1565 St. Elmo's Pay by Hall or Nothing Productions

 1565 St. Elmo's Pay

by

Hall or Nothing Productions

 It is 1565 and we are on the Island of Malta. Suleiman the Magnificent has sent an armada filled with men to finally crush the Knights of St. John. Their full name was The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, hence the Hospitallers. The Knights had been forced out of Outremer, and then also the islands of Cyprus and Rhodes by the Muslims. The Island of Malta is their last bastion in the Mediterranean. Can the Knights survive one of the greatest sieges in history or will Suleiman add another piece to his huge empire? This is what Hall or Nothing Productions say about the game:

"Relive the Greatest Siege in History!

A vendetta spanning decades reaches its terrible and bloody crescendo!

Suleiman the Magnificent's 30,000 strong armada descends on the 500 beleaguered Knights of St John and the defending people of Malta, with the express purpose of wiping them from existence, and changing the course of European history forever...

1565, St. Elmo's Pay is an asymmetric, competitive, tactical card game, and successor to the award-nominated 1066, Tears to Many Mothers, with which it is fully compatible. Each player, as either Ottoman Turks or Knights of St John, musters troops and resources to overcome the various obstacles in their path before the two armies clash in an epic siege over three fronts on the tiny island of Malta: Birgu, Senglea, and the doomed fortress of Saint Elmo.

Every beautiful card in the game is inspired by a real person or event from the time. With a focus on quick, tactical play and a thematic re-imagining of the events of the time, the game is non-collectable, and there is no deck building required. Each player simply grabs their deck and shuffles, then play begins.

Note on title: When, after a relentless show of strength, the small fortress of St. Elmo's finally fell to the Turks they butchered the bodies of the Knights and floated the corpses across the bay to the remaining two forts to deter them from resisting further, lest they suffer the same fate. Instead, the Maltese forces chose to fight with 'the spirit of St. Elmo's'. When they eventually turned the tides against the Turks and chased them away the people of Malta chanted 'St. Elmo's Pay' - an expression they still use today to mean 'no mercy.'

 The game's components are what you would expect from a card/Euro game mixture. Like so many other games coming out of the UK now, it is a beauty to behold. This also goes for the minimalist approach to what you get in the box. The following is what comes with the game:

166 cards in two decks (+3 bonus promo cards for their game Shadows of Kilforth!)

40 red wooden teardrop shaped tokens

40 blue wooden teardrop shaped tokens

22 cardboard attribute modifier tokens

1 first player token

2 Rulebooks (one for full solo play!)

1 solo play resource dial

 

 The two-player Rulebook has full glossy print and is eight pages in length. It is filled with illustrations from the cards and has a good number of examples of play. The solo play Rulebook is also in full glossy print and is only four pages long. There is also a full-page card stock that on one side has the 'Foe's Turn Flow Chart' and on the other side 'Foe's Unit/Character Deployment Flow Chart'. The print on the Rulebooks and the player aids are nice and large and easy to read. The flow charts are not 'busy' and are easy to follow. The red and green wooden tokens are all uniform in size and have no cutting errors or flashing on them. The 'cardboard attribute modifier tokens' (what we would call counters :)) either have a cannon or a gold or black cross representing from -2 to +2 as an attribute. They are very large, and again, very easy to read. The solo play resource dial has a listing from Easy to all the way to King. These numbers have an effect on the resources on the foe's ready cards during play. The front of the dial has a nice illustration from the siege. As expected, the cards in the game are the main artistic part of the whole package. From the simple action cards to the Mustapha Pasha and Jean Parisot de Valette cards, the illustrations on them are magnificent. The three 'frontier' cards Birgu, Senglea, and St. Elmo have full-sized artworks on them. The game also comes with two card sized player aids. On one side is the Game Summary, and the other has the Battles Summary. The components are all very well done. The only quibble I have is that the writing on the cards is small. However, you would either get bland cards with large writing or the excellent artwork, so I choose the artwork. The three Shadows of Kilforth promo cards are also wonderfully rendered.

 It might seem at first glance that the game is a simple one that is pretty much based on the rock, paper, and scissors premise. As in, this card beats that one which in turn is beaten by this other card. Thinking like this does St. Elmo's Pay a great disservice. The game has both strategy and tactics in it and is very nuanced. It also plays very historically. By this I mean that the outcomes that happen during play could very well have happened in reality. The game is not based on the designer's fancy of how the siege played out. It is based on solid knowledge of the actual history and scholarship. The cards themselves drip history. The inclusion of cards of the different characters during the siege also helps greatly with the immersion factor while playing. When playing on the Muslim side you feel the loss of the Giant Basilisk or some of Turgut's Corsairs. The same holds for your units when playing the Knights. 

 Victory in the game is decided by:

Destroy two Frontiers of enemy troops at the Great Siege of Malta, or

Destroy their opponents' Leader, or

Have their opponent run out of cards in their card deck.

You can also check playing solo how well you have done with your victory points against the different level of opponent on the resource dial.

 One of the best features of the game is being able to play either side solo. This is not a glued on after the fact solo bot. The game was obviously designed from the ground up for solo play on both sides. This is a design feature that we should see in many other games.

 Thank you, Hall or Nothing Productions for allowing me to review your product. I am now looking forward to delving into your large catalog of other games. Some of them have really piqued my interest, especially after having played St. Elmo's Pay.

Robert

Hall or Nothing Productions:

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