Designer: Mark Herman

Both Mark Herman as a designer and GMT games as a publisher have become regular sightings on my gaming table for the past couple of years. As I add my 6th GMT game and my 3rd Mark Herman design to my shelf I can’t help but point out that all of these games fall into the must-own, most highly rated parts of my collection. One hit after another both GMT games and Mark Herman can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned.

Peloponnesian War tackles the classic Greek war between Athens and her allies in the Delian League and Sparta and her allies in the Peloponnesian Confederacy between years 431-402 BC. Now if that doesn’t ring a bell and you have only the vaguest idea of what I’m talking about, don’t fret, you aren’t the only person who had better things to do in history class than pay attention. Everything I knew about the Greeks, Athens and Sparta I learned from movies like The 300 and Troy when I started with this game. I did not walk into this one with some sort of affection for the period or any clue what it was about. I picked this game up because it was a solo game, a Mark Herman design, and a GMT publishing. That was reason enough for me. Regarding the subject matter, I just kept an open mind and dived in. Historical war games are about discovering what you are interested, not making assumptions about what you are not.

Still, like all of Mark Herman’s historical war games, him being a historian and expert in the subject, he provides you within the confines of this game a wonderful history lesson and so when you are done playing this game you will know far more than before you started.

Peloponnesian War has a reputation as being a highly complex solo game with a steep learning curve and a very high level of challenge. Even Mark Herman mentioned in an interview that despite being the designer and fan himself, has a losing record in the game.

Simultaneously intimidated and excited, I enter the world of the ancient greeks… THIS … IS… SPARTA!

Overview

Final Score: (4.55 out 5) Great Game!

Peloponnesian War has the look of a traditional point-to-point strategic war game with a large map, chit tokens for units, dice, and a very procedural structure with lots of phases that drive the gameplay along one step at a time all in an effort to bring historical simulation to the table. This assessment tells only part of the story however because while it is definitely a deep, meaningful historical war game, casual players need not apply, it prioritizes the story of the period and events of the setting over the minutia of historical war game mechanics. In a sense, it’s a game about broad strokes so that the narrative and history rises above the typical chart-based hex and counter historical simulation specifics.

The feel of the game I think will break expectations for historical war game fans mechanically as it’s equipped with a number of unique properties that really diverge from other war games you might have played before. This should not be a surprise to anyone in the hobby given the designer is quite famous for leading rather than following, but this particular game is so unique that using common game referencing like “it’s like X game” is simply not possible here. This may ultimatetly be a good or a bad thing.

For example, being a solo game you are playing against the AI, a fairly standard approach, but one core feature of the game is at different points there is a possibility that you will switch sides, taking over one of the two nations at war with each other (Athens and Sparta). This means that all of the progress in the war, all of the success you have had, even if you potentially brought the game to the brink of a victorious conclusion thanks to a well thought out strategy, it is all handed over to the AI and you are given the terrible situation you have created yourself to deal with. This very traumatic twist creates a unique atmosphere in the game that demands a completely different approach to the concepts of winning and strategy. You want to do well, but not so well that if you switch sides you won’t have an alternative path to victory when you take over for your current opponent. It really is a fascinating concept, unlike anything I have experienced before and dare I say, brilliant. In fact, so brilliant, after having played with this mechanic I’m actually shocked it hasn’t become a staple of solo game design as it solves a major problem solo games have which is providing players with the type of challenge only a human opponent can provide.

Peloponnesian War’s scope is quite wide and zoomed out. Being a game about broad strokes, big plays, and important events means control is intentionally hindered in many ways. In the course of a single round, sweeping changes may take place on the board and while you make the decisions on this grand scale, your ability to control these events, in particular, the outcomes is quite minimal. You can put the pieces together, formulate a plan but in a sense, the execution of that plan is not going to be followed to the letter as you might want it to be. This feature of the game takes some getting used to.

