Wargame review — Skies Above the Reich

Defend Germany and Most Likely Die Trying

Designers: Jerry White & Mark Aasted

Player count: 1 (possible with 2)

Publisher: GMT Games

Between 1942 and 1945, the Allies launched flight after flight of bombers to conduct a relentless assault on Germany. Military objectives soon gave way to industrial targets, and eventually civilian ones, as the intent shifted from hindering production to destroying sapping the morale of an entire nation.

However, the Germans would not go down without a fight. They developed and refined attack techniques that allowed them, for a time, to break what the Allies called the “combat box”—a formation of bombers where each plane provided maximum coverage to its airborne neighbors.

GMT’s Skies Above the Reich recreates the entire air war from the point of view of those tasked with defending Germany, from 1942 all the way to 1945, when push seriously came to shove, before everything eventually collapsed.

Right on the heels of two other bombing-themed titles—Enemy Coast Ahead and The Doolittle Raid—designer Jerry White joined forces with Mark Aasted to revisit a postcard game they had put together for Against the Odds magazine back in 2010. The solo experience they came up with is a spectacular self-propelled machine that’s as addictive as it is exciting.

Each campaign of Skies Above the Reich involves at least one season (for a short game) and up to a whole lot of seasons for the full campaign. Victory is determined differently in each case, but your objective always remains the same: to prevent as many bombers as possible from reaching the Fatherland.

In turn, each season is broken down into individual missions. Setting up a mission involves a series of die rolls to determine several variables: which of the game’s four maps will serve as the aerial arena; budget available for aircraft and armament; the type of escort that will attempt to thwart the player’s best efforts to bring down the bombers; whether some of those bombers start the mission with preexisting damage (essentially from scenes that have happened “off-screen”); the position of the sun; how long the mission will last (and when escorts will show up or fly away); even the presence of contrails—which German pilots can use to camouflage their approach...

Each turn, German fighters move through a series of boxes around the board in an attempt to reach the perfect position from which to launch an attack. Naturally, escorts—from the ever-present Spitfire of the early war to the terrifying P-51 Mustang of the later years—are also moving about at that time. At best, they ensure that no German fighters can reach certain positions; at worst, they engage a whole stack of fighters in a time-consuming dogfight that will allow the formation of bombers to get away unscathed. Whether those embattled planes will live to fight another day remains to be seen.

Then an attack is launched, ideally from different positions and varying altitudes. The flip of a card determines whether the fighter inflicts any damage on a bomber (which might be enough to blow it to smithereens, or just bring it a little closer to its demise) and whether the fighter itself gets hit by the neighboring gunners.

It’s important to understand that the game board is a static depiction of a network of bombers flying in formation; the result becomes a sort of terrain that fighters must navigate. The interlocking fields of fire that emerge from the gunners “having each other’s backs” mean that some areas of the board will be highly hazardous, while others (in front of the first bomber, for instance, or behind the very last one) will present less of a threat. Serious thought must be put into your angle of attack, but also into where your aircraft might end up if it flies in too fast and overshoots its target.

Right in the middle of the combat box is not where you want to be.

Your fighter is not out of the woods once the brunt of the attack has been carried out: enemy gunners get to take one last shot at it (another flip of a card) before the metal predator breaks away to lick its wounds and prepare to lunge anew.

This aerial ballet goes on until either the mission has run its course, no German fighters remain in play, or all bombers have been destroyed or scattered out of their formations. (Fat chance.) VPs are tallied and the campaign assessed if this happened to be the last mission on the menu. If not, a new mission is set up so as to reflect your last performance: lose too many aircraft, and you’ll have a reduced roster and a bunch of green pilots to contend with.

As aficionados will expect, Skies Above the Reich comes replete with mechanical subtleties and agonizing choices.

• Combat is handled through three different decks of attack cards: Nose, Oblique and Tail. Tail offensives tend to yield more satisfactory results, but rest assured the six of a bomber is more often than not the 12 of another—no one’s going to make it easy for you.
• Each attacking fighter needs to be set in one of two modes: Determined makes your plane (potentially) more lethal, but also more vulnerable, while Evasive risks producing less reliable results, but might prolong the longevity of the aircraft. On top of that, fighters need to know what maneuvers they’ll perform right after the attack: dive, climb, roll—and in what direction? This will not only influence the retaliation capacity of defending gunners, but also the position around the board into which the fighter will end up after exiting the tangled web of bombers. Assuming it survives, of course.
• When it comes to near target missions, flak plays a major role, both in helping taking out bombers and accidentally whittling down your own forces.

The list goes on, providing a slew of decision points without feeling cumbersome. Chrome reaches just the right level.

WAR PRODUCTION

The box cover does a wonderful job of selling the game, as artist Antonis Karidis sets the stage with dramatic flair. That’s what a wargame cover should feel like: epic and exciting, but also serious and dripping with History.

The deep box opens on a 60-page rulebook (hold your horses), 15 pages of advanced and two-player rules, a Situation Manual (aka the setup bible), a veritable squadron of players aids printed on card stock, two double-sided, mounted boards (with a delightful twist: historical quotes printed right on them!), a couple of smaller maps, multiple card decks, tokens galore, a pad of log sheets, a pair of 10-sided dice, and blocks for the German fighters.

Did I say blocks? Yes indeed: they make the fighter stickers affixed to them easier to follow on the map and provide a genuine tactile pleasure. And what’s better than blocks? Why, more blocks! Those blue contraptions serve to indicate altitude on the board—none for low, one for level, and two for high.

