Washington's War Review

One game that I was incredibly excited to receive a copy of was Washington's War.

Washington's War is a Revolutionary War board game.   One player takes on the role of the British army, and the other takes on the role of the Americans.  The game is played over a series of rounds - each round representing a year between 1775-1783 (in a long game).  On each turn, both players get to draw 7 cards.  These cards can be either "Ops" cards, or Events.  Events simply do something to alter the game, or a phase of the game.  They can help in combat, determine when the game ends, move the French closer to a treaty with the Americans, have Benedict Arnold betray the Americans, and many other things.  There are two types of events - Mandatory and Optional.  With Ops cards, a player can bring in reinforcements, move a General (possibly to attack), or gain Political Control in different regions of the board.  At the end of each round, many troops are lost to winter, and Political Control can shift if certain parts of the board are isolated from others.  After a certain number of turns (based on which events are played), players check for victory conditions - and whoever has Political Control over enough of the colonies is declared the winner!

The first thing that I like about Washington's War is that a lot of the elements of the game give it a nice historical theme.  Specifically, some of the things like winter attrition, though incredibly challenging in gameplay terms, make complete sense in the setting of the game.  One of these elements is the fact that, even in battles, you generally don't kill especially many troops.  I think that this really depicts the inaccuracy of the muskets used during this time - it's much more likely that you will destroy a large army by catching them in a place where they can't flee (thus getting them to surrender) than it is to wipe out them out on the battlefield.  Honestly, this element of a war game where you are pushing armies around instead of killing them reminds me of the Game of Thrones Board Game and, though I didn't really like it especially much in that game, I think that it works well in Washington's War.  (It helps that you can wipe out an entire army if you can force them to surrender.)

Ok, I thought the flash made this picture look cool.

My next two pros really are very intermixed, so I'll talk about them at the same time.  First, I liked that both sides had significantly different advantages and disadvantages (this also works with the historical feeling to the game), and second, I liked how "Isolation" and placing Political Control markers worked.  The two sides in this game play quite differently.  And, if you want to win, then you truly have to capitalize on your strengths and find ways of exploiting your opponent's weaknesses.  Specifically, the British player gets a lot of troops, especially early, and has major combat advantages to start the game.  The American player, however, is able to quickly get small armies positioned on different parts of the map in order to gain Political Control and isolate the British player's control - and winning the game is about Political Control (and not killing things), so this is a very useful ability.  One of the elements of the game that you check at the end of each round is called "Isolation."  Basically, it means that if you can't find a way to connect your Political Control markers to some troops or some neutral areas of the board, then you will lose your control in those areas, as the people will feel isolated from your influence.  It isn't generally very easy to isolate your opponent's political markers, but successfully doing this at the right times during the game can really determine which player wins and which player loses.

Now that I've mentioned several things that Washington's War did very well, there were a few areas that I disliked.  First, this game is overly complex.  One of the reasons that I was so excited about this game is that it has a 90 minute playing time - and, for the most part, I've found this to be accurate.  However, it also has a 24 page rulebook that is very text heavy (there are a lot of diagrams and such - I'm more focusing on the length than the quality), and also has another 14 page book for examples of play, strategy tips, and design notes.  To read through and really understand the rulebook will probably take around an hour.  I read it three times before my first game.  And then, I referenced it repeatedly every time that I played.  Basically, here's how it reads, "the British player performs this rule like X, but the American player does Y.  Exception: in Z situation, everything is different."  There really feels like an exception to every rule.  Oh, and the French armies (obviously) work differently than either the American or the British armies.  Yes, I realize that much of this is attempting to capture the historical feel of the Revolutionary War, but it seemed quite excessive.  Additionally, I thought that, though the rules covered everything, they weren't one of GMT's better rulebooks.  Rules weren't laid out in the actual order that you would encounter them in the game, and I often wanted to look up rules, but wasn't able to find what I needed in the index.  This led to flipping pages and trying to remember what section covered that exception.  The complexity and the rules will definitely be your biggest hurdle in enjoying Washington's War.

