A Wargamers Needful Things

Antony and Cleopatra

Hollandspiele

"Hail, Antony's Legions". Thus began a fifty plus year love of Ancient Rome, and then all of Ancient History. It also started a love of brunettes, but I digress. Was Antony so besotted with love that he lost all of his strategic and tactical sense? Was Actium inevitable or just a fluke? Hollandspiele has allowed us to kick Octavian's butt (we don't use that other name, he is always Octavian). Enough about the history and brunettes, how is this new game?

This is what comes with the game:

(1) 22" x 34" map

(88) 5/8" counters

12-page rulebook

4-page Player Aid

2 Player Display Sheets

20 Province Cards

1 six-sided die

If you have been following the blog you will know that I love Hollandspiele's games, especially ones designed by John Theissen. His games have a small footprint as far as counters go. However, even with a small amount of counters he is still able to give the player a multitude of choices, both strategic and tactical. This game is no exception to the rule.

The map is not overly colorful, but I really like it. It has large hexes to help with the amount of counters which could be in one of them. The counters are your standard Hollandspiele's fare. Not the prettiest, but totally useful? The cards are very well done and the most artistic of the components. The rulebook is in black and white. It is set up very well and is easy to read and understand. Setup is easy.

This is the sequence of play:

Each side adds up their respective Resource Points. The higher total is the first player.

Random Events Phase

A. Storm Check

B. Invasion Check

First Player Turn

Second Player Turn

This is a Player Turn:

A. Reinforcement Phase

B. Defection Phase

C. Movement Phase

D. Combat Phase

E. Attrition Phase

The Western Player also has a Phase called 'Troubles Phase'

The Combat Phase has these Phases:

1. Attacker Declaration

2. Retreat Before Combat

3. Odds Calculation

4. Combat Results Table

5. Losses, Retreats, And Advances

The only rule that I have a problem with is this one. Both Antony and Octavian give a favorable shift in Land Combat. For Antony it's totally understandable. Octavian couldn't tell one end of a pilum from the other. If anything, troops commanded by him should get a minus shift. Agrippa gives a favorable shift for Naval Combat for the Western Player.

The Western (Octavian) starts with eight 'Experienced' legions, with three more as first turn reinforcement. The Eastern (Antony), starts with six 'Experienced' legions, with one as a first turn reinforcement. However, the Eastern player also has four regular legions at the start. The Western Player can also reinforce his troops with eight experienced legions from the Off-Map Garrisons. If the amount of legions Off-Map goes below eight, the Western Player has a 'Troubles' Phase. This represents invasions or rebellions that occur Off-Map. If either of this happens the Western Player cannot take any more Off-Map reinforcements until the Off-Map number of 'Experienced' legions reaches eight again. The naval might of the Eastern player is pretty daunting for the Western player. These are the separate naval forces:

Western Player

Light Squadrons - six

Transports - one

Eastern Player

Heavy Squadrons - six

Light Squadrons - two

Transports - three

So you can see that the Eastern Player can effectively strike where he wants to. It takes two turns to build Squadron reinforcements, all other units only take one turn.

The game plays and feels very historical. You do not feel that you are moving troops and ships from a generic point in time. The game is won by Prestige Points. You gain or lose points by losing/winning battles or if your capital is captured. If you or the other player has five or more points than the other player, the higher player can try to cause the lower players troops or a province of his. This is something that happened frequently in all of the Roman Civil Wars.

I am very impressed with the game. The player is given so many choices in the game. Offense, defense, what do you choose? If you do play badly or are getting bad rolls, it is hard and takes a good player to pull your irons out of the fire. Thank you, Hollandspiele for letting me review a great game on one of my favorite subjects. Now, get to work on the Civil War between Sulla and Marius. Of course, I will take Pompey Magnus versus Caesar (it is so hard to write that name).

