Quartermaster General: South Front

Having played Quartermaster General: East Front recently, Han and I moved on to play the South Front version. The South Front of World War 2 refers to the Mediterranean theatre. The game has a long map that stretches from Gibraltar in the south of Spain to Iraq in the Middle East. You have North Africa, Italy and the Balkans too. On the Axis side you have mainly the Pact (I think these are mostly Italians) and then you have some Germans too. On the Allies side you have the British and the Americans, and one French infantry. The Americans only enter the war mid way though. The game starts with the Axis invading North Africa. The British controls Egypt and tries to hold on. The Americans won't be coming yet for some time. However the tide of war will turn, due to how the decks are stacked. The game will develop in a more or less historical way, but things can develop in unexpected ways. 

That blue infantry is the French

In general this works like Quartermaster General: East Front. It has fewer pieces, so it feels a little closer to the original Quartermaster General. However this still feels more tactical, like East Front, and less strategic, like the original. You play through a fixed timeline. You score points at certain intervals. If any side outscores the other by 10 or more, it achieves an instant victory. Else you compare points at the end of the game. The game is card driven. Both sides have their own decks. You only play one card on your turn, unlike East Front where you play two. 

One new thing here is neutral countries. You can choose to attack them. They will join the other side, but if you capture them, some of them give victory points. Some cards let you bring neutral countries to your side. Neutral countries don't actively attack your opponent. They just have infantry defending themselves. 

Transports play an important role here. Often you need to ship infantry and tanks around. Naval battles can be crucial. There are few game pieces, so losing a piece can be painful. Also you can easily run out of pieces and you can't deploy more even if you have a card that lets you do so. So you have to think about where you want to have units. They can't be everywhere. 

In the first game I played against Han, I was the Axis and he was the Allies. I played aggressively and pushed hard toward Egypt. I was able to capture it, but I had a bad feeling. I realised I was running out of cards, when Han still had a lot. I think the Allies have more cards and normally their cards will last longer. I wasn't prepared for that and I had not been conserving my cards. Thankfully I managed to outscore him at mid game, and won an instant victory. Otherwise it would have been downhill for me all the way from then on, and I am sure I would have lost. 

As the Axis I vacated Italy and poured everything to North Africa.

Contingency cards are always available. You know your opponent's contingency cards. They are single use and they are played just like normal cards. 

I was the Axis and I was completely surrounded in Tunisia. At this point the Americans had entered the war (dark green pieces).

This was our second game and I was the Allies. Han was active in the Balkans and captured some territories. I had to respond by activating my own allies and even sending an infantry. He pushed aggressively towards Egypt. The situation was bleak for me. Then something unexpected happened. His whole army about to invade Egypt was wiped out due to their supply lines being cut off. I did deliberately try to send lone units to disrupt his supply, but I thought all I would achieve was distraction and delay. He misunderstood part of the supply rules, and did not re-establish his supply line in time. It was disaster for his huge army. Needless to say, things went downhill for him from that point onwards. 

The Axis soldiers still put up a good fight on the Italian peninsula. However the Allies simply had overwhelming numbers. One thing that worked out differently from our first game was I established a supply depot on the tiny island of Malta. In the first game I didn't feel Malta was important and as the Axis I didn't even bother to capture it. However in the second game I realised its importance when as the Allies I used it as a supply source. I still don't quite know why the lone French infantry in the game though. Just for flavour? 

Near final push up the Italian peninsula

Rome has fallen

South Front, like East Front, is a little scripted. You are not just re-enacting history though, you try to do at least a little better than your historical counterpart. That's how you win the game. You don't have many game pieces, and the board is not big. Sometimes it feels like you don't have a lot to do. The beauty in the game is how you decide to use your cards. In an ideal world, you draw all the right cards at the right time, and you fully utilise the card powers. But most of the time you have to work out how to best use your cards given your situation. Sometimes you spend cards not for their powers but for basic actions. Some actions require you discard cards. This is when you sacrifice some cards in order to be able to use other cards. 

DETROIT

DETROIT is a lovely little two player game from Japan. You compete to build three cars. You share a factory floor, where some spaces are common while some are for you only. You have six game pieces, and you need to move them all through the assembly line, in the process combining the top and bottom pairs to form complete cars. Whoever does so first wins. 