My next con was that I really disliked Mandatory Events.  More specifically, I really disliked that Mandatory Events made your hand significantly worse.  Some Mandatory Events are fairly neutral - they set what year the game will end.  However, other Mandatory Events would actually help the other team!  I've played card based political games (like Twilight Struggle) where you might draw your opponent's cards and you have to make the most of a bad situation.  However, in Twilight Struggle, there are ways of mitigating the impact of these cards.  In Washington's War, if a British player draws one of the strong American Mandatory Events, then he is forced to play it, and he doesn't get to redraw a card.  So, not only does it help his opponent, it also hurts his hand because he has one card that is functionally useless.  If you draw an opponent's Optional Event, then you can at least use it to give yourself an advantage in combat, or discard it to perform a political action.  With the Mandatory Events, it's like having a card in your hand that says "Pass."

Playing this card helps.  A lot.

The final con that I will mention for Washington's War is that I felt that it was far too luck based.  This luck came in what cards you draw and how important single die rolls were.  Now, I'm really okay with luck in games.  However, I feel that there is a disconnect in Washington's War - rule intensive games have a highly strategic feel to them.  Generally, the longer it takes to learn a game, the more I want random factors of the game to be mitigated.  Here's an example of a card that is amazing - "Baron von Steuben Trains the Continental Army."  To start the game, the British get a +1 advantage in every combat.  Why?  Because the American troops are horrible and throwing pitch forks at them.  However, this card permanently removes this bonus from the British.  See how this is useful?  So, if an American player draws this card early, then he will have a much easier time than if the British player draws it and is able to discard it during a combat.  Another element of luck is in determining your General's combat rating.  To start a fight, each player rolls a die.  On a 1-3, the General's rating is cut in half for that battle.  That hurts quite a bit.  But, then the battle is also determined by a single die roll (with modifiers).  I can outnumber my opponent by 3-4 troops (5 troops is a massive army in this game, and is the most that you can ever attack with), have the better General, and discard a card to give myself an advantage and still lose the combat.  Yes, this represents the fact that things go horribly awry in battle.  But, the winner of a battle coming down to how players roll a six-sided die became frustrating to me.

Overall, I give Washington's War a 7.0/10.  If you can get through the rules and start playing the game, then there is quite a bit to like about the game.  However, with the very steep entrance barrier mixed with the fairly high luck factor for the game, it didn't quite live up to the expectations that I had for it.

If Washington's War sounds interesting to you, then you might also want to check out 1989: Dawn of Freedom, Game of Thrones, and Twilight Struggle (really, everyone should check out Twilight Struggle if you haven't yet).

I would like to thank GMT Games for providing me with a review copy of Washington's War.

1989: Dawn of Freedom Review

One of my all time favorite games is Twilight Struggle.  Because of this, the fine people of GMT Games suggested that I try out 1989: Dawn of Freedom, since it's by the same designers and is somewhat of a "part 2" to Twilight Struggle.

In 1989, each player is struggling to take (or maintain) power in Eastern Europe.  To do this, players alternate playing cards that can either be used for "Ops", for the event showing on the card, or to advance on Tiananmen Square.  If using a card for "Ops", the player may add influence to any countries where they currently have influence or are adjacent to countries that have influence.  Alternatively, when using a card for Ops, a player may choose to make "support checks" by adding the value of the card, a few modifiers, and a die roll, to see if their opponent's influence is removed (and possibly their own influence is added).  Whenever a card is played for Ops, if an opponent's event is on the card, then that event will still occur.  If you want to avoid this, you can play a card in Tiananmen Square (once per round), to try to get one of a variety of bonuses - and to prevent your opponent's event from occurring.  One special type of event card is a scoring event.  When a scoring event is played, a Power Struggle immediately ensues, where both players get cards based on their position in the scoring country, and they play a small mini-game with them.  Whoever wins gets bonuses, which can include taking or keeping power in the country.  Finally, the players score points based on each player's position in the country; and if the Communist player still has power, then they get a bonus based on the number of times the country has scored.  Play continues like this until one player has 20 points (in a tug-of-war scoring, where only one player can have points at a time), or until 10 rounds have been played - signifying the end of the year.  If all of the rounds have been played, one final scoring takes place, and the highest score wins.

