My Top 10 Boardgames Published in 2019

I've been doing this for four years now, and I don't see why I should stop. :)
So here are my picks for the ten best boardgames to come out in 2019.

#10 

CASTLE ITTER (designed by David Thompson, published by Dan Verssen Games)
At the very end of WWII, German and American troops (along with French prisonners of wars, an SS commander and even a member of the Austrian resistance) fought side-by-side to defend Schloss Itter against an SS onslaught. What better setting for a solitaire wargame?
Slightly reminiscent of Victory Point Games' States of Siege series, Castle Itter puts you right in the thick of things, assaulted on all sides, fighting to survive until reinforcements can punch through. It's a nail-biter to the finish, with enough replayability to keep you entertainingly stressed-out for long evenings to come.

#9

SPACECORP (designed by John Butterfield, published by GMT Games)

Another solitaire offering, this one by the master of the genre, John Butterfield. Develop ambitious technologies, take to the stars, explore the solar system—and then venture far beyond!
Technically a multiplayer game, I am of the opinion that it first came to life as a solitaire adventure. I found it merely okay as a group experience, but solo? That's where the game truly shines.
An expansion is currently in the works, and I couldn't be more excited.
You can read my full review here.

#8

FOOTBALL HIGHLIGHTS 2052 (designed by Mike Fitzgerald, published by Eagle-Gryphon Games)
I was already sold on Fitzgerald's previous sports game, Baseball Highlights 2045, but there's something I like even better in this one. It still presents itself as a futuristic version of a match's highlights, but this time has both opponents playing two highlights at the same time, with each affecting the other.
It sounds like a total mess, but it works, it feels like football, and it's a whole lot of fun.

#7

FOOTHILLS (designed by Ben Bateson and Tony Boydell, published by Lookout Games)

Billed as "as Snowdonia experience," Foothills manages to carve out its own niche while hewing to its lineage.
It's much more than "Snowdonia, the card game" and presents original game mechanics and unique challenges. Yet, if you're a Snowdonia veteran, you'll feel right at home.

#6

C&C: MEDIEVAL (designed by Richard Borg, published by GMT Games)

The latest entry in Borg's Commands & Colors sprawling series, it also happens to be the finest distillation of the entire system. Somewhere between Ancients and Napoleonics in terms of complexity, Medieval manages to bring something fresh to the table, reinvents the tactician deck with its Inspired Actions tokens, and shows up with 19 exciting historical scenarios.
You can read my full review here.

#5

UNDAUNTED: NORMANDY (designed by Trevor Benjamin & David Thompson, published by Osprey Games)
This is Thompson's second game on this list, and it's well earned.
Undaunted: Normandy is a light wargame deck-builder that offers simple and innovative mechanics, topped with totally addictive gameplay. I burned through the game's scenarios in the blink of an eye, and I'm looking forward to the upcoming Undaunted: North Africa.

#4

TANK DUEL (designed by Mike Bertucelli, published by GMT Games)

Another light and exciting wargame, Tank Duel drops you behind the wheel of a 20-ton steel monster. There is no game board: all movement is resolved in an abstract manner with relative range and only serves to showcase the intense firefights that will blow your socks off.
Deep? No, sir. Fun? You bet. It's not at #4 for nothin'.
You can read my full review here.

#3

CLANK! LEGACY (designed by Andy Clautice & Paul Dennen, published by Dire Wolf Digital, Penny Arcade, and Renegade Game Studios)

I wasn't convinced by the original Clank, fell under the charm of Clank in Space (which fixed everything that was getting on my nerves in the original game), but became totally addicted to this legacy incarnation. 
A laugh-a-minute experience backed with exciting gameplay, this is the Clank I can't put down. It's also the most innovative legacy game I've played so far.

#2

WATERGATE (designed by Matthias Cramer, published by Frosted Games and Capstone Games)

Running on an abstract engine and offering the tense multi-purpose card play found in classics such as Twilight Struggle, Watergate is an amazing game dripping with historical flavor, and that plays in under an hour. There's no excuse not to give this jewel a shot.