On your turn you roll four dice, and they determine how many steps you must move one of your pieces. The dice here don’t look like dice at all. They look like traffic cones. A cone which lies on its side shows one pip at the bottom, and that means one step. A cone that is standing upright means zero. You might move up to four steps, but if you are very unlucky, you might not move at all. 

Each space on the board allows one piece only. If you move into a common space containing your opponent’s piece, you knock it off and it needs to restart. This is the key element of the game. Some of the common spaces are safe spaces. You are protected from being knocked off. Three of your pieces are top pieces, and the other three are bottom pieces. When you move a top piece to a space with your own bottom piece, you combine them to become a complete car. Thereafter you move the completed car as one piece. Now if your completed car gets knocked off by your opponent, it is taken apart and both pieces need to start over and get assembled again. 

A big part of the game is managing risk and opportunities. When you have multiple pieces, you can maximise opportunities by positioning them such that no matter what you roll next turn, there is something useful you can do. The safe spaces are fun. Sometimes you choose to move a piece there even if it means leaving another piece vulnerable. Occupying a safe space blocks your opponent from using it, which means his pieces will be more vulnerable. 

You cannot assemble a car by moving a bottom piece onto a top piece. This is an interesting challenge. If your opponent knocks off your bottom piece, and you now have a top piece far ahead of your other bottom pieces, it is a little stuck because it needs to wait for a bottom piece to catch up. You have to plan how to get your cars assembled as the pieces advance through the board. 

This is the kind of game where the game components can sell the game. The good news is the gameplay is decent and meaningful too. 

Legions

Legions is a 2-player card game set in the world of Abyss. There are five regions between the two players, and you play cards to compete for dominance in each of these regions. There are two ways you can win. If you manage to capture five banners, you win immediately. Banners only appear on some cards, and it is not easy to achieve this victory condition. If no one achieves this by the time the draw deck runs out, whoever has more points wins. Many cards in the game have point values, so this is probably the more common way to win. 

Cards come in five suits, corresponding to the five regions. There are also many cards which do not have suits. They are jokers and you can play them anywhere. Every round you choose a card to play simultaneously to your side of the board. The player with the lower card goes first, and will also have first pick when replenishing his hand from a market of two face-up and one face-down card. However the second player will have the opportunity to attack the first, in a region corresponding to the card he doesn't take from the market when replenishing. Attacking means turning your opponent's cards face-down, temporarily disabling them. He can revive them by playing a new card in the region. 

When you have more cards in a region than your opponent, you control it and get to enjoy its special ability. For example one region breaks ties for all other regions. One region gives you a banner if you control it. After you play your card, you draft a new card from a shared pool. This means your opponent can keep track of what you have been taking, and this gives him clues about your intentions. 

When you have three cards in the same region, or one card in every region, you get to claim a hero. This is how you can score banners and points. You claim a hero from a hero pool, and you must move two of your cards to accompany that hero. The hero and these two retired cards contribute to your points and your banners. Since you are required to remove two cards, you become weaker in the regions they were in. 

Getting to five banners is a threat you can use against your opponent. Since this is a sudden death victory, your opponent cannot let you get too close. The game is tactical. You want to maximise the small advantages you get here and there, like the region powers. 

Legions is a light strategy game that can be a filler for gamers. 

The Architects of Amytis

This is a 2-player game about city building, where you compete for the same pool of resources to build your individual cities. 

You each have your own player board, which is a 3x3 grid. On your turn, you place one of your four pawns on the common board, which is also a 3x3 grid. The common board has stacks of tiles. When you place a pawn, you claim the topmost tile, and you must then place it on your own board. You can place it on an empty space, or you can stack it on top of another tile. The tile colours are for you to complete missions. You start the game with some missions, specifying configurations you need to achieve - specific combinations of building colours (regardless of building type) in a certain layout. During the game when you claim a certain building type you can take more missions. Completed missions are one of several ways you score points. 

Buildings come in four colours, and also six types. The colours are for completing missions, while the types help you score points during building placement. So while working on your missions, you try to claim buildings that help you score points at the same time. One building type scores points based on how many pawns you have on the common board. Another scores points based on building types visible on your player board. 

The positions of your pawns when you place them on the common board can also help you score points. You want to place three in a row, because whenever you manage that, you get to place one of your discs on the bonus board. These are called the king's favour. These give you additional ways to score points, for example at game end each stack on your board with exactly one tile scores 3 points. Or every staircase configuration (three stacks in a row of 1, 2 and 3 tiles) giving you 6 points. While trying to place your pawns in straight lines, you also try to stop your opponent from doing so. 

