Don't Mind the Thorns
Sometimes I fall in love with an engine and find myself waiting for someone, somewhere, to create just the right game to go along with it.
That’s what happened with Dominion, the grand-daddy of deck-building games. As a veteran TCG player who wanted to spend more time playing with friends and less time huddled alone in a corner tuning my deck, I was blown away by the idea that you could build your deck of cards during the game. What a genius concept! Except I found the game itself dry as powdered bones, and I waited eagerly for new games built on that magnificent engine to come around and win me over. (It did happen, of course, and I’m still discovering great new deck-building games today, 15 years down the line.)
I
experienced something similar with GMT’s Levy & Campaign series. The first
of those titles I played was Inferno,
three times, quickly followed by a handful of games of Nevsky. Those sessions left me absolutely taken with the L&C
system, so very different from any other wargame I’d played before. I loved the
levy part, with Lords calling upon one other and amassing matériel in
preparation for war; I was thrilled by the campaign part, where each player puts
together a stack of cards—and commits to a specific order!—that will activate
one Lord after another, launching them on perilous travels and heroic feats of
arms. Add a cool combat system on top of everything, plus weather to contend
with, and what’s not to love?
Yet
I always came away from the experience somewhat unsatisfied. The system felt a
bit too heavy to me, and I could never quite get my Lords to where I wanted
them in time. If they managed to reach their destination before starving to
death, then a siege usually stood in the way of a good old-fashioned fight,
supply lines became a nightmarish puzzle, and anything short of the campaign
game tasted like a game-convention demo. Which models medieval life in a
faithful way, I suppose, even though it wasn’t what I was looking for in a game.
But I loved the engine under the hood, and I was determined to keep trying new
titles in that expanding series until I found the one that was tailor-made for
me.
That game is Plantagenet.
Two families, York and Lancaster, tore each other to pieces for most of the 15th century, as they competed (to put it politely) for the throne of England. The War of the Roses—pitting two coats of arms that each bore the delicate flower—would lead to upheavals and rebellions, betrayals and broken promises, and a veritable festival of tragedy all across the land until the Plantagenet dynasty tore itself apart.
That rich history is alive again in Plantagenet, as York goes up against Lancaster in a series of escalating clashes. The board is crowned with a calendar where a marker moves forward to regulate turns, and where players can track the effectiveness of their Lords and vassals. (How long before Fauconberg decides he needs to get paid again, otherwise he and his men will desert my army and go home?) The rest of the board depicts England as well as a few of the surrounding territories, together with an influence track that wraps around the play surface.
 |
| Pay day for a couple of vassals is just around the corner. |
Each turn is divided into a levy phase and a campaign phase. During levy, players use their Lords already in play to try and convince other Lords (and a bunch of vassals) to join their forces, attempt to influence locations into favoring their cause, or else stockpile whatever they’ll need to reach the enemy and attack them.
Then the turn marker on the calendar is flipped to its campaign side, and it’s time to get in gear. Each player assembles their own stack of command cards, secretly programming the order in which their Lords will act, up to a number of cards limited by the current season. Summers are the best, as you can stack seven of those cards—meaning seven lord activations will take place. (But since each Lord only has three command cards to his name, you can’t activate the same Lord more than thrice on any given turn.) Harsh winters severely blunt dreams of conquests, though, as only four command cards can be used on those turns.
When
they act, Lords need to keep an eye on everything. They can parley (curry favor
with a nearby municipality), supply their troops (provided the supply line is a
chain of locales that favor their side of the conflict), forage if supply
proves impossible (albeit with mixed results), tax their own seat or that of
one of their vassals (the more vassals on your side, the easier it becomes to
raise money), or else march, sail and generally get closer to some guy who’d
rather not see you show up.
Almost
every one of the actions listed above depletes a location’s resources, so it’s
only a matter of time before you can’t pilfer this or that town to satisfy your
needs anymore. Plan accordingly.
When
armies do meet on the battlefield, the outcome is determined via an ingenious
battle system where hits inflicted upon each army are known in advance and it’s
the defense, in fact, that’s up in
the air. You need to absorb 3 hits? Pick a unit to suffer the first one and
roll against that unit’s protection rating—from 1 for the lowly militia all the
way to 4 for valiant knights—with the unit surviving if the roll is equal to or
lower than its rating. Further hits can be inflicted on the same (surviving)
unit if you so choose: it all depends on which forces you’d rather keep in
fighting order. Your knight enjoys better odds of survival, but he’s also a
much more potent attacker than that poor militia. So do you want to risk him
again and again to absorb hits?
Defeated
Lords go into exile or outright give up the ghost, but either way, they lose precious
influence that will alter the course of the campaign.
Speaking of which—remember that influence track? At the end of each turn, players accrue influence there for control of various locations on the map. It’s a net computation: whoever has the most influence subtracts from it their opponent’s influence and marks the result (in their color) on the track. Not only is influence a measure of success on the part of one player or the other—indeed a victory condition set at different heights for each scenario—but it’s also a currency you’ll need to spend with care throughout your diplomatic endeavors. Want to convert a neighboring city? Pay some influence. Intent on bringing some vassal over to your side of the conflict? Pay some influence. Desperate to keep Lords and vassals fighting for you once their time is up? PAY SOME INFLUENCE.
(I’m not even talking about forking over vast quantities of food each time your forces execute the slightest of maneuvers, or disbursing actual cash to keep troops in your employ. But fear not, you’ll be required to manage those aspects as well, or suffer the consequences.)
The winner is the family that reaches the influence threshold set by the scenario, or that’s got the influence marker on their side when the game concludes its last turn.