I also enjoy fishing out those thick damage counters out of cups a whole lot more than referencing die rolls on a combat results table. Pure bliss.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Jerry White is known for his programmed learning curves, and his two previous titles were so well executed in that regard that the rulebook became superfluous. This is no exaggeration: a newcomer could pick up the game, set it up, and get going with confidence holding nothing more than the player aids. In other words, the game taught itself—an incredible feat in a paper-based world, especially considering the complexity of the design involved.

Things are not so transparent within the entrails of Skies Above the Reich. Don’t get me wrong: the player aids still do the heavy lifting. But some of the work is left up to the player this time around. That’s because there’s a density to the decision making that, while not immediately apparent, cannot be escaped. As a result, player aids cannot hold the breadth of rules necessary to keep the engine running. So instead of explaining an entire mechanic, a specific bullet-point on the player aid might offer a one-line summary and a page number. But it’s all very well done and completely painless—the designers weren’t about to leave us hanging.

Crack open any number of typical wargame rulebooks, and every page is a two- or three-column affair, newspaper-style. That’s the way things are usually done. Not here: the layout is open and generous, so much so that when I first laid eyes on a random page, my immediate assumption was that I was looking at an extended (an extremely extended, at 60 pages) example of play. If you read it in one gulp, one concept flows into another like a charm—so you can imagine what happens when a player aid sends you on an errand to page 38 in order to look up collision results.

It’s a breeze.

Is the rulebook perfect? Close, but not quite. Some ancillary ideas are vaguely addressed or not at all. For instance, where do fighters and escorts go when they “exit the game?” Given the abundance of mechanisms designed to provide players with a sense of destiny when it comes to aircraft and pilots, one could be forgiven for expecting a definitive outcome in this particular case. (They just leave the game and nothing further happens to them.) Another example: escorts already on the board move to adjacent spaces occupied by fighters, and then other escorts might leave their designated stations and join the fight on the board; yet that sequence of actions is reversed in the rules. Wargame rulebooks do this all the time, but White’s writing is so consistently sequential that I can’t be the only one who had escorts departing stations and then immediately moving to adjacent spaces during my first mission. (Fear not, I stumbled upon the one line that sets the sequence straight in the rules shortly thereafter.)

When you get down to brass tacks, Skies Above the Reich remains one of the rare wargames players can tear open and dive right into. Just don’t throw out the rulebook like you might have with Enemy Coast Ahead. You’ll still need it.

A smattering of player aids

FUN FACTOR

Whereas I immediately loved White’s two previous designs, I had my doubts about this new opus. It offered the same procedural experience I had come to enjoy—indeed to expect—but this time something was amiss. I felt I could do more… and yet the game seemed to yield less. My flight plan was a little muddled.

In Skies Above the Reich, the action matrix is wider and somewhat shallower at the same time. This means that while the design space remains more or less the same, the resulting experience is different from what you might have lived through with Enemy Coast Ahead or The Doolittle Raid. Instead of a long and narrow narrative where you pull a lever here and throw a switch there, you get a shorter, wider story with more decision points coming at you all at once.

Because of that curtailed storyline (and despite the wider design matrix), players might initially feel like the game is more repetitive than what White has accustomed them to. To that I say: keep playing. The depth will eventually bubble up to the surface (ha!) and you’ll be happy you stuck around.

PARTING SHOTS

Interested in a more difficult challenge? Itching for more icing on your air combat cake? Skies Above the Reich’s got you covered. The entire bomber formation may change direction (which alters the position of the sun); the combat box might shrink (as bombers fall out of formation); squadron erosion could take its toll on your roster after each mission (as if the game weren’t already tough enough); you can play the game with a friend as a two-player cooperative endeavor; you can even tack on an entirely new module that allows your fighters to hunt down bombers edged out of their combat box, in an attempt to finish them off for good. Hell, you can even partake of optional rules within optional rules!

I suggest you forego these options for your first handful of sorties: even with just the standard settings turned on, the game is HARD. While the “story arc” has you going through the advances that benefited both sides during the war as technologies evolved from one year to the next, it also makes you feel the very real pain of the pilots of the Reich, when dwindling resources and evaporating manpower made defending the skies an increasingly desperate proposition.

As always, White (and now Aasted) is obsessed with the narrative—in a good way. Hence the numerous fate boxes used to decide the destiny of fallen pilots, depending on what wiped them out: engine trouble, fuel leak, damaged cockpit, etc. A dead pilot may be replaced with a fresh recruit, but that new element incurs a green penalty (one of mine would immediately leave the battle when hit, for instance).

From those systems emerges a simple, yet engrossing story: if you play several missions in a row with the same roster, you’ll become attached to some of your pilots and get genuinely worried when you’re about to roll on that damn fuselage table. (“I sure hope Neumann survived that fire!”)

By the way, after bitching and moaning in my reviews of both Enemy Coast Ahead and The Doolittle Raid, my prayers have been answered: the game sports an index! It’s camouflaged on the back cover of the advanced rulebook, but it’s there. Make good use of it.

In the end, I laughed, I cried, I cursed at the game and I kissed the dice for services rendered—sometimes all within the same turn. I can’t ask for much more from a wargame.

# # #

A Year of Boardgaming, 2017 Edition

Another year has come to a close and, as always, I like to look back (not while driving) and stare my boardgaming activity in the eyes.

