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First Impressions: Song Of Ice and Fire Miniature Game by CMON

Let’s be honest here, Game of Thrones as a setting, as a franchise as, a design space for games is just an awesome place. The books and show have made so many fans world wide that there are plenty of people looking for more, but for those in the table top community you know that this franchise has also produced some of the best table top games in the market today.

You have the Game of Thrones board game which is just amazing, recently getting its own digital version. You have the Game of Thrones living card game, another smash hit in my book and now we have Song of Ice and Fire the miniature game, a new rank and file mini game adaptation. While I reserve judgement to an extent with this first impressions article as my experience with the game is limited to a few games, as my first impressions will indicate, I’m very excited about this game. There are some very good reasons for miniature gamers to take notice and today we are going to talk about this lovely game a bit from the perspective of a newbie.

Evolving Modern Miniature Games

There are many notable features in Song of Ice and Fire the miniature game that modern miniature gamers will appreciate and find familiar, in fact the game improves on many modern staples of the genre.

These improvements where born out of what I believe to be something of a golden age in the world of miniature games. There have been a metric ton of amazing mini games in the last few years and the hits just keep on coming. It all kind of started with Fantasy Flight Games who took the approach that miniature games don’t have to be complicated, that they don’t need a 400 page rulebooks and special army books and through that approach FFG produced hits like Star Wars X-Wing, Armada and Legion. This has triggered miniature game makers to re-asses the classic exception based designs and really changed the face of how miniature games are made and released. An evolution to design was started and games have been benefiting from and evolving ever since, after decades of stagnation.

Song of Ice and Fire the miniature game is among the latest of games to take advantage of this evolution and what can be said about this game is that like many modern mini games, its VERY easy to get into.

For starters the rulebook is more of a pamphlet and the rules are crystal clear with a dependable, structured core rule system that you can rely on. This has become the norm in good miniature game designs. This makes the game very approachable, very easy to teach and it really clears out that elitism that has for so long been associate with miniature gaming. SoIF didn’t invent this concept but it takes full advantage of it. It evolves it further by providing living documentation and an officially supported app to ensure players always have the latest rules and unit errata. This allows them to make changes to the game as they see fit without the frustration of our books and game material going “out of date” which is still a problem even in many modern mini games.

The next thing to note is that SoIF miniatures come pre-assembled and I can’t say enough about how that opens the world of miniature gaming up. The game assumes that its meant to be played, that it’s not a hobby that occasionally masquerades as a game, but that its an awesome game first, which you may or may not care to also make a hobby.

I know that this is controversial to say but for me personally if your game comes on a sprue, its an automatic no from me, nothing else about the game matters to me. I want to play these games, if I have to spend 20 hours gluing shit together you already lost me and I believe a lot of that elitism persona of the genre comes from this assumed hobby expectation. SoIF takes this a step further by not requiring any assembly of any kind, compared to many games like Star Wars Legion for example where while you don’t have to deal with sprues, you will still need to super glue stuff to play. Making each army a specific color so they are easy to tell apart on the board further illustrates the fact that SoIF is a game first and a hobby second, as it should be in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy painting mini’s to some degree, but I don’t want to be forced to if I’m busy and have assembly block my playing the game. I have plenty of miniature games on my shelf I have never played because they are still in sprues.

Another modernization I think is worth noting is that starter boxes come with ready to play and moderately competitive armies. I can’t express enough the disappointment of getting a new miniature game with a starter box only to find out that my game is still technically incomplete and what I have is not an army, but a demo of the game or worse, the game comes with the built in assumption that you will buy two starter/core sets. I hated this with X-Wing, I hated it with Armada, its literarily the reason I don’t play Legion (after buying two core sets I STILL don’t have a complete army).

Finally and I think this is fairly significant albeit minor thing, but even in the starter set you have quite a few list building options, in particular considering it is in fact a starter set. Typically starter sets are not only very limited, but there is a pre-built army in it and there is no customization or flexibility in list building. With SoIF there are choices to be made, variations to be had and I think this is a great thing. It gives you a taste of what is to come and that helps to encourage you to expand your army.

At The Table

I think that SoIF is one of those games where you can easily comprehend the rules, but there is tremendous depth in how those rules are applied to the strategic and tactical component of the game. The game is a bit deceptive in this regard, it seems like a simple game, but is almost overwhelmingly deep to the point that it can very quickly become a little intimidating.

This is a game that is extremely sensitive to tactical and strategic mistakes at the same time. Where you position your units during deployment is critical, where you position them at the end of the first round can be game changing. Make one mistake and it can cost you the match. This is a game where you can be wiped off the board in a single round and it does happen and its not because of the dice.

As such I think this game despite having a very minimal learning curve for the rules has an extremely steep learning curve for becoming even marginally competitive. There is just so much subtle things in this game that you have to remember and their are so many ways units, actions and effects can have on the game that it can feel almost impossible to keep it all in your head. Things can swing on a dime because you forgot that your opponent has some commander who has an order that lets him make an extra attack or that archer units when they shoot can shift 2 inches, or that your player has a hand of cards that can let him break various rules in the game, or that the NCU (more on that later) has some special ability that stops you from doing something you had been planning for with one of your units.

It actually reminds me a bit of games like Magic: The Gathering where if you have a high level of expertise, knowledge about the game, about the cards, about the effects, you become almost super humanly good against people who don’t have that knowledge, because you can anticipate and plan around the activities of your opponent. This isn’t a game where you can look at the board, create a strategy and execute it. You need to know in great detail every inch of what your opponents units can do, all the possibilities of his hidden hand of tactic cards, the many ways effects can combine and the subtle timing of effects that can trigger unique and devastating combinations.

These things take time and practice to learn well and I would argue that this is a game that you not only must learn how to play, but you must study if you have any hope of ever winning a match.

What this does for the game is two fold. On the one hand it can be frustrating because part of the learning process is losing, badly and often. It takes time to really pick up many of the subtle elements of the game and that can feel like a bit of a turn off as you learn the game through failure. You come to realize the rules are simple and fun, but that the strategy of the game has so many layers that this ups the stakes on the learning curve front a great deal.

On the bright side of things however, a game that challenges players, takes time to learn to play well, ultimately gives you a reason to keep playing. A game that has a basic strategy that all players work out ends up being a game about list building and who rolls dice the best, where there is no expertise beyond the basics of the game and it all boils down to list vs. list and dice vs. dice. I see a lot of games like this and they tend to lose their energy in our groups as the conversations shift from “how can I improve my strategy” to “My army sucks because my units aren’t as good/cost effective as my opponents”. The conversation essentially shifts to discussions about what is and isn’t balanced, because there are no more avenues from the perspective of strategic play. SoIF does not have that problem, which is not to say that there aren’t some balance issues here and there, but “how you use units” matters a lot more than “how good the units are” and its very easy to prematurely judge a unit in the hands of inexperienced players.

That is not to disregard a conversation about balance, but often a unit may feel unbalanced because your not using it right and that is a very different conversation.

The result of all this is a game that is deeply tactical and strategic, a game you can study, really sink your teeth into. You will drive yourself crazy thinking about the different effective ways to use your units and your cards, but beyond that because the game comes with a lot of different “game modes”, aka scenarios, each more unique then the next, there isn’t this “one list to rule them all” kind of thing in the game. You build your list, but no matter what you build, every scenario is going to create unique challenges for that list and your always going to have advantages and disadvantages going into every match as a result. The same list that gets completely crushed in one scenario may totally dominate in another.

My impression so far about the game play is that, I’m largely confused. I’m in that newbie zone still and I feel like I lose matches, not because I roll dice badly (though I often do) or because my army is shit but because very clearly and very obviously I make a lot of tactical and strategic mistakes. I can see that with every match I improve dramatically and really the conditions haven’t changed, but how I see the game has. This to me is as a whole, purely positive. I see a lot of potential in the game and as I play more matches, I’m eager to learn and play even more. This is a good place to be in a miniature game.

The Details of The Targaryen Army

The army I chose is the Targaryen army, it was a rather unplanned choice, I largely made it based on theme and maybe a bit because I knew at some point I would be getting some dragons which I thought was cool. I did not investigate the army nor chose it as a result of anything specific about how it would play.

The Targaryen army, at least as its represented in the starter set is a very fast moving, hard hitting cavalry army, a sort of glass cannon driven by hit and run tactics. My experience with them so far has been that it seems to lean a lot more on positioning and use of cards to be successful, though an argument could be made that all armies and really the game as a whole is about position and timing of card play.

There are some really interesting units, some I would argue are just amazing while others, even with my minimal knowledge of the game I recognize as absolute shit. So its a bit of a mixed bag, but there is plenty of room for adaptation and some really great army lists can be formed even with just the starter set.

I will talk a bit about the different units in the starter set here just to give you a feel for the army, but it suffices to say some of this conversation might not make sense unless you know the game rules and I will make that assumption here (that you know the rules of the game).

Jorah Mormon The Wandering Knight

Cost of 3 points, you have to wonder if this was a misprint or something.

First up is Jorah Mormont, The Wandering Knight which I start with only because there should be so little to say about this unit, yet I will say a lot anyway because he was one of my favorite Song of Ice and Fire characters. Jorah is, by no stretch of the imagination the worst unit in the Targaryen army and arguably in the whole game. It almost feels like a misprint its so bad.