#1

BARRAGE (designed by Tommaso Battista & Simone Luciani, published by Cranio Creations)

The Italians nab the top spot two years in a row!
Despite some horrendous production problems and too many mouthfuls of lies to count during the Kickstarter campaign (not to mention an arrogant and condescending twit at the head of Cranio Creations), Barrage is so original and engaging that I can't help myself. With high replayability, several paths to victory and an unusual theme (not to mention the super fun construction wheel), I'll be playing this one for years to come.

DISAPPOINTMENTS
I define "disappointements" as games I expected a lot from, and which failed to deliver. And 2019 turned out to be devoid of any disappointments worthy of the name.
So I guess it was a great year overall!



STRAGGLERS
Let's conclude with three games that would have made the list had I encountered them in time.

Published in 2015, Stonewall's Sword managed to elude me until the very last months of 2019. What a shame!
Built around the Blind Swords system—a chit-pull framework with repeat activations and semi-random events—the game offers exciting action, tense situations, clear and logical rules, plus a really cool way to resolve battles. Except for a map that's sometimes difficult to read (apparently fixed in the second edition), the whole thing is brilliant and made me add every single Blind Swords game to my wish list.

Although I never played any of the videogames, I fell hard for Fallout (2017) when I tried it this year. The way the game tells a story is totally mesmerizing, and I love how resolving some quests and not others opens up the narrative by throwing new, related cards into the mix. 
In the end, it's as much an experience as it is a game, and I'm enjoying every minute of it.

When you first read the rules to Biblios (2007), you can't believe it'll be any fun. I mean, there's so little to do, and it's got this strange two-phase structure, and the game is probably over way too quickly anyway... Turns out it's an exhilarating little game with more painful decisions that should be able to fit in that small box.
So yes, I'm 12 years behind the curve on this one, but I'm happy I finally happened upon it.

# # #

Wargame review — Tank Duel

(My review of the first two expansions is here.)

Move Over, Gunther

Designer: Mike Bertucelli

Player count: 1-8

Publisher: GMT Games

While the concept of war conjures up many different images and indeed has inspired an onslaught of movies, no martial element seems to fuel the collective imagination quite as effectively as the tank. Sure, war planes go faster and ships offer their own alloy of might and elegance, but tanks are much more relatable. For one thing, they work hand-in-hand (so to speak) with the infantry, the basic building block of any army. For another—and this may be the crux of the fascination they hold over us—the fact that tanks operate on land brings them vertiginously close to the everyday vehicles we’ve all grown accustomed to. Cars, trucks, big rigs… There’s an immediacy that pulls tanks within our reach. In a bind, we’re pretty sure we could drive one of those steel behemoths.

Yet, strangely, few games have tackled those mechanical beasts head on. Oh, there’s always a handful of tank counters in your run-of-the-mill wargame, but how often do you find yourself in the thick of things, maneuvering your metal fortress across treacherous terrain while trying to spot an enemy tank—and get off a shot before he does?

This is exactly what designer Mike Bertucelli and publisher GMT are proposing with Tank Duel, a title that mixes the old with the new in an exciting and volatile package.

In this first volume, Russia clashes with Germany as both sides control a handful of tank lining up for the carnage. Each tank is represented by a large player board, loaded with weapons stats, stations for crewmen, range indicators, and more. On that board are logged a tank’s successes, using the victory point track, but also its failures—usually in the form of wounded or dead crew members.

Let’s get one essential bit of info out of the way right now: there is no game board in Tank Duel, and movement is completely abstracted. Range is relative to what is imagined as the middle of the battlefield, meaning that if Tank A is marked at 400 meters and Tank B at 200 meters, both are 600 meters away from each other. (Older gamers might be reminded of Avalon Hill's Up Front, and they wouldn’t be wrong.) No lines of sight, no zones of control, no movement point allowance—the system feels strange at first but quickly becomes natural and fades in the background when the shells start to fly.