The game mechanism is pretty straight-forward. You are just placing a pawn to claim a tile in order to place it on your player board. However there are multiple scoring opportunities you need to think about - the missions, the building abilities, and also the positions of your pawns. The game ends when two stacks on the common board run out. 

The Architects of Amytis is smooth. I like how simple each turn appears to be, but there are actually several considerations behind that simple turn. Some elements feel tactical, for example if taking one particular building is going to score you many points now, you probably can't resist the urge to take it. Also if your opponent is almost making three pawns in a row, you may just want to block him. However there is also long-term strategy to think about. One thing I deliberately tried to do was to keep as many single-tile stacks as possible. I decided to do this about mid way through the game, when I noticed that I had many such stacks. The king favour which rewards single-tile stacks gave 3 points per stack, which was lucrative. The Architects of Amytis is polished, well balanced, and provides plenty of player interaction. 

Quartermaster General: East Front

This game is set in World War II and depicts the battle between Germany and the USSR. This is a two player game and the story starts with Germany initiating the invasion of the Soviet Union. Every few rounds both players will score points based on controlling key locations. If you outscore your opponent by 10 points, you win immediately. Otherwise, you win by having more points at the end of 1945.

One thing that is a little different from other games in the Quartermaster General series is the granularity. You have more pieces, you also have more pieces per territory. But still, this is nowhere near as many pieces as you would have in games like Axis and Allies. This is a card driven game. Each player has his own deck of cards and most of the things you can do in the game are dependent on these cards. The cards reflect the characteristics of the two nations and also many historical elements.

On your turn, there is a movement phase followed by two card plays, and then finally a second movement phase. All units only move one step. Also units need to stay in supply or bad things will happen. Being in supply means you can trace a supply line to one of your supply sources. Cutting off your opponent's supply line is an important tactic in the game. Movement is not used for attacking. You cannot enter a space containing enemy units. You can only attack enemy units in an adjacent space, and this happens during the card phase. You need to have specific cards that let you initiate an attack. Normally, when you attack, you will kill one enemy unit. Your opponent can prevent that only if he happens to have the right card to defend his unit. After you manage to kill one enemy unit, normally your attack ends. If you want to continue killing, you need to have another card in hand which lets you continue attacking. So you can see that battles are pretty short, but you can save the right combination of cards to make more powerful moves.

For your second movement phase, only tanks and ships can move. For land units, the tank’s ability to move in both phases can be crucial to help you capture territories. When you enter enemy controlled but unoccupied territories, you capture them. 

At the end of your turn, you draw three cards, or up to a maximum hand size of five. Although you normally play only two cards on your turn, sometimes you spend more cards due to pressing attacks or responding to the enemy’s actions. 

For the German player, that is one complication. He controls two types of units, German and Pact (i.e. other members of the Axis). The cards for them are different and you can only use the cards on the corresponding units. Also, they cannot attack together. 

I played against Han. I was the Germans and he was the Soviet Union. I started with many units, well poised to attack. He did not have many units, and it felt almost impossible for them to hold out against the Germans. It was a matter of how far and how fast the German armies could push. The Soviet did control more victory point locations at the start, so there was pressure for the Germans to conquer and keep up in victory points. The game felt like a war of attrition. It was not easy to build new troops. Not many cards allowed building new troops. It was possible to spend cards to build new units, but it was an expensive thing to do, and it was time consuming for me to transport troops to the front lines. 

One type of card in the game is contingency cards. Both players have five contingency cards. They are always available to you from the start. It is just a matter of when you decide to use them. Your opponent can see your contingency cards so they can prepare for them. You too can plan around them. They allow strategic planning and also help create some historical accuracy.

One thing I was quite impressed by the game was how historically accurate the end game turned out to be. I thought as the Germans I did pretty OK all the way till near the end. I was ahead in points. I just needed to hold on to this lead. There were only a few more turns to go. I completely underestimated the counterattack of the Soviets. My front line crumbled and the Soviets managed to make it all the way to Berlin, entering the gates exactly on the very final turn. It was an amazing turnaround. 

This was mid game when Germany was approaching Moscow.

I was able to surround the Soviets in the south briefly, cutting off their supply line.

I was leading in points, but my front line had crumbled.

Where the heck did all these Soviet tanks come from?!