If you're familiar with Twilight Struggle, and you just want to know what is different, here's a quick list before I get into the pros and cons:

• There is no Defcon track
• There is no Headline phase
• Realignment rolls and coups have been combined into "support checks"
• Power Struggles occur during scoring rounds (I'll write more about these later)
• The Space Race has been replaced by Tiananmen Square
• No single scoring card has an automatic win condition (though one triggers an early game end)
• Each city has a "type" (worker, farmer, elite, etc)

All of the events are based on history

Now, let's start digging into the pros and cons.  The first major pro was that I found 1989 to be incredibly engaging.  I enjoyed each of my games from start to finish, and I was even thinking about the games I played afterwards - and found myself really looking forward to the next time that I would be able to try it out.  Now, I play games a lot (though I'd like to play even more), and I often find myself looking forward to game night - but normally I am thinking to myself "ok, what game do I need to play so that I can review it."  With this one, I was thinking specifically about wanting to get together with someone to play 1989 - forget all of that "what should I play" nonsense, I wanted to play this.

The next pro is fairly standard with all of the games that these designers make - I really appreciate the historical richness of the game.  I like that each of the events are based on things that actually happened, and that, if I was willing to learn it, I could easily learn some history simply by playing a game that I enjoy!

Another couple of pros that I will mention briefly are that I love the tug of war nature of the game, and I like that you have to make hard decisions (and sacrifices) during the game.  Each game will be different based on who you play with, and what you draw.  If I play with someone that is very interested in taking over Hungary, the entire first half of our game might be focusing on Hungary - because it's important to counter what your opponent is doing.  One example of this is that I drew an event (as the Communist player) that gave the Democratic player an influence in every city in Czechoslovakia where I did not have control.  I spent the entire round building control in Czechoslovakia to mitigate this effect.  My opponent naturally thought that I had a Czechoslovakia scoring card, and so he was countering my moves there.  That's the great tug of war.  Then, at some point, I knew that I had to give up and play the card - or throw it in Tiananmen Square.  I chose to play this one and throw a different card away, so that I would get the 4 Ops points, even though it made me sacrifice a bit by giving my opponent some influence in Czechoslovakia.

Some cards are very powerful

Now to talk about Power Struggles.  If you like Twilight Struggle, then you will basically like or hate 1989 depending on your feelings about Power Struggles.  When a Power Struggle ensues, each player gets 6 cards if they have at least one city in the scoring country.  Then, for each additional city, they will get 2 more cards.  The cards come in 6 types - Petition, Strike, Rally, March, Leader, and Wild.  (Though the Leaders really act as Wilds, and the "Wild" are more like events.)  If you have a Leader, and you have the corresponding type in the scoring country (ie, you have an Elite Leader, and you control an Elite space in the country), then they can be used as any of the first four types.  Whoever played the scoring card starts with initiative and plays a card.  Their opponent then must play a card of the same type.  If they are able to do this, then they roll a die, and if they roll at least the number in the corner of the player with initiative's card, then they get to take initiative.  Otherwise, initiative stays the same.  Cards are played back and forth like this until one player cannot play a card.  That player loses the Power Struggle.  Finally, both the winner and loser roll a die.  The loser is rolling to see how much influence they have to remove from the scoring country.  The winner is rolling to see how many victory points they earn (and if they are the Democratic player, to see if they take power in the country).