GAMES
I played 128 different titles (down from 148 in 2016), for a total of 411 plays (down from 489).
Taking into account the play time of each individual game, this translates to 397 hours of poring over cardboard maps with family, friends, and the occasional random stranger. That's almost 17 full days of boardgaming fun—and while it might seem like a lot, it used to be a full month per year about a decade ago. I must be slowing down in my old age (currently 44).

Of those 128 titles I played last year, 53 were new to me, down from 75 in 2016, which itself was down from a whopping 105 in 2015. This means I'm playing my "old" games more and more, and that's a good thing.

So here are the top 10 games I played the most in 2017:

1. Fuji Flush (26 plays)
      A quick trick-taking game that's a riot with any crowd.

2. Combat Commander: Europe (22 plays)

A WWII tactical wargame, and my favorite boardgame ever, bar none.

3. Great Western Trail (20 plays)

An amazing cattle-herding deck-builder, and my favorite game of 2016.

4. Scythe (16 plays)

A thrilling hybrid game I originally disliked. Go figure.

5. Santorini(14 plays)

A tense and beautiful abstract game about building towers.

6. C&C Napoleonics (13 plays)

A fun simulation of the Napoleonic Wars, which I only play with the GF.

7. Clank! (12 plays)

A fun dungeon crawler now superseded by Clank in Space.

8. Memoir '44 (11 plays)

A simple WWII tactical romp. Lots of fun.

9. Flamme Rouge (11 plays)

A deceptively simple cycling game that'll get your heart pounding.

10. First Class (10 plays)

A train-building card game that happens between Paris and Constantinople.

PEOPLE

Last year, I sampled the best the boardgaming world had to offer in the company of 97 different players, up from 66 in 2016—which means I'm meeting new gamers!

So here are the top 10 people with whom I played the most in 2017:

1. Suzie D. (127 games)

2. Jean-Luc S. (119 games)

3. François P. (84 games)

4. William L. (40 games)

5. Gustavo A. (38 games)

6. Maxime M. (36 games)

7. Ophélie K.L. (25 games)

8. Héloïse K.L. (16 games)

9. Jonathan P. (13 games)

10. Philippe M. (11 games)

Once again, two of my daughters (Héloïse and Ophélie), as well as the GF and her son William all show up on the list. Only Béatrice is missing (she comes in at #18), but given that she no longer lives in the family home, it's not surprising. Although it is heartbreaking.
A special shout-out to Maxime, the first of my new colleagues to make it to the Top 10! Well done. :)

LOCATIONS

A new high this year: I managed to grab a game in 22 different places!
61% of my gaming is done in the safety of my own home, followed by 10% in the workplace. My closest (geographically) gaming buddy, Jean-Luc, only received 8% of my boardgaming activity in his humble abode, which tells me that I should get out more.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

I played more wargames in 2017 than I did in 2016; that was something I wanted to do. Among them was my favorite game, Combat Commander, which I have played at least 20 times (sometimes over 50!) each year since its publication in 2006. To date, I have played it exactly 370 times, and I can't see myself slowing down. If anything, that count will rise sharply with this year's release of the new entry in the Combat Commander family, Great War Commander.
And yet, wargames keep piling on faster than I can dust them off. Hearts and Minds is one such casualty, but new fodder has now joined it: Wild Blue Yonder, Holland '44, Pendragon, Pericles...

I kickstarted 2017 with a game of Royal Turf in the company of my parents, and I topped the year playing Welcome to Centerville with my lovely Suzie. I can't ask for much more.

So what's next? As I'm writing this (January 2nd), I already have three games under my belt, including an exciting go at Age of Industry. Things bode well indeed.

# # #

My Top 10 Boardgames Published in 2017

I compiled a similar list last year, and I thought it would be fun to do it again.
So here are my picks for the ten best boardgames to come out in 2017.

#10 

GLOOMHAVEN (designed by Isaac Childres, published by Cephalofair Games)
The boardgame horizon has been filled with a horde of dungeon crawlers of late, but Gloomhaven stands head and shoulders above everything else I've played.
On paper, the concept shouldn't work: a legacy monster that spews about 100 crisscrossing scenarios, with endless card decks and a flood of tiny components. And yet, the whole thing is mesmerising. Gloomhaven is more aptly described as an experience than just a game; it is in fact much closer to a roleplaying game sans game master than anything else.
My character is about halfway through her life cycle, and I'm really curious to find out what the future has in store for her.

#9

CLANK! IN! SPACE! (designed by Paul Dennen published by Dire Wolf Digital and Renegade Game Studios)

Speaking of dungeon crawlers—I had quite enjoyed playing Clank! back in 2016. It was fast, fun, and a deck-builder on top of everything (oh, how I love those). But enough little things prevented it from shining as a truly great game (and making my 2016 Top 10).
But behold! 2017 brought forth a star-spanning descendant that fixes most of what felt lacking. Variable board? Check. More satisfying progress through the dungeon/space ship? Check. More exciting conclusion? Check. Better openness for expansions? CHECK.
Now to find a way to trade in my copy of Clank...

#8

878: Vikings—Invasions of England (designed by Beau Beckett, Dave Kimmel and Jeph Stahl, published by Academy Games)

Another sequel! I have sung the praises of all three titles in the Birth of America series, and it was with great enthusiasm that I tackled the first entry into Academy Games' new family: Birth of Europe. I was not disappointed. 878 feels fresh yet familiar, and is another great light, four-player wargame.
The game even sports miniatures instead of the ubiquitous wooden cubes, and I've got to admit that it adds to the overall charm of the engagement.

