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. 

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. 

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. 

Cthulhu Wars

This is Han's game, and it has a ton of miniatures. This box you see is just for the basic components, including the game board, the player boards and the player markers. However you cannot fit the miniatures into this box. There are at least two other huge boxes needed for all the miniatures in the game. When you need to bring this game to game night, you'll be carrying several bags like you're going on a trip. Or to war. 

Cthulhu Wars is an area control dudes-on-a-map wargame. You play the Great Old Ones competing to dominate Earth. Every player controls a different faction. Some basic game mechanisms apply to all factions, but each faction has its own set of abilities, units, and ways to score points. One thing everyone has in common is the cultists. You need cultists at interdimensional gates to summon your monsters. Monsters come in three classes - small, medium and large. Your large monster is your Great Old One, the lord of your faction. This is a point scoring game. Sorry that doesn't sound very wargamey, but I assure you there is still lots of warring. Some of your points are public, but some are kept secret. So you don't know for sure who is the true lead player and how close they are to winning. One of the basic ways to score points is to be in control of gates. You score points every round. 

This is the player board for one of the factions. They are all different. At the start of a round, you receive actions points, and this is marked using the track near the top. Not everyone gets the same number of action points. Factions have different ways to generate action points. Cultists in play are one way to generate action points, but there are other ways too. Whenever you perform an action, you spend action points. Once you run out, you can't do anything else and need to wait for everyone else to also use up their action points. 

The player board lists all your faction specific units, their combat strengths and their special abilities. The six spaces on the right are for your spell books. They specify conditions which you can fulfil in order to earn spell books. Spell books are faction specific abilities. They are all useful. You need to earn all six spell books before you qualify to win. 

Han's copy of the game is all painted. He did all this painting during the pandemic when he was stuck at home. It's a lot of work! 

Cthulhu Wars is a very Ameritrash-style game. You get a majestic view with so many pretty miniatures on the board. Nowadays Ameritrash games incorporate some Eurogame elements. You are not just blindly attacking. You choose how to attack and fighting is a means to an end. You must fully utilise the abilities of your faction to maximise your points. Some factions are natural warmongers. For example there is one which gets monster upgrades whenever a monster survives a battle. Fighting is no longer just about winning, it is also about surviving and coming back stronger. Cthulhu is the king of the seas. It can submerge and disappear and then emerge somewhere else (must be a sea zone) bringing troops. However there are also factions which benefit from coexisting with others. 

One of the stars of the show - Cthulhu

This is a low granularity wargame. You only have a handful of units of each type. You can't spawn units indefinitely. When you need to move units, each unit being moved costs an action point. Moving about takes a lot of energy! You have to use your action points sparingly. Your units can coexist with those of another player. When you enter a territory with units from other factions, you don't automatically attack them. In fact, if you want to attack them, you need to wait for your next turn and spend an action point to do so. Big battles take much coordination to make happen.  

Battles are resolved using dice. Some die faces have no effect, some force enemy units to retreat, and some kill enemy units. You may not necessarily score points by killing enemy units. You should fight only with good reason. Else you are wasting your action points. 

In our game I was rather passive and I focused primarily on getting all my spell books. I did not work much on points. Eventually I did get all my spell books, but not that much sooner than the rest. By then I was rather far behind in points, and it was difficult to catch up. I should have been more aggressive earlier in the game, to make sure I don't fall behind too much. To truly enjoy the game you need to know the characteristics of the factions in play. This shapes how you play. We had a 6-player game. By the time we saw one or two players pulling ahead from the group, we should have already ganged up on them to keep them in check. However most of us were busy learning the game and did not do much leader bashing. I certainly was absorbed in doing my own stuff and stayed out of fights. In hindsight that was unwise. I played a wargame like a Eurogame. That wasn't going to end well. 

The most interesting part of Cthulhu Wars is the distinctness of the factions. Your play experience varies greatly depending on which faction you play. You must learn to make good use of your faction's unique abilities. The game experience also differs depending on the combination of factions in play. If you like the Cthultu theme, you will likely enjoy this. 

Polis: Fight for the Hegemony

This is a game I am not quite qualified to write a serious review about, because I have not properly experienced a full game. Technically I have completed two games, but in both cases our game ended after the first era. A full game can be four eras long, but a victory check is done at the end of every era, so it can end early. I have experienced a full round, but I have not seen how a game can develop in the subsequent eras. 

