Virgin Queen

Plays: 6Px1.

The Game

Virgin Queen is an epic. Long, grand, complex, demanding and immersive. It is a sequel to Here I Stand, and is also designed by Ed Beach. These games have many similarities. The period covered in Virgin Queen is the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Here I Stand depicts the rise of Protestantism. In Virgin Queen, the Protestants are already well established, but there are still religious conflicts in England, Scotland, France and the Netherlands. The six major powers playable are England, France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), the Ottoman Empire and the Protestants (Netherlands and the French Huguenots). The actions which can be executed and the ways of gaining victory points differ depending on which major power you play. Some of these do overlap, but there are some which are unique to a single power. You can wage war and conquer key cities. You convert the population to your religion, you try to circumnavigate the globe, you send pirates to raid your opponents, you establish colonies in distant lands, you set up political marriages, you plot assassinations, you sponsor great artists and scientists. There is much to do as a major player in the arena of European politics.

Virgin Queen is a card driven game. Many historical events are captured in the cards. Every round you draw some cards and take turns playing them to either trigger the event or to spend command points to freely execute actions available to your power. Some of the major powers are natural enemies, some have incentives to cooperate. However in the game it's all up to you how you want to play. Ultimately only one can win, so no alliance is permanent. Any player threatening to win will be ganged up upon by others. However in most cases victory points earned cannot be lost, so your opponents usually can only slow you down.

This game has a 43-page rulebook, so it's hard to describe in just a few paragraphs. Let me share my experience through photos.

I played the HRE, and this was my player board. This board lists the actions available to me and how many command points they cost. I have eight square markers, four of which are already on the main game board, and four remain here. Square spaces on the main board are important cities called keys. When you control one, you need to place your square marker on it. The more keys you control, the more cards you get to draw every round, and the more VP's you will have. If you manage to place all your square markers (i.e. in my case if I control eight keys), you immediately win a military victory. You do not need to capture all keys by force though. Sometimes it is possible to gain keys via diplomacy, i.e. minor powers deciding to ally with you.

This is the diplomatic status chart, showing the relationships between the six major powers and five minor powers. There is a diplomacy phase at the start of every round. If you want to attack another power, normally you have to declare war in this phase. You also negotiate peace and make alliances in this phase.

This is the Protestant Spaces chart. The left side shows how many spaces in the religious struggle areas (England, France, Scotland, Netherlands) are Protestant spaces. The right side shows how many VP's the various major powers have depending on the number of Protestant spaces. Spain (yellow column) wants to keep the number low, because when it is low, Spain will have more VP's. The Protestants (orange) and England (red) want the opposite. In this, they have a common goal. The HRE (black) has special rules on this. At the start of the game the HRE player needs to secretly decide to support the Protestants or the Catholics, or to be neutral. The VP's the HRE gets depend on this secret decision made.

If 50 or more spaces become Protestant, the Protestants will win a religious victory. Conversely if the number drops to 9, Spain or France will win.

This is the marriage chart. The five spaces on the right are for indicating the eligibility level of each bachelor or spinster. At the start of every round some new characters will appear here and players will try to find matches for the characters from their respective countries. If a marriage is agreed upon, a die roll will be performed later to determine what benefits the two countries will gain. Younger couples will have better odds of getting high rolls. If a lady remains unmarried at the end of a round, her eligibility level will drop one step. For a gentleman, he rolls a die to determine whether he drops one step or retains the same level. Aging is more unforgiving to women, just like in real life. If a character drops off the chart, he or she will no longer be available for marriage, and still stay unmarried forever.

The Play

Our game session was initiated by Dith, who owns a copy of the game. We managed to round up the full complement of six players, which is the best number. Meet-up time was 9am. By the time we finished setup and the stragglers arrived, it was about 10:30am. We started off then, and our first round lasted till about 1:30pm, around 3 hours! It was mainly because we were still unfamiliar with the rules, and we had to look them up frequently. By the time we were done with the first round, we had executed most types of actions in the game. Subsequent rounds ran more smoothly. Our game ended at 5:30pm. Total play time was about 6.5 hours. I had actually expected we would have to continue after dinner.

Reading reading reading...

From left: Dith (Protestants), Heng (Ottomans), Jeff (Spain), me (HRE), Kareem (England), Ivan (France).

The early game. At the start of the game, France and England were at war, and so were Spain and the Ottomans. Scotland was allied to France, and Kareem (England) decided up front to subdue these pain-in-the-butt highlanders first. I gave him some mercenaries during the diplomacy phase, which boosted his invasion force. Unfortunately another player played a deserter card and all the mercenaries fled. Bummer!

In my secret alignment I had chosen to side with the Protestants, so I was hoping England and the Protestants would do well, because they would be indirectly helping me. Most English (red) locations were Protestant at the start of the game - red border and white centre. The Netherlands area (orange) was still owned by Spain. Dith (Protestant) needed to start rebellions in the Netherlands and in France to allow the Dutch and the Huguenots to establish their bases. Spain (yellow) and Portugal (maroon) already had many colonies settled throughout the world - those triangles with their nations' colours. Every round treasures would be shipped back to Europe, and other nations could attempt to send pirates after the treasure ships. That was what Heng (Ottomans), Kareem (England) and Ivan (France) did in the first round. They almost robbed Jeff (Spain) clean.

I (HRE) made a stupid mistake in the first round. One of the unique scoring methods for HRE was to control three key Central European cities. Being able to do this scored 1VP per round. I had assumed I already controlled all three keys at the start of the game, and I only needed to hold on to them. Only after the diplomacy (i.e. war declaration) phase, I realised I didn't control Buda yet. It was controlled by the Ottomans. It was too late for me to declare war on the Ottomans. I could only make preparations in the first round.

My hand of cards in the first round was quite suitable for making war on the Ottomans. I had the War in Persia card which would divert some of the Ottoman forces. I also had the Foreign Volunteers card which would let me gain three regular troops. What a waste!

Ivan (France) invested much effort in sailing and colonisation. He managed to establish two colonies in South America in the early game. Colonies may grant additional cards or treasures at the start of every round. Ivan also pushed his sea captains hard to circumnavigate the globe. The first two sea captains to circumnavigate the globe would earn VP's for their nations. However sailing the oceans was risky. The rest of us watched keenly as Ivan pushed his fleet of three ships further and further along the journey. One by one the ships failed navigation rolls and had to turn back or were lost, until he had one last ship remaining and was one sea zone away from completing the circumnavigation. We held our breaths as he rolled... It failed! We all felt his pain, but it was funny as hell at the same time. So much effort wasted! Thankfully his captain didn't die and managed to make his way back to France, only to be sent sailing again by Ivan in the next round. Eventually Ivan succeeded in going around the world. Both the first two sea captains to do so were Frenchmen, and there was much glory won for France (3VP in total).

This one is an interesting card. If there was any sea captain in the Caribbean area, I could make him fail his mission and immediately return home. The story behind this was the captain was distracted by the legend of El Dorado, and neglected his duties. In the early game there were a few sea captain in the Caribbean area, busy plundering Jeff's Spanish colonies. I could have played this card on these pirates, but at the time I didn't have any particular reason to, so I let them ravage the colonies.