#7

13 MINUTES: THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS (designed by Asger Harding Granerud and Daniel Skjold Pedersen, published by Jolly Roger Games and Ultra PRO)

13 Minutes's big brother 13 Days made my Top 10 list last year, when I was surprised that the Twilight Struggle cold war experience could be distilled into a 45-minute, white-knuckler of a game. But those crazy designers one-upped themselves and further compressed the paranoia to a mere 13 minutes. Seriously.
Each opponents only gets to play FIVE cards, and every single one is pure agony. You win if you control more battlefields at the end of the match, but then only if you haven't triggered thermonuclear war by then. What more do you want in a 13-minute game?

#6

NEMO'S WAR, 2nd edition (designed by Chris Taylor, published by Victory Point Games)

I'm cheating a bit here, as the original Nemo's War was first released in 2009. But hey, it's my list.
The 2017 second edition is a feast for the eyes, with gameplay to match. It's an underwater solo adventure where you command the famous Nautilus and explore the seas, engage the occasional vessel in pursuit, uncover elusive treasures, and generally try to stay alive.
Driven by story cards (divided into three acts, no less), Nemo's War creates a narrative that never feels the same twice. 

#5

WELCOME TO CENTERVILLE (designed by Chad Jensen, published by GMT Games)

I rarely enjoy dice games—not for long, anyway. They start to feel hollow and pointless too fast for me. But once in a blue moon, one of them falls into my lap and completely seduces me.
Welcome to Welcome to Centerville.
Roll the bones to erect buildings in four different sectors, run for municipal offices (yes, plural!), acquire sumptuous villas along the riverside, embrace vocations by the dozens, and screw your opponents. All in about an hour.

#4

FIELDS OF DESPAIR (designed by Kurt Lewis Keckley, published by GMT Games)

The first world war was a pretty static affair, and so games that attempt to model that great clash on a strategic scale rarely come to be described as exciting. Against all odds, Fields of Despair turns out to be exactly that.
Deploying fog-of-war blocks on a massive scale, the game also proposes tech tracks, aircraft reconnaissance and dogfighting, artillery barrage galore, as well as four short scenarios plus the campaign game. Did I mention the map was absolutely gorgeous?
I've never seen a WWI game like this, and I'm relishing every step I take towards the campaign scenario.

#3

AZUL (designed by Michael Kiesling, published by Plan B Games)

Abstract games occupy a special place in my heart for a variety of reasons (a story for another time). But it's not every year that one of them stops me in my tracks.
Azul is a simple affair, where players draft beautiful Portuguese-style tiles and then arrange them on their "walls" to score as many points as they can with the patterns they create. It's one of those games that's eye catching and easy enough to get non-gamers to the table, while remaining engaging enough to please the veterans. It can accommodate from two to four players and scales amazingly well.
Play the basic version as a learning game, and then flip the boards to tackle the "advanced version," which is really how the game should be played.

#2

THE DOOLITTLE RAID (designed by Jeremy White, published by GMT Games)

At the end of 2014, I reviewed the original Enemy Coast Ahead and gave the game high marks. White had seriously raised the bar for narrative solo wargaming, and I thought ECA would keep the trophy for a few years. Well, it did—until White himself gave us volume II, The Doolittle Raid, and cleared his own bar with room to spare.
Plan 1942's Doolittle raid on Tokyo, train your people, load your B-25s onto your carrier, sail through the Pacific (avoiding Japanese attacks and the whims of Mother Nature), fly all the way to Tokyo (if you can make it), drop your payload and high tail it out of there—only to have to figure out where to land... It's all edge-of-your-seat boardgaming, with a detailed debriefing that tells a complex and compelling story.
Best of all, White made it possible to play all of this without laying eyes on a single page of rules! 

You can read my full review here.

#1

LISBOA (designed by Vital Lacerda, published by Eagle Games)

The man behind The Gallerist strikes again, this time bringing players back to 1755 and right into the heart of Portugal, after Lisbon was devastated by an earthquake, a tsunami and a fire that raged for three days. (I am not making this up.) Your job is to rebuild Lisbon as a thriving metropolis, all the while negotiating the treacherous politics that can carry you to the heights of success or sink you to the very bottom of failure. Cards drive the entire procedure, and while you'll want to do everything a card promises, you only get to pick one option in each case. Sweet brain cramps.
Lisboa is a beautiful, heavy game where all the gears are gilded with gold. It shines.

So there you are! My 10 favorite games from 2017.


STRAGGLERS: I would be remiss if I didn't mention three great games published in 2016, but which I didn't get to try until 2017. Otherwise, they might have made it on last year's list.

Scythe is an odd case: I did play it a few times in 2016, and dismissed it as something unremarkable. Then I got an opportunity to play it again (in 2017) and I completely changed my mind. I have now played this hybrid farming/war/exploration/resource management jewel 22 times and I can't wait to play it again.







Reminiscent of its Russian Railroads roots, First Class was an instant classic with my group. It plays with the elegance of a Paris-Constantinople passenger, feels fresh every time (thanks to interchangeable modules) and ends in a flash. It's also a train game, and I do love me a train game.





I really enjoy cycling games, but Flamme Rouge seemed like it had nothing new to offer. I mean, with three pages of rules, how good could it really be? Turns out I was very wrong. The game is a nail-biting fight to the finish, with a system so simple you wonder why no one came up with it before. Flamme Rouge is pure cycling in a box, and I'm very much looking forward to the upcoming Peloton expansion.