The fall of Berlin

The game gets better as you get to know it better. You get more familiar with what cards are available in your own deck, as well as in your opponent's deck. You can anticipate your opponent’s card plays. I like how the card effects steer you towards a certain level of historical accuracy. However they don’t feel restrictive. You won’t get all the right cards at the right times, so you need to manage this. You need to think about how to make the most of the cards you get. You can’t always hold on to a card to wait for that perfect situation. I think this is what makes the game challenging and fun. 

Charge & Spark

Charge & Spark is a 2 player microgame from Jelly Jelly Games, Japan. I have just played another game that sounds just like this, Bahamut Dispute. Both are about reducing your opponent’s health from 4 to 0, but here the execution is a little different. Humankind is extinct. You are robots competing for supremacy. You win by destroying your opponent or by reaching the centre of the game board.

The players have the same set of cards when the game starts. Every round, you simultaneously choose and play a card. Cards let you shoot, block, charge your batteries, collect data and so on. The most recently played card is left face up in front of you. You cannot use the same card twice in a row. When you shoot, if your opponent also shoots, only net damage is inflicted, i.e. when one attack is of higher strength than the other. Attacking consumes energy. Different actions consume different amounts of energy. Some are free. If you fully charge your battery, it goes to 4 bars. Data works the same way as batteries. Some actions consume data, for example of being able to bounce the attack back at the attacker. You need to collect and store data in order to perform these powerful actions.

Whenever you advance on the board, you get to draw a new card. These are better cards which give you more action options. You can get at most two additional cards, because by the time you advance for a third time, you would win the game.

This game is very much about guessing the psychology of your opponent. If you shoot when he makes a move, he gets damaged and he will not be able to advance. If you move when he charges his battery, you will be able to safely advance and also earn an action card. The best thing is when you are able to choose to deflect his attack exactly when he chooses to attack. You do have some basis for making guesses. You know there is one specific action he cannot take because he has just done it in the previous round. Also, if he is low on battery or data, you know there are some actions he cannot perform. You want to have your battery and data sufficiently charged because it gives you more flexibility. In a way, this is advanced rock paper scissors. I am hesitant when saying this, because there is much more here than just simple rock paper scissors. Sometimes you choose an action for the sake of your flexibility in the following round. You know if you deplete your battery, next round it is easier for your opponent to guess what you are going to do. 

I played this with Chee Kong. I like that it is satisfying when you successfully guess your opponent's mindset and choose the right action card to foil his plans. It reminds me a little of Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. 

Bahamut Dispute

Bahamut Dispute is a microgame from Japan. It is a 2 player game about two kings trying to defeat the other by setting a dragon on their opponent. The structure is simple. On your turn you draw one card, and you may play up to two cards. You need to discard only if you exceed the hand limit. You start with 4 health, and your goal is to reduce your opponent’s health to zero. So far, nothing unusual. What makes this game interesting is the card powers and the deny mechanism. 

In the deck of 16 cards, there are only three creatures, i.e. cards you summon and keep in front of you. The dragon (Baleful Bahamut) does 4 damage, which means if you can summon it and it stays in play until the start of your next turn, you will one-shot-kill your opponent. The tricky thing is you can’t just play the dragon card. It can only be summoned by certain spells. Spells are another type of card. There is a baby dragon which deals 1 damage per turn. Not so glamorous but it is slow and steady. And then you have the goblin which protects you from attacks, except for attacks from the dragon. The rest of the cards have various abilities, for example dealing damage, letting you draw more cards, forcing your opponent to discard a specific card, and so on. 

You start the game with two deny tokens. Whenever your opponent plays a card, you can spend a token to cancel the power of the card. This can be a life saver. However when you do so, your opponent may spend two tokens to cancel your cancel, and you can't cancel this cancel of your cancel. It’s not always easy to decide whether to use a deny token. If it is life-and-death, then of course you'd spend it, but often the decision is not so straight-forward. Is the current situation dire enough to warrant spending a token? Should you save your token for a double-token spend on a later turn to force an attack through? You might be thinking of spending a token to lure your opponent into spending both of theirs, but what if that backfires and they decide not to cancel your cancel? You'd have one fewer token. And if you have the opportunity to spend double-token, should you do it? How critical is this card play to winning the game? If your opponent is desperate enough to spend a token, maybe it's worth your while to spend both of yours. Or might that be a trap to trick you into spending both your tokens? This is such a simple mechanism, but it creates much angst. This is the kind of game which appears simple, but there are moments when you realise there is something more and you go "waaaiiiit a minute..."