Round 2. The Ottomans (Heng, green) had been doing much pirating in the Mediterranean against Spain (Jeff, yellow), but now Spain was building up its own Mediterranean navy. The Protestants (Dith) had initiated some rebellions in the Netherlands and France, but they still only controlled very few cities. In Round 2, I think everyone pitied Jeff, the victim of many pirate attacks in Round 1, so no one bothered him much this time. This allowed Jeff to collect most of his treasures being sent back from the colonies. Subsequently he had many treasures to spend in Round 3, allowing him to perform more actions.

This Charles II on the left was one of my (HRE) guys. On the right was Elizabeth I of England (Kareem), the star of the show. Elizabeth I started the game at eligibility level 5, the highest level. Charlie here had a long and complicated relationship with Lizzie. They agreed to marry, but Lizzie changed her mind at the last minute, cancelling the wedding. England had one home card (i.e. a permanent card on hand) which allowed Elizabeth I to jilt her fiance. Charlie knew she was just flirting and didn't mind. He loved her too much. He was content with the presents she showered on him, which helped advance the HRE cause. Just a few years later, they got engaged again, and Charlie got jilted yet again. The last thing I expected from this game was a romantic comedy.

My HRE was mostly a land-locked nation. It was technically possible for me to build a ship, but I was limited to just one galley. So, up front I had decided to not bother with naval affairs. One unique ability I had was to sponsor Italian artists or scientists, which could potentially get me VP's. I couldn't directly participate in religious conversions. I could only indirectly help the Catholics or the Protestants. In Round 1 I missed the opportunity to declare war on the Ottomans (Heng), so at the start of Round 2 I did not hesitate to pull the trigger. The Ottomans had a great general - Sokollu Mehmed, who could lead 12 units. I had two generals, Schwendi and Zrinyi, who could lead 8 and 6 respectively. My two generals needed to combine forces to match Heng's general. In Round 2 I quickly attacked and captured Buda, the third city I needed to fulfill my scoring condition. At the time Sokollu Mehmed was still in Istanbul. I had planned to sue for peace right after that, but Heng would not hear it. He reached an agreement with Jeff (Spain) to pull a pincer move on me. Sokollu Mehmed was coming for revenge on my eastern front. My western front was barely defended, and Spain had a small army in northern Italy getting ready to attack.

Jeff came after me also because I had stolen one key city from him via diplomatic means. The Papal States were originally allied to him, so Rome was under his control. I had invested in my relationship with the Papal States and then played a card to make the Pope reconsider his options for allies. The Pope switched over to ally with me, thus giving me control over Rome, while Jeff lost control. I was suddenly perceived to be a major threat by everyone, because now I was just two keys short of achieving military victory. Even if a major power did not share a border with me and could not directly attack me, it could still play nasty cards to mess with me. It was not impossible for me to capture two more keys. If I could defeat Sokollu Mehmed, I could sweep all the way down to Istanbul. But then of course that's easier said than done. If I did break through and threaten to wipe out the Ottomans, there would be plenty of wolves knocking at my western border.

In the end, my opponents didn't need to have worried. My two generals fared poorly against Sokollu Mehmed, despite having a larger army. They lost battle after battle, and now my front was broken (photo above). I would not be able to hold on to Buda for long.

The Dutch Protestants (Dith) started rebellions and now controlled both Antwerp and Brussels. This was the start of the Dutch Republic. Most of the Dutch region was still under Spanish rule (yellow flag with red cross). There was still much work for Dith. One of the key methods for Dith to score points was to convert the populace to Protestantism. At the start of the game, as the HRE, I had selected to trust in his ability to mass-convert the people, so I picked to secretly side with Protestants. However his conversion efforts were lacklustre at best. Later we found out that he had misunderstood the rules and thought it was much more difficult and costly than it really was. No wonder he hesitated to spend command points on conversion. Aaarrgghh... I should have sided with the old-fashioned Catholics.

At this point Kareem (England) had finally managed to capture Edinburgh. He didn't want to bother with the other Scottish towns, and wanted to go for major French cities. He was going for a military victory. He had deployed fleets along the English channel and had been raiding French coastal towns, greedily grabbing VP's. Ivan (France) had not been spending much effort on military, neither army nor navy, and had to suffer this English bullying. France had both internal and external threats. The English pirates were annoying. Even more worrying was the English armies on standby across the channel. Locally, the Huguenots had initiated a rebellion. Ivan had his hands full.

One unique scoring method for France was marriages. Whenever Ivan managed to marry off a member from the Valois family, he would score 1VP. So he had been busy playing matchmaker. Also in two marriages when he rolled dice for how they turned out, he rolled very high numbers, and these marriages gave the countries involved 2VP each. 4VP from marriages was a big deal. Controlling Paris was worth 1VP every round. That was another reliable way for France to score points.

Round 3. Some new elements were added - we could now hire assassins and spies. My (HRE) situation did not look good at all. My front with the Ottomans (Heng) had crumbled. My ally the Papal States (purple) was under attack by Spain (Jeff). Rome would not hold out for long. The Ottoman corsairs had been keeping a low profile in the Mediterranean Sea for a while, because the Spanish had a stronger naval presence now.

Spanish counters.

Spain (Jeff) had sent a Jesuit priest (grey square tile with a portrait) to England to convert the people to Catholicism, and he was doing well. Some towns had been converted (solid red markers without a white centre). Kareem (England) was busy preparing to invade the European continent, and couldn't spare time to deal with the priest. Jeff took the opportunity to initiate a Catholic rebellion, attempting to murder Elizabeth I and to put a Catholic king on the throne. For such a gunpowder plot to succeed, Spain needed to roll four hits more than England during the rebellion (not easy). If the plot succeeded, Spain would instantly win the game.

Jeff counted the various factors that affected the number of dice he got to roll. He had nine dice. Kareem had five. A 5 or 6 was a hit, i.e. a one third chance for each die. Jeff rolled first, and our eyes popped to see six hits! That meant Kareem needed three of his five dice to be hits, to prevent a Spanish instant victory.

Kareem rechecking the Catholic rebellion rules and probably thinking: you've got to be kidding me...

This is it - life or death in one roll.

Two hits. Boom! Spain (Jeff) wins! Elizabeth I was killed, and a Catholic king ascended to the throne. We hadn't even completed the third round. I had expected we would play one or two more rounds. At this stage, many of us were close to 20VP, so it was quite likely someone would hit 25VP in Round 4. On BGG the consensus seemed to be that the game normally lasts 4 or 5 rounds, and rarely went on to the 6th or 7th round.

To summarise our session, one sentence: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

The Thoughts

I had a great day playing Virgin Queen. It's a game that requires much effort and commitment, but I think it's worthwhile. You feel like you've lived through history. Similar to Here I Stand, there is some luck element, and sometimes you just have to accept fate. You can strategise, you can use diplomacy to your advantage, you can do all sorts of preparation, but sometimes bad luck just strikes and you can't help it. That sounds scary, considering how much investment the game requires. So much good work put in, and you lose because of a die roll? Wouldn't that make all the meticulous scheming and careful preparation meaningless? I think the game still gives you plenty of opportunities to mitigate luck and to position yourself to benefit from events and other players' actions. It's all about how much risk you want to take and how you want to allocate your resources. Just like in real life, there is no 100% guarantee. This is what makes the game exciting. This is what makes it feel epic. You are caught in the chaos and wonder of a turbulent and fast-changing age. You do your best, and hope for the best, as your witness events unfold and heroes emerge. In my conflict with Heng (the Ottomans), I felt I had done all the preparation I could, and went in with an advantage. Unfortunately things didn't go as I had hoped, and that was beyond my control. One thing I was thankful for was in most cases you don't lose VP's gained. Losing keys will cost you VP's, but most other VP's are permanent. So even if you suffer a setback, you don't go into a downward spiral with no hope of recovering. You just need to find ways to resume scoring VP's, and pick up from where you left off.