The main problem is the cost of this unit, not visible in the picture here, but at 3 points, this unit simply doesn’t earn its point value, not even close. Scout Openings is a strangely tone def ability in a game that is so well designed, a short range ability you are not likely to get more than 1 use of if you’re lucky. Jorah is very vulnerable because of having only 2 health in particular to the many instant wound abilities of NCU’s and card effects. An argument could be made to use him for the extra activation, but you may very well never see an activation with Jorah thanks to this unique vulnerability. You essentially are adding a unit to your army list that almost assures your opponent will get a free victory point, it just doesn’t make sense to pay 3 army points for that privilege.

You can get a lot of mileage out of the Targaryen army for 3 points, investing it in Jorah is a terrible use of such a limited resource.

The frustrating part for me is that his ability and setup just does not fit within the game, within the setting or within the Targaryen army. Jorah from a story perspective was a volunteer serving Daenerys, while also being one of the tougher characters in the story surviving all sorts of crazy stuff. For him to be weak and expensive is a tragic misreading of the character.

Ok I have said my peace, moving on.

I would argue one of the best NCU’s in the game, a far better use of 3 points then Jorah.

Dothraki Screamers

At 6 points its a arguably bit pricey in the Targaryen army, but its a cavalry unit and that is a big advantage on the battlefield.

These guys are the staple of the Targaryen starter set, you get two of them and while I would argue that at 6 points they are just 1 point too much for a cavalry unit with no abilities, however, cavalry units in their own right offer exceptional flexibility on the battlefield so I can understand the 6 point cost here.

My argument for reducing its cost by 1 has more to do with the fact that activation advantage is a major concept of the game. The impact of activation advantage is massive in SOIF and the Targaryen army does not have that all important “low cost unit” required to put them in a place where they can compete in a game where 8-9 activations is the norm. Typically a Targaryen army will have 6 to 7 activations at best which means every match you enter you will be out activated, typically by at least 1-2 activations. It might not sound like much, but this really knocks Targaryen’s out of competitive play entirely, its very difficult to overcome an activation disadvantage. This being the Targaryen’s staple unit seems like the most appropriate place where an argument for reduced cost could be made.

At a 5+ defense you want these guys doing hit and runs on people’s flanks, which can be devastating with a 3+ attack and though they can hold their own in a fight with a 6+ morale save, they aren’t likely to be able to remain in a sustained fight for very long with a +5 armor save. Their leverage is their 6+ speed which can be increased in various ways in a Targaryen army with NCU’s like Daenery’s Targaryen, Khaleesi and Targaryen cards like Unstoppable Advance.

I would argue however that this is really a 7 point unit because fielding it without one of the two commanders for an extra point (Either an Outrider KO or a Screamer KO) is really not getting your points worth, they transform this unit from a threat to a major threat with one of the two KO’s. You will feel like you need to have them I think to get the value out of this unit and strictly speaking if you add 2 Screamers and 1 Outrider, each with its own commander you are spending those 3 points you just saved by not adding Jorah into the list, a vastly better investment in army points in my opinion.

Screamers are a great unit, though I can understand some arguments for using Bloody Mummer Zorse Riders for example as a potential alternative. While slightly more expensive at 7 points, Zorse Riders offer some built in abilities.

A 7 point unit that is in competition with the screamers.
A staple NCU in the Targaryen heavy cavalry army that doubles down on the factions main advantage.
Yet another way to get more speed and with the added surprise of ignoring terrain and ensuring your charge re-rolls.
Good on either the screamer or the outrider cavalry unit.
The only place to put them in your starter army is on a screamer.

The Dothraki Outriders

At 6 points the Outriders can have a high impact on matches, but don’t forget the Outrider KO, its arguably the best 1 point you can spend in the Targaryen army.

I think the best unit in the starter set by a fair margin, the Dothraki Outriders at 6 points while tricky to use largely do to an absence of a melee attack and short range of their bow, have incredible mobility thanks to a 6+ move combined with their Nimble ability. In fact, I’m fairly certain this is the most mobile unit in the entire game.

When fitted with their attachment (Outrider KO), they are shooting 7 dice at 3+ into units that can be assumed to be vulnerable (thanks to their Outrider KO) which when combined with shooting into a flank can be absolutely devastating even to the toughest of units. Their nimble ability also keeps them out of range of other short range units and makes it much easier for them to get into peoples flanks. All around its a pretty amazing combo and deadly combination.

This is a unit that when timed and used well will always earn its 7 point cost (never leave home without a outrider KO however). I think its well priced within the scope of the Targaryen faction and though I think I could file a complaint when comparing this unit to the Nights Watch Ranger Trackers who are effectively better and cheaper in every way as they get the Outrider KO ability built in, have better defense and a reasonably decent melee attack. I do believe that Nimble is so significant that it makes up for it.

Its unfortunate that you only get one of these guys in the starter box, I think I would rather have another unit of these guys as an option then the poorly thought out Jorah.

Dothraki Veterans

This very pricey (10 points) yet very dangerous unit requires a lot more plays to make a determination, but you cannot deny its ferocity, people will come to fear the veterans.

Finally we have the Dothraki Veterans which is our high priced, high value unit. It seems every faction gets one, but at 10 army points it is one of the most expensive units in the game, currently one among only 3 units that come in this pricey. It is more expensive then a bloody dragon for crying out loud!

The question is, is it worth it and the answer is, that I just don’t know. There is no denying its ferocity, it is absolutely devastating to get shot at with 7 dice at 3+, then get charged with 8 dice at +3 before any other effects are even applied in a single activation. With an Outrider KO or a Screamer KO you could potentially wipe entire fresh units off the board with a single attack and when you consider some of the Targaryen cards like Overrun or Khal Drogo’s cards (The Commander) like Devastating Impact, the potential for a single game winning move is very high. Your opponents are going to fear this unit and rightfully so, its a game changer.

The problem is however that as it stands, to invest 10 points into a single unit is a hard pill to swallow for any faction but in particular the Targaryen faction where if you really consider the makeup of the army we already have major activation disadvantage problems.

The cheapest unit we have is 6 points (screamer and outrider), which arguably need their KO’s to be effective making them 7 point units realistically speaking. Adding this 10 point unit into any army list means you are going to be limited to 4 units on the board at most, meaning 6 activations at best (with 2 NCU’s). That is too big of a disadvantage in a game where you will be facing 8-9 activations as a standard. In my experience having an activation disadvantage and having a unit disadvantage on the board at the same time is pretty difficult to overcome and this may very well explain why Targaryen’s are at the bottom of tournament play results, yet to win any recorded tournaments in which they were played.

I don’t think the issue with Veterans are the Veterans themselves, in fact, like the screamer I think the unit is appropriately priced in general, yet I would argue because of the composition of options for the Targaryen’s, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to add them. We don’t have cheap options to offset high cost units and running any army but with only 6 activations is a losing proposition, it’s just too big of a disadvantage.

Devastating but situational, it can turn a loss of a unit in to a loss of multiple units.
All around great and easy to use card.

The Commanders

In the Targaryen starter set you get two commanders, Khal Drogo and the commander version of Jorah Mormont. In my humble opinion these are both excellent commanders that work extremely well within the Targaryen faction and they are both a joy to use. They come with strong abilities in their own right that punish opponents and offer some amazing surprises for your enemy and frankly both of their tactic card sets are filled with some amazing cards.

Jorah Mormont tends to be a lot more flexible than Khal Drogo and I would argue that cards like Bravery in the Face of Death and Superior Flanking are two cards you can count on using in every game. Martial Superiority is also a great defensive card that punishes opponents for attacking you. Really they are all great.

Charging and Morale checks is something you are going to be doing, so this card will always get played.
One might say situational but your a cavalry army so if your not charging into flanks and rears your doing it wrong.
Great defensive card that punishes opponents for attacking you.

Khal Drogo’s tactic cards are a bit trickier to use. The already mentioned Overrun can have insane impact on games in combination with successfully timed charges.

Addrivat! is extremely circumstantial, I find its the card I discard the most often. It requires you to activate the combat action on the NCU board to use, which means you must already be engaged with the opponent and have the initiative. In addition screamers already have sundering so they don’t leverage as much of the card as other units might, its useless to outriders because it’s melee only and you don’t want to use it with veterans because you won’t get your ranged shot – charge combination, arguably the main reason to use veterans.

To be honest I don’t recall ever actually playing this card, the circumstances when you could use the card combined with actually having it in your hand at the same time are extremely rare. Its clearly designed to combo with Khal Drogo’s ability but even there its not great since usually you will have Drogo in your Veterans unit and you don’t want to skip over your ranged shot before charging. I actually think its a terrible card in general.

The trickiest of the cards is Ride-By-Attack, it allows you to make a march through an enemy, performing a charge as you do it. Again its a very situational card because you need to be able to move far enough through a unit to get on the other side of them to do it. Additionally it doesn’t combo well with your most expensive unit as it does not allow you to use that ranged attack before the charge as the card must be used on activation. It requires considerable coordination and positioning to pull off, but can push one of your cavalry into your opponents back line so in addition to the charge you have good positioning for the next series of action. It has a lot of potential and I think becomes more relevant and significant in expert hands.

Clearly a card tailor made for whatever unit Drogo is in, but overall its just a terrible card.
Can be tricky to use, but your opponents will never expect it, it breaks the rules of the game.
This is one of the easier cards to use from the Khal Drogo set.

Conclusion

There is certainly a lot more that can be said about the Targaryen army, there are other components and cards not mentioned here that could be discussed but I think I have shown enough here to come to this conclusion.