# # #

Wargame review — The Doolittle Raid

Backward is the New Forward

Designer: Jeremy White

Player count: 1

Publisher: GMT Games

PARTING SHOTS

This second entry into the Enemy Coast Ahead series (there’s going to be more, right?) seriously raises the bar when it comes to narrative solo wargaming. The 19-page debriefing manual alone tells a completely different story each time you reach the end of the campaign game—and that’s not taking into account every little detail that’ll pepper your way to that yoke-gripping conclusion.

Naturally, the detailed research baked into the game mechanics means that you’ll learn a boatload of historical facts about that incredible endeavor every time you climb into that B-25 cockpit for another spin. (And keep an eye out for those historical green boxes scattered throughout the rulebook.)

I do lament the lack of an index—and that was also true of the original Enemy Coast Ahead. It will not always be a problem, but once in a while you’ll find yourself cursing under your breath when, in the thick of things, with bullets flying every which way, you try to remember the consequences of switching from high to low altitude…

Still, you can rely on the astounding player aids. Not only do they painlessly teach you the game, but they also vaporize the solo gamer’s main headache: coming back to a solo game after letting it stew on its shelf for an extended period of time. Will you remember how to play that thing? In the case of The Doolittle Raid, it doesn’t matter. All you need to do is just sit down and start playing.

So what’s left to say?  That Operation Chariot would make a great volume III?

(Pretty please…)

FUN FACTOR

The Doolittle Raid is an absolute blast (pun intended).

Don’t be fooled by the early scenarios: they are intentionally facile to ease players into the system and make it possible for them to assimilate basic game mechanics without feeling overwhelmed by chaotic happenstances erupting left and right. After all, you’re just performing the Attack segment, which happens at the very end of the raid. So everything is set up just right for you to enjoy the ride. (By the way, unless you want to take in an extra dose of historical goodness, don’t bother with all of the Attack scenarios: just one or two of them will be enough for you to grok what’s going on.)

However, once you back up and start with the Flight segment, your performance there will affect the subsequent Attack segment: suddenly, you’re not in that perfect, hypothetical shape when you reach Tokyo. Not so easy now, is it?

Then you back up one more step, to play the Naval segment that will bring your bombers into takeoff range—if your aircraft carrier makes it that far. Of course, by then not all of your planes might be fit to fly anymore, which will affect your Flight segment, which will then generate consequences for your Attack segment…

Eventually you’ll tackle the complete, campaign game, moving through Planning, Naval, Flight and Attack segments, even tacking on a Denouement segment at the end to cap the adventure. Only then will you start to fully grasp the repercussions of even the earliest of your decisions, as they cascade out of your control down the game structure.

It is a thing a beauty.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

We are indeed talking about a 64-page rulebook, here. At first glance, not the faint of heart. But the amazing thing is that you don’t need to read a single page of it.

Just like its sister game, The Doolittle Raid is presented with programmed instructions in a reverse sequence of connected segments (or modules, if you wish). This means that you start by learning the rules to the last chunk of the game: the Attack segment.

“A-ha! So there’s rules reading involved!!” Well, no, not really. Because the Attack segment is summarized in a glorious player aid folder that contains everything you need to get underway. Right now. So you open the box, punch out the components, set up scenario 1 and get going, performing whatever the player aid tells you to do.

I am not using hyperbole to make a cute point—this is exactly how your first game will unfold.

Of course, you can sit down in your favorite armchair, armed with a nice single malt, and plow through the rulebook from cover to cover. But you don’t need to. Know that the book will be there, like a trusty wingman, for when something doesn’t quite make sense to you and you need confirmation.

Other than that, keep your eyes on the target.

Once you’ve learned how to play the Attack segment, the scenario book takes you one step back to the Flight segment, i.e. getting your planes to where they need to attack. Again, the relevant player aid folder takes you through the entire procedure with nary a page of rules to read.

So you fly your way to Japan, trying to make it there in one piece. Then the end of the Flight segment connects to the start of the Attack segment—but you already know how to play that, don’t you?

When you’re comfortable with the Flight and Attack segments, the game takes you back one step earlier, to the Naval segment. This involves navigating treacherous waters with your task force until you bring your carrier far enough into the Pacific for your B-25s to take off. You guessed it—there’s a handy Naval segment player aid folder to guide you, so that you need not touch the rulebook.

And what happens once the aircraft take to the skies? The Naval segment blends seamlessly into the now-familiar Flight segment, which will culminate in the by-now-quite-comfortable Attack segment.

Finally, when you’ve paid your dues and then some, the game takes you back one last step, to the Planning segment. There you are tasked with making the most crucial decisions of the entire game, from negotiating with foreign powers (where do you want your planes to land once they’ve released their ordnance?) to making actual modifications on your aircraft (heavier and better equipped, or lighter but more vulnerable?), setting secrecy levels (provide more information to the troops, enhancing their readiness, but at the price of a heightened security risk…), organizing training, managing transportation, and so on. Again, a jewel of a player aid folder guides you through the entire process and makes sure you don’t forget a single rivet on those B-25s.

And then? You embark on the Naval segment, segue right into the Flight segment, follow up with the Attack segment—and top everything with a Denouement segment that evaluates your entire performance and provides an array of results that mesh together to form an enthralling narrative.

Congratulations! You’ve just played the campaign game, enjoyed one of the best rides of your wargaming life, and can’t wait to just experience it all over again.

Now, while the Attack segment might appear as if its provides few decision points, the more you step back, the more you come to understand how each of your selections blooms into consequences you’ll have to deal with later on. By the time you reach the Planning segment and can envision the entire breadth of the campaign, it becomes absolutely clear (if somehow you still had doubts) that you’re not spending time on some half-baked, harebrained contraption.