Luck does not come only from the dice. The cards too are a factor - whether you draw useful cards, and whether others draw cards which will harm you. Having 6 players in itself is a balancing mechanism. The players will reign in one another. It is hard to imagine a runaway leader not getting ganged up upon.

Playing the Holy Roman Empire, and I think the Ottomans too, can feel like you are the supporting cast. As the HRE, I had no finger in the seafaring and colonisation pie. I couldn't directly participate in the religious struggle. The Ottomans can do plenty of pirating because they have corsairs, but being Muslims they had no interest whatsoever in the European religious struggle, and needless to say, they won't be marrying any of the Christian infidels. They only had two fronts - the Mediterranean Sea, and the frontline with the HRE. When playing with four players, the HRE and the Ottomans will be delegated to non-player powers. Despite having less variety in possible actions, they are not passive powers in a 6-player game. There are still strategies to think about and scheming to do, and it is very much possible for them to win.

Some of us felt the game is more complicated than it needs to be. Indeed Virgin Queen places more emphasis on representing history than on streamlining gameplay. Every mechanism exists for a reason and tells a story. The game has a very wide scope.

If you intend to try Virgin Queen, do be prepared to spend much time and effort. You will experience the delicate balance of power between six ruthless nations. You will be making difficult decisions while you try to lead your nation to glory or steer it away from disaster. You will set a vision for your people and set in motion events to achieve it. You may even make history, with a little blessing from above.

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Note: Thank you to Jeff (Boardgamecafe.net) for providing some of the photos in this blog post, and also the venue for this event.

Cuba Libre

The iconic Che Guevara is one of the main characters in the Cuban revolution.

Plays: 2Px1.

The Game

Cuba Libre is a game design from Volko Ruhnke (Wilderness War, Labyrinth: The War on Terror, Andean Abyss), and the second game in the COIN (Counter Insurgency) series. It is about the Cuban Revolution (1953-1959) in which the government was toppled, and Fidel Castro came to power, establising a communist government. It also marked the start of a US embargo that is still in effect today - more than 50 years after the end of the revolution.

There are four factions in the game, and regardless of the number of players, every faction will be in play. The government faction controls the army and the police force. Its victory condition is to have all cities strongly supporting it, and to have a total of 18 points of support in the whole country. The 26 July Movement (M26) led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara aims to incite the people to oppose the government (opposing the government means supporting them). To win, the total opposition points across the country plus their bases must exceed 15. The Directorio Revolucionario (DR), an anti-communist group mostly made of students, aims to control the people, and wants the people to support neither the government nor the M26. Its winning condition is the total population under their control plus their bases must exceed 9. The syndicate is Cuba's organised crime lords. Their objectives are to have more than 7 open casinos and more than $30.

This is the starting setup. The four big boxes around the edges are the component storage areas for the four factions. Blue = government, green = syndicate, yellow = DR, red = M26. Components are limited. You can't have more soldiers on the map than pieces you have. The big circles are cities, the small ones economic centres. The other regular spaces are the provinces, coloured differently based on terrain.

There are two key concepts in this game. Having control over a city or province and its inhabitants means you have more units (soldiers / guerrillas / bases / etc) than everyone else combined. For some actions, having control is a prerequisite. The other concept is the support level of the people, which is independent of control. There are five different levels of support: actively supporting (the government), passively supporting, neutral, passively opposing (which also means passively supporting the M26 revolutionaries), and actively opposing.

Each city and province has two square boxes next to it. The first box to denote control (i.e. one of the factions has more pieces than all other factions combined), the second box to denote the support level of the people. Camaguey is now controlled by DR (yellow), but the citizens are still slightly supporting the government.

The factions have different actions and special actions. Most revolve around bringing new units onto the board, moving units around, and fighting. They work differently for different factions. The presence of units affect the control (or lack of) at each city and province. There are also actions related to making money, and modifying the support level. When the insurgents bring in new guerrillas, they enter the game face-down with the star or coin icon hidden. This means they are underground, and the government is not yet able to directly attack them. The government needs to perform a Sweep action to flush them out, before it is able to conduct an assault. However once guerrillas are exposed, the government can kill them quite efficiently. The guerillas on the other hand are not as effective in killing each other or killing government units. They need to roll a die and even if successfully only get to kill two units. Each faction has some unique special actions. The government can conduct air bombardment against exposed guerrillas. M26 can kidnap to make money and force casinos to shut down (casinos are the bases of the syndicate). The syndicate can bribe. DR can assassinate.

The player reference sheet shows all possible actions and victory conditions of each faction. This is indispensable for new players.

The octagonal pillar pieces are the guerrillas. Notice that the yellow guerrilla in the middle has a star on it. This means it is now exposed and is thus vulnerable to government forces. Also, notice that the Syndicate (green) guerrillas have now entered the economic centres (small circles). During the Propaganda round, if an economic centre has not been sabotaged by other insurgents, and there is not enough police to man these locations, the syndicate will be able to earn money from these locations.

The event cards and the round structure is quite different from other card-driven games. You don't hold cards in your hand. Instead two event cards are always open on the table, for the current round and the next. The card specifies the turn order for the round. Eligible players get to decide whether to execute the event card, to conduct operations, or to pass (and earn a little money). Every round at most two players may execute an event or conduct operations, and if you do one of these, you become Ineligible next round. Also after the first player selects a type of action, whoever comes next has only one action type to pick. It's take it or leave it (pass). If you are the first player you need to be careful in picking your action because it affects what the next player can do. You also want to look ahead at the next card, because if it's a very good event for you, you may want to pass this round so that you get to execute that event next round.

The row of icons at the top of the event card shows the player order for the round. In some cases, e.g. the card on the right, there are two different events on the same card, and they usually have opposite effects. The second event is written in a darker green box. If a player decides to execute an event, he can only pick one of them.

This is the core mechanism. The yellow and red faction markers being on the right means these factions have executed events or actions in the previous round, and are thus Ineligible in the current round. The six small boxes in the centre represent the various types of actions the Eligible factions may select. The first faction to execute picks one of the three boxes in the left column. After that the next faction to execute may only pick the small box next to the one already chosen by the first player. It's either that or pass. If you pass, you do early some spare change and you will remain Eligible next round.

There are four Propaganda cards in the deck, shuffled into each quarter of the deck. When you come to a Propaganda round, you do a victory check and then a reset. If a faction achieves its victory condition, the game ends. Else there is a bunch of things to do. Each faction gets to earn some money, based on different criteria. The US support for the Cuban government may drop, resulting in less aid money and more costly actions by the government. Both the government and M26 has the opportunity to influence support levels. The Syndicate's casinos can be reopened. Government soldiers must return to bases or to cities. These Propaganda rounds are like wintering rounds in some wargames. Players must prepare for it to help themselves as well as to hinder their opponents. Just watching out for the victory conditions is not sufficient. You need to pave the way as best you can for the next cycle.

The box at the top left is the US Alliance box, indicating how friendly US is towards the Cuban government. US begins the game friendly, but as the game progresses, the relationship will tend to sour, and the Cuban government will find it more and more expensive to perform actions. US foreign aid will dry up too.