The Targaryen army is a very mobile force that can make high impact moves that can completely decimate opponents but in the same token, it has a lot of vulnerabilities and is susceptible to terrible collapse if not positioned well and its core effects timed poorly. I think it should probably come with a warning label that says “For Advanced Players of Song of Ice and Fire” because it really does assume a lot of knowledge to use well.

As an army its biggest drawback which I think is the biggest contributing factor to its poor competitive play results is the fact that it lacks the ability to overcome the activation advantage almost all factions will have over it. The standard amount of activations for a list is 8-9, for the Targaryen’s its 6-7. This is a major problem for the Targaryen’s that keeps them from being truly competitive and there is currently no way to overcome it.

I do believe however with a bit of practice and a few expansion units, in particular the Heroes box to get some variety in the NCU’s can result in this army being at the very least fun to play. With some good player skill developments I certainly think you can get some wins on your record with the Targaryen’s, as they tend to really punish opponent mistakes.

I suspect in time their will be changes made to this army, its clear to me that units like Jorah Mormont The Wandering Knight are just too awful to be ignored and the cost of units like Screamers and Veterans are probably going to be adjusted (or their abilities adjusted) to bring them in line with the rest of the game or at least the army will get some methods to help them overcome their awful activation disadvantage.

The Targaryen Faction represent the newest addition to the Song of Ice and Fire miniature game and as such I think inevitably, as was the case with the rest of the games many factions, there will be some adjustments needed and made. CMON however seems to be very cautious about just sporadically making changes which I think is a good thing.

So far I’m enjoying my experience with SoIF, there is a lot of love put into this game, some really great design work and a really great design space to expand the game. Even as I write this article I as well as many of my gaming friends are waiting for new units to arrive to join the ranks of our armies so that is a good sign that we will continue with this great in my local gaming group.

Gaming Articles

GM Theory: What is D&D supposed to be about?

What is D&D supposed to be about? It behooves every D&D DM to ask himself this all important question and give a thorough answer so as to provide a clear cut understanding of the premise of the game to the players. Now your typical good DM will say the most natural and simplest thing that rolls off the tongue of most good DM’s, its about story. Truer words have never been spoken, however this simple answer does not really lead one to a definitive statement of the premise behind D&D or ensures story is the outcome. Sure its about story, but how do you get that story to the table? How do worthwhile stories make an appearance in our games? How do you ensure the players participation and involvement in the story is ensured?

The answer is motivation. The motivation of players participation and the motivation of their alter egos, the characters are ultimately what drive the natural invention of story at the table. Before we get into this articles primary purpose, to discuss how stories sprout in our games and what methods DM’s can use to ensure that they do, lets discuss what does not.

Fake Storytelling

I have for many years been an advocate for the OSR (Old School Revival) and there is a primary and very good reason for that. I find modern DM’s really suck at bringing story to the game, they suck at creating motivations to care about stories in which our characters participate and they fail to give life to the worlds in which the stories are told. In essence they regulate the entire thing to cliche’s. While I can say that part of the blame goes to RPG culture, really it has been specifically the way gaming systems are designed that has caused the evolution of RPG culture to become so terribly derailed and unfocused.

This has happened because the practice of “storytelling” has evolved to become the domain of mechanics. Elements that were once the exclusively the work of our imaginations and constructs on which the premise of fantasy adventure was built have been washed away in exchange for tactical battle systems and rules oriented replacements.

Modern games no longer care who is at the helm of a player character as it is the character sheet and the mechanism that drive the systems that define the success and failure of a character and not the player driving him. Your choices in modern systems are reduced to die rolls rather then your imagination, your cleverness and your teamwork with your fellow players and note when I say “your” I mean the player, not his imaginary alter ego made up of attributes, skills, feats, special powers etc..

So what are we talking about here. Well to put it plainly with examples, we no longer define what our characters do, we activate mechanical actions to find out if we succeed or fail at our intention.

For example we don’t bargain for price of a sword with a merchant, we make a diplomacy check to see if our character manages to get a deal or not. We don’t decide if an NPC is lying to us, we roll an insight check to see if our character knows whether or not someone is lying to them. We don’t define how we search a room, where we look, how thorough we are, we make a search check to determine if our character finds something or not.

By the sheer act of mechanizing these many role-playing opportunities, we cease to tell a story about our characters and reduce the experience to a series of mechanized checks to see how our characters are doing.

In an environment like this it can be difficult, ney impossible for players to find their characters soul and purpose because the truth of role-playing is that it’s magic is hidden in the detailed and mundane activities of characterization. That interaction with a merchant is the opportunity to explore who our characters are and how they deal with people of the world in which they live. Believing whether or not someone is lying is a component of mystery to be debated among the players, is it truth or a lie, we must decide, not the dice. Whether or not we find treasure in a room should not be delegated to the randomness of a die roll, but rather our attention to the details of a room that must now be defined by the DM creating the atmosphere and imagery so desperately needed for the art of storytelling.

The point here is that in a fundamental way as you remove mechanics from the game, the central focus then instead becomes the story and the motivations of the characters and as such from that grows the responsibility and independence of the players to discover the concept of story. This is what the OSR and really old school games got right. They where simpler mechanics, vague mechanics and often existing in the absence of mechanics. These omissions aren’t an accident, they are a very intentional and purposeful decision to ensure the focus of the games is where it belongs, on the story, not the rules of the game. Oddly enough, the primary driver for DM’s everywhere, modern and past alike.

The morale of the story is that good storytelling and great stories are born in the absence of mechanics. I believe no truer statement can be made about role-playing

Creating Motivation Through Abstinence

It is here then that I make a case for slim, watered down systems that focus on the players and their intent instead of mechanics as is the case in versions of D&D like Basic/Expert, the full BECMI or various clones like Old School Essentials, Castles and Crusades etc..

These systems create a basic construction kit for story by alleviating the complexity of rules and defaulting to the premise of collaborative storytelling, imagination and core concepts. In the absence of rules, players have no choice but to use their imaginations to fill in the blanks, however that still does not provide players with the fundamental premise of the game. What are the things that actually motivate players to find and advance the story.

The Goals of the Game

You have to see D&D and role-playing as a construct in which their must be a primary driver with some secondary drivers that motivate the players, so that they can in turn invent fantasy oriented motivations for their characters. In a sense the players must know what the game is about, to know what sorts of characters to create. In the absence of this construct you end up with what I call “null motivation” characters.

A null motivation character is a result of a player creating a character without an understanding of the premise of the game.

For example. In Vampire The Masquerade, players are asked to create vampire characters in a world of darkness. Now a player who understands the premise of the game, that it is a game about political power in a gothic underground world of vampires, will understand that since this is the over arching concept of what the game is about, that in turn his character must fit into that world. He must answer questions like, how will this character pursue that power, what level of morality will he apply to his actions, will he pursue that power through intrigue, wealth, force or something else? If a player creates a character in pursuit of that premise, understanding that this is the meta goal of the game, he is likely to create a character that is ready for such a place narratively. This character will be attuned to the world around him, motivated to act in it in pursuit of the core premise.

However it is entirely possible to create a null motivation character if you fail to understand this fundamental premise of the game. If you create a character that is not going to engage in the loosely defined but fundamental meta objective of the game, he will likely enter it unprepared to participate in the gothic world of horror and be delegated to irrelevance as he does not pursue or engage in the world/setting built for that very purpose. A player like this might create a lone wolf, an outsider, who finds no logic in getting involved in the plots of vampires seeking higher positions/advancement, he will have no one he views as a competitor or a threat to his own power as he likely will have none. His world becomes one in which he exists as an empty placeholder with no real reason to actually be a member of the troupe.

The outcome however, when characters are built for the core premise is undeniably the story that will emerge from that interaction. When players are motivated to act, when they have their goals defined through a core premise in this way, they will both create and use their characters in that pursuit, ensuring that a story will most certainly emerge without any need for a GM to nudge anyone into action.

I used Vampire The Masquerade as an example here because unlike D&D, the premise of the game is very strictly defined as are the rules of this political game very explicitly defined in the kindred traditions. Your goal in this gothic world is to seek power and control, but you must abide by the rules of vampire society while doing it that very much force your hand into the world of intrigue and plots to achieve your goals.

Modern D&D’s premise, its core concept is not well defined at all, in fact, its really the absence of this fundamental definition that creates the most amount of problems as the players are asked to create “generic adventurers” in a game about “adventure” without any real definition of purpose. So vague is that premise that there really is not much on which to hang your hat. There is no core fundamentals on which to base a players motivations as such players create characters in the absence of any real direction about what the game is about other then the easy to say but hard to accomplish concept of “story”. Yes story, but what story? What is going to motivate the players into action?

Traditionally the answer is “whatever story the DM creates”, but this still lacks the true motivation because the story cannot be revealed to you in advance. You know it will be a fantasy adventure of some sort, but without a fundamental premise this becomes a rather vague catch all phrase and its very likely some players will create characters that simply don’t fit resulting in null motivation characters.

This is a very common problem for DM’s in modern D&D. A quick run through any D&D community forums you will discover just how common the DM complaint that his players “Waste Time”, are “unmotivated”, or are not “following along in the adventure” are. Its an epidemic in modern D&D culture so vast, I’ve personally gotten to the point where I don’t really like running or playing modern editions of D&D.

Old School Premise

Old School D&D, aka, 1st edition B/X, BECMI and 1st edition AD&D all actually had a core premise, just like most RPG’s of the time and really even today, just like Vampire The Masquerade.