Still, this is a short game. You will probably run through the deck and need to reshuffle. The game becomes more strategic when you get to know the cards better. You know what to look out for and you anticipate your opponent's moves. 

Bahamut Dispute is quick and clever. It is one of the top-selling titles from Jelly Jelly Games. It is portable. We played it on a small Starbucks table at the Manila airport. 

Talon

Talon is a game of tactical spaceship battles. It is a game for two players. One plays Earth and the other plays an invading alien civilisation. You each control a fleet of spaceships. Your goal is to destroy all of your opponent’s spaceships. 

The battlefield is abstracted to a 2D hexagonal map. You fly your spaceships around and shoot at your opponent’s spaceships. There are different classes of spaceships and they have different abilities. The spaceships of the two factions are also a little different. There are differences in fire power, shields and manoeuvrability. Yes, these spaceships have shields. There are shields on all four sides, and you need to completely destroy a shield before you can hit the spaceship itself. If your shield is depleted, you can recharge it somewhat.

Guns have different facings and you can only shoot in specific directions. They also have different ranges. Naturally, the closer you are to an enemy, the more lethal your hit will be. One thing you can do in the game is to adjust the power core of your spaceship. This affects the manoeuvrability and also other characteristics of the ship.

One round of play is divided into many small steps. Each of these steps specify which spaceship classes may act. Spaceship classes go from 1 to 6. This is one of the ways how the game handles the different abilities of different ship classes. 

When playing the game, I feel like I am playing a game of warships during the age of sail. I don’t mean it in a negative way. I think it is partly because the map is 2D. You have to manoeuvre your ship well and position yourself to shoot at the best possible moment. Every time you shoot, you need to recharge your weapons before you can shoot again. So this is not a game where you just keep pressing the fire button. You need to be smart about when the best moment to shoot is. This is not a fast and furious type of game. You have to be deliberate and careful. 

So far I have only played one introductory level game where the two sides only have two ships each. I have not yet experienced the complexity of larger scale battles. I find the game serious and strategic. It reminds me of Star Wars X-Wing, not because of how similar they are, but because of how different they are. Similar setting, but very different gameplay experience. Star Wars X-Wing is the kind of game where you go pew pew pew. Talon feels more like a serious war game. 

7 Wonders Duel: Pantheon

Pantheon is an expansion for 7 Wonders Duel. Allen came across this at Cash Converters in Singapore, and it was a fantastic deal, SGD3.00! That's less than MYR10.00. As a game buyer I’m thrilled about these great deals. At the same time as an indie publisher it’s a little sad to see slightly older games get the stock clearance treatment. I guess to view it positively it is a good thing that a game gets sold and it gets played. 

Pantheon brings gods to 7 Wonders Duel. There are three gods for each of the five ancient civilisations, and every game up to six may come into play. Each civilisation has a different strength, and their gods have powers in that specialty. For example Egyptian gods help you with wonders of the world. 

In Age 1, players have opportunities to choose which gods to bring into the game and where to place them at the pantheon. Where a god is placed on the board determines how expensive it is to summon them. The nearer they are to you, the cheaper they will be to you, which also means they will be more expensive for your opponent. Each god can only be summoned once per game, and they give powerful one-time abilities. 

When you pick up a brown-backed token, you get to choose a god to introduce to the game.

Five stacks of gods, and one gate.

Mesopotamian gods (green) help with science.

The original game board gets extended, adding a pantheon above it where five gods and one gate can be placed. 

There are new wonders and technologies related to gods. You also get some game components which are for specific gods. Guilds are replaced by grand temples. This aspect has become simpler than the base game. Guilds used to offer various ways to score bonus points. Grand temples are associated with gods of specific civilisations. If you have collected tokens of the corresponding civilisations earlier in the game, their grand temples are free to build. Otherwise you can still build them using your resources. There are at most three grand temples in a game. The more you build, the more points each will be worth. 

Grand temples

The red pawn is Minerva's shield. It prevents one military attack. 

Nisaba's snake copies an opponent's science icon. Copyright laws were not yet invented.

Pantheon adds some gameplay elements and offers more options. When you summon a god, you don’t take a card from the card structure. This can be important when you want to avoid letting your opponent take a certain card. The god powers are potent. They can give you a critical advantage. If you play the base game a lot, this is a nice expansion to give you some new content. It is not just more of the same. It brings in new elements.