If no one wins an instant victory from the Propaganda rounds, the game ends after the fourth Propaganda round, and victory is determined by scoring. This scoring is measured by how far a faction is from its objective.

The Play

Allen and I mostly blundered through our first game. As a 2-player game, we each played two factions - he was the government and the syndicate, while I played M26 and DR. The alternative of using AI rules to run non-player factions would have made things more complex. Still, it was quite a lot to digest, because each faction is different, and you need to know not only your own faction but also your opponents'. We fiddled with the various moving parts and forged ahead in trial-and-error mode. We were quite clueless on strategy, making it up as we went. Despite all that, it was a lot of fun. I felt very immersed in the setting. I agonised over how to recruit more guerrillas, how to flee from the government forces, how to instigate opposition and also how to find the money to do all these. I made plenty of mistakes, which was part of the fun. Now that I have completed one game, I have a better idea what not to do, but I think I will need more plays to know for sure what I should do.

One of the earliest mistakes I made was not harassing the government right from the get-go. At each Propaganda round, the US support will decrease if the government doesn't maintain 18 points of support. It's not too hard to snipe at the government to bring the support level down, but I neglected it, and the government continued to enjoy US support - i.e. cheap actions and also foreign aid. Initially I thought the government being rich was a given, but later on when US support eventually dwindled, I realised that it could be brought to its knees financially. I should have tried to force it into this corner much earlier.

One other mistake I made was not realising the importance of bases. You need to remove two guerillas to place a base, which significantly weakens your power. However once you have a base, you are able to recruit much more efficiently. I only realised this around mid game. Another area where I did poorly was money. For certain stretches during the game, both M26 and DR experienced droughts. Running out of money is bad. Many actions can be done in multiple locations, just that you need to pay for each location. Being able to afford that means you are playing much more efficiently, achieving multiple objectives within the same round. There are not many ways to make money. Few actions make money. There are at most four Propaganda rounds where factions can earn some money. Keeping an eye out on financials is important. In my case I wonder whether I had been spending too recklessly.

Allen and I gradually experimented with the various action types. We started with the basics, like recruitment, movement and fighting. As we explored, we found that the special actions could be very powerful. It was through such fiddling that we learned to make better use of our factions' unique abilities.

My two insurgent factions clumsily stumbled over each other. Strictly speaking their goals do not conflict, but some of their actions can cause harm to each other. DR can cause the people in a location to become neutral. If the people are previously actively supporting the government, then it's a big help to M26 shifting them to neutral. However if the people are previously actively opposing the government, then it's a big step back for M26, negating their hard work. I fumbled over what to do with my two factions for quite a while. Then I came up with an idea. I should let them focus on different provinces, and after they had done what they needed, they could just march to each other's provinces. They could just swap! DR needed to control the population, while M26 wanted the people to be actively opposing the government. These two goals could coexist. The people in a location could be controlled by DR and at the same time oppose the government. This all sounded perfect, but when I tried to execute my plan, I found that it was easier said than done. I had to contend with Allen's actions. His government troops were hunting me down, and his syndicate gangsters were bribing my fighters.

In the last quarter of the game (between the 3rd and 4th Propaganda cards), Allen managed to execute two event cards which made the government very powerful. One event gave him one free Assault with any Sweep action. Normally the government needs to execute a Sweep action to expose guerrillas and then execute an Assault action to kill them. Being able to launch one free Assault meant his units were suddenly much more deadlier. The other event allowed his police force to act like soldiers. They could enter the countryside to hunt for guerrillas. Normally the police can only attack in cities and economic centres. Allen had a deadly combo, and I could not come up with any countermove.

Look at that show of power in Havana! Dark blue cubes are soldiers, and light blue ones are policemen.

Allen's government (blue) and syndicate (green) factions have secured the north western part of Cuba. He has built a base (round disc) in the province next to Havana, which will help him launch further attacks to other provinces.

Las Villas is getting very crowded, and these guys are not here to peacefully watch the World Cup together. I have two M26 bases here (red discs), and I am desperate not to lose them. They took much effort to build. If anyone attacks me, they must kill all my guerrillas before they can start destroying my bases. So effectively guerrillas protect bases. Also having guerillas which are not yet exposed will further protect bases from the government, because the government needs to expose the guerillas first before it can target them.

There was one time I had this event which gave me a free M26 base and a free M26 guerilla in Havana, the capital city. At first I thought this was rather pointless, since Havana was crawling with soldiers and policemen. These free units wouldn't last. However when I thought a bit more about it, I realised it was a golden opportunity. Because of the dense population, when I did a recruitment drive, having the base allowed me to recruit a massive army of volunteers. Havana suddenly teemed with revolutionists. I took the opportunity to sway the people's support, greatly reducing the support for the government. Eventually Allen still managed to kill off my guerrillas, but at least I had fun and I had done some damage. Totally worth it! Maybe.

My DR (yellow) guerrillas rushed into Santiago de Cuba, which Allen had not been defending strongly. I have attacked, thus exposing all my fighters. Santiago de Cuba is now under DR control, since there are more DR pieces than all other pieces combined.

We reached the fourth Propaganda card without anyone achieving instant victory. In a 2-player game where we each played two factions, we needed both our factions to achieve their victory conditions in order to win instantly. We couldn't even get one of our factions to achieve its victory condition. So we had to execute the relevant steps of the final Propaganda card, and then determine victory by scoring. The faction with the highest score was the syndicate belonging to Allen. The government did moderately well. Both my insurgent factions fared rather poorly. The revolution failed miserably. History was rewritten.

Those green discs with the 3-coin icons are open casinos, open because the 3-coin icons are showing. This was the late game. Notice that the US relationship at the top left had dropped to rock bottom.

This was near game end. Allen's government (blue) and syndicate (green) factions have secured the north western part of Cuba. Government forces have also successfully mounted a number of excursions to other parts of Cuba to hunt down the insurgents. DR (yellow) only controls two locations. M26 (red) has managed to rouse the people to oppose the government somewhat, but the momentum is not strong enough. The syndicate has an amazing eight open casinos, mainly because one of the late event cards allowed Allen to reopen all casinos. Such perfect timing.

My DR guerrillas which have previously invaded Santiago de Cuba have now retreated back to Sierra Maestra. Since they are now exposed, I want to get them away before the government forces counterattack.

The Thoughts

Allen has all three games in the COIN series so far. We decided to try Cuba Libre first because it looks like the simplest. The estimated play time is 3 hours. We played for about 6 hours! Digesting the rules took some time, and having to control two different factions made it even more challenging. Strategy-wise we were really going by trial-and-error, experimenting different approaches to see which worked and which didn't. Despite the long play time, the incessant referring to the rules and the frequent rules discussions, I had a blast! This is a very immersive game. The arena is small and you have to fight for every space. There are not many pieces on the board, and every piece counts, every piece is valuable. There is a lot of pushing backwards and forwards, measures and counter-measures. It's constantly dancing on a knife edge. Beat down an enemy here, and he may come back somewhere else. Neglect one location, and your enemy will soon exploit it. It is a tight map, and with four factions vying for power, you are constantly reminded that it's a small small world.