The old school premise was fundamentally built on a simple mechanic that has been regulated to being an out dated concept, but was and continues to be in my opinion one of the most important and fundamental mechanics D&D needs to ensure it functions as a game that will ultimately create a story.

The mechanic I’m talking about is the Treasure is XP mechanic (1gp recovered = 1 XP earned). In classic D&D, the core (main) way that characters gained XP was through recovering treasure. This defined a core premise of the game. At the center of the D&D, all players knew that in the end, they where treasure hunters and this was the premise on which the motivation of the player rested. Their job as players, was to lead their alter egos to wealth. This wealth could take many shapes, just like in Vampire The Masquerade, the road to political power could vary dramatically. The important thing was that a premise for the game was established.

The Unfolding Story

From an absence of direction, to a clear cut goal, the very definition of what D&D is about is made crystal clear in the classic 1st edition D&D. However there will be skeptics and its important to remember that rules like this don’t exist in a vacuum. Just like in Vampire The Masquerade there are things that govern how you go about doing it, for example the Kindred Traditions is one such barrier to success. So it is too in classic D&D, there are other, widely misunderstood pieces of logic built into classic D&D that are important to understand and must be used for the premise to work.

First is that the game was deadly, this reputation is well deserved, but part of the core premise was that when you created a D&D character, he was a mundane nobody that was setting out on an adventure, now with a clear cut goal to write their story. They were vulnerable, they could easily perish and that was a barrier to success you had to overcome.

This is connected to the concept of “who is your character”, which gives directions to the players. Who are you? You are a nobody, the game is about finding out if you, the player, can turn this nobody, vulnerable weakling into somebody. That is the story, that is what you are writing when you are playing classic Dungeons and Dragons.

The fact that the game is deadly is to remind you further and really define to the player that the goal here is not to go out and seek your death by trying to fight monsters but to find wealth while avoiding danger. You must figure out how you are going to do that. Will you venture forth into the wilderness and seek your fortune in some ancient ruins of a long forgotten city or will you stay in the safety of town to scheme a way to rob the local nobles? Will you join the ranks of the local militia in hopes of making a name for yourself or start a local adventuring guild to get other adventures to do the dirty work for you as you claim a percentage. How you achieved your goals, was entirely up to you, the game is the story of how you do that.

This was further enforced by the fact that all other methods of earning XP, namely fighting monsters was the absolute worse way to do it. To prove that point consider that a 21 HD monster, the single most powerful in the world of D&D that would require a party of max level characters earned you a measily 2,500 XP, while a 1 HD monster that you would be an even match for at 1st level earned you 10 XP. The chances of you successfully fighting your way into success without dying was virtually ZERO.

Which puts the cliche that D&D is a game about fighting monsters and taking their stuff in a much different light. It is a cliche that is regulated to the OSR, that this is how “D&D used to be”, but the truth of the matter is that this is what D&D is today, in 5e, this is the core and fundamental motivation for players today, to fight monsters and take their stuff. In classic D&D this was the absolute worst thing that you could do and the entire system from low HP of characters, a complete absence of encounter balancing, to tiny XP rewards for fighting monsters and everything in between. The system did everything in its power to discourage fighting monsters. Which is true, as a player of the old school games I can assure you that we always avoided fights like it was the worst possible thing that could happen.

So how does the story evolve from this atmosphere. The answer should be obvious. The players have a clear directive, they know the premise of the game. When they sit down to create their characters, they do so with purpose. They understand their meta motivation and when the game starts, their purpose is also crystal clear. We are here to become rich, famous and powerful, now we need a plan. That plan, that adventure, those pursuits drive the story and players will seek out whatever opportunities you put in front of them with eager anticipation. You will never have unmotivated players again.

The Conclusion

It may not be as romantic, but having a clear cut goal for your players, something on which they can put their elbows is vital to the game. Players who create characters without a full understanding of exactly what the goal of the game is, will always struggle to create meaningful characters with meaningful motivations on their own, or worse, they will have misaligned motivations that will pull them in different directions.

The best thing you can do is to establish a core premise for your game, now you don’t necessarily have to adopt the classic Gold = XP premise of old school D&D, though I would argue this is an excellent logic to have in the game as a starting point. However in the absence of a premise, you will find that null motivation characters and mismatch is inevitable.

In my next article I will focus on creating other motivations (other premises) for D&D, Gold = XP is just one in a sea of possibilities and may indeed be better left to the past, though I encourage you to try it.

Game On People

Gaming Articles

GM Theory: Creating the Perfect Game

If there is one universal truth about being a GM is that with each new campaign, with each new writing effort we are always looking for ways to improve, trying to create that truly great RPG experience that encapsulates all of our hopes and dreams for a game.

We watch shows like Critical Role and wonder, how the hell do they pull it off? Well the short answer is that they are professional actors and do create a professionally produced show for a living, which of course gives them a major advantage that most of us simply don’t have, but there is more to it than that. Even a professional show like Critical Role could fail, there are plenty of great methods for creating that perfect game and while there is plenty of advice on the subject from wonderful storytellers like Colville, Mercer and the like, since I’m currently on a high of success, I thought I would write my own article on the subject of how I finally achieved that truly great RPG experience.

First a bit of history on my RPG experiences in recent years. Now I have been running games for nearly 30 years and though I would like to claim that my success as a GM is attributed to all of the experience I gained of what to and not to do to create a great game that ultimately yielded the great results I have today, I don’t think that would be the complete truth.

Of course experience is a contributing factor to success but I don’t think you need to have 30 years under you belt to pull off an amazing game. In fact, in many ways, my long experience often works against me as you become kind of stubborn and set in your ways from running games a certain way for a long time. You begin to think that you have it all figured out and can become rather defensive about taking advice, about listening to player complaints and adapting to the many great evolution’s that take place in the RPG hobby. In essence you can become an old Gronard who thinks they have it all figured out and stop developing as a GM which is something that not only does happen, but happens far more frequently then it doesn’t. In fact it has happened to me many times and entire decades of potential progress as a GM was lost and many games ruined because I refused to change and accept certain fundamental truths.

Point here is that experience (being a veteran) is often presumed to be the key to being a good GM, and while this has some truth to it, their is a whole lot more to it then that and today we are going to crack open the knowledge basket and see what falls out as we explore some of the methods you can use that go beyond experience to create that perfect game.

The Group Dynamic is Key

All the writing, effort and experience in the world will not help you create that great RPG experience without a good group, a lesson I have learned the hard-way more times then I can count.

Now when I say good group, I don’t mean good people, good role-players or good anything else. A good group is a placeholder for a type of group that fits into the mold (your version) of what a perfect RPG experience is. They fit into your style of running and create a dynamic with each other that works at the table.

You might be tempted for example to bring together “the best role-players you know” and think that, this is the route to creating the perfect game. The reality is however that sometimes two amazing role-players when put into the same game can result in a disastrously bad game.

A good group, aka, a good group dynamic that works is something that just happens and there is no sure fire way to artificially create it, it takes experimentation. You put people in games together and it either happens or it doesn’t. When it does work its magic, when it doesn’t it may not become immediately apparent, but eventually it will slowly sink the game and derail the experience. The game might still be ok, fun even, but you will never achieve that high level of play you wish to have, that magic that comes only from great group dynamics.

So the advice here is to understand that when you form up a new group this is a testing period of the group, not an opportunity to run a campaign. If you want to achieve a great game sometime in the future you have to be ready to do some intermediate stuff to find out how the group dynamic works and be ready to make changes. Don’t create your masterpiece campaign for a new group and expect amazing results because you think your campaign is that good. A poor group dynamic can destroy any game, no matter how much work you put into it.

The goal anytime new players get together is to find out what the dynamic of that group is, what kind of fit they are for each other and for you. What are the complaints, is the focus of the game where you want it to be, do people get along, is there jealously or hostility in the group, is everyone in agreement about what is and isn’t important and good in the game or in RPG’s in general.

All of these things need to be tested and its best to run short campaigns, trying out different games, different approaches and testing the groups reaction to find out what works and more importantly who fits and doesn’t fit into the dynamics of that group.

Eventually you may realize that most of the group except for one or two people function and this is a hard realization to make. At some point you will know who in the group has to get politely asked to leave and that can be difficult, ney impossible in some cases because they might be friends, co-workers or family.

Its here where the first real pain to perfection comes in as its critical to ensure that you have a very strong, positive group dynamic that works for everyone without doubt or conflict. This is key to creating that awesome RPG experience and it actually is physically impossible to have even a marginally passable game that you will be satisfied with if the group dynamics just don’t work.

Its painful and uncomfortable to ask a player to leave a group, but often the first necessary step to take when trying to create a great troupe that will be able to achieve the heights of a truly great role-playing experience.

Don’t Skim over Character Creation

I can’t stress enough how important character creation is to the process of creating a great RPG experience. This isn’t just about vanity as a GM, aka, its not about saying “hey if you want to play in my game you need a deep robust backstory”. It’s not about control, or trying to be some sort of artist. This is a practical matter.

The reality of RPG’s is that it’s a game that focuses on the players, on their roles in the game and as such, its less important for you to know who the characters are and more important for the players to know what character they are running. Creating backstories, writing backgrounds and personalities is not something players do for you as the GM, but rather something they must do for themselves.

This is largely for their benefit and of course to a degree, for the benefit of the game as a whole. They need to understand who their characters are, how do they behave, how will they react to different circumstances, how does their world view ties into the setting. This cannot be understated, great games come from great characters and great characters are born from in depth understanding of them which needs to happen before the game starts.