For example, when you give an army instructions to attack and besiege a city 20 spaces away as part of a brilliant strategic move, there may be several routes the army can use to get there. Some of the routes may be tactically smarter and perfectly safe, while others are fraught with danger and risk of being intercepted and destroyed by enemy forces. You do not get to pick your route, this is left to random chance presumably reflecting the absence of intelligence in the period and the idea that you are the leader of the nation giving orders, not the commander leading the troops. This lack of true control means the game is often very chaotic, sometimes the plans go off without a hitch just as you intended, other times the route taken leads to disaster leaving you to deal with the fallout.

This lack of control is a staple of this game, as a player, you are a sort of a god-like entity that offers guidance to the nation you lead, but in the end, the commanders and armies you instruct have a will of their own. The output is the narrative, the story of the history you are playing a role in creating but often simply sitting back and enjoying as a spectator nodding in approval or shaking your head in dismay. The fact that you sometimes switch allegiances gives you a kind of unique ownership of this entire narrative. You see the game from an unusual perspective because while you care what happens to Athens since you currently represent them, you are also deeply concerned for your opponent, Sparta, because next round you might be forced to switch and they may be yours to lead.

Don’t let any of this broad strokes and lack of control talk fool you however, this game is deeply cemented with real historical gaming, Mark is no slouch in ensuring that the granularity of events of this period are all here both mechanically infused in the gameplay and through the usage of actual event tables on which you will roll as time passes. I’m no expert in the subject so I can’t exactly tell you why King Sitalces of Thrace changing sides is an important feature of the games events nor why there are so many allied Athens units stacked in the city of Larisa, but I can say all of these things have a considerable impact on the strategy you will employ and the outcome of the game you might have.

All of this culminates into a unique gaming experience that is Peloponnesian War, a game of broad strategic decisions in an ancient period of land and naval warfare, fraught with traumatic and often unpredictable events with an uncanny ability to provide you with deep and meaningful historical connections.

Components

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Pros: A typical GMT production which is code for “knocked it out of the park.”

Cons: You would have to be a pretty petty person to find a problem here.

I’m going to keep this short, GMT made this game so you know that the quality of the components is tough to beat, in particular in the historical war game market.

The gorgeous mounted map is cotton candy for the eyes, the tokens are perfectly aligned, sturdy and well-illustrated, the player aids are all well designed and on good stock paper.

The rulebook is well written and concise, making it easy to learn from, reference and follow during gameplay all done in a nice logical order. The playbook is excellent with very thoughtful examples that cover most situations you may find yourself in during play. The game comes with a number of unique scenarios including the full campaign and there is a well-written strategic overview of the entire war provided in the playbook that gives you a great starting point and context for the history.

I tried to come up with something to complain about to make this section a more interesting read but GMT kicks ass and takes names in the component department. They get their usual 5-star rating. They are as dependable as a German train schedule!

Theme

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Pros:  A wonderful execution of theme that brings the history to life in coordination with the mechanics ensuring the history matters.

Cons: The switching side mechanics are not going to be everyone’s bag and infiltrate the narrative in your head, I say here and now, you will either love it or hate it.

While theme in most historical war games is vital, in Peloponnesian War and really any ancients game it can be hard to convey a sense of time and place given the rather rudimentary and sometimes hard to imagine way in which war was fought not to mention how critical the politics and logistics of war were to the effort. You certainly can and must abstract much of the detail here if you are intent on including everything that was historically relevant to the period, but simultaneously the game must be fun and playable. The connection between theme, history and the game mechanics needed to be quite tight, a little too much of one and not enough of the other, and suddenly the game stops making sense. I’m happy to report that in Peloponnesian War, this balance is struck quite flawlessly resulting in a deep and rewarding historically accurate theme.

The Peloponnesian War in general was a unique conflict in that it was fought between one nation (Athens) which was a major naval power and the other a major land power (Sparta). This conflict was further complicated by the fact that Greece and the surrounding landscape are a mixture of critically positioned city-states spread out over many coastal areas and islands. The Peloponnesian War map does a great job of giving this part of the world personality. When you first look at it your eyes will bug out, but after a few plays of this game, you will be dreaming about opening moves due to the brevity of possibilities, all in line with the core historical theme of the game.