WAR PRODUCTION

With a box almost too small to hold all of its gaming goodness, The Doolittle Raid hides behind a cool cover—courtesy of the US Navy Department of Defense!

So you’re armed with a 64-page rulebook (which you don’t have to read, it bears repeating), a 40-page scenario book, a 20-page debriefing manual, and enough player aids to cover a fair-sized table. If you still have some surface left, deploy the immense map sheet and plug whatever hole might remain with the three smaller attack maps.

Errata here was kept to a minimum, and while I ran into a few nomenclature woes (for instance, page 44 calls “Reaction Value” what the map labels “Anti-Sub Value”), there’s really nothing to prevent you from accomplishing your mission.

Oh, and don’t forget your opaque containers: you’ll need ten of them to house the multitude of chits you’ll need to pull as your aircraft make their long, dangerous way to Japan. (To be fair, you’re not expected to use all of them at once, although I did have to resort to seven simultaneous mugs on more than one occasion.)

The components are the usual GMT high quality, and all illustrations (including the main map!) are provided by the designer himself. Talk about a one-man army.

Five six-sided dice round out the package. Will you need them all? Yes. Ooooh yes.

Have fun running out of fuel over Tokyo.

INTRODUCTION

Three quarters of a century after the fact, most people know about the infamous air attack on Japan that brought World War II to an end. But there was another raid on Tokyo, earlier in the war, which did not leave quite the same mark on the public’s psyche. It was the Doolittle Raid.

And now it’s your turn to make it all the way to the Empire of the Sun—and survive to tell the tale.

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Wargame review — Time of Crisis

The Proverbial Knife Fight in a Roman Phone Booth

Designers: Wray Ferrell and Brad Johnson
Player count: 2-4
Publisher: GMT Games

Things weren’t always peachy for the Romans during the III^rd Century. For L years—as important families strove to carve themselves a place in History—civil war was a way of life, with mobs of ignorant peasants insisting on decent living conditions, vile barbarian hordes knocking (and sometimes doing quite a bit more) on every door they could find, and nowhere to buy an aurochs at a fair price.

In short, the glorious Empire was going to hell in a handbasket—albeit a finely woven one. And Time of Crisis invites II to IV players to recreate those chilling days when even thinking about becoming emperor was tantamount to a declaration of war.

The game is played on a large map that shows just how far reaching the Empire had become: from Hispania to Asia in the north (let’s not forget Britannia!), and all the way from Africa to Syria in the south. Breaking away from most wargames, the map in question is not laden with hexes: instead, military units—as well as uncivilized barbarians—move between adjacent areas, some larger than others. Thus is territory gained and lost, all in the name of a greater cause: posterity.

The goal here is to accumulate as many legacy points as possible before the game ends. Such points are mainly earned through the control of provinces and, oh, actually being the Emperor.

Time of Crisis is a deck-builder at heart. Everyone starts with the same basic deck of IX (rather weak) cards. Each turn, players have the opportunity to ditch old cards from their decks and purchase new, powerful ones. The cards come in III flavors: red (for military actions), blue (for senate actions) and yellow (for populace actions). Purchased cards go into your discard pile, to be put into circulation the next time you run out of cards and need to reshuffle.

Ah, but not so fast: cards are not drawn from a player’s deck, but rather selected, one by one. So every time you need to refill your hand to V cards, you look through your deck and pick the cards you need. Of course, you can give yourself a gorgeous, incredible hand for a turn or two, but then you’ll have to contend with whatever leftovers are still available until you reshuffle the whole thing.

Every player turn starts with a random crisis that applies to everyone: it either causes barbarians to pile up (and possibly unspool into neighboring regions) or it unleashes a special event (from Inflation to the Plague, all the way to the rise of a rival emperor who needs to be shown who’s boss). Then the player whose turn it is plays any and all of the cards he selected at the end of his previous turn.

Playing a card enables its event (good for you, insufferable for your opponents) in addition to yielding a number of influence points (from I for the basic cards, to IV for the most powerful pasteboards in the game). Red points make it possible for armies to grow, move, fight, and gently disperse the occasional mob; blue points allow governors to seize control of rival provinces; while yellow points increase support in a province (rendering the aforementioned seizing more difficult), and generally make home a better place by installing some militia, holding games (keeps the mobs busy) and building improvements that perform a variety of useful tasks.

In the meantime, armies clash and provinces change hands. (More than once.) Intermittent attacks by barbarian hordes can screw up the best laid plans, but also provide opportunities to rack up some quick legacy points. Because who can forget leaders who administer memorable beatings to the unwashed masses?

Whoever becomes governor of Italia also claims the Emperor’s throne, which effectively doubles the legacy points awarded for his provinces at the end of each turn.

When a player currently holding the title of Emperor reaches LX legacy points, the round is played out, bonus points are awarded depending on how many turns each player spent wearing the crown, and whoever is then showing the most legacy wins.

WAR PRODUCTION

The equipment in the thin Time of Crisis box fails to elicit any excitement on its own. The large map is pleasantly mounted but will not stop anyone in their tracks: it just looks like a map in IV colors. The cards are their usual GMT sturdy selves, with nice illustrations. The unit counters feature silhouettes of Roman dudes, and there’s a bunch of dice. Player aids present a wall of text; however they will later turn out to feature everything you need to play without touching the rulebook). Only the box cover proves to be arresting, and promises serious Roman action.