Its important to understand however that in depth understanding and fleshing out of characters is not necessarily the product of great writing. In fact, some players can produce very real, very believable characters and never put a word down on paper. Its enough that they spend time thinking and planning in their head exactly who this alter ego they are creating is. So don’t be hung up on the printed word in this regard, most people are not great writers, in fact, its far more common that people don’t write at all.

The important thing here is that players do more than produce a character sheet and personality quirks. You always know your in trouble when as a GM you ask a player to tell us who their character is and they use 3rd person generalities to describe them “He’s a savage Half-Orc Barbarian that doesn’t take shit from anyone” is not a character, its a caricature.

Push for depth, push for background, make sure your players really know their characters and have done the diligence required during the character development process. In most cases this means you have to give the players time, don’t let the excitement of playing an RPG push you to the table before the characters are really ready.

Great games are not about great story writing

One of the hardest lessons and most difficult thing to do for GM’s is to realize the very humbling fact that great games don’t come from great writing, but from great storytelling. Its not what the story is, but how you portray it.

What this simply means is that the plot doesn’t need to be a complicated, multi-layer onion for the players to peel involving lots of characters and in depth mysteries. In fact, an approach like that will most likely derail your game rather then make it great.

Great RPG experiences come from the moment and the moment doesn’t have to be part of a complex plot, but rather a simple situation made to feel real and authentic. As a GM you play the cast of characters with whom the players interact and these characters are what make the story and the world feel real, authentic and believable. How you define the scenes and portray the characters is far more important then the complexity and depth of the plot and it is the secret to great GMing and a great RPG experience for your players.

Its important to note however I’m not talking about wacky voices or the use of adjectives. Imagery can be simple, while remaining authentic, choosing your words carefully knowing when to define something or when to let the players imaginations take over is a subtle but important skill to learn, though notably its much easier then trying to become a master writer.

The game lives in your players minds and its your job to paint the first strokes and let them fill in the rest. If you make the world a believable place, that picture in their head will be clearer. You can mess that up by making things too complex and too involved as easily as you can by being too vague. So find that middle ground and understand that as a GM its your job to give players space to exist, its their story not yours.

Session Pacing is Vital

Most people when they watch a movie don’t realize how critical pacing of the story is as its such a very subtle art form, however the editing of a movie, the pace at which the story progresses and the time each character in a story is given is without a doubt one of the most technical and difficult things to get right and it is no different in an RPG session with one exception. The editors of a movie can do trial and error, they can edit a movie over and over again until they get it just right where as a GM you only get one shot at it in a live session where all decisions about pacing have to be made in the moment.

This vital and often difficult skill is unfortunately one of the things that really comes from experience of running games. However so many GM’s never truly learn how to do this correctly, not because they are incapable or because its so difficult, but because they aren’t consiously aware of it.

The pressure of running a session, managing the rules, thinking about the plots, portraying the characters, defining the world… there is already so much going on that it can feel like an impossibly daunting task to also be self aware of the pacing of the game and so it is largely something GMs tend to ignore. The result is a game where pacing can bounce around in a session from going way too fast where important details and emotion are lost, or too slow where the game bogs down and comes to a crawl.

It becomes even more complicated when you realize that different settings and worlds require an adjustment, require a different pace. There is a big difference between running a horror game and running a fantasy adventure and each requires its pace.

Fortunately if you are aware of pacing in your game and make a conscious effort to control and manage it, you will very quickly find the right pacing and become proficient in maintaing and controlling it.

Its very subtle but very important component of creating a great RPG experience for your players.

Find the Right Players, or Adapt to The Players You Have

If there is one hard lesson I have learned from years of GMing that probably didn’t need to be as painful as it was, its understanding that you cannot change what you players like and don’t like. While this goes to group dynamic to a degree, this is really more about choosing the right game for the group you have and there are two approaches to this.

The first approach is adapting to your players. What this means is that when you are choosing your game, when you are deciding on the style of the game and the method in which you will present it, you must understand the preferences of the players. Its vital, that the game you are running for your group is something everyone is overwhelmingly excited to play. If for example you are running a science-fiction game because you love science-fiction, but your players want to play a fantasy adventure, that mismatch (though it should be obvious) will never work.

Preference of settings, or style or game type are irreconcilable, meaning you will not be able to convince players to like something that they have already decided they don’t and there is no sense in trying. Run the game they want to play.

Now alternatively you can find another group that matches your preferences and while it may seem mean spirited or selfish the opposite is also true here. A GM running a game that they are not into, that they aren’t excited and overwhelming eager to run will be just as big a failure as running a game the players don’t want to play. You will never successfully achieve a great RPG experience running a game you don’t like.

It has to be a perfect match and your options in this matter should be clear, run the game your players want to play and make sure you love it as well, ensure that game is like its your first born child.

Conclusion

The truth is that running RPG’s is a challenging labor of love and while it’s by no stretch of the imagination an easy thing to create a truly great RPG experience, I do believe that if you are really aware of some of the subtleties that go into creating such a game you are far more likely to achieve that far earlier in your GMing career then if you ignore them.

It’s important I believe to not get hung up on the technicalities of the game, sure knowing the rules is important, being prepared is important, but these things are the standard stuff of running a game. The more subtle things like group dynamic, focus on character creation, understanding the important distinction between story writing and storytelling, the strategy of pacing and the sort of equilibrium of picking the right game are far more subtle yet far more critical components of creating a great RPG experience.

Often these things aren’t talked about and addressed by GM’s who are eager to simply play a game and while this can be fine for some GM’s who are a little less eager to perfect, those of us who are striving for that Critical Role level experience, these subtle things become paramount. Knowing and understanding them is the key to success.

My advice is of course just one point of view, but I do attribute all of my success as a GM to the subtle changes I have made in my style and approach to running games, as they say, the devil is in the details and its clear to me that really is the case when it comes to chasing that perfect role-playing experience.

Good Luck Out There!

Best of List, Gaming Articles

Top 10 War Games

While I recognize the concept of a war game can be a great many things and such a list can probably vary dramatically, when I say war game I mean soldiers on a map, fighting over territory in the classic sense. So while games like Through The Ages have abstracted war concepts and something like Cosmic Encounter may technically be seen as a galactic war, to me this sort of game would not really qualify as the focus game is something other then war. For example Through The Ages is an empire building game and while war is an inevitable part of that, at the core of its game-play is the concept of building up your empire. I also excluded miniature games because I feel though certainly these games would qualify as war games, its kind of its own category deserving of its own list. Finally I excluded short (filler) games, again, not that I dislike or don’t play such games, but filler gamers are really their own category and though many can be about war even in the more serious sense, I believe most people who would look up “war games” are looking for something a bit more robust.

Ok lets get into this.

10. IKUSA, formally Shogun, Formally Samurai Swords

While many gamers consider dice chuckers like RISK to be beneath them, to me Ikusa has sufficient “extra’s” to make it a quality strategic game and would simultaneously please RISK players. The fact that it looks amazing on the table is just a cherry on top.

This 1980’s Milton Bradly big box classic has been on my shelf since I was a teenager and with only brief interruption I have always played with pretty much every gaming group I have had. Certainly at this stage in gaming history its a bit of a dated game, but I do believe it has aged a lot better then all of the other Milton Bradly classics and still holds up in particular as an alternative to the traditional dice chuckers like RISK.

Its a nostalgia thing to some degree for sure, though I do believe out of all the old 80’s classics which includes Axis and Allies, Fortress America, Stratego, RISK and Supremacy, this is the only one I still long to play today.

Its a classic take on the dice chucker, but it takes it up a notch or two by having unique armies that can be permanently removed from the game, strategic resource management to give the game a measure of planning beyond just where you attack and unique individual units for interesting ways to affect battle outcomes.

Of course the fact that its medieval japan (one of my favorite time periods and historical cultures) as well as looking absolutely amazing on the table helps it a great deal not to mention the childhood memories I have of the long summer days playing it with my friends. I love this game and this list would be incomplete without it, warts and all.

Recommendations: If you love medieval Japan in using western presumptions about the era (think samurai’s and ninja’s), in particular if your a fan of RISK, this game is for you.

9. Tide of Iron

It looks and feels like a heavy world war II tactical game, without that uncomfortable elitness required from most games in the genre or that silly need for ultra realism.

I love war games and I love tactical miniature games, but when it comes to tactical board games I find I don’t have the same affinity for them. In fact, Tide of Iron is, out of my considerable collection of games, the only tactical board game I actually own. I don’t know why that is exactly, but I suspect it has to do with the fact that so many tactical board games are based on World War II and since I have Tide of Iron and adore it, I find it difficult to seek out other games that cover the same subject on the same scale. I mean there are a metric ton of them out their from Conflict of Heroes to Advanced Squad Leader which all seem interesting, but I always fall back to the question, why do I need another one when I already have one I love?

My love for Tide of Iron comes from a childhood memory of playing war with little green men, which is essentially what Tides of Iron is. Scenario driven, Tide of Iron zooms in on the battlefield to the squad level where players control squads of soldiers, tanks, various artillery in a wide range of situations in a green vs. grey army men World War II battle.

It abstracts many high level concepts like bombing runs, long range artillery and various “tactics” on the battlefield with cards that give the game a sort of zoomed in and zoomed out level of play which makes the battles feel more authentic, while also having a very clever system for managing terrain that is easy to understand and teach, a common complexity in other games of this type that often focus too much on realism in my opinion.