The fact that you have this naval power vs. land power in conflict creates a unique strategic problem where one side could decisively win every naval engagement and raid coastal cities unopposed, while the other could do the same on land with little resistance. It really explains why Athens built the long wall of Athens for example, without it the Spartans would probably have little trouble just marching in and sacking the city. Suffices to say many details like this are included in the mechanics to make sure the logic of the history and its relevance is reflected in the gameplay, while simultaneously balancing the game so that you feel this struggle.

The situation is further complicated by the politics of the era, various betrayals, rebellions, personalities and political upheavals that all crept up on the greeks in this period. Again, this needed to be included not only for historical accuracy and context but to shake up gameplay and bring the theme to life. Much of the heavy lifting here is done through the events table on which you roll between rounds, but there are also other subtle historical realities built into some of the exception mechanics like the handling of Syracuse, the importance of keeping trade routes open to Byzantine or like the rebellion mechanics just to name few. None of these exceptions complicate learning or running the game as they are simple to implement, but they infuse the game with historical accuracy and force you to deal with the same problems both Athenians and Spartans had to contend with during this period.

Finally, there was the general logistics of ancient warfare, it was both an expensive and complex matter to field an army requiring a great deal of coordination and leadership. It is a key feature of the historical theme here that balancing the books really meant the difference between victory and defeat. Moving units is expensive and if you don’t have the cash, raising levies is impossible. Except of course for Spartans that fight as a way of life, ready to go into the field in the name of Sparta. All these finer historical points find their way into Peloponnesian War making the game feel alive and creating this exciting historical narrative, but again always infusing the mechanical hardship on you that will drive decisions.

To gaming fans, historical or otherwise what I can say about Peloponnesian War’s theme is that it shines through at every turn. You can read the historical outline in the back of the playbook and find yourself experiencing those historical stories in the game as you play it. I don’t think from a thematic perspective you could ask for more out of a boardgame. It fires on all pistons and nails the history square in the chin.

Gameplay

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Pros: Highly dynamic full of very difficult gameplay challenges makes this game a serious addicition you will have trouble shaking.

Cons: This design breaks expectations and traditions fearlessly, the result may be too much of a departure for historical war gamers who are this games only identifiable audiance.  The movement mechanic is really fiddly.

The word on the street about Peloponnesian War is that its mechanical complexity was quite high and I recall being a little intimated even though the box proclaims it a medium weight 6 out of 10 on GMT’s complexity scale. Having learned and played the game several times, I think GMT judges this game quite well. It is fairly complex and there is quite a bit to learn but it’s not the monster it’s made out to be. I would not recommend it for casual gamers or even those outside of the hobby as a first go at historical wargaming, but for those of us used to the structure of historical war game rules, this one is not going to stump you.

Peloponnesian War is a very procedural game and really if there is anything difficult about moving through these steps it’s understanding their impact, the cause and effect of the actions you take during the decision points of the game and how that alters what happens during the more automated steps that you walk through. It can take a bit of time to fully grasp.

This is the part that is going to be challenging, though I don’t consider it a “learning the complexity of the rules” challenge as these steps are easy to execute, but rather a “depth of the strategy in the game” challenge. This game can feel on the surface, at least at first, to have rather simple decision points, but there are many layers here that are interconnected and if you want to be successful at the game you really need to have a good grasp of these connections.

The first two games I played of Peloponnesian War I lost the game with 0-10 points and that is assuming you aren’t counting negative scores because in that case, I was like -100 points. Getting your head around the strategy actually requires you to understand both the mechanics and the actual history really well which is both brilliant and exciting that this connection is so tight.

In Peloponnesian War most of the phases of the game are quite fixed and are largely about resolving the decisions you made during the most important phase of the game (The Operations Phase).

In the operation phase the only decision you are making is which objective you want to claim (which city-state to attack essentially) and how you assemble the army prior to the attack. Your leader moves around the board picking up military units and when your army is the size you want, you move towards the objective either besieging a city or attacking an opposing army.

This simple decision however is complicated in a number of unpredictable ways that create all of the risk vs. reward in the game because of how this game responds to your actions.