And boy does the game deliver.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Not to be outdone, the rulebook turns out to be deceiving in its own way. Wargamers usually relish a heavy tome of rules to peruse; but in this case, the tome turns out to sport a mere XX pages, half of which are devoted to an extended example of play. This means that Time of Crisis runs on just X pages, which I find astonishing. True, the text is lacking in a few areas (Can a militia join an attack against a foreign army in its province?) but it’s nothing an online search or II won’t solve, and the depth of tense gameplay that is achieved with X pages of rules is to be saluted.

The “pick the cards you want” mechanism is fiendishly clever. It sounds like nothing, but it changes the game dramatically. For one thing, your cousin Angus will stop complaining about always getting a rotten draw. For another thing, you can set up your political uprising (or your military conquest) to perfection: just select the exact cards you’ll require to pull off your shenanigans on your next turn. Then again, if you succeed, you know that your opponent will be able to pick just what he needs to counterattack—unless the relevant cards have already been used up, that is. (Yes, it pays off not to nap while others are taking their turns.) In the end, a huge part of the fun lies in divining what your adversaries will attempt, and then building the perfect hand to both advance your own plans and thwart theirs. Of course, that’s easier said than done.

The only drawback to this card selection procedure is a fairly scripted opening: since you can pick the cards you want, you can decide ahead of time what your starting hand will look like, and there are combinations that definitely outrank others. (It also makes the “refill your hand” part of each turn a little slower than in other games, but it’ll only bog down the works on occasion, when someone’s on the verge of seeing one of their precious provinces collapse. Muahahahaaa.)

FUN FACTOR

Please allow me to indulge in a thin slice of personal life.

A couple of years ago, I attended a gathering where a volunteer armed with a prototype copy taught the game to a small group of which I was part, and we proceeded to play our first ever session of Time of Crisis.

I hated it.

There was something dull in the whole proceedings, the cards weren’t exciting, it felt like there was to nothing to do, combat was putting us to sleep… Both my wargaming buddy and I emerged from the experience thinking we would not touch that game again with a sharpened trident.

And then something strange and wonderful happened.

GMT finally published Time of Crisis, I got my hands on a review copy, and against my better judgement, I started reading the rules. Before long, I was texting my friend about how the game seemed to be right up our alley, and how strange it felt to want to give it another shot. To his credit, my partner in crime agreed to a do-over, and within a handful of turns, we were grinning at each other, clearly enjoying ourselves. So either the game had undergone a chrysalis-style transformation, or the volunteer had seriously bungled his explanation, or a little of both—but whatever it was, time had worked wonders and we were hooked.

The game plays great with II, III or IV players, and although I do prefer to enter the arena facing a full complement of adversaries, I will never turn down a head-to-head request. It’s fun, tense and surprisingly deep, while remaining simple and fast: unless you’re playing with bespectacled snails, you can expect a play time between II and III hours.

PARTING SHOTS

This has to be a first for me, in III decades of boardgaming: a game that goes from “man that sucked” to “can’t wait to play this again” in just a couple of sessions.

Time of Crisis proves to be that elusive, reasonably deep, multi-player wargame that drips with theme and moves fast enough to reach a satisfying conclusion well within the confines of an evening. Best of all, one player can teach the intricacies of the game to the rest of the patricians in about XV minutes.

My only serious complaint is akin to an unquenchable thirst: I want a larger variety of cards from which to gradually build my deck. Now, I am are already hearing rumors of an expansion coursing through the Empire, so the gods must be listening…

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Boardgame review — 1960: The Making of the President

“Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You…”

Designers: Jason Matthews and Christian Leonhard
Player count: 2
Publisher: GMT Games

Ever since its first publication in 2007 (by Z-Man Games), I have loved 1960: The Making of the President with a passion. In part because it makes clever use of the fantastic tug-of-war system that blew me away in Twilight Struggle, but also—and perhaps especially—because it felt like a microcosm of that sprawling Cold War epic. I always thought that if we could zoom in on a single card in Twilight Struggle (used above as the title of my review) and play out the event depicted by that card at a tactical level, then we'd get 1960.
A game within a game; a cog lost in the big machine.

(Of course, one of 1960’s designers—Jason Matthews—also happens to be the co-designer of Twilight Struggle; so that intimate connection between the two games shouldn’t surprise anyone. Indeed, I am not surprised by it: I’m fascinated.)

Z-Man put out a 2nd edition in 2008, essentially tweaking the visuals for clarity. But for the 10th anniversary of 1960 (how deliciously confusing a phrase, from its 2017 perspective), GMT is giving us a completely retooled version, complete with original art and rules modifications.

But first, how does it play?

The game throws two players into the arena: one as Nixon, the other as Kennedy, both fighting tooth and nail during their arduous presidential campaign. The political match unfolds on an electoral map of the United States, circa 1960, where opponents travel from one state to the other, hoping to win local support—and then hold on to it until that fateful election day.
In classic card-driven fashion, both players are dealt a hand of cards at the outset of each turn, and those cards can be used in multiple ways. You can use the points listed on them to campaign (travel the country and muster support for your party, indicated by piling cubes on the targeted states); you can also use those same points to buy media support in one or several areas (which helps you break the stranglehold your opponent may have in that neck of the woods); or you can use those points to position yourself on the issues that mattered most back then (defense, economy and civil rights).
And then, of course, there’s the big one: you can forego the points and instead decide to play the historical event depicted on each card—granted it is playable by your side of the political divide. And what if it isn’t? Well then you have to make use of the points, but you can expend precious momentum tokens to prevent your opponent from benefiting from “his” event. Otherwise he might just spend his own tokens to trigger what could be disastrous circumstances for you.
At the end of each turn, each player sets aside one unused card in anticipation of the upcoming TV debates (a novelty of great historical significance in that day and age), and both opponents pick up the fight for one more round. After five turns, the aforementioned debates are resolved through the play of cards previously set aside, using issue and party icons on each card to help position your candidate. Victory in the debates provides a significant advantage, so don’t take them lightly.
Then the game resumes for two more turns, at the end of which cards set aside are used this time to fuel final thrusts into the hearts and minds of the voters—it’s Election Day!
Both players gather up the seals of the states that favor their politics, add up the electoral votes associated with them, and hope to God they make it to 269.
And we have a new President.