The beating heart of Tank Duel is a deck of Battle Cards, each of which features a Battle Number (from 1 to 100), one or more card effect, possible terrain effects, and a series of icons, triggers and markings. Each turn, a player must manage all of his tanks using a single hand of cards, which means that not all of his machines will be able to move or fire. First, each tank gets assigned a face-down initiative card. That card’s action will be disregarded: only its Battle Number is considered. Then tanks act in order, from lowest initiative to highest. When a tank’s turn has come—after going through a quick procedure to figure out whether a blazing tank survives or goes from bad to worse, or whether a demoralized crew rallies or decides to bail out without ceremony—its controller selects one of his remaining cards and launches the beast into action.

A Move card allows the tank to get 200m closer to of farther from the middle of the battlefield—with two Moves played together making that distance 400—but only if the Move card shows a number that is equal to or lower than the moving tank’s Move Level. (You used that Move 4 as an initiative card? Too bad.) Playing a Flank card while moving makes it possible for the tank to flank a spotted enemy, thus gaining access to more vulnerable armor. Playing a Terrain card after moving will stop that tank behind a building or in a wood, while not playing such a card will keep the tank in motion and make it harder to hit—unless the opponent plays a Terrain card on his turn, which could halt the moving tank in the middle of an open field, or worse, in a muddy bog.

A Smoke card hides the active tank behind an impenetrable curtain, provided the tank is actually equipped with a smoke dispenser, of course.

A Leadership card can conceal the active tank, spot an enemy, or steal a random card from an opponent’s hand.

Discarding any card enables a wide array of minor actions, which includes loading special ammunition (for that extra kick we all crave), and rearranging crew seating after Gunther the driver got more than he bargained for.

With a Fire card, the active tank can take a shot at an enemy they’ve previously spotted.

And that’s when things start to go boom.

First, the Fire card’s number needs to be equal to or lower than the active tank’s Fire Level. (Again, you should have thought twice before you used that Fire 3 as an initiative card.) Then the player declares his target and looks up his to-hit number based on the active tank’s ordnance chart: the closer you stand to your target, the bigger punch you deliver.

To that base number are added several modifiers, such as +20 for the play of a Leadership card, -20 for a Tactics card, +10 if target is flanked by the firing tank, plus size modifier, cover modifier, and so on. The player flips the top card of the battle deck and looks—intently—at its Battle Number: if it’s equal to or lower than the modified to-hit number just arrived at, the target is hit (but keep in mind cards 96 through 100 are automatic misses). If the attack was successful, another card flip determines the exact location of the hit. (Alternatively, the firing player could have played two Fire cards together, which enables him to select the hit location without resorting to the randomness of a card flip.)

Two similar checks are then executed for penetration and damage—the latter relying on the top card of the damage deck. Depending on whether damage was light, heavy, or perhaps critical (!), the ensuing destruction can go from a wounded crewman to tracks getting blow away (that tank’s moving days are behind it), to the outright explosion of that poor machine.

Following the fireworks, crewmen might have to bail. When that happens, a battle card is flipped for each man trying to get out the hell out of there: if that card features an icon that depicts the reason for the attempted escape (fire or explosion being the usual culprits), the crewman is killed. Of course, wounded crew must flip two battle cards and survive both—nobody said life would get any easier with shrapnel embedded in your right leg.

This procedure may seem lengthy but is in fact very intuitive and becomes second nature by the time you’re mourning the loss of your second T-34.

Whenever a crewman dies or a tank gets blown up (or, less spectacularly, abandoned), the opponent earns points. And the more important the crew member, the higher the point reward. The game ends after a number of “deck shuffles” as specified by the scenario, at which point the player or side with the most points wins. 

WAR PRODUCTION

The deep game box is stuffed to the brim with counters and markers of all kinds, several decks of thick, reliable cards, a mountain of player aids… but the real stars of the show are the 16 double-sided tank dashboards. Ever dreamt of sitting at the controls of a 1943 Tiger, or a massive IS-2m? Now’s your chance. They’re even printed on cardboard as thick as steel plates.