For starters, your army can be intercepted by the opponent many times before you get to your target, hell even before you are done assembling your army. Different units have different rules for interception (Hoplites, Calvary and Naval units). It would be easy to avoid these interceptions if you had full control over the route your armies take, but you do not. The route you must take is always the shortest route to your destination and if there is more than one shortest route you roll dice to randomly determine which one your army will take. This is a feature not a problem with the game, you have to contend with the will of your commanders.

These interceptions, however, are not 100% reliable either, it is pretty much a 50-50 shot that you are intercepted by any skirmish force and it doesn’t mean your army will be stopped even if intercepted. A skirmish takes place which might result in some minor loses but your army will keep moving unless this skirmish escalates to a battle and you lose that battle. If you win, you keep moving anyway.

This means that as your army moves to its destination which notably could be anywhere on the board as their are no movement limits (a turn is a representation of 2 years of time) there is a risk of interceptions, skirmishes, and even full battles.

This is where much of the strategy takes place because setting up these interception spots is the only method of controlling and preventing your opponent from getting where they need to be. Key city-states on the map are choke points and in a historically accurate fashion, these places become vital to your strategy. Corinth, Thebes, Piraeus and Byzanthium, all names you might have heard mentioned in the history of this period are critical places you will be keeping a close eye on and fighting over often.

This is only the tip of the strategic iceberg here because while the area control element of Peloponnesian War creates deep and meaningful contemplation, it isn’t as simple as deciding where to put your units.

Athens and Sparta are asymmetrical nations, their positions, strengths and ultimately routes to victory are quite different. What you can do with each is limited really by their unique circumstances, benefits and drawbacks. Certainly, you can say the game is simple, find a way to siege and conquer the opposing nation’s capital but as was the case in real history here, the goal is much easier to express than is to achieve it.

For the Spartans to besiege and conquer Athens is virtually impossible, in fact, all sieges automatically fail due to The Long Wall of Athens. This wall that connects Athens to Piraeus (a coastal city) means Athens can indefinitely hold out when sieged as long as they can maintain a trade route to Byzantium. Naturally, you might think that it’s then as simple as besieging Byzantium but for the Spartans this is not easy as the Athenians is a naval power and Byzantium can only be reached by sea. Since Athens controls the seas such an endeavor is unlikely to succeed in particular since the AI’s defense strategy will kick in and make that a priority to defend.

This is just one example of the strategic problems you face when playing the Spartans, but illustrates how the game mechanic is in perfect harmony with the historical realities and noteably how the AI is just clever enough so that it responds appropriatetly to your actions.

The Athenians don’t have an easy go either. The Spartans are a land power, they can not only bring far larger numbers to any land battle, but are considerably better warriors in the field so even a small force of Spartans can whoop a larger force of Athenians in the field.

The Spartans don’t have long walls, but they don’t need them as Sparta is nestled in a land space not accessible via the coast rendering Athenian naval power meaningless in any attempt to conquer it. This means that in order for the Athenians to conquer Sparta they have to win an unwinnable land battle!

What this all boils down to is that neither side has the option for a quick victory, they must first change the circumstances of the advantages that the opposing nation has. As a player, you must weaken your opponent by leveraging your advantage (Naval or Land power as the case may be) and grind them down so that an opportunity opens up for that big push against their capital.

There are a number of ways as a player you can do this. Raiding your opponents unprotected city-states which at any given moment are going to be most of them. Causing rebellions and helping them spread will widdle down their strength as well. Creating choke points that will halt the opposing army’s movement and circumvent their efforts to do the same to you. Finally going after your opponent’s source of income will also slowly bring them down.

There are also a number of special rebellion triggers for both nations, the Athenians are a bit more suseptable as the Delian League is a bit more fragile, but the effects of such rebellions are also less impactful. The Spartan Helot Rebellion is much harder to trigger, but the consquences are devistating. Certainly both are goals for you if you really want to hit the opponent where it hurts.

The issue of managing your strategy well however is far more complex than simply coming up with a good military plan not only because at any point you might need to switch sides.

Each nation has a two very important properties called Bellicosity and Strategy Confidence Index, two scary sounding words with simple meaning behind them.