The interrelationship between the factions is very interesting. 2-player games with each player controlling 2 factions is an interesting twist, but I think the game is best played with four players, each controlling one faction. Well, maybe I was just overwhelmed by the split personality disorder thing that controlling two factions gave me. Factions sometimes can work together, sometimes joining forces to fight a common enemy, sometimes politely going around each other so that both can achieve their own goals without hindering each other. This is a very different feeling from other multiplayer games where factions are generally the same and have similar goals. In Cuba Libre the nature of each faction is unique. This is what makes the game feel so thematic.

This should so so so be classified as an Ameritrash game, but the mechanisms feel very Euro. It's open information. There is little dice-rolling. Component count is low. The game feels very succinct. It even uses wooden cubes and discs! Yet it is also definitely not the type of Eurogame that has a strong mechanism but an interchangeable theme. Everything ties back to the story. I guess you can say it's a special breed of wargame. Or perhaps there's no need to try to pigeonhole it.

I'm a little sorry I didn't do Che justice in my play. He is probably turning in his grave now.

Wilderness War

Plays: 2Px1.

The Game

Wilderness War is a game I bought 10 years ago in Taiwan, and only recently got around to play it. Back then I had underestimated its complexity (or overestimated my capability). Later, even after I started to delve into more complex games, I still never quite found the time or will to play it, even after I bought the deluxe game board (the original game board was just thin poster paper). This year, because of my new year resolution of planning one hard-to-arrange game per month, I finally managed to bring it to the table.

Wilderness War is a card driven game, like Twilight Struggle, Paths of Glory, and Washington's War. The cards contain events which bring out much of the story, and can also be played for their operations points to execute various actions on the board. The historical backdrop is the French and Indian War in North America, i.e. the same as Martin Wallace's A Few Acres of Snow. This is a rare topic in boardgames. This period in history was a turning point for North America, when the English defeated the French to become the main colonial power. However soon after this the War of Independence occurred, and the colonies broke away to become USA.

One player plays the English, and the other the French. The objective of the game is to reach a certain victory point (VP) level, while the English can also win by capturing specific locations. VP's scored by both sides are always net off, like in Twilight Struggle, so it's a tug of war on the score track. VP's are gained mainly by winning battles, capturing or destroying fortifications, and raiding. The game comes with a few scenarios, varying between 3 to 8 hours of gameplay. Victory conditions differ slightly depending on scenario. Each scenario lasts a fixed number of years, and each year has two rounds, a round being a complete play of a hand of cards.

The board shows the French colony in the northeast and the British colony in the south. In between is a huge swath of forests and mountains. There are three main fronts in this war. In the centre both the British and the French have built fortifications along rivers, which allows them to quickly send troops to the front to fight. In the west the French has forts and allied Indian settlements in the wilderness which can be used as bases to raid the English colony. The French will want to raid, and the English needs to build fortifications to stop that, or bring the fight to the raiders. The third front is the Louisbourg front, where only the English, if they are able to draw an amphibious landing card, can attack the French port fortress of Louisbourg. If they are successful, they can further press on along the coastline to attack Quebec and even Montreal eventually. The French, having a weaker navy, has no option to launch an attack in the opposite direction.

You can say there is a fourth front in this war - the raiding game. Raiding scores points, and the French which tends to have more Red Indian friends, has much incentive to raid the English colonies which has a long border.

This is the central front at the start of the game. This is looking southwards, i.e. looking at USA from Canada (although neither country existed at the time of this war). Those boxes in the foreground are holding boxes for generals. Instead of stacking so many pieces on the board, you can place troops and subordinate generals lead by one particular general in his holding box. At this moment the English has three generals in the vicinity (red coats), and the French has two (white coats), one on the main board itself and the other in the holding box of the lead general.

This is the western front at the start of the game. The French has one general rubbing his hands greedily getting ready for raiding. The English has started putting up fortifications, but there are still gaps.

A full view of the board. Square (and rectangular) spaces are cultivated spaces, round spaces are wilderness, and triangle spaces are mountains. When regular troops move, they must stop in the next space if they pass through a wilderness space without friendly fortifications.

There are three types of troops - regulars, auxiliaries and militia. Regulars fight well in the colonies, i.e. cultivated spaces. They can besiege. They can build fortifications. However moving regular troops in the wilderness is difficult. They must stop in the next space when they move through forests, unless there is a friendly fortification. If they lose a battle in the wilderness, they must be able to retreat to a cultivated space or a friendly fortification. Else they all die. Auxiliaries (Red Indians, British rangers and French coureurs) don't suffer these penalties. They move quickly. They can raid. But they are much weaker, and they can't besiege or build fortifications. When fighting in cultivated spaces, if you don't have regular troops but your opponent does, you suffer a penalty. When fighting in the wilderness, if you don't have auxiliaries but your opponent does, you suffer a penalty too. The use of regulars and auxiliaries in this game is one of its interesting features.

Movement on the board is mostly centred around leaders. The action cost for moving regular troops individually is high, so you will need to rely on your leaders to lead armies. Some leaders can lead as many as 7 units. Auxiliaries are much cheaper to move individually, but if you intend to use them to raid, you'd better have some leaders guiding them. Without leaders, raids tend to be rather iffy.

Players use the same deck of cards. Some cards can be used by only one side as events. Drawing your opponent's event is bad in that you can only use it for operation points, but it is also good in that you have denied your opponent this event which may be quite useful to him.

The Play

On 4 Apr Allen and I had our first outing with Wilderness War. Since this is a game about British ascendency and French demise, I let him play the British.

We played the shortest scenario, 1757 - 1759, so there were only six rounds, i.e. six hands of cards to play. The scenario started off with many troops already near the central front. We further escalated that by consolidating troops there and combining them into two huge stacks. The situation remained so for the whole game. We had some battles, and we continued to send reinforcements. It was an escalation that neither of us were able to back down from. As the French I had to commit all my resources here, because I received fewer new troops than the English did. As the English, Allen could afford to send some new troops to other fronts. Thankfully the French was still strong in the early game, and I managed to win some battles and even capture a fort. However I did not really break through that front, and we more or less maintained a nervous stalemate on this front throughout the game.

In scenarios starting in 1757, armies at the central front are already on the brink of battle.

To simplify the situation at the central front, we kept the army commanders (i.e. the lead generals) on the board, while we moved the subordinate generals to the holding boxes of the commanders. I moved my units there too. Round units are auxiliaries, square units are regulars. These match the shapes of locations on the map.

To make things even easier to see, I spread out my units, so that I could more easily add up their combat values. The four on the upper left are Red Indians of various tribes. The two on the upper right are coureurs, French soldiers adept at fighting in the wilderness. The top numbers on them are their combat values. The bottom numbers are their movement values. The square units at the bottom are regular troops. The numbers on the left are the combat values, and those on the right are movement values. When injured, a unit is flipped over to show the weakened side with a diminished combat value on a white background.

Allen's English army. Those with a red background are Englishmen. Those with a green background are provincial troops.

The situation at the central front kept escalating. We were both sending more and more troops here. In hindsight, this might not be a good idea. In the deck there is one Smallpox card which hurts many units at one go, especially when played on a crowded spot.

At the end of every year (i.e. every two rounds), there is a wintering phase. Regular troops need to return to civilisation (i.e. cultivated spaces), or suffer heavy attrition. Forts and stockades in the wilderness can accommodate some regular troops, but they have limited capacity. This photo shows the end of autumn, so troops at the central front have now all temporarily retreated.