It’s a beautiful package, with exciting board art and attractive card backs I don’t mind spending hours staring at while blowing away my friends.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

The rules to Tank Duel are pretty simple, and the 20-page rulebook does an excellent job of laying them out in an organized and methodical manner. It’s one of those elusive rulebooks that are both excellent teaching machines, but also efficient reference tools—with an index at the back!

The much more voluminous playbook rides in with reinforcements in the form of a 20-page tutorial (that you probably won’t need—and that’s a positive thing), advanced and optional rules (hello infantry and anti-tank guns), a handful of scenarios, solitaire rules and example of play, plus a nifty card index and designer’s notes.

Overall the game is easy to learn and exciting to get into gear. Easy enough, in fact, for you to teach it to your buddy in about 20 minutes—something that can’t be said of many wargames.

FUN FACTOR

Without reaching for the cheapest pun within range, Tank Duel is a blast.

What it is not is a serious simulation or an intellectual exercise in armor command. You (abstractly) move around, get an enemy tank in your sights, try to find the best angle of attack, and fire away. The fun lies in trying to outflank your opponent, getting one of your tanks closer to the front for some scenario points (and the ability to draw more cards!), while using the rest of your armored machines to keep would-be attackers in check, and blasting away until everything on their side of the battlefield is ablaze.

Multiple options on each card force players to make deliciously difficult choices. Will you use your only Fire card to simply shoot at your opponent, or would it be more valuable to move your infantry forward, or perhaps open fire with one of your anti-tank guns in an advantageous position—or just use the low Battle Number to give yourself an edge when the initiative phase comes around?

Things also get hairy (i.e. interesting) when crewmen start to kick the steel-reinforced bucket. A dead driver will immobilize his tank until you spend an action moving someone else to his seat. (And depending on who takes his place, your tank might not move as well as it previously did.) The same goes for your gunner, your loader—and God forbid your commander should get hit.

Multiplayer is possible, with several players on each side, but I vastly prefer the head-to-head match: it forces you to operate your entire complement of tanks with a single hand of card, which in turn creates agonizing and game-changing decisions.

The game comes with a card-driven AI that makes for a nice enough adversary. However, it requires that you constantly recalculate whether enemy tanks have high or low quality shots, which wasn’t to my liking. It became too cumbersome for me, but your mileage may vary.

PARTING SHOTS

The only real beef I have with the game lies with its scenarios. Most of them are of the sandbox type where you’re given a basic situation and asked to pick your favorite tank match-up, along with a more or less experienced crew, as you see fit.

Me? I want historical scenarios (or plausible hypotheticals) that force me into unenviable positions and scream that I have to get myself out of them. The playbook proposes two such scenarios, which is not nearly enough. Give me more! I’d happily buy a scenario booklet in a ziplock bag.

Everything else about Tank Duel puts a large smile on my face.

One of my favorite aspects is how a game ends: while the “shuffle” card is always shuffled in the bottom half of the battle deck, the “game end” card—upon the very last reshuffle of the game—goes anywhere in the deck, leaving opponents no room to breathe, no margin of error. The skirmish might end at any time now, and if you don’t make up for lost time (and points) with your next two or three actions, that’s it, you’re toast.

Of course, you can then just play another match.

And I know you will.

Not exactly a great situation—but hey, the game's over!

# # #

Lucas Land: The Door

(Previous chapter: Welcome to Tatooine)

I’ve already recounted how the stars somehow aligned to send me to Tunisia, North Africa, on a wild expedition that would eventually land me a job at Lucasfilm. I've also offered a rough sketch of how the trip unfolded, highlighting some of the most spectacular Star Wars shooting locations we encountered along the way.

But it is now time to get down to brass tacks: the cantina door.

Right upon arriving in the vicinity of Ajim, on the island of Djerba, we recognized the telltale architecture that sends the hearts of countless fans around the world aflutter—we knew we were in Star Wars territory. As previously told, we found Obi-Wan’s home on the outskirts of town, and encountered the famous cantina, albeit devoid of its innumerable alien denizens, right in the heart of Ajim.