Bellicosity is a nations will to fight, in role-playing terms, their hit points. Once a nation is at 0 Bellicosity at the end of a turn they surrender and the game is over. The Strategy Confidence Index is a measure of how well the nation is doing in the current turn, this number can be positive or negative. This property goes up when you win battles/sieges and down if you lose. The SCI affects the Bellicosity at the end of each round, raising it or lowering.

These two properties are linked and part of the gamist element of Peloponnesian War, unquestionably the key to a winning strategy. Understanding how and why is a critical part of the game, but it’s the mechanics surrounding these two properties where I think some historical war gamers might see a serious problem with the game.

The important piece of the puzzle to know here is that in order for you to win (as a player) you must score at least 150 victory points. It doesn’t actually matter which nation is defeated in the story of your game per say, dropping your opponent to 0 Bellicosity doesn’t mean you’ve won the game, it simply means the game ends. You win if you have 150 victory points in that moment, else you lose regardless of which nation wins the actual war.

Each nations Strategy Confidence Index at the end of each turn will raise or reduce each nations Bellicosity, which means that if you are winning battles with one nation, the other nations will to fight is reduced, but because Bellicosity is more a timer for the end game condition rather than a victory condition, unless you have scored sufficient points, crushing your opponent could mean you are rushing to an end game condition which will result in you losing the game anyway.

As such, a big part of the meta strategy of the game is controlling these properties, trying to create the conditions in the game regardless of which nation you are running that will result in the game ending when you have 150 victory points. I say meta strategy because this part of the game has virtually nothing to do with the historical element of the Peloponnesian War or your strategy on the map or success with running any particular nation. You are trying to earn victory points and you have to do it in a fashion that doesn’t end the game prematurely. Their is a kind of equallibrium you must maintain and your strategy goes beyond that of a historical conflict and its more about manipulating the game to ensure you, not Athens or Sparta, come out on top.

In a way you can say that as a player you don’t care who wins or loses the war, you care about your scoring conditions. Now one important additional point here is that if you force a nation to surrender you do score some bonus points, but the value of these points is based on how quickly you did it. You earn 200 points divided by the number of game turns it took for you to make that happen. So if you force a surrender of a nation in turn 3 for example you would score 67 points (rounding up). That may be enough to bring your total to 150 points and you could potentially win, but if the game goes long, say 8 rounds you would only earn 25 points, not likely to put you over the top. As such, winning quickly and effectively with one nation might be a good strategy, but if it fails, you might have weakened the oppossing nation so much that when you switch (a very likely occurrence if you are very successful with a nation) you might have defeated yourself!

Now if your doing math and you know there is a maximum of 10 turns in the game and you must score 150 points, you can roughly calculate that you will need to win 15 battles/sieges since each battle earns you 10 points. The issue is that when you lose a battle or siege you lose 15 points. So for every 2 battles you lose you have to win 3 battles to make up the points.

Suffices to say, if the nation your running is forced to surrender, the likelihood of you winning is pretty slim, so you still need to end the game by ensuring the nation your running is victorious. Its not an absolute necessity, you win if you have 150 points either way, but its hard to put numbers like that on the board without those end game bonus points. The fact that you risk switching sides by winning battles and raising your current nations SCI which acts as a modifier to the roll to determine if you switch… Well, lets just say that shit gets pretty bloody complicated and I realize as I attempt to explain all this I am probably confusing you more than helping you understand. All I can say is that Its a brilliant mechanism that will have you scratching your head trapped in an infinite state of analysis paralysis. To me, the mark of a great game.

Personally I absolutely love this aspect of Peloponnesian War, to me, its what makes this such a great game. That said I can totally understand how a historical war gamer, accustomed to playing a game that rewards military strategy and tactics exclusively might see this meta, gamist approach and element as a major flaw of the game. I would warn anyone considering Peloponnesian War to really consider if that sort of mechanic works for them. It is in fact a common complaint about the game in reviews and the merits of this meta mechanism is often debated on BBG. I do understand both side of this debate and I would argue that this structure and mechanism is what makes this game absolutely brilliant, but certainly very non-traditional.