Its an engaging game that I love to pull out and I have even on occasion made it my choice of solo plays. I can’t recall a time I introduced the game to someone who didn’t love it, in fact, its been a birthday present to a couple of friends over the years which says a lot, especially since they were not “gamer” buddies.

Great tactical experience, bit of a pain to setup but tons of scenarios available and can be scaled for different lengths, ranging from everything between a short 1 hour mini battle to a 4 hour major engagement. Great fun, simple mechanics, perfect for inducting new players into war gaming.

Recommendations: If you like World War II tactical games, but find many of them overcooked, Tide of Iron gets it just right here with a perfect balance between realism and ease of play.

8. Empire of the Sun

Empire of the Sun is a very complex game and is not recommended for the uninitiated.

Easily one of the most complex games I have ever played and certainly the most complex one on this list by a wide margin, Empire of the Sun approaches the war in the Pacific in such detail, such focus and such an unusual scale that it is truly a unique gem in the genre, in fact I would say the game is a genre onto itself. I actually don’t recommend this game to all but the most dedicated war game fan, but in terms of scale and subject matter, it is the unquestionable king of high level strategic war games.

Card driven similar to Paths of Glory and as likely to have a-historical outcomes as Paths of Glory, Empire of the sun simultaneously zooms out and plays on the high level strategic map, while zooming in to cover the history of the Pacific War in great detail.

Its a fantastic game, one I have Reviewed, worth a look but be sure you are ready, it can be quite overwhelming.

Recommendation: This is for the ambitious war gamer looking for the ultimate challenge. It takes time and dedication to learn to play it and ten times that to learn to play it well. Its a life style game, make sure you have a dedicated partner.

7. Paths of Glory

Paths of Glory is a classic in the historical war gaming communities and is the foundation game for card driven mechanics.

World War I is probably one of the less known or sought after topics, and though this is a relatively new addition to my collection I’m warming up to it very quickly thanks to its strategic depth. Paths of Glory falls into the card driven point to point high level strategy games which is almost a genre in on to itself but this classic is a classic for good reason as I have discovered.

Really intricate and detailed it does what I love most about historical war games of this type, it infuses the game with rich thematic history, but does not become scripted walking you through the war as it actually happened. In Paths of Glory you are going to change history in some of the most unpredictable and interesting ways and because its a card driven game with literally billions of possible outcomes its physically impossible for you to play enough games to have even a similar outcomes from game to game. Every game of Paths of Glory is going to be wildly different. Some history buffs might find the a-historical outcomes to be distracting but for me personally there is nothing I hate more then playing a war game where I’m just going through the motions to ensure my war turns out exactly as it did in history. I find games like that incredibly boring and they never make my shelf.

Paths of Glory is more than just a war game however because while you are certainly focused on winning the war on the battlefield, you must carefully manage your resources and supply lines and like in real history, wars are rarely won or lost becomes of the outcome of battles, but rather everything that happens before and after. The influx of key historical moments represented on cards can also create some incredibly complex puzzles to solve increasing the challenge on a wide range of scales. What happens if Italy fails to enter the war in a timely fashion, or the Russian Czars never fall or the US never enters the war? All of these things are possible and more in a wide range of combinations and timings, all driving you to play the game again and again.

Absolutely love this game and though the complexity level ranges somewhere between the mid to high range, I find that the rules are very well laid out and it really doesn’t take more than one play to really get it. People say the game takes about 8 hours to play and I would agree that is the case until you play with an opponent that already knows the rules. Then the game goes from an 8 hour game to a 3 hour game fairly easily as the flow of the game is very quick once you get the hang of things.

Recommendations: This is definitely a game for someone looking for a higher level of complexity and meeting to the game, if you like games like Twilight Struggle or Washington’s War, this game uses many of the same concepts. If you are a world war I history buff, this one should not be missed.

6. Washington’s Wars

Washington’s War looks a lot more complicated than it is, I would put this is the light rules category.

A Mark Herman card driven game, however unlike Empire of the Sun, Washington’s War is a relatively light game that is closer to the likes of Twilight Struggle in weight and scope. This is a game about card management, strategic positioning and timing but unlike Twilight Struggle there is no requirement of card memorization which makes it a lot more newbie friendly.

In fact it’s almost questionable whether this is an actual war game, just like Twilight Struggle it is technically a game about war and you have armies and battles, but really this is a strategy game that covers the revolutionary war from a very high level overview.

I put it on this list mainly because I believe very strongly that if you are going to play games like Twilight Struggle, Paths of Glory, or even Empire of the Sun, this is your starting point. Learn this game and the rest will be a lot easier for you to absorb and understand as its incredibly rules light for such a deep strategic experience yet it uses many of the same concepts and mechanics as the various more complex cousins.

One thing I love about Washington’s War is that the game is relatively quick, yet gives you that full, heavy war game feel. Its a rare treat to find an opponent as the Revolutionary war, much like World War I in Paths of Glory is something not everyone is really going to know, though unlike Paths of Glory, knowing the history of the Revolutionary War is really not going to be much help here, its a lot more abstracted and general in terms of card play.

In any case I adore Washington’s War, while many would claim that Empire of the Sun is Mark Hermans masterpiece (and it very well may be) I think of all his games, this is the most likely to make the table if for no other reason than that it takes all of 10 minutes to explain how to play and even a first timer will pick up the game and put up some serious competition which is really what puts this one over the top for me.

Recommendation: Great entry level war game and introduction to card driven war games. If you have interest in playing games like Twilight Struggle, Paths of Glory and Empire of the Sun (universally accepted classics in the historical war gaming genre), this is where you start.

5. Battle of Rokugan

Its a game that feels like a knife fight in a phone booth from round 1, one of the hidden gems in the Fantasy Flight Games library.

Easily one of the most underrated strategy war games to come out of fantasy flight in the last decade, Battle of Rokugan is a gem that fills that “I want a war game, but I don’t have 4 hours to play one” feel to it. This is my go to game whenever I have people over who see all my board games on the shelf and want to play one because “they love risk”.

I have never introduced this game to anyone who didn’t instantly love it and I have on a number of occassions pulled it out at partys with non-gamers who not only end up playing it and loving it, but wanting to instantly play it a second time.

Its fast and furious yet deeply strategic, somewhat asymmetrical and though very abstract, still fairly thematic war game straight to the point war game. Its just a great mechanism for presenting that full fledged war game feel with a very light touch.

I think what I like about it the most is how close the games always are, its rare that a winner can be determined before the final move of the final round and often the game ends with several people within 2-3 points of each other.

Great, deeply strategic game, yet simple to teach and learn. Perfect for that spur of the moment game night.

Recommendation: While it may not scratch that deep historical war game bug floating around in your system, this is a game that will hit the table with just about anyone with even a passing interesting in war games. Its a perfect replacement for RISK.

4. War of The Ring

There is nothing like the feeling of a epic scale game that captures a story, War of the Ring is the best of its kind.

My favorite game I never play, this dust collector however still deserves notice for two core reasons. First, it is the single most thematic game I have ever played, it is without reservation The Lord of the Rings in a box. Secondly, its a game that tells an alternative version of history, written through gameplay of what I believe to be one of the greatest fantasy stories in existence unless you count Star Wars.

Why don’t I play it. Its hard to say, its not a lack of desire, but more circumstance. Its a two player game that takes a good 4-5 hours to play for starters which is not that easy of a thing to pull of for a guy like me who has a dozen gaming friends who always want in on board game night. Though this isn’t really the only problem. The second kind of difficult thing with War of the Rings is that its a terrible game to teach. It requires intricate knowledge of the cards/events, board and an understanding of some of the strategy which can be quite high level and though the game is not really complex per say, it does have an element of randomness that doesn’t really mesh well with the length of the game. Its something that I find is a problem in a lot of games, randomness and long games are a really bad combo. Still when played by experienced players, War of the Rings luck can and is completely circumvented. Beneath its ulterior is a very deep strategy game.

I love this game, it tells a great story, it makes for a fun evening and with the right opponent it will make for a great game two man game night.

Recommendation: If you have a dedicated gaming partner, this is one worth learning and playing repeatedly as it gets better with time. Its a must have for Lord of the Rings fans.

3. Shogun (Dirk Henn version)

Most of Dirk Henns games are in the “not my thing” category, but Shogun is about as me as you can get.

Shogun has been on my top 10 best games of all time list as long as I have kept one. There is so much to love about this game. It combines deep strategic thinking and planning with the wacky and chaotic gameplay reminiscent of Galaxy Trucker. I will submit that this combination will not be for everyone, but to me, board gaming is about having fun and this game brings it in a way no other game I have ever played does.

Ok so its not a serious war game, that cube tower is just down right silly but I have never played this game at any table where when cubes go into the tower people aren’t shouting, cheering and standing up. Its a game that goes from silent contemplation to people laughing out-loud in a single round of play. Some games I love because they are deep and strategic, others I love because they have interesting and thoughtful mechanics, others still I love because they are silly or funny, but Shogun I love just because it combines all of it into a single game.

Its a game that is very easy to grasp, it will capture that casual “RISK” crowd, it has plenty to offer for more seasoned war gamers, yet its play time is relatively quick so it never overstays its welcome.

I would never dare to make a best of list without Shogun on it, it checks so many boxes it can be justified on just about any list but certainly on one with my favorite war games list. Love, love it.

Recommendations: Really and honestly I believe this game has universal appeal if you have an open mind, but my experience has been that some people love it, some people hate it.

2. Game of Thrones The Board Game

This is a game that is played in the minds of the players, the board and pieces are mostly distraction.