Polis is a game about the Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece. In Malaysia the game title can be easily misunderstood because here polis means police. This is a two-player war game, the protagonists being the city states of Athens and Sparta. They want to expand their spheres of influence, by military means and political, to bring other city states under their folds. This is not just a wargame but also an economic game. The people need to eat. If you overextend yourself and fail to feed your people, the city states will rebel and leave. If you do not manage your alliance well and lose all credibility, you immediately lose the game. If you manage to last all four eras, you compare points to see who wins. Points come from prestige and population. 

Athens is blue, Sparta is red. The game starts with each side controlling a few city states, those with discs on them. Neutral city states are those black circles with a number. The cubes on the map are your armies and navies. To build an army or navy, you need to spend population as well as resources. You may not reduce the population of any city state to zero. Your population, armies and navies are precious resources. To be able to grow your population, you need to have surplus food. This is something you have to plan carefully for. 

The battle mechanism is a little different from typical wargames. There is no traditional sense of who the attacker is. A battle happens when there are eight or more units in a territory. In each era, there is a limit to how many units one side can have in a territory. The limits for the four eras are 3, 4, 5, 5. This means battles will not occur in the first era. There can be at most six units in a territory, three from a side. In the second era, if both players send four units into a territory, a battle will happen. Battles are resolved using die rolls, so there is some luck.

In the game every city state is represented by a little tile. It specifies the basic population, the maximum growth rate, and the population limit. The cubes placed below the tiles are the population at each city state. If you need to build an army or a navy, you will move these cubes to the main game board.

Resource management is something you need to manage meticulously. If you control a territory you can send soldiers there to collect resources. You can do this once per round. Different territories produce different types of resources. If you focus on collecting only one or two types in the same territory, you will be able to collect more. Usually you want to specialise. You need resources to build armies and navies. Some resources are for trading so that you can earn grain (i.e. food) or silver (i.e. money). Some territories do produce grain, but it is often not enough and you need to import. To be able to trade, you need merchant ships. This is yet another thing you have to manage.

Your merchant ships must have an uninterrupted path to the markets you want to trade with. This means none of territories en route are controlled by your opponent. The number of trades a market performs per round is limited. If your opponent beats you to it, you won't be able to trade even if you have the goods to sell. You will need to wait for the next round. 

One important thing that you will do is to projects. These require many resources. You build temples and statues, and you hold festivals, and so on. Projects give you prestige, either at the end of every round, or at the end of the game, or both. Different city states allow different types of projects. Every round only three projects are available. If you want do a particular project, you need to control a city state which allows that project type. This is an important factor as you decide which city states you want to capture. If a city state with a completed project is captured by the opponent, the ownership of the project goes to the opponent as well. Projects change the value of city states and make them tempting targets.

Each player has one diplomat, called a proxenos. You can use your diplomat to outright buy a city state. This is assimilation by political means. It is expensive, but it is a powerful move. 

The game looks simple. There aren't that many game components. However this is not at all a simple wargame. In fact, it has a complex economic layer. You need to manage your resources, plan your trading and feed your people. There is logistics you need to handle. Resources are scarce, and this makes the game challenging. This is all done in a minimalistic manner with little tedium. I would describe this as a compact game. 

I played two games against Han. In the first game he forgot about storing food, and quickly lost at the end of the first era because he couldn't even feed his capital. In our second game, he miscalculated the prestige part of the game, and lost because it dropped to zero. So we have not yet fully experienced all aspects of the game. We haven't even started going to war. We need to reread the rulebook and try again. 

This game feels real to me, because it is not simplistically sending troops out to fight. To be able to afford a war, you need to ensure you have a solid economical foundation. You need to manage your production, your trading, your logistics, and your population. As you grow your alliance, you have to think about sustainability, because you have more mouths to feed. When you decide to invest in prestigious projects, you need to make sure you are able to defend and keep them. 

Shogun

I used to own Wallenstein, which Shogun is based on. They have mostly the same mechanisms but the map has changed from medieval Germany to medieval Japan. I bought Wallenstein about 20 years ago, but I have not played it for a long time. I recently gave it to a friend who was interested. Playing Shogun immediately felt familiar. The province names are all different now, and the shape of the map too, but the game delivers the same experience.