While shooting A New Hope, that particular building had been enhanced with all sorts of accessories in order to provide it with an even more outlandish, out-of-this-world appearance. The edifice was thus fitted, amongst other elements, with plastic domes on its top and an actual extension to one of its sides, complete with a fake door that, had it swung on its non-existent hinges, would have led to absolutely nowhere. Walking around the humble abode, we did spot the domes in the backyard, used as some sort of protective covers, more than twenty years after filming had wrapped on this weird movie filled with all sorts of creatures. Clearly, the town’s inhabitants had seen no reason to discard the materials left behind by the film crew, and had found uses for those decorations, no matter how bizarre they might have appeared at first.

So maybe, just maybe, the cantina door had survived, somewhere, and was just waiting for us to unearth it. Right?

Our little group (there were six of us) decided to split up and conduct a thorough search of the area, spreading in a circle from the cantina itself, as if a deity had thrown a rock on that very spot from the heavens, and was watching us ride concentric sand waves across the dry, scorching land. We felt that the cantina door, if it still existed, would not have dropped anchor too far from its point of origin. And sure enough, after barely fifteen minutes of stumbling about, the door—the door—appeared right before me, at the end of an open field where goats were grazing without a worry in the world.

The cantina door: one of my personal
Star Wars holy grails 

It was unmistakable: the door had kept its recognizable shape, and the plastic ridges that adorned its front—affixed to sections that had been hollowed out in the wood—were still mostly intact. That ancient, obscure piece of set dressing was now performing important duties as an actual door, guarding the entrance of a rickety shed that no doubt sheltered some tools or others. At some distance, an old man stepped out of the shade and stared at me with curiosity. I raised my hand in a friendly greeting, made a vague gesture that I hoped would be understood to mean that I’d be returning in a moment, and hurried back to round up my travel companions. They hadn’t wandered far, and in no time we found ourselves standing together in front of the shrine.

The old man had apparently understood my intent and was waiting for us, in what little cover from the burning sun the shed could provide. I extended a hand that he shook surprisingly firmly. As we were clearly foreigners, he addressed me in French—in a deep, parched voice and with a beautiful accent that smelled of wild flowers and exotic spices. I explained, also in French and as succinctly as I could, that we were fans of Star Wars, a movie shot in that neighborhood back in 1976; that we were fans who had travelled all the way from North America to visit this corner of the world that was so significant to us. He only replied that he had never heard of that movie, but his warm smile and amused eyes spoke volumes: we were crazy kids with way too much time and money on our hands.

I then proceeded to tell him that the door to his shed had been part of that movie, and that we were very excited to have found it. I actually showed him a playing card that featured that fake cantina entrance prominently, with three Jawas seated in front of it. (That image sits at the top of this article.) The old smile grew wider. Biting my lip in hesitation, I asked the old man if we could re-enact the scene and take a picture in front of his shed. The man let out a soft laugh that had seen generations come and go, and silently waved at the ramshackle construction with his palm turned up, as if saying “knock yourselves out.”

And we did.

Yours truly, sitting on the right

It was a strange feeling, knowing that we were sitting in front of the real cantina door—almost like kneeling before a holy relic. A small crowd had gathered at the edge of the field, and the locals were gazing at us with puzzlement. I remember thinking that the group would have a good laugh at our expense after our departure, and so they should. We were crazy kids. But the craziness was just getting started.

Because it’s right there, on the ground, that our archaeologist guide and my soon-to-be colleague and close friend, David West Reynolds, asked me in English: “Do you think he’d sell us the door?”

I laughed out loud and said this was nuts. What would we do with it—if we could even bring it back with us? Reynolds thought the door would find a place of honor in the private museum of Steve Sansweet, one of his friends and colleagues at Lucasfilm, and also the world’s nuttiest collector. I admitted that I liked the idea, and so I stood up and turned to the old man. “We would like to bring that door home with us,” I began in French, “if at all possible. Would you consider letting us purchase it from you?”