While I have much love for the 2nd edition card game as well, to me the board game is a representation of everything I love about war gaming. It is not only a high level strategic war game with asymmetrical factions in an awesome fantasy setting, but throws into it that classic “diplomacy” style betrayal of move and counter move politics. There are so many ways to screw opponents and get screwed by opponents that every turn of the game is a nail biting assessment of what if scenarios and I have rarely ever played this game with anyone where all the passion and raw human emotion a gaming group can muster doesn’t spill onto the table.

This is a very controversial game that may not work with some groups if for no other reason then its a requirement to lie and betray to win, which can create a lot of hostility at the table and create a huge disadvantage for the more casual gamer. Its a cruel game where the only way to win is to completely screw people over and much like the classic Diplomacy it can rub people the wrong way.

My gaming group loves it and every year we do a big game of Game of Thrones at our big board gaming weekend, its always the main event, but be weary, its a long, painful and very hostile game that will end less mature friendships. Adult Advisory on this one.

Recommendations: I would say if you can handle games like Diplomacy, you are going to love this one, but I always put a friendship advisory on this one, its a rough ride and a fairly complex game to boot.

1. Twilight Imperium

There is no doubt in my mind that this is the ultimate gaming experience available in the board game market period.

Easily one of my favorite science-fiction war games, while Twilight Imperium is a fairly complex game and in depth game, I’ve never had much trouble inducting new players. There is a lot of “common sense” rules in the game and even a casual observer can pick up the core concept of the game with ease. There are a lot of moving parts and a fairly multi plateau of strategy that can stump new players, so experience certainly makes a difference but I find a reasonably seasoned gamer doesn’t require more then a couple of turns for the light to come on and understand how to win.

In either case, while the focus of the game is a grand scale intergalactic war the game also features trading, politics, diplomacy and various types of resource management and careful strategic positioning. There is a lot more to it then simply fighting, yet most games are ultimately resolved through direct conflict and the winner is typically the person who created the best setup for himself going into that war.

Amazing game, but it is one of those 6 to 8 hour games that is always at its best with 6 players which can be a fairly difficult game to put together. Though I only play it roughly once a year or so, It’s always one of my favorite gaming get together’s. Its been on my shelf since 3rd edition, over a decade and now with the new streamlined 4th edition there is even more justification to get into this one.

I put it as number one on this list because to me, there is gaming, there is war gaming and then there is Twilight Imperium. It stands out as a unique experience that I have never seen any other game come even close to. Anything can and will happen in this game, no two games will ever resemble each other and you really can spend countless hours contemplating the endless possibilities in the depths of its strategy. This is without question in my mind THE best war game ever made.

Board Game Reviews

Twilight Struggle by GMT 2005

As a matter of principle I pride myself on the fact that I’m a diverse gamer who always keeps an open mind to any game, but for the past 15 years since Twilight Struggle released I have resisted it simply because I honestly have no interest in the cold war at all. Having lived through the tail end of it myself, even as it was happening I barely understood it nor cared to know anything about it.

Yet I find myself somewhat obligated to try it as a writer for a gaming blog to play games like Twilight Struggle that are universally hailed as masterpieces, in particular a game that held on to the number one spot on Boardgamegeek for years and still ranks in the top 10 today 15 years after its release.

Finally after years of avoiding it I gave it a try, first by playing the digital version and now the physical version. Today we review Twilight Struggle, 15 years behind schedule!

Overview

Final Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star (3.35 out of 5 Stars)

Designer: Ananda Gupta, Jason Matthews

Twilight Struggle is thematically a game about the cold war in which players via for power over a map of the globe in a “struggle for global supremacy. Always on the brink of nuclear war, players manipulate and maneuver the abstracted concept of influence on the board as they try to dominate entire regions from the America’s to Southeast Asia and everything in-between.

In more practical terms its a game about victory points, scored through a wide range of methods but most notably through the scoring cards that reward control on the map. Each round players can play only a single card at a time from their hand in a back and forth battle to manipulate the board and events on the global stage in their favor. This process is further complicated by the fact that there are American friendly cards and Soviet friendly cards in the single deck from which both players draw cards. Hence as an American player for example you will at times be forced to execute events on cards that benefit your opponent and vice versus, leaving much of the games strategy to timing. Any given card can be super powerful or super weak, depending on when it is played and much of the strategy and sort of high level thinking behind the game lives in this space of assessing when exactly that is.

The game largely comes down to who can best balance the benefits and drawbacks of the cards, timing of when they are played and smart positioning of your influence. There is some luck to the game as players take some of the more riskier moves like waging mini wars in different regions, performing coups or trying to win the space race, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that a skilled player will always win against a lucky player, hence the luck can be mitigated entirely through tactical and strategic game play.

Twilight Struggle is an award winning game and I have no trouble understanding why. Its a game that is incredibly simple to learn how to play, yet bottomless in terms of depth of strategy and gameplay, it is very much like a game of chess where learning the rules of the game is just the beginning of what is a much larger world that surrounds the mechanic.

There is of course more to it then this brief description but it suffices to say that the game looks far more complex then it is, though it has the look of a war game it most certainly is not one and the basis of its duel use card mechanic is a tried and true one responsible for some of the best games on the market today in the genre of historical war games.

The only question that remains is does Twilight Struggle really earn its keep with me, or is it like many of the top 10 contenders on Boardgamegeek overrated?

Components

Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
Tilt:christmas_star

Pros:   Its a beautiful game, plain and simple, capturing via colors and art perfectly and the innate feel of the cold war.

Cons:  Like most GMT games, the cards are of such high quality stock that they are almost too stiff to shuffle.

GMT games is probably not known for high quality components, though it should be! In fact they should be famous for changing the reputation of historical simulation games and war games in this regard, as the more commonly known “chit games” have always been notoriously poor quality. Back in the day when a lot of these types of “token based” war and simulation games where made they were known for having really shitty components, poorly written manuals for really complex games, lack of “color” and artistic style. They focused on gameplay but never components. GMT has changed all that and shown that you can have the best of both worlds.

In fact, some of the GMT games on my shelf like B-17 Flying Fortress Leader and Empire of the Sun are among the most beautiful table decorations I own, with some of the highest quality components I have ever seen in a game. Twilight Struggle (current printing) benefits from this change and GMT provides truly high quality, gorgeous components for the game with an artistic flair that just fits. Yet their wise enough to understand that I want to pay for a game, not fancy miniatures, something that has grown incredibly tiresome in today’s gaming market where games are five times as expensive then they need to be just to have some plastic representation that serve no purpose in the game-play at all. This annoys me to no end and I’m glad GMT understands that good components does not mean wasting my money on pointless and usually unnecessary plastic sculpts while simultaneously ugly components devoid of any art or style, are just as distracting and disturb enjoyment of the game. The middle ground they found is exactly what I like to see in games today.

The mounted gameboard is astonishingly colorful, wonderfully illustrated and incredibly useful (for gameplay) in terms of organization and layout. It makes playing the game easier, faster and makes grasping its concepts simpler, serving not only the aesthetic but practical purpose for the game. I love that and GMT should be commended for how well thought out the game-board is. Somehow they managed to capture the color theme of the cold war as one might imagine it with the deep dark blood reds of the Soviets and the cool, clean blues of the Americans. This is a game-board you will just love owning, giving you that warm fuzzy feeling of money well spent.

The cards and tokens in the game are also of the absolute highest quality you can get, truly made to last with a lot of thought going into the legibility and usability of both, not overwhelming them with art and color but ensuring that each component has thematic weight and recognizably. In fact after a few plays of Twilight Struggle I can tell you what each card does just by the picture and I have the memory capacity of a goldfish. Unfortunately GMT has a tendency to make the card stock too rigid, they are actually difficult to shuffle.

I would not consider component quality a huge must for a game like this, but the fact that the components are great is a huge boon for the game, I love being surprised and impressed by something unexpected, it carries a lot of weight with me.

Finding opponents for Twilight Struggle can be difficult, but there is a digital version of the game that can help with that.

Theme

Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
Tilt:christmas_starchristmas_star

Pros:  Its difficult to imagine a game capturing a theme better, this is the cold war in a box.

Cons:  Your interest in the theme will have different mileage, its not exactly the most interesting of subjects.

I walked into Twilight Struggle with very limited if any understanding or interest in the cold war, yet after playing the game I have found myself engrossed in the subject going so far as reading books on the topic. To me, when a board game not only teaches but creates interest in a subject, its an automatic win in the theme department and Twilight Struggle has certainly done that with a very large, nuclear bang.

Twilight Struggle does an amazing job of creating that anxiety of the cold war in which there is a constant move and counter move as was often the case historically between the Americans and the Soviets. That feeling of being limited to what you can do out of fear of the ultimate consequence. There is a kind of sense of scale as well and the weight of players actions create a constant re-assessment in trying to understand the “why” of each play. Every card play, reveals something about your opponents strategy, yet you can’t help but imagine the world in which these events take place thanks in large part to the clever way in which cards and history are linked.

Because each card represents an actual event in history and the draw deck is broken down into early, mid and late war cards gradually shuffled into the main deck, their is a kind of progression through history that you feel through the cards as they are played. Even the focus of what regions are important, the fluctuations in where the influential political battlefields are and the places were it all takes place breathes life into the thematic and often historically accurate feel of the game, yet it is not scripted and each game you play you get a truly unique alternate version of history.