In Shogun, you score points mainly by controlling provinces with structures. You need to spend money to build those structures, and hopefully after you build them, you can hold on to them and repel any invaders. Every round in the game starts with a planning phase. For each province you control, you have one corresponding province card. Every round you can perform up to 10 actions, and each action can be performed only at one province. To plan an action, you place your province card face down on the action space on your personal board. If you don’t have 10 provinces, you will not be able to perform 10 actions. Sometimes you don’t want to perform a particular action. You can just place a blank card on top of that action space. 

Your player board

Your province cards and bidding cards

You place your province cards on your player board to plan your actions

Three of the actions are related to building structures. Three are related to raising troops. All of these require money, so there is one action for collecting taxes. When you do this, the province becomes unhappy and in future, it may revolt. There is one action for harvesting rice. You need rice to feed your population in winter. If you don’t have enough, you may get revolts and lose provinces. The last two actions are for initiating battles. This is when you attempt to capture an opponent province or an uncontrolled province.

At the start of a round, the order of the first five actions are known, but the rest will only be revealed during the round. Everyone performs the actions simultaneously, except for battles which are executed in player order. You cannot plan 100% accurately since you don’t know for sure the order of all the actions. You may plan to build a structure, but if that province gets captured before the build action is performed, you will be unable to perform that action. You don't on the province anymore. Well, that might not be too bad. The worse situation is you build and then the province gets captured. 

The cards along the bottom determine the order actions will be executed in the current round.

The most eye-catching part of the game is the cube tower. This is the mechanism for battle resolution. Soldiers (and also revolting peasants) are represented by cubes. When two armies clash, they are all thrown into the cube tower, and you determine the outcome of the battle by the cubes which fall through. Some cubes will get stuck inside the tower, and they may only be knocked out in a future battle. Of the cubes which fall through, soldiers of the opposing armies eliminate each other. You win if you still have soldiers left over. They go back to the province on the map. 

The game is played over a fixed number of rounds, and the highest scorer wins. Provinces are grouped into regions. In addition to scoring points for the structures in your provinces, you also score points for having the most of specific structures within regions.

Wallenstein (2002) was unusual as a German game of its era, because of how prominent warfare is in the game. Shogun was published in 2006, four years after Wallenstein. Many aspects of the game are deterministic. You know how much money you have and you know how many new troops and structures you can afford. Uncertainty comes in the order of some of the actions and also where your opponents might attack. Although there are only two attacks per player per round, which doesn’t seem like much, but sometimes an invasion by an opponent can drastically affect your plans. Provinces have different characteristics. Some produce more rice, some generate more taxes. They also have different numbers of slots for structures.

This is a simultaneous action selection game. You need to plan how to fully utilise your provinces. You need to construct buildings for points and for their abilities, for example, castles increase defense strength. You certainly need to plan to attack and capture provinces, and to defend against attacks.

Pax Pamir

Pax Pamir is a compact historical game about Afghanistan. You play local warlords supporting one of the three major powers - the loose local coalition of warlords, the British or the Russians. These major powers compete to exert influence in Afghanistan. You aren’t loyal to any one of them. You just want to be on the winning team when the dust settles. 

You will be buying and using cards in the game. Cards represent various characters and factions. Many of them are associated with one particular region on the map. Having them in play allows you to perform various actions. You raise armies, build roads, and march on those roads to fight.  Depending on which major power you are supporting, you deploy their pieces as armies or as roads. More pieces on the map means stronger presence. There is a type of piece - influence - which does not belong to the major powers, they belong to you. You also want to deploy these because if the strengths of the major powers are close, you score points based no your personal influence instead.

Two rows of cards are available to be purchased. Cards on the left are cheaper than those on the right, so players will tend to buy from the left and then cards will be shifted leftwards, dropping in price. Cards on the right are effectively a preview of what is to come. They allow you to plan ahead. There are limits to how many cards you can have in hand and in play. You need to buy and play cards in specific suits to increase these limits. So this is another challenge the game poses to you. 

What factions, characters and actions become available in each game depends on the order cards are drawn. You will be competing with other players to grab a combination of cards which work well together. The feeling is you are somewhat at the mercy of situation, i.e. history. You are going to learn much about this period in the history of Afghanistan. The option to switch support is interesting. If your current win condition is difficult to achieve, you might as well try something else.

Those thick discs are your influence pieces

Like other games in the Pax family, this is a game about manipulating the board situation to fit one of several possible end conditions. It is not a game about accumulating victory points. 