I haven’t touched much upon the gameplay differences in the various added scenarios of the game nor the two player variant which I’m yet to try. In fairness, to me those things are just bonuses, remove them and my opinion or this review would not change one bit. I will say that expanded content like this is appreciated and one day Im sure to get to it, but I play this game for the main campaign. I have completed a total of 4 games before writing this review, enough to form an opinion and write the review but not even close to enough to put it on the shelf. In fact as I write this review the game is setup behind me on my hobby table and frankly I rather be playing it than writing this article!

Replayability and Longevity

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Pros: The dynamic nature of the game creates a wide variation of challenges that keeps you coming back for more.

Cons: The high difficulty of the game might be a turn off for some and replayability really hinges on your affection for some of the unusual mechanics and approach this game requires.

Historical war games very often have a limited shelf life because they are built around very specific starting conditions and the dynamics are often limited to preserve the historical context of the game. Peloponnesian War does not suffer from that even though the main campaign does in fact have a fixed historically accurate start.

The game is simply to dynamic, a single activation in the operation phase can have lasting effects that echo all the way to the last turn of the game. The events are randomly generated and the order in which they appear has huge impact on the outcome of the game, but perhaps above all else is that the side switching mechanic can completetly alter what happens because you as a player are going to influence the game far more dramatically than the actual AI.

This game I believe will have very good longevity, its both addicitive, challenging and narrative. I’m not sure which of those properties I appreciate more. I do believe however that not everyone is going to find themselves as enthralled by Peloponnesian War like I have been. There are some pretty unique elements to this game that put it in a class of its own and such breaking of tradition I think will be rejected by some players.

Historical war game fans looking for a traditional war game in the Peloponnesian War era should know that traditional is not how I would describe this game at all and if that is what you are looking for, one play of this and you are going to wonder what all the fuss is about. It takes an open mind to like this game, a willingness to accept it as a game, less so as a simulation even though it does a great job as a simulation, its just that it does it in a way you are probobly not expecting or accustomed to.

The replayability of this game hinges on your excitement to try to solve this complicated meta puzzle of switching sides, scoring points and dealing with the asymetrical nations. That may feel a bit distant from more traditional historical simulations in which the gameplay is strictly about the simulation itself.

The game is also brutally difficult, if the designer of the game can’t play it well enough to have a winning record, it is unlikely you will either, so be prepared to lose a lot. I’m 4 games in and I haven’t even come close yet.

Conclusion

What I’m going to say in this conclusion now is going to be the most controversial and contradictory thing I have ever said in a review but here goes. This is one of the best solo games I have ever played, I fell in love with this concept almost instantly and I think it’s just pure genius. Mark Hermans approach to game design just speaks to me and though most would argue that Empire of the Sun is his masterpiece, a claim I have made myself in the past, I honestly think Peloponnesian War might actually be his Mona Lisa.

That said, I struggle with the idea of recommending this game to historical war gamers, though strangely enough I would not recommend it to Euro gamers, Ameritrash gamers, casual dabblers or any other “grouping” of gamers you could think of.

This game strays a bit too far outside of the box of standard historical war game design and expectations. It spits in the eye of tradition and established nuances. It is its own thing, a white elephant living in a space outside of the norm. There are players who are going to love this game and you might be one of them, but I honestly don’t know how to categorize this game in a way that would allow me to target a specific group of players or a specific style of game and say “this is for you”. The fact that I think it’s brilliant is not going to change the reality that many gamers will play this game and simply not get it and I get that, I understand why that might happen with this game.

All I can say is that its a risk that you might not enjoy this game despite the fact that to me personally its a bloody revelation. Its games like this that keep me coming back to this hobby again and again. As a board game fan I want something that surprises me and does something unique, this is why I’m constantly buying and trying new games. It doesn’t happen often but every once in a while a game like Peloponnesian War comes along and just blows me away and reminds me why I love this hobby. You might share that reflection if you try it, or you might not.

I thought long and hard about this conclusion as I find it to be kind of unfair to the reader and so I fall back to my general advice about the board gaming hobby. Explore… that is what this hobby is all about. If this game intrigues you, don’t over think it, buy it and give it a try.