I haven't decided my feelings about Power Struggles.  Conceptually, I really like them.  I think that they are a neat additional element of the game.  I don't think that they are especially strategic - or, more specifically, I think that the strategy is fairly basic in them. But I enjoy them.  Theoretically.  However, when you draw 10 cards, and 5 of them are leaders that you can't play, you really feel like the game just punched you in the face.  Or, if you draw 12 cards and don't have any of a certain suit - and then your opponent leads with that suit - you become disenfranchised with this mechanic.  So, as I said, I still haven't really decided my feelings on this element of the game - but it is the single biggest change from Twilight Struggle.

Here's a hint: Ruse is in Bulgaria

Now to get to the cons.  I'll start off with a very minor con.  As it turns out, I don't know my Eastern European geography especially well.  So, when a card tells me that something happens in "Ruse," it will take me a while to figure out where that is (the first time - I do learn where it is on the gameboard eventually... though I still can't find it on a normal map).  This con goes away as you keep playing the game, but it will probably be something that you will encounter in your first game or two.

My bigger con is that the game seems to be a bit more luck influenced than it initially seems.  More specifically, bad luck can be more detrimental than I would like.  One example of this is in the Power Struggles that I mentioned earlier.  Bad luck in a Power Struggle can be a major swing in points.  For example, let's assume that I am the Democrat player and we are having a Power Struggle in Poland.  It's the second time that Poland is scoring, I didn't do well the first time, but I have since gained a small advantage (2 more countries than my opponent).  I have the advantage, so I "should" win the Power Struggle.  We score Poland, and I get a horrible draw in the Power Struggle and lose.  I will possibly lose influence (making it harder to win the next struggle), my opponent may get some victory points (if he rolls well), but then I will also lose 6 points for letting the Communist player have power in Poland after it has scored a second time.  Six points is a huge point swing based on bad luck.  And, that's just one example - there is also a decent amount of luck about when the scoring cards are drawn, as well as who draws them.  There is also luck in die rolling for Power Struggle results, support checks, and Tiananmen Square results.  I'm not suggesting that the game is luck based, but what I am saying is that when you have bad luck at a critical juncture of the game, it will be incredibly frustrating.

Overall, I give 1989 an 8.5/10.  I really, really enjoy this game, but I have also been so frustrated by bad luck (I didn't win a single Power Struggle in my first two games, regardless of how many cards I or my opponent received, and often rolled a 6 afterwards, forcing me to remove quite a bit of influence) that I just can't give it a 9.0 or higher.  With that said, it is one of the only games in recent memory that I think about between gaming sessions, and that I really have the urge to want to play (instead of wanting to play games in general).

If 1989: Dawn of Freedom intrigues you, you should also check out (of course) 1960: The Making of the President, and Test of Fire: Bull Run 1861.

I would like to thank GMT Games for providing me with a review copy of 1989: Dawn of Freedom.

Twilight Struggle Review

One of the highest rated games of all time is Twilight Struggle.  So, of course, I felt the incessant urge to try it.

In Twilight Struggle, players re-live the Cold War.  One player takes the role of the US, and the other is (of course, if you know history) the USSR.  On any given turn, both players will start with 8-9 cards in their hand (depending on what phase of the war you are in).  These cards have both an Event on them and an Operations value.  At the start of the turn, each player selects a "Headline" event to occur first.  Next, players take turns playing cards as either Events or for their Operations value.  Some cards represent US events, some are USSR events, and some can be played either way.  Playing a card for it's Operations value allows you to place new influence in countries (after all, keep in mind that the Cold War was primarily a war of influence, and not of direct conflict), make Coup attempts, realign a country, or even in advance in the Space Race.  If you play a card for it's Operations value then the Event does not occur - unless it's your opponent's Event!  As the game progresses, players will score victory points back and forth; sometimes from playing "scoring cards" (which score various continents based on who influences the most countries and battleground countries), and sometimes Event cards will score points.  The game is played until one of the end of game conditions occurs: 1) one player has scored 20 Victory Points (keeping in mind that when the other player scores points, you just reduce your opponent's score, as Victory Points are a constant tug-of-war), 2) until Defcon is reached (the world blows up), 3) one player has Control of Europe during a scoring phase (they own more total countries, at least one non-battleground country, and all of the battleground countries), or 4) 10 turns have elapsed (at which point whoever has the most points after a final scoring phase wins).  There are a lot of things I skimmed over... like 5-20 pages of rules.  But then again, I'm hoping you're not here for me to teach you everything about how to play the game.