Robert

Underwater Cities gives players the opportunity to terraform the last ‘habitable’ spaces on Earth by building cities and their supporting infrastructure under the waves. That’s the premise at least of Underwater Cities which is a hybrid tableau builder and worker placement game. In the game, 1-4 players build tunnels, cities and other building on their own player boards by taking one of the available action slots on the main game board. That sounds like a dozen other tableau builders out there but there are enough wrinkles and differences here, aside from the theme, which will keep this hitting the table for some time to come.

Gameplay

Each round of the game, every player will take three turns. A turn starts off being a simple affair in which you choose a card to play from your hand of three cards and an action slot on the mainboard. If the chosen card and action slot colours match, you can do the actions on both, if they don’t you’ll be limited to just performing the board space action. This provides a significant amount of difficult decisions (this is a big plus), right from the beginning of the game.

The mainboard

However, the best part about choosing your turn actions is that at the beginning of your turn you must discard down to the hand size limit of three cards. This doesn’t seem like it would have much of an impact of the game, but it allows for tactical thinking on other players turns, choosing which cards to discard and keep, and it means there is little-to-no downtime in between your turns. This is no mean feat for a multi-player medium weight board game.

Like most worker placement games when a board action slot has been taken no other player can take that action. The main game board is double-sided to accommodate 1-2 players and 3-4 on the other side. When playing with 3 or 4 players, there are 15 actions slots on the board, 5 each in yellow, red and green which correspond to the card colours. This means that a 3 player game will feel less congested than a 4-player game and your options to meddle, intentionally or not are limited. In a 4-player game, however, you’re constantly re-evaluating your decision as invariably the action slot you want to take has been, probably 3 times, before it’s your turn again…thankfully this will often happen sooner than you’re ready.

2-player end game - player board

From the middle game onwards, because of the action cards that have been claimed into your tableau, there are often action combos that can be pulled off. This is facilitated by the rule that you can resolve either the action card or board space action in the order you choose. Where there are multiple actions within those areas, you can choose the order in which they’re resolved as well. This means that you can often be a little a clever on your turn to maximise your benefits and doing something like this gives me at least, a great deal of satisfaction.

Finding these synergistic combos isn’t that easy though. During your ‘downtime’ you’ll be scrambling to choose which cards to keep and which to get rid of at the beginning of your turn, choosing a card to play for your action – assuming the action slot is still available and trying to find the most optimum combo. I never had the chance to play with anyone that I hadn’t taught the game to, but I assume that experienced players will be able to do all this as well as minimise the remaining options to their opponents. That was not me though, I found the size of the iconography too small to see clearly in your opponents’ area.

3-player middle game - mainboard

Underwater Cities also features a variable turn order track, although it is simple, this must be one of my favourite mechanisms because nearly all of my favourite board games feature them, e.g. Brass, Dominant Species, Age of Empires etc. However, one of the underlying rules in this game is that whenever you cover an icon up you get that immediate bonus. In this game, if you get into the 3rd space or higher of the turn order track you will also get a bonus, which on many occasions permitted additional actions to be taken.

There are a plethora of icons on your own player board to cover up as well, giving a specific bonus, which can – and often do permit additional actions to be taken. Which brings me onto another aspect of ‘tight’ worker placements that I enjoy. The Euro-gamers perennial struggle to ‘feed your people’. Not so much an issue in this game but overall resources are very tight. There are three production rounds separating the three eras of the game, after which you’ll feel like Croesus; this will be short-lived. However, I’ve nearly always found a way to do something worthwhile for my progress on my turn. I never felt like I was treading water (ba-dum tish), or as last player or out of the game.

Inside the rule book

Components

There is a traditional bewilderment of icons in this game however after the first round or two of my first I found them all to be intuitive and easy to follow without referring to the rulebook. There is also a fantastic Player Info card which details the cost of each build and what they produce and how to conduct Production rounds. However, as mentioned earlier when those icons are in your opponents' area across the table, their size makes it difficult to see what they are, but this can be levied against most tableau builders.