I was very lucky with the Louisbourg front. In early 1757 I played a French Squadron card which prevented the English from making an amphibious assault on Louisbourg for the rest of the year. This meant I could ignore defending Louisbourg, at least for the short term. That was only the start of my good luck. Throughout the whole game, Allen did not draw a single Amphibious Assault card! There are three in the deck, and the cards get reshuffled not only when they are exhausted but also when a specific card is played. In one of the rounds I drew all three of them! No Amphibious Assault meant Allen could not attack Louisbourg at all. He had two good generals there waiting to pounce, and he had also deployed troops there to be ready to launch an attack. Those were all wasted.

The Louisbourg front was uneventful.

On the western front, I eagerly did some raiding, and found out the hard way that it wasn't exactly a piece of cake. The chances of successfully raiding were not exactly high, and the risk of injuring my auxiliary units was high. I realised I really needed leaders to help improve my odds. I did manage to do some raids, but later on Allen assembled a strike force and came after me. I only had weak units which were no match at all, so I had to keep retreating, burning stockades as I abandoned them, so that Allen didn't get the pleasure of scoring points when he captured them. I kept retreating until I reached Niagara. One of the winning conditions for the English was capturing both Ohio Forks and Niagara. Ohio Forks was near the English colony and had already fallen. I could not allow Niagara to fall too. His western army was fast approaching. Niagara was not too far from my French colony, so I could quickly redeploy troops there, but I needed troops in the central front too.

This is the western front. I succeeded in making some raids. Upon completion of any raid attempt, regardless of success or failure, the raiding party escapes (teleports) back to the nearest fortification or Red Indian settlement. This makes raiders hard to catch. This is guerilla warfare. The location where that French general is standing is Ohio Forks, one of the victory objectives of the English. Allen had amassed strong English regular troops and was coming to get me. I did not have French troops to spare to help out here. I could at best do an organised retreat, burning stockades as I went to prevent them from falling into English hands.

The French started the scenario with 4VP. Throughout the game I managed to score more than Allen due to battles and raids, and my score was approaching the 11VP required for a sudden death victory. In case no other victory conditions were met by the end of the scenario, I would win by simply having VP's. So the pressure was on Allen to capture Niagara, which was his only realistic option by then, because it would be much harder to take away my 11VP within the little time remaining. I did a gamble. I sent more troops to the central front, threatening to defeat Allen's army for that last 1VP I needed to reach 11VP. This was just trickery, and it worked. Allen quickly consolidated his troops in one spot in anticipation for the battle. Then on my next turn, I took the chicken way - I captured an English stockade which Allen had left undefended. That was worth 1VP too, and I reached 11VP to win.

This was the end of our game. That stockade in the centre had been captured and turned into a French (blue) stockade.

After the game, I rechecked and reread the rules, and found out that I had taken advantage of Allen in more ways than one. I had incorrectly interpreted that sudden death meant the game ended immediately when one side reached 11VP. The correct way is to check for this condition only at the end of a year. So we should not have ended the game where we did, and my devious plan might not have been feasible at all because I had left Niagara poorly defended. Another mistake I made was regarding the French Squadron card. I played it in 1757, and it was removed from the game. Upon removal of this card, the French was not allowed to make any more naval moves. I had forgotten about that and in 1759 had redeployed some troops from Louisbourg via a naval move to reinforce the central front.

There was a third way I gained an advantage. There is a Massacre card which kills all Red Indians present when the enemy successfully assaults a fort or fortress. Allen played it on me, but he played it as a regular event, instead of as a response event when I captured his fortification. He had to take it back, and since I knew he had that card, I delayed my attack on his fort until he used the card for operations points. If he had played it at the right moment, it would have been a devastating blow to me because I had many Red Indians in my army.

I think we should do a rematch. :-)

The Thoughts

I find Wilderness War a game that gives me a lot of "feel". Perhaps it is because it has a rarely-used setting. The game feels unique. It has a strong character. The event cards really bring out the story. Much of your strategic manoeuvring has dependency on the event cards you draw, so to a certain extent you are at the mercy of fate. In most cases you will eventually draw the card you need, but the question is when. You need to make the most of what you are dealt. You grab an opportunity that arises. You try to do damage control when you get a poor hand, or when your opponent has a powerful hand. Every fresh hand of cards is exciting because you need to consider all the possibilities it offers you, how it can support your current strategy on the board, and whether you need to switch tactics on some fronts. Knowledge of the card deck is important. There are some powerful events you need to watch out for, e.g. the Massacre and Smallpox cards mentioned above. You need to anticipate event cards that your opponent may play, and prepare for them. If you happen to draw these cards, even though you can't use them as events, the fact that you are holding the cards means you know opponent won't have these options this round. So you can discount these threats when you plan your round. I find it an interesting design to have players share the same deck of cards.

The execution details like leaders, movement, battles and sieges are nothing particularly noteworthy. They work. What I do like is the additional touches that give the game some character, e.g. regulars vs auxiliaries.

Compared to A Few Acres of Snow, Wilderness War is more detailed, more complex and requires more effort. A Few Acres of Snow uses an abstract way to represent armies and battles. They are represented by cards and there are no actual units on the board. Before I played Wilderness War I wondered whether I would like it more than A Few Acres of Snow because it is more detailed. Now that I have played it, I find that it doesn't diminish what I think of A Few Acres of Snow. Not having detailed control over armies is not really an issue. In fact sometimes micromanaging armies can feel tedious. In A Few Acres of Snow, you decide what cards to buy to augment your personal deck. You are at the mercy of the order of cards being drawn from your deck, but what cards get added to your deck is completely under your control. In Wilderness War, the uncertainty is not only in the timing of cards appearing, but also whether the cards are being drawn by the "right" player. In A Few Acres of Snow, the difficulty is your deck grows to become more and more unwieldy, and it becomes harder and harder to draw what you need when you need it. In Wilderness War, the shared card deck presents the players different hands every round, and the challenge is making your hand work for you, not just for that round, but also for the longer term. At the tactical level, i.e. where you spend cards as operations points, you are restricted by whether you draw high numbered cards. At the strategic level, where events dictate reinforcements, allow amphibious assaults and trigger many other powerful effects, you need to puzzle out how to best use the events and the order of their appearance. A lot of excitement comes from seeing what hand you are dealt next, and whether a carefully planned event card play will work out. These two games are very different, despite trying to simulate the same difficulties faced by the two colonial powers in this war.

Here I Stand

Plays: 3Px1.

My first game of Here I Stand took 9 hours, but I barely felt the time pass, or my hunger, until we forced ourselves to take a break to eat. I was ravenous when I noticed my hunger, and ate two servings. It was something cooked by Allen himself, so his wife would probably be shocked to learn that I had braved two servings. This is how absorbing the game is. Even afterwards I kept thinking about it.

The Game

Here I Stand is about the religious reformation in Europe, the rise of the Protestants. It is a Card Driven Game (CDG) and a wargame, designed for 6-players, and has the many aspects of multi-player conflict games - diplomacy, alliances, negotiations etc. The six factions are the Protestants, the Papacy, the English, the French, the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans. There are various non-player minor powers in the game, like Scotland, Venice, Austria-Hungary and Genoa. The main ways to win are gaining victory points (VP's) and conquering major cities (called keys). The six factions have very different ways of earning victory points.