Here's what I liked: first off, I loved the tug-of-war nature of Twilight Struggle.  Throughout the game, you rarely feel like you are truly winning.  You may have advantages in certain places, but you know that your opponent will be able to counter you somehow - and you're just hoping to be able to get a slight upper hand.  I don't have personal memories of living through the Cold War, but I think that Twilight Struggle does a good job of grasping the kind of tension that occurred during that time period (obviously without the fear of a nuclear holocaust - I do realize that boardgames aren't life and death).  Sometimes you will have to concede certain areas to your opponent to gain an upper hand in others - the winner of the game won't be the person that played the better cards; it will be the person that was able to repeatedly capitalize on small advantages.  The give and take nature of Twilight Struggle truly feels like a masterpiece of game design to me.  I can't express how highly I appreciate this aspect of the game.

The next thing that I appreciate about Twilight Struggle is how rooted it is in history.  Every card is based on actual historical events in the Cold War.  What's more, there is a section in the back of the rulebook that goes over each of the different cards, and what that history entails.  I really appreciate this, as it allows people (like myself) who don't necessarily have a strong knowledge about history to learn in a fun way; yet it also allows people who enjoy studying history to have an opportunity to relive an important historical time.

The third thing that I like about Twilight Struggle (that is really a "sub-pro" of my first pro) is that you have to make sacrifices in the game.  At some point, your opponent will perform an action, and you will have to decide if you want to counter them in that area (Space Race, a certain continent, etc), or if you want to counter them elsewhere.  The world is too big, and there are too many aspects to the game to be able to do everything that you want.  You are forced to decide where to allocate resources, and what areas you're willing to sacrifice.  Do you want to control Asia?  This will probably come at the cost of South America; or Europe.  To win, you have to make sure that you don't sacrifice too much, and make sure that you are sacrificing smaller benefits to gain larger ones.

Everyone's favorite dictator

The final thing that I will mention as a pro for Twilight Struggle is that it factors in realism in Influence placement.  What this means is: you cannot place Influence anywhere.  When placing Influence, the country you are influencing must already have your Influence, or must be adjacent to a country where you do have Influence.  Yet, with this, there are enough Events that place Influence in new territories that this rule is not crippling.  (After all, the USSR would have little to no chance of influencing Central or South America otherwise.)

Now, an interesting topic in Twilight Struggle are the scoring cards.  There is a scoring card for each continent where you can place Influence.  These cards might be drawn by a player, just like any other card.  The main difference is that scoring cards cannot be kept until the next turn (you typically have a card that you will keep at the end of each turn).  Scoring cards are interesting - they give you the advantage of knowing a continent that is about to score, and even having the power to decide when that scoring occurs.  Yet, there is a disadvantage in being dealt a card that has no operations value and no Event.  It may be advantageous to be dealt a scoring card, but it might be detrimental to be dealt two or more of them.  Whereas I don't see a problem with how the scoring cards work - I just view it as a part of the game, some people may dislike them.  The same can be said for how the Space Race and Coup/Realignment actions are performed.  These actions all determine whether they are successful based on rolling a six-sided die.  Again, I don't have any major problem with this, but it can be frustrating when the die roll goes against you.