I expected the owner of the cantina door to burst out laughing, call out to his friends in disbelief and share some quick comments with them in Arabic, all the while eyeing us like a bunch of loons freshly escaped from the nearest asylum. Instead, he kept a perfectly straight face and returned only one word: “Oui.” Reynolds had no need for a translation here, and pressed on without missing a beat. “Ask him how much.”

Feeling very much like a Jawa haggling over droid parts, I relayed the question. The man bit his lower lip, and after a pause that could have been pregnant with quintuplets, he said, “one hundred American dollars.” Only then did he allow himself a smile—the kind of knowing smile that says, hey, I may be just an old Tunisian shepherd, but I know a good deal when I see one, and I think you understand that. I smiled in return, nodded in appreciation. The man added, “It’s been a good door to me,” and I thought that was a perfect line. I smiled again, with genuine delight, and translated the man’s remarks for my English-speaking companions. Reynolds laughed, said “Oh, I like this guy,” and immediately agreed. Money changed hands, the bills quickly vanished into the folds of the man’s white robe, and he helped us disconnect the cantina door from his shed. No tools were required: the ancient wooden barrier had been hanging by little more than a few loose nails.

It was with a strange sense of elation that we removed ourselves from the man’s field, under the puzzled gaze of half a dozen goats and handful of locals. Grinning from ear to ear, Reynolds and I were carrying the door, like an oversized trophy after a hard fought match, and I wish someone had captured the scene with a camera. (Alas, in that pre-smartphone age, a snapshot was not yet hiding in every pocket.) Despite the excitement of the moment, we understood that we now had a problem on our hands: how did we intend to bring the door home? We quickly decided that the best solution would be to saw the door in half—through the middle section, which was all wood—and then fold it on itself, with the top half facing the bottom half, thus encasing the precious and fragile pieces of plastic set decoration inside the door itself. We figured that if we could just nail the two halves together, the door would be ready to travel in relative safety.

Fine. But how? And where?

In the west, the sun (singular) was setting fast on Tatooine, and we realized we were racing against the clock. We had to find someone with the tools we needed for the job, and soon.

We started walking, our growing shadows connected by a mysterious rectangle of darkness hanging between us. Despite my questioning some of the town folks, night fell before we reached our objective. But we were in luck: one helpful resident eventually directed us not to someone with a saw, but to an actual woodworking shop armed with equipment beyond our needs. Surprisingly enough, given the late hour, the business was still open and several employees hard at work when we stumbled in. Tools ground to a halt and the mechanical ruckus gave way to an amused silence as one head after another turned our way.

I introduced our little group and explained our situation. Could they provide the services required? “Bien sûr,” one of them replied. Two of the men brought our door to what looked like a homemade—albeit fiercely effective—table saw, then proceeded to expertly slice our relic in half, nail the two pieces together, refuse payment and shake our hands with the most charming smile in the world. They even provided a burlap bag to stick our wooden assemblage in and tied the whole thing with a rough piece of rope.

The bag, along with its coveted contents, would make it back with us to the airport and survive four plane trips. Smuggling it through customs proved surprisingly easy: we explained it was an old door we intended to restore and put in a museum. How much more Indiana Jones-esque can you get? The customs official laughed, shook his head and let us through, and that was it.

The cantina door now rests comfortably in Rancho Obi-Wan, in northern California, as one of the most exclusive pieces in my friend Steve Sansweet’s collection—the largest private collection of Star Wars memorabilia in the world. I try to pay Steve (and the door) a visit from time to time, although not nearly as often as I’d like.

Thanks to Steve for the picture!

One day, I promise myself to fly back to Tunisia and find my way to the outskirts of Ajim. I just need to see what that old shepherd installed on his shed to replace the strange door he’d been using for over twenty years. For all I know, some kid might greet me there and tell me, in that fragrant French of theirs, how his grandfather once spun a tale about some sentimental fools from overseas who showed up, decades prior, in search of an old piece of junk.

(Next chapter: The Call)

(Full series here)

# # #

Wargame review — C&C: Medieval

Forge Ahead

Designer: Richard Borg
Player count: 2
Publisher: GMT Games

When the Roman Empire reinvented itself in the east (a vast power known today as the Byzantine Empire), the 6^th century never looked so bright and promising. But Persia had other ideas, and the two forces would repeatedly meet on bloody battlefields for the better part of six decades.