PRODUCTION

Serving up this new incarnation of 1960 in their “double deep” box (a thick bookcase-style box, as opposed to the flat and oblong original), GMT went with fresh artwork that moves away from the game’s familiar look—starting with the game cover, which is fantastic. Inside the box, we still find wooden cubes in red, white and blue (with a draw-string bag to fish them from); we still have a separate debates board for that tactical mid-game twist; and yes, those cardboard discs (both for momentum tokens and state seal tokens) are omnipresent. But the pièces de résistance here are the cards and game board.

The card back is magnificent—artist Donal Hegarty really did a fine job there. (Yes, I’m a big fan of card backs. It’s not the last time you’ll read about them on my blog…) It’s got that late ‘50s feel that permeates the entire package, and I think that goes a long way towards thematic immersion, which is never easy to accomplish.

Now that's a card back.

The face of the cards is also very nice, if a tad subdued. And while I’ll admit that I miss the newspaper-headline look of the original, I find the new card layout easier to decode. (Many new players kept missing the number of rest cubes each card would provide; not with this edition.)

GMT edition on the left, Z-Man 2nd edition on the right

The board is a beautiful, mounted leviathan, and a true work of art. Donal Hegarty and Mark Simonitch managed to make it look like it was made—manufactured—in 1960. Where the original board went for a realistic campaign manager look (complete with a “battle map,” a manila folder, a coffee cup stain, and a pencil that I’ve seen more than one unwary player try to pick up), the new board asserts its identity as a game, albeit one that aims squarely at late 1950s aesthetics. It’s also easier to read than the original, and I’ll never say no to that.

GMT game board. A chunk of it, anyway. 

The only aspect I will lament as far as the new edition looks is the loss of authentic photographs. While the old game plastered historical pictures all over its real estate, the new one goes for a traced-over-the-picture style. It’s all fine, and it certainly jives with the period vibe oozing from the box. I just miss the pictures, that’s all. (Quite the irony when you think that a gazillion wargames published by GMT use historical photos.)

RULES

While some sections were reformulated, the rulebook remains essentially the same. And at 14 pages, the game is one of the easiest to learn in the GMT stable. It’s got the same sample turn the original offered, with clear examples and a cleaner layout that makes the whole thing easier to follow.
However, veteran players will be interested to know of the three rules changes introduced in this edition of the game.

1.  Support Checks: Players must now make Support Checks for Events which grant State Support in states carried or currently occupied by their opponent, just as if they were Campaigning. 

(This makes carrying a state—owning at least four support cubes there—much more significant than in the original game, where an event would allow your opponent to breach your fortress without breaking a sweat. Notice, though, that the above rule states that this only applies to events: debate victories are immune to the change, which beefs them up a bit. An exciting tweak to be sure, as I’ve always found the debates to matter less than I would have liked.) 

2.  Momentum Phase: The player with the most media support may now shift issues before momentum and endorsements are awarded rather than after.

(Shifting them after the awards hardly did anything, since so many events shuffled them around before the end of the next turn, anyway. But altering their order right before rewards are doled out has a big impact on the game flow, and I welcome it with open arms.) 

3.  Tiebreaker: While the first tiebreaker remains the player who won most states, the second tiebreaker is now the player who has the most total state support. 

(The original game’s second tiebreaker was to give the game to Kennedy—certainly the change least likely to affect you. After many, many games, I’ve never seen a single tie. Let alone one that requires two tiebreakers.)

But the new rulebook doesn’t stop there: it also provides two optional rules! The first one has players start the game with their Vice Presidents (Lyndon Johnson and Henry Cabot Lodge) on the side; a player can discard one of his own events to play his Vice President card as if from his hand. The second optional rule prevents players spending points on issues from adding support to the issue depicted on the card thus played.
I haven’t tried those optional rules, and I doubt I ever will. But they’re there if they tickle your fancy.

Finally, the last page of the new rulebook features an obsession of mine: historical notes. Enjoy!

FUN FACTOR

1960 has always provided me with visceral thrills and historical insight, and I was initially doubtful when GMT announced their own edition of that all-American gem. Why would I switch? But after just one game, I was won over. The look of the new edition makes the experience even more enjoyable and immersive than it already was, and the little tweaks to the rules pack an impressive punch, patching up the only weaknesses I ever felt the design needed to address.

PARTING SHOTS

It took three turns at bat, but we’re finally here: this is the best incarnation, the definitive edition of 1960: The Making of the President. A challenging, clever, and tight contest—very much in the spirit of the moment it tries to evoke—now with inspired visuals to match.

If you have any interest at all in the history of the United States, and in the amazing campaign of 1960 in particular, this is the game for you. What happened to Nixon in Michigan? What was “Lazy Shave” powder? Who was Herb Klein?
It’s all in there—and a whole lot more.

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