The Protestants and the Papacy gain VP based on the religious beliefs of the locations on the map. Every city has two characteristics - what the main religion is and who has political control of the city - and they are independent of each other. E.g. technically Rome can convert to Protestanism while still under Papal rule. The Protestants gain VP for controlling Holy Roman Emperor (HRE) elector cities (all German), for Bible translation, and for disgracing Catholic debaters in religious debates. The Papacy can gain VP by building St Peter's Basilica and burning Protestant debaters as heretics. England gains VP by producing heirs, and by converting their cities to Protestanism. The game models King Henry VIII's progress from one wife to the next, each time hoping she will produce a healthy male heir. How's that for unusual? France builds art galleries for VP. The Ottomans do pirating for VP. The colonial powers (Hapsburgs, French, English) can do exploration, colonisation, and conquests to gain VP. Most powers also gain VP by conquering keys.

Game setup. The colours of the cities indicate the initial controlling power. Yellow is Hapsburgs, red is English, dark blue is French, dark green is Ottoman and purple is the Papacy. Grey is independent cities, i.e. they are up for grabs. Light blue is Scotland, pink is Genoa, orange is Venice, light green is Austria-Hungary. Squares are important cities, called keys, which are worth victory points. Circles are normal cities. 8-pointed stars are fortresses. The colour zones are language zones. Yellow is Spanish, blue is French, red is English, faded greyish brown is German, purple is Italian, natural coloured is other languages.

Components for the English player. Is this overwhelming or what. Later I discovered that some of these markers actually belong to the Protestant player, e.g. the English-speaking debaters in the top row (white square markers with a red strip on top).

The player mat for England summarises the actions available to the English player and the action costs. The starting monarch is Henry VIII, and he can be replaced by new monarchs. The marital status track shows that he is currently married to his first wife. All the pink counters are his potential future wives. The square markers are used for marking keys controlled by the English player. At this moment the English already controls four keys, so four markers have been placed on the map. When a fifth key is conquered, the next marker will be moved to the board, revealing the space on the mat, which may give more VP and 1 more card draw.

There is a separate sheet for recording the Protestant vs Papacy struggle. These counters are debaters. Papal debaters have a purple stripe and they are multi-lingual. Protestant debaters speak either German (brown), English (red, and I only have one now), or French (none yet). The partially shown Protestant Spaces Track below is for marking the number of Protestant cities. It indicates how many VP's the Protestants and the Papacy get.

Things that the factions can do differ and reflect history. Events on the cards, some mandatory, guide the game to develop in a generally historically plausible direction. They also force important historical events to occur, although sequence and timing may deviate from history, e.g. new monarchs, and the creation of a Protestant state (actually an alliance of German cities).

This being a CDG, on your turn you always play a card, to either use the number on it (ops value) to do actions your faction can do, or trigger the event on the card. Some events impact only one or a few factions. When you get something that doesn't impact you, you can still use it for negotiation, either threatening to unleash a bad card, or fishing for a good deal using a good card.

The Play

First, sorry Afif, I had planned to rope you in for a game, but this session was arranged quite last minute, and I decided to be less ambitious and stick to a 3-player game and not try to shoot for 6 players. The game is playable 3 to 6, but is recommended for 3 or 6.

Han, Allen and I played this at Allen's place. As Allen and I started the setup, his father-in-law looked for a while, and gently commented, "This is a game for professionals" before leaving us to our crazy endeavour. Han played the Ottomans and the French, Allen the Hapsburgs and the Papacy, and I the English and the Protestants. We made quite a lot of rules mistakes, discovering and correcting some during the game, and realising some only after the game. But we did get a good feel of the game. Well, after spending 9 hours on it, there is no excuse for not doing so.

As King Henry VIII of the English, in the early game I tried to focus my energy on, ahem, producing a healthy heir. By default the English is headed for disaster, in having Queen Mary I as the next ruler. She is a devout Catholic and supports the Papacy, and if she comes into power, the English will suffer many disadvantages, including difficulties in converting to Protestanism, which is one of the ways the English earns VP. To steer the English away from this fate, I needed to be "productive". If I was half successful, I would at least get Queen Elizabeth I to succeed Queen Mary I and try to undo the damage. In the best case, I'd get a healthy King Edward VI, and Queen Mary I would never come to the throne. I managed to persuade the Papacy (Allen) to grant me a divorce with my first wife, which helped speed things up a little in my progression to subsequent wives and thus attempts at a good heir. I eventually succeeded in achieving the best result with wife #4. So no wife #5 or #6 as per history. Staying focused on switching wives was no easy feat, because this required using a very powerful Home Card (a permanent card held by a faction), which could otherwise be used for many other things. It was worth 5 ops points. While making babies, I had a modest secondary goal of subduing Scotland. I managed to strike a deal with the French (Han) to not interfere. It required me to declare war on the Hapsburgs (Allen), but I thought since I was protected by the English Channel, I would be quite safe. Unfortunately my campaign into Scotland was much more costly and took much longer than I had expected, mostly due to Allen playing the Unsanitary Camp card on me. A third of my troops died of diarrhea. Owww...! Allen managed to draw this Unsanitary Camp card 5 out of 6 game turns that we played! Han and I took turns to suffer diarrhea. Baaad...

How many games can boast a Henry's Wives' Pregnancy Chart? You roll a die every time Henry VIII marries a new wife, hoping to get a big number. Once you achieve the best result (healthy baby boy), Henry VIII remarries no more, which is the case in this photo.

The Henry's Marital Status marker will progress no further. Since I have conquered Edinburgh, a key, the fifth key space is revealed because I have moved the square marker onto Edinburgh.

The English did not do much other fighting. Partly because of diarrhea, and partly because later on they focused on converting to Protestanism. Since my other faction was the Protestants, the English proactively doing conversion also helped me. Playing as the Protestants, I had no country and no political control markers on the board at the start of the game. I could gain troops by converting HRE elector cities, but they couldn't move or attack or be attacked. My starting area, Germany, was all Hapsburgs-controlled politically. I knew that there was a Schmalkaldic League event that would establish a Protestant country sooner or later, which would create a state of war between me and both the Hapsburgs and the Papacy, so I tried to delay this event by being less aggressive in converting cities to Protestanism. The event required at least 12 Protestant cities, so I tried to stay just below that. I kept myself busy with Bible translation work, and with converting the 6 elector cities. Bible translation was slow, but whenever the New Testament was fully translated, or the Full Bible was translated, the Protestants gained a bunch of conversion attempts. I managed to delay the Schmalkaldic League event until the last possible moment, buying myself much time to prepare for it. However once the Protestant country was born, the Hapsburgs (Allen) came knocking. I did not have many troops and had a tough time holding them back. Now I realise it's partly because I had forgotten to add two army generals that should have come with this event.

The Protestants have converted all six HRE elector cities to Protestanism. Once converted, they gain some soldiers. The Reformation starts in Wittenberg, which is where Martin Luther (brown counter) is. Cities which have converted to Protestanism get their marker flipped to the white-centre side, e.g. Lubeck, Magdeburg, Leipzig and Worms in this photo.

The Schmalkaldic League event has occurred, and the Protestants have a state now. We played one rule wrong here. German cities that are still Catholic (e.g. Regensburg and Salzburg) should have stayed under political control of the Hapsburgs and not switched to Protestant political control.

The Hapburgs (Allen), French (Han) and Ottomans (Han) did much fighting. Han was aggressive in conquering keys. Using the Ottomans he also did piracy. The Hapsburgs were rich (had many cards), and were good at colonising and conquering, but the challenge for them was fighting multi-front wars. The French (Han) harassed them at the French-Spanish border and along the French-German-Belgian borders. After the Ottomans (Han) defeated Austria-Hungary, the Hapsburgs automatically intervened and had to fight that front too to protect their second capital Vienna. All-in-all, the Hapsburgs were kept rather busy.