C&C: Medieval is the latest incarnation of Richard Borg’s Commands & Colors system—a system the designer has molded and twisted to simulate a variety of conflicts, from the American Civil War to hypothetical skirmishes in the far reaches of intergalactic space.

Medieval stands as GMT’s third foray into the system, starting with Ancients back in 2006 and following up with Napoleonics in 2010. Both previous publications spawned large numbers of expansion modules, adding new battles to ponder and new factions with which to resolve them. There’s no reason to believe this new family member won’t be treated the same way—after all, the Middle Ages lasted a thousand years!

The basic system remains unchanged: stickered blocks represent various units, which are deployed on a grid of hexagons divided into three sections. Command cards allow players to activate a number of units in the left, center or right section (and sometimes across multiple sections). Movement follows; battle oftentimes ensues.

Each type of unit has its own movement and battle capabilities, perhaps allowing it to fire from a distance (as is the case for archers, amongst others) or engage the enemy with awesome power (like the heavy cavalry). Leaders provide support and enhance the performance of neighboring units; however, your commanders are not invincible, so make sure you guard them well.

Special six-siders are used to resolve combat, which sees players trying to roll the symbol associated with the unit type they are targeting. The more powerful the unit, the more dice it rolls in combat. But no matter its strengths or weaknesses, a unit is made up of exactly four blocks, and each hit suffered takes away one such block. Upon removal of a unit’s last block, the attacking player earns a banner. Accumulate the number of banners required by the historical scenario you’re playing, and you win the game.

HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO C&C: ANCIENTS?

Medieval is more or less an Ancients sequel. Leaders behave the same way, boosting units and preventing ill-timed retreats; units are back to consistently chucking the same number of dice, no matter how many blocks they have left. Yes, line combat is still a thing, and you’d do well to respect the doctrine.

In fact, the two games are so closely connected that the Medieval rulebook uses a special arrow icon to indicate where new or altered rules are introduced into the classic Ancients ruleset. (Although they missed one, the Parthian Shot, on page 16.)

• Superior Armor Class: In close combat, units with an armor class higher than that of their adversary can ignore one sword hit. (Red > Blue > Green)
• Superior Stature: In close combat, mounted units can ignore one sword hit inflicted by an infantry unit.
• Parthian Shot: Light bow cavalry units can shoot two dice at their attacker when they evade!

But the most significant, earthquake-inducing change introduced in Medieval is without a doubt the advent of Inspired Actions.

Each time you play a Leadership card (a card with the word “leadership” in its title), you can spend an Inspired Action token to activate one of your army’s Inspired Actions. Said actions vary from army to army but generally include powerful maneuvers such as Mounted Charge, Darken the Skies and Move Fire Move.

Essentially, the units activated by the Leadership card get to carry on whatever special action they are empowered with. (And if you don’t play an Inspired Action token with your leadership card, you earn one such token. Hoarders will have a field day.)

Inspired Action tokens can also be used to trigger Battlefield Actions, much like Inspired Actions, but without the need to play a specific card. Currently, three Battlefield Actions are available to both armies: Move a Leader (at the end of the turn), Battle Bonus (attack—or battle back!—with one additional die), and Bravery (ignore one flag).

Two things are important to state at this point, both of them red herrings.

First, the rules changes appear cosmetic; I mean, how much could a few lines of text really transform the gameplay experience? A lot more than one might think, it turns out.

Second, and given the previous statement, Medieval must feel significantly different from Ancients, right? Well, in a joyous paradox of cardboard and wood: not at all. If you’re a veteran of Ancients, you’ll feel right at home. And if you’re new to the whole shebang? Medieval is no more difficult to pick up than its predecessor.

(And I envy you the wondrous journey ahead.)

WAR PRODUCTION

Medieval ships in a deep box that harbors a tall deck of command cards, a large mounted board, all the Inspired Action tokens you might want, more terrain tiles than you can shake a long sword at, plus about a warhorse’s weight in wooden blocks and stickers.