My game ended quite abruptly, while I was still trying to fully figure out what was going on. this is not a simple game. The board and the pieces look minimalistic, but it is quite a challenge to manage the cards you are going to buy and play. Your most important actions come from the cards you are able to play. Despite the simple structure, the game is complex because most of the details are on the cards themselves. You need to manage your tableau of cards. You also need to be aware of what your opponents can do.

I need to play this game again because I am still figuring out the strategy. 

A Gest of Robin Hood

The Game

The first thing I learned from this game is a new word. Gest. It means story or adventures. This is a COIN game - counterinsurgency. Normally these are set in modern day or close to modern day situations. Seeing this applied to a medieval era scenario is certainly refreshing. This is a two-player game, one playing Robin Hood and the other the Sheriff of Nottingham. Robin fights for justice, while the sheriff wants control and order. This is a tug of war. In the game there is a track for justice vs order. The players try to pull the marker towards their end of the track. When the game ends, the position of the marker determines who wins. 

The map shows the town of Nottingham, Sherwood Forest, and the surrounding regions. Each of the seven regions can be obedient (blue) or rebellious (red). Robin tries to instigate rebellion while the sheriff wants to keep things calm. However the sheriff will force people to pay tax, and that makes people rebellious. One thing which the sheriff does is to fill a carriage with taxes and then escort it back to Nottingham. If the carriage reaches Nottingham, the sheriff gains order and money. If Robin manages to rob the carriage, Robin gains justice and money. Yes, everyone wants money. The tricky part is a carriage might be a trap set for Robin and his gang. It might be better armed than expected and Robin's team might all get captured if they can't defeat the guards. 

Robin is the red piece. In the computer implementation he is presented this way to the Robin player. In the actual game, Robin is a green piece just like any of the merry men. You can tell him apart only by the icon on it. The merry men pieces can be face-up or face-down. When face-down, it means they are hidden, and it also means the sheriff doesn't know which one is Robin. To be able to capture the merry men, the sheriff needs to first expose them. The grey triangular pieces are the sheriff's henchmen. 

The game uses a simple initiative system. The first player picks one of the three action spots, and then the second player can only pick from the remaining two. The actions are then performed from left to right, and the initiative for the next round is also determined by whoever has his token on the left. The first action spot only allows one action. The second spot allows executing an event. A different event is drawn every round so this action changes every round. The third spot allows two actions. This basically means if you want to do more and do the more powerful actions, you will likely go later in the next round. 

The Robin player has a selection of actions to choose from, some called Plots and some called Deeds. The sheriff has a different selection. Many actions require spending money. Robin needs to rob either the carriages or some other poor travellers to maintain a decent cash flow. The sheriff too needs to collect taxes. If you run out of money, you will become very restricted in what you can do. 

The success of robbery attempts depends on several factors. The number of merry men vs the number of henchmen is one. Whether the region is rebellious or not is another. You need to roll a die to determine the outcome, so there is some luck. When robbing a traveller, you can decide whether to take a higher risk for a higher reward. 

The number of merry men and henchmen is limited. You can't recruit if there no more in the supply, so you need to manage your people well. 

The Play

This is very much a cat and mouse game. I played Robin Hood. I had to recruit merry men and cause trouble. The challenge was whenever I robbed, my merry men would be exposed, and we would be at risk of getting caught. I needed to quickly move and hide ourselves to stay safe. I needed to go about inciting revolt, because having the people supporting my cause was helpful. Carriages was something I could not ignore, even if I suspected they were traps. I was caught in such a trap unfortunately. I did not have a big enough group and we were captured. Things went downhill very quickly for me. I didn't have enough men, and I was arrested several times myself. Robin could always sneak out of prison, but doing all this took time and actions. Playing Robin Hood was not at all fun and adventure. It was very much about spending money wisely, gathering support from the population as much as possible, and keeping the pressure on the sheriff and his henchmen. You need to be a military strategist specialising in guerrilla warfare, not an action hero. Our game was rather short, Han as the sheriff achieved an instant victory because he reached more than 5 on the Order track when there was a royal inspection. Robin Hood's little gest was cut short significantly. 

Lots of event cards add colour, story and flavour to the game. 

At one point most of the merry men and Robin Hood himself was thrown in prison. What a disgrace!

The Thoughts

A Gest of Robin Hood is a serious wargame. Not a complex one among wargames, but it is a serious take on the folklore, very much unlike what I remember of the Disney animation movie. This is not a simple game and it takes some effort to learn. It is interesting to see the COIN mechanism applied to this setting. Too bad I was a lousy outlaw and I didn't really experience the full game.