The Ottomans are the only power which can build corsairs and can conduct piracy.

A big battle in south eastern France between the French and the Hapsburgs. Units in silhouettes are mercenaries. They are cheaper to recruit, but many event cards affect them, so it is more risky to use them.

The Papacy (Allen) spent time building St Peter's Basilica, and was particularly fond of initiating theological debates with me. I, as the Protestants, could not ignore the challenge and initiated some debates myself. Debates were risky business and the rewards were often not much, unless the victory was so overwhelming that the Catholic debater burned the Protestant debater as a heretic, or the Protestant debater disgraced the Catholic debater into retirement. Then the victor would earn VP. In the early game the Protestant debaters were overall smarter, and only in the later game the Papacy gained more debaters and the two sides became more equally matched. In total Allen managed to burn 3 of my debaters, leveraging his advantage that his Catholic debaters were multi-lingual, whereas my Protestant debaters were split into 3 language groups - German, French and English. I only managed to disgrace one Catholic debater. The Papacy could raise armies, but did not do much militarily. Allen focused on the religious battle against me.

The Ottomans (Han) were militaristic and this suited Han's style well. The Hapsburgs' (Allen) committed defense of Vienna halted his advance, so he switched his efforts to piracy in the Mediterranean and sending Suleiman (his Sultan and an exceptional general) to battle in Spain and Italy. The Ottomans even managed to conquer Barcelona, a key. The French under Han's control turned out to be less civilised than their historical version, never building any art galleries and instead went about fighting wars, expanding their borders. They conquered Genoa (a minor power), and even invaded Italy. The Papacy (Allen) did not excommunicate the French king. I think Allen just forgot, since he was so busy with his Hapsburgs. But he did remember to excommunicate my English King Henry VIII, the moment that London converted to Protestanism. Grumble grumble. I guess to the Papacy the religious war was more important than lowly earthly wars.

Enemy at the gates. Sultan Suleiman of the Ottomans is knocking at Vienna's door, but Charles V of the Hapsburgs have come to its defense.

The French (blue) invaded Italy to grab some of the keys (Milan and Florence).

The diplomatic status display. So many wars in progress now. The numbers in the table are ops points costs to declare war, which depend on who the two parties are. E.g. it is very costly for the Papacy and the Hapsburgs to declare war on each other because they have a close relationship.

The Ottomans have conquered Barcelona, and are now attacking Seville. The French are also advancing into Spain from the north.

By game turn 6, the Protestants approached 25VP, which was one of the winning criteria. With the English (me) performing conversion in English speaking cities, while the Protestants (also me) did conversion in French and German speaking cities, I was able to push beyond 25VP, so that even if the Papacy managed to Counter-Reform some of the cities, at worst I would fall back to 25VP at the end of this game turn. The other faction approaching victory was the Ottomans, but it was a different victory condition that Han was shooting for. If he could conquer just one more key, he would achieve an instant military victory. That last key he needed was Rome itself, the capital of the Papacy! It all came down to one final dice throw... and boom! Rome fell to Sultan Suleiman, a much more impressive victory than capturing Vienna, which in history the Ottomans tried but failed.

Protestanism has spread in England and eastern France. The Ottoman army was beaten back from Spain, but they still had a token force holding Barcelona. The main Ottoman army is now invading Italy. The French have conquered Genoa (pink square now with a blue square marker on it). A Hapsburg army is now attacking the weakly defended Protestant cities in Germany. Edinburgh in Scotland has been conquered by the English.

The Papacy has taken Florence and driven out the French, but the Ottomans have landed in Ravenna, and conquered it from the Papacy.

The Ottomans preparing to attack Rome.

Rome falls to the Ottomans.

The VP chart when the game ended. Hapsburgs 14, Papacy 16, English 21, French 22, Ottomans 23, Protestants 25.

The Thoughts

Here I Stand is a very engrossing game. It is an ambitious design, and its scope is wide. It takes much time investment, not just in playing the game, but also in reading the rules beforehand. I don't think this is a game that you can teach someone else. Whoever wants to play must read the rules himself. There are many rules, but none is very complicated. It's just that there are so many rules you shouldn't expect to remember all. Just keep the rulebook handy when you play. The player aids are not just helpful reminders. They are necessities. One good tip to learn the game and to gain a clear overview is to read the 20-minutes overview article which can be found at www.boardgamegeek.com.

Playing Here I Stand made me think of a number of things. Do I play games for the fun experience or for the intellectual competition? How much luck is acceptable in a complex game? How much luck is tolerable in a 9-hour long game? In Here I Stand there is luck in the card draw (e.g. the Unsanitary Camp that Allen unleashed on Han and I turn after turn) and there is luck in die rolls. Many important events and battles hinge on drawing the right card or getting the required die roll. There are many events throughout the game so you can say that the luck in both card draws and die rolls evens out eventually, but I still feel that despite your best preparations, there is always a luck factor that you are dependent on. To my own surprise, I still enjoyed the game immensely, despite the diarrhea my soldiers suffered. There are still many decisions you need to make, and there is much you can do to work towards victory and to improve your chances of success. There is a Chinese saying, that it is for man to plan, but for heavens to grant success (谋事在人，成事在天).

We did a 3-player game, but I can see that the 6-player game would be the most interesting, because there would be more negotiations and interactions among players, and there won't be pairs of factions automatically being allied to each other. The English would have a dilemma when converting to Protestanism, because by doing so they would be helping the Protestants. In our game we intentionally avoided some actions which would not make sense thematically, although not forbidden by the rules, e.g. the French making an attack for the sake of helping the Ottomans on their next turn. However the 6-player game will likely take longer because of the increased negotiations, especially if players want to make secret discussions away from the table, which the rules allow.

Here I Stand is immersive and rewarding. Due to the width it is trying to cover, not all aspects can be presented in detail and some are more abstracted than others, e.g. the exploration, colonisation and conquest aspect. Some aspects are abstracted into a single event card, e.g. a revolt in Egypt. This means sometimes the outcome of an event comes down to a die roll. This is something you need to be ready to accept, knowing that in the wider scheme of things, a few bad rolls will not completely kill you, and there is still the multiplayer diplomacy aspect that you need to use to your advantage, e.g. allying with others to get your enemy off your back. In this sense multiplayer games are self-balancing. Everyone can try to work together to drag down an obvious leader.

The exploration, colonisation and conquests in the new world are more abstracted. The English (red) has explored the Mississippi River. The Hapsburgs (yellow) have explored St. Lawrence River and conquered the Inca. The French (blue) has circumnavigated the globe.

The Revolt in Egypt card is an abstraction of an off-board event impacting the Ottoman. The Ottomans are forced to commit soldiers to this card until the revolt is put down.

The CDG system works very well here. When you get your hand of cards, how do you make the most of the event cards, and how do you make the most of the ops points that you get. Do you use the event or the ops points? You have plenty of choices and also plenty of hard decisions. Even declaring war is no simple matter. It costs ops points, and you can only do it during a diplomacy phase, not any time you like. No sneaky betrayals.

I am reminded of a PC game that I used to play, Europa Universalis II. The PC games covers an even longer period, and also has events which make the game very rich in historical detail. Now I am tempted to boot up this old game again.

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Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

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