The game also comes with printed dice whose solid, weighty plastic puts previous C&C stickered dice to shame. I love them and hope that GMT will keep using similar dice in the future.

Despite the fact that most cavalry units are pictured without a bow, several scenarios state that those units do, in fact, carry bows. No worries: bow tokens have been provided to help mark those units quickly and efficiently. (The marker also looks pretty cool, sitting atop that quartet of blocks on the battlefield.)

The Medieval board is one hex deeper than most of the other C&C boards, which might not seem like much of an alteration. Ah, but you can certainly feel the difference when your raiding cavalry units, operating deep into enemy territory, try to make their way home.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Only 18 pages of rules stand between you and victory on the battlefield.

And those pages are slightly better organized than the Ancients rulebook, with concepts like “Attach and Detach Leaders” being given their own section instead of ending up buried in a wall of text about movement. So get to it—you’ll be up and running in no time.

As usual within this family of games, the separate player aids contain all of the stats pertaining to individual unit types, so that you’ll never have to browse the rulebook for those in the heat of battle. But I do miss the terrain effects player aids that accompanied many of my other forays into the C&C world. Hopefully, GMT will equip us crusaders with those weapons in an expansion to come.

The back of the rulebook reveals a full card almanac (quite handy when it comes to assessing a few edge cases), as well as 19 challenging scenarios. Just like in Ancients, the Medieval battles start you off easy, without any terrain in sight. But just you wait. Can you hear the raging waters of the Euphrates in the distance? Or the furious wind barreling through the many passes of Petra Mountain?

Terrain will find you. What you accomplish with it is up to you.

FUN FACTOR

One of the nice surprises here is that the game supplies armies on both sides with light bow infantry units that can shoot adversaries at a distance of four hexes. That’s a range of more than a third of the board, which can wreak some serious havoc in your opponent’s line. Long-distance relationships have suddenly become a lot more tense.

I was a bit disappointed when I saw only one deck of cards sitting in the Medieval box. I had become accustomed to (spoiled by?) the tactician deck found in Napoleonics and some other games in the series. But when I started playing with the Inspired Action tokens, I quickly realized I didn’t want to go back.

Whenever you play a Leadership card, you can spend a token to morph that card into whatever Inspired Action you need. True, tactician cards meant you always had a handful of such actions at your disposal, but you might get stuck with stuff you didn’t need and wait an entire game for the one card you want to show up. With Inspired Action tokens, when you do draw that Leadership card, you can call it whatever you like.

Inspired indeed.

I would be remiss if I didn’t make a special mention of the cataphract cavalry. Not only can those super heavy cavalry units trample everything in their path with their 4-dice attacks, but their armor class is at the very top of the food chain, allowing them to ignore a sword hit from almost everyone, even other heavy units. With a leader at its head, the cataphract cavalry cannot be ignored for long. Flanked by a handful of friendly units, it becomes a veritable terror on the board.

PARTING SHOTS

Back in 2011, I wrote in a review [link] that Napoleonics was my favorite entry into the world of Commands & Colors. I loved the fact that units attacked with only as many dice as they had blocks left; that artillery could shoot over the heads of friendly units and join forces with infantry or cavalry in some impressive feats of combined arms; that infantry could go into a square formation and stand its ground against the most aggressive cavalry charge. I loved it all. And that sentiment went unchallenged for years… until I started missing Ancients.

Napoleonics remains a fascinating game, but there is a simplicity, a directness to Ancients that frees the mind to tackle the tactical problems that are the beating heart of the system. After over 150 plays of Ancients I felt ready for the next step, but Napoleonics might have gone just a tad too far in its sophistication—despite the fact that I couldn’t imagine myself ever again playing a C&C game without a tactician deck. So for a dedicated Ancients player, Medieval feels like a better “next step.” And it gives us the Inspired Actions mechanism, which I believe represents a fascinating evolution of the tactician deck of cards.

In the end, I’m getting the best of both worlds.

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