There are some more things you need to be aware of in Twilight Struggle.  You could classify these as "cons", but I think that they are more accurately termed "points of note."  The first one is that Twilight Struggle is a complicated game.  There's not getting around that.  I've played this game many times, and I still don't know that I got every rule right in any of my play sessions.  With that said, however, every time that I've played Twilight Struggle, I've really enjoyed it.

Why you want the Deluxe Version

Second, there are different version of Twilight Struggle that have been printed.  I highly recommend that you get the "Deluxe" version.  The map in the other version is made of cardstock and refuses to lay flat.  Most of my games have been played on this version, and we had to keep phones and mp3 players placed on strategic positions throughout the board to try to get it to lay flat.  After all, keep in mind that Twilight Struggle has tons of very small pieces that must be placed in just the correct place on the board.  And, these pieces can easily slide around on an uneven board.  The Deluxe version also has overall higher quality components, card text has been cleared up in a few places, and also has some color in the rulebook to make it less intimidating.

Overall, I give Twilight Struggle a 9.5/10.  Let's put it this way - I enjoy Twilight Struggle enough that I am tempted to stop reviewing games so that I can dedicate more time to re-playing Twilight Struggle and games like it.

If you like Twilight Struggle, you might also want to check out

1960: The Making of the President (same designers), 1955: The War of Espionage (similar feel but much shorter), and Test of Fire: Bull Run 1861 (two-player historical war game).

Flagship Review

 
The latest game that I tried out at my local game store was Flagship.

In Flagship, each player takes on the role of an inter-galactic super power that is skirmishing in a space battle. To start with, each player will get a certain number of points to pick their fleet, which must include a flagship and a commander, but then can hold any number of other ships (up to the point total). From there, the players will be able to take turns in which they maneuver and attack the other player's ships until one of the flagships has been destroyed (at which point the player who still has a flagship will be victorious in a 2-player game, and in a bigger game the player who has the most points from destroying ships will be victorious).

Flagship was an interesting game to play. One of the interesting things about it is the different types of attacking that are allowed. There are direct fire attacks, boarding attacks, and guided attacks. Each attack works slightly differently, and each race will be better at some attacks over others. This allows each player to try to maneuver their ships to be able to take advantage of their better fighting abilities and minimize those of their opponent. Another facet of these different kinds of attacks is that the counter-attack cards to be risky to try to use. If you hold on to the wrong kind of counter-attack, then you will have wasted a card in your hand, and you will not be able to counter their attack because they attacked with direct fire instead of a guided attack, or something similar.

The biggest pro of Flagship was that it could be played using scenarios and different races. The rulebook laid out several different scenarios that players could use.  An example is where one race is out-manned significantly but the other side gets to surprise attack them to get significant advantages in the first few rounds. This scenario based combat and the mix of races could keep the game from being as repetitive and could keep people who enjoyed the game interested for longer.

The first con that I saw while playing Flagship was that ships other than your flagship seemed trivial in many situations. For the most part, since your flagship will always be alive (unless you have lost), you will put all of your crew members on your flagship - thus preventing them from dying. However, when this happens, there is no way to get rid of crew members. Everyone is just able to stack as many as they want on their flagship, and thus the other ships become inconsequential as their attack values will not be strong enough without crew members to deal damage to the opponent's flagship (and thus cannot help the player win). I think it would have been better had there been ways to destroy crew - perhaps with boarding attacks, for example, and if there had been more ways of allowing smaller ships to damage the flagship. 

The next problem that I had with Flagship was that the fun of the game did not last overly long. I played through one game and enjoyed it, but during the second game (with slightly bigger fleets to start with) the game seemed to drag on more.  It seemed to me that the game was designed to be fairly fast paced, and so anything beyond a small skirmish became somewhat dry.

Overall, I give Flagship a 6.5/10. I have never played a spaceship battle game that worked out quite like this one, but Flagship didn't seem to be able to handle anything beyond a small skirmish to me. I think I would rather play Mag Blast if I were looking for a game of this type, unless you are really drawn to the scenario based combat.