180-600 mins

The post Salerno ’43 Review appeared first on Punchboard.