WAR
PRODUCTION
Plantagenet ships in what’s fast becoming the new GMT standard: the sturdy double-sized box you can use to jack up your car when a tire needs changing. Inside you’ll find a generous stash of wooden pieces in various shapes and colors, two decks of cards (one York, one Lancaster), a variety of cardboard markers for several purposes (including that damn coinage your Lords will keep running out of), a pair of handy player aid folders that sum up everything you need once you’ve got a couple of sessions under your belt, rulebook, background book, and a mounted four-panel board where all the action takes place.
The game also includes generic Lord mats used to hold each Lord’s card, vassal markers and troop pieces. Previous volumes in the series used dedicated mat with a Lord’s stats printed right on it; but since Plantagenet allows for Lords to replace each other, it made sense to provide blank mats together with a deck of Lord cards players could cycle through. (I wouldn’t be surprised to see future L&C titles use a similar idea.)
Nevsky on the left, Plantagenet on the right
The
board may look cluttered at first, especially when compared to earlier titles
where the map depicted vast expanses dotted with the occasional stronghold. Here,
the territory is more compact, generously irrigated with roads of all kinds, and
offers a host of tantalizing targets within a short radius. Yet, even with several
armies on the march—and seat markers scattered across the countryside—the map
remains perfectly legible.
 |
| Nevsky on the left, Plantagenet on the right |
RULES
OF ENGAGEMENT
At
18 pages, Plantagenet’s rulebook is
the shortest one within the L&C family, and for good reason: every system
has been streamlined and tightened, with exceptions filed off and unnecessary
chrome discarded.
Gone
are sieges, for instance, and although there are those out there who will mourn
their removal, I for one rejoice in the heightened immediacy of battle. Stop
hiding behind walls and let’s get down to business!
Also
dispatched is the Call to Arms, a once-in-a-while über-armament phase which provided
interesting possibilities, but at the price of dealing with an additional
sub-system that players needed to factor into their every decision.
And
let’s not forget the laden/unladen distinction, now a thing of the past. The
types of pathways Lords use to move around the map—and not the weight of their
baggage trains—determine how costly marching will be.
This
doesn’t mean that the game isn’t injecting some new material of its own in the
series. One of my darlings is the addition of influence points, used both as a new
currency and as a means to assess victory. Capability cards are also assigned
to specific scenarios, which means that your favorite asset will not always show
up. And whereas defeated Lords would previously see their service markers shift
left on the calendar—thereby shortening their usefulness—they can now die in
battle and vanish from your plans of conquest entirely.
Several
other rules differences round out a package that, for me, accomplishes what I
was hoping the L&C system would deliver to begin with.
The game comes with one battle mini-scenario (handy to learn the ropes of violence on the medieval field), five standalone scenarios of various lengths (with Lords often switching sides from one scenario to the next, owing to the historical context), and one three-part clash with branching outcomes, depending on what side proves triumphant each step of the way.
The extensive background book is replete with gameplay examples, strategy tips, historical references and a host of other resources, including detailed family trees for the House of Lancaster as well as the House of York. (Might as well know whose legacy you’re cutting short.)
FUN
FACTOR
As I made clear with my comments above, Plantagenet is the most fun I’ve had so far with the Levy & Campaign series. I think this time the system feels a little less like a simulation and a little more like a game, which is exactly what I was looking for. The turns fly by and things keep moving, with plenty of battles and enough fealty shenanigans to keep even the most impatient players engaged.
While vassals used to be assigned specific allegiances in earlier volumes (they belonged to one opponent or the other), I love that this time around they can be recruited by either side. This makes it sort of a race when it comes to reaching and persuading a specific noble before the other side gets to him. And while each vassal comes with his own retinue, their main appeal lies more often than not in the fact that you can tax their hometowns—a significant advantage when money becomes scarce, and it will. Troops that go without coin payment, even for a single turn, go on a rampage that not only damages your reputation (resulting in the loss of precious influence points), but also flips the loyalty of their current location to your enemy’s side.
The decision space widens with bountiful replenishment options, where you can use a location’s resources to stockpile food, raise money or even levy additional troops on your way to war. However, those temptations are shaded with a hefty price tag. The first time you squeeze a locale to satisfy your needs, it’s marked “depleted;” the second time, it goes to “exhausted” and can no longer provide anything. A growth turn will put locations back on their feet, but those only come by once in a blue moon, and by then it might very well be too late for your Lords and their not-so-merry men.
PARTING
SHOTS
Amongst all of the newfangled elements that make their brilliant debut in Plantagenet, the one that excites me the most is the reworked currency system.
Previous
titles ran on coin (spent to keep Lords in your employ) and food (doled out to sustain
marching and fighting troops). Players could earn victory points by defeating
enemies in battle and occupying opposing strongholds, and whoever had the most
VPs at the end of game took the crown.
In Plantagenet, food is still used to
maintain troops that move or battle, but coins are required at the start of
each turn to keep those same forces happy, even
if they did nothing at all. Sure, you can amass that gigantic army and
threaten to march it all the way to London and unseat your opponent; but will
your pockets prove deep enough to keep everyone on the payroll until the job is
done? Especially if you stop a few times along the way to gain more food or—God
forbid—raise some new troops? The clock is ticking.
Influence
is the final nail in that delicious coffin. You can spend it to do most
everything in the game, and it’s a powerful tool—hell, you can even use it when
you technically don’t have any influence left to spend, pushing that Influence
Points marker further down your enemy’s side, tug-of-war style. But don’t
forget this game is won on influence: sooner or later, you’ll have to win those
IPs back or else lose it all. So will paying three influence (which you might
not have to begin with) to win over that Essex dude be worth it in the long
term?
There’s
only one way to find out.
 |
| Victory's a long way up when it comes to influence points... |
# #
#