I think Twilight Struggle has done an incredible job of bringing the theme of the cold war to life, in particular in making you feel that anxiety of the era. Its truly an amazing sensation that even now I find difficult to describe but as I write I can’t help but to nod my head in agreement and understanding of why this game was both so popular, highly rated and won so many awards. Its a beautiful coordination between theme and game-play deserving of all its accolades.

Gameplay

Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
Tilt:christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star

Pros:  The card mechanic is brilliantly done, with lots of difficult decisions and interesting strategies to explore while being relatively easy to teach the rules.

Cons:  The game favors the soviets and the game suffers from an overwhelming expert syndrome problem that can make it difficult to induct to players.

Twilight Struggle is hardly the first game to make use of the card driven “operation costs” mechanic we see in the game at its core, but what is surprising is that a game with this mechanic could become such a hit with the general gaming public. Topping the charts on BBG (boardgamegeek), Twilight Struggle has achieved considerable acclaim considering its historical war game roots.

Though Washington’s War might look more complicated, it actually is at about the same complexity level to learn, yet much simpler game to get your head around the strategy and may actually be a better choice for inducting players into the genre of card driven historical war games.

We see this mechanic in classics like For the People, Washington’s War and Empire of the Sun, attributed largely to the wonderful designer Mark Herman. Yet Twilight Struggle somehow manages to improve on the concept mainly by simplifying it down to its basics and implementing it in a simple way mechanically while gripping tightly to the reason for its existence, that deep strategic core that drives paralysis analysis. I think Mark Herman is a great designer but he designs games for war gamers and it really took someone more in tune with the general board game culture to understand how to leverage this mechanic in a way that it could be absorbed by more casual gamers which make up the vast majority of people out there rolling dice. I really think its this leveraging of Mark Hermans great revolution in game design that has produced a game like Twilight Struggle, yet Ananda Gupta and Jason Mathews also really opened the door into some interesting elements of play that don’t really exist in the Herman design on which Twilight Struggle is based.

This is a mechanic you will be thinking as much about during the game as between games, as its a an endless well of potential and its why so many of Mark Hermans games are so highly regarded among war gamers, yet Twilight Struggle in my eyes simply does it better than all of its predecessors in many ways. Not necessarily because it goes deeper but rather by making the experience far more palatable, approachable and easier to absorb. Twilight Struggle is a game you can teach in 10 minutes flat with few “exception based” rules that can make so many historical war games difficult to manage at the table and while a novice opponent may struggle to beat a more experienced player speaking to its depth, it won’t be the result of not understanding how to play. This is a vast contrast to most games that use this card driven mechanic that really require considerable amount of study just to play correctly. One exception might be Washingtons War which I found had a very similar feel, yet lacked the depth of card play that Twilight Struggle has.

More than that however, Twilight Struggle creates a sort of static zone of gameplay. There aren’t infinite possibilities and combinations and though from play to play you will always be surprised by the way cards and situations combine, there is a tone to the game, a strategic playing field that a single person can absorb, understand and work within thanks to the fact that in playing the game your not constantly trying to remember the many rules and exceptions to interactions as is the case in so many of the games where this mechanic appears. Its why I say its a better version of the game as it has considerably fewer if any “gotcha” moments in the rules, yet has them in immense quantity in terms of game-play.

Don’t get me wrong I love Empire of the Rising Sun, Washington’s War and even Paths of Glory, but I never feel comfortable pulling these games out with a friend and saying “hey lets play a fun game” even though I desperately want to play those games with someone because they really are amazing. They just require a lot more explanation and understanding of rules to really play even remotely competitively and really the first few games of these great titles are going to be very much learning the rules games. Even after playing them many times, it still can feel like a bit of a grind to get through them. Twilight Struggle is the first game in this vein I have seen that I really believe anyone can learn to play in 10 minutes from opening the box and that just makes this a gem among gems.

Twilight Struggle gameplay is all about subtle plays and I have to admit the first few times I played it, even though it always drew me back, I felt helpless and limp. It was easy to learn how to play, but learning to play it well really required some study, understanding of the cards, the subtle interactions of those cards and the importance of key locations and most importantly paying attention to what has and hasn’t been played. In a sense this is a drawback of Twilight Struggle. It suffers from what I like to call “expert syndrome” where new players don’t have a prayer in hell winning against someone who has a few games under their belt, which notably is not an uncommon phenomenon among strategic war games, but at least the cause is not the lack of understanding the rules which is more typically the case with all other games I have played in this vein.

The game is full of cards like this one that if you don’t know about and understand that they are coming you can create circumstances on the board that will be easy to counter. Its expert knowledge like this you really need if you have any hope of winning a game.

When it comes to the road to experience mileage will vary, I have found some get it right away, others struggle with the subtle way the game is manipulated card play to card play. In fact I have found that non-gamer or casual gamers tend to pick it up faster then veteran gamers that enter the scene with a lot of expectation and assumption from the genre. This may explain why its so popular on boardgamegeek.

Still I found that when I teach the game I spend as much time explaining the rules as I do giving strategy tips and advice. Most players become competitive only after many plays and only IF they like the game initially which filters out a lot of people, in fact most people. If you can manage to find someone who sticks with it during this learning the strategy curve, the game not only becomes absolutely amazing, but extraordinarily diverse.

You will never play the same game twice especially since every opponent will ultimately develop their own style and approach to the game. That is assuming you can hook them which is a iffy proposition. The subject matter and the complexity of the strategy that really favors expertise can be a real turn off in the initial plays and it will take many plays for a player to really become competitive against someone who has already gone through this cycle of learning and developing their skills.

I do find some flaws with the mechanic as well. For one, its clear to me that the Soviet player has a significant advantage. This is not just a sort of personal opinion but a fact based statistical reality. No matter where you turn for these statistics, tournaments, online play in the digital version of the game or personal experience the win rate of the Soviet is ALWAYS much higher then the Americans. I think this is mainly because the turn order does not change and the Soviet Player starts with that powerful China card, but it could be a other subtle elements combined that drive the results.

This can be a deal breaker because all things being equal the Soviet player will win more often than the American player. An American victory is a far more respected and coveted thing in my eyes, but it does not change this simple flaw in the game.

At its core, Twilight Struggle is a game of chess, a battle of wits in which you analyze your opponents plays to asses what he may or may not be after and I think really experienced players will make intentionally misleading plays to try and trick their opponent into believing in certain assumptions. This of course assumes that both opponents are experts, so when novice players who don’t know the cards are involved this tends to carry considerably less weight if any, but I suppose to some extent this is always true about strategic war games.

Which brings me to my point. Twilight Struggle may indeed be a much simpler to absorb and understand game rules wise but it is no less deep and strategic then your typical high level war game which kind of creates an unusual circumstance in the hobby. Here is a game anyone can learn to play but it exists in that same plane as Empire of the Rising Sun or Paths of Glory. Removing the complexity is ingenious but it does result in this weird space were highly experienced war games playing casual gamers creates a very wide gap of gaming results.

I can say already now that I have a grip of this game that 95% of all people I play against I beat by the 3rd or 4th turn definitively in what can only be described as a crushing defeat. Its rare that I run across a player who has studied the game enough to really give me any semblance of competitive play. It did not take long for me to get here, but it did require a much bigger effort then simply a few plays. Reading and understanding the cards, the structure and format of the game where key to bringing me up to this level. This is the main distinction between war gamers and casual gamers, one studies games the other plays them, however when you make a game like Twilight Struggle that is interesting and simple enough for casual gamers, yet is very much on that higher plane of war gaming two worlds collide.

Replayability And Longevity

Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
Tilt:christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star

Pros:  The various interactions of the cards and situations on the board can make this a puzzle to solve every time you play.

Cons:  Strangely enough, it takes repeated plays before you really learn how to play well and once you do, the game starts to feel a bit scripted.

Twilight Struggle has been a top ten contender on boardgamegeek for over a decade and this comes to no surprise to me, however I personally believe that it can act as an entry point to a much larger world less visited by the casual gamers out there for which I appreciate it a lot more. Twilight Struggle can act as an introduction to the concept of true war high level war gaming and I think its a great place to start if you have interested in exploring this very different type of experience in the world of table top games. Washington’s War, Paths of Glory, Empire of the Sun and We The People are just some of the amazing games that use this core mechanic and are absolute gems worth your time to expand to.

That said, I do think that Twilight Struggle can become a bit scripted after sufficient plays, in particular if you are playing the same opponent repeatedly. I find most players find some rhythm to how they approach the game and so will you, so games can start to sort of meld together into a single memory.

Still I think there is definitely enough replay-ability to warrant a purchase of this game, I think I may have been spoiled by the digital version where I have already clocked over a 100 games. That is not something you are likely to do with the table top version.

Conclusion

What can I say about this game that hasn’t already been said by countless fans, its a gem worth your money. I would only caution those with no interest in the sort of historical war game genre that while this game is certainly not a war game, it definitely has that “history genre game” feel to it and that may be the reason I love it and someone else may not. It also requires repeatedly plays before you will really understand what to do and how to win, so you will loose a lot at first and there is no shortcut to that as the subtle ways the cards interact and what they can do needs to be nearly memorized to really get to that fundamental core strategy that fans of this game love.

At its core there is an amazing mechanic here and even if abstracted outside of the theme there are some amazing puzzles to solve generated dynamically through game-play. The game is full of really tough decisions, its over flowing with amazing “holy crap” swings and there is no such thing as a game you can’t come back from. I have one games where I’m at -19 points during mid war, so there is this really amazing “there is always a way to win” feel to it.

Great game, highly recommend it!