Good looking cards

Most of the other components: the cards, mainboard, metropolis tiles, player markers, city domes etc. are completely unremarkable considering modern game publishing i.e. they’re of excellent quality and just what I would expect. However, there are a few component issues that are worth mentioning. The player boards and player info cards are really thin card stock, almost a heavy bond paper. The resource and money tokens seem a little odd in their design choices. The money comes in 1s (small size), 5s and 10s which share the same size…I don’t understand why they’re not consistent and make the 10s bigger or keep them all the same size.

A random assortment of bits

However, probably the biggest issue with the components is with the 3 resource markers. They look just like a pile of singles with a 3 in the middle. This is better than earlier printings of the game, which didn’t have a 3 on these tokens, but it’s still not great. Unless you keep the stacks of singles and 3s separate you can’t really tell how many you’ve got.

Criticisms

Aside from my component criticisms, my quibbles with this game are all fairly minor and I can easily overlook them. The first is one of scalability. I have not tried this solo, but the 2 and 3 player game feel quite different from a 4 player game. I prefer the 4 player game, as long as you’re not teaching the rules, otherwise, it can drag on. This goes against the bgg consensus that suggests 2 players is the sweet spot.

After my initial sorting

I would normally comment on the box insert in Components, but here they haven’t bothered with anything. No cardboard trench, no ill-fitted plastic tray. You just get all the bits thrown into a few bags and card decks and a box. Unless that box is jammed with counter sheets and rules, like many wargames are, then this is poor practice. Especially considering that this version comes from Rio Grande Games, one of the bigger players in the board game world. I think my 3d-printed insert will work out just fine.

Much better, - still don't like those 3s

The vast majority of the scoring will be done in the end game, there is no way to see who is ahead or behind up until you start counting up your final scores. This, alongside the difficulty in seeing your opponents' tableau to allow you to choose the action slots your opponents want, turn this into not much more than multi-player solitaire - not necessarily a bad thing.

Conclusion

With all that said, I do enjoy Underwater cities a lot. It gives players an array of decisions to be made and there are some really smart design choices that make this gameplay quick and it is definitely on the crunchier end of the spectrum. Discarding card(s) at the beginning of your turn makes so much sense.

3 player end game - player board

Many people have compared this to Terraforming Mars, and the main differences between the two, for me, are the board of Mars, in which players are able to have direct conflict with one another, which is a plus Terraforming Mars. Underwater cities, pros compared to Mars, are the way in which you play and resolve cards and those synergistic combos, which I didn’t really find in Terraforming Mars.

If you like thinking games and finding optimisation strategies with a minimal amount of player interaction then I can easily recommend this game.

I’d like to thank Asmodee for sending this review copy. Many local game stores will still have this in stock and you can use this link http://www.findyourgamestore.co.uk/ to support your FLGS or use their online shopping web store.

Publisher: Rio Grande Games
BGG Page: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/247763/underwater-cities
Players: 1-4
Designer: Vladimír Suchý

Playing time: 2 hours +

Rifles in the Pacific

by

Tiny Battle Publishing

Tiny Battle is an apt name for the company that released this game. The game defies my attempts to pigeonhole it. It is a tactical game, but it is unlike any other tactical game I have played. It is a solitaire game of tactical warfare in the (surprise) Pacific. Let us first list what comes with the game:

Rule Booklet
Mission Briefing Booklet
Four Army Sheets (on two sides of 8 1/2" x 11" cards)
One Master Copy Unit Roster (on the back of the game's cover)
Three 8 1/2" x 11" Maps representing the varying terrain in the Pacific Theater
One Squad Examples Card (on the back of the Map Card)
39 1" Unit Counters
46 Administrative Counters
You will need to provide five six-sided die, and a container for random drawing counters

The one inch counters are a godsend for these old eyes. The 'Map Cards' do not resemble any I have seen. They look much more like 'Battle Boards' I have seen in other games. So, you really cannot say if the 'Map' is an eyesore or a work of beauty. They are utilitarian looking, and do the job. The counters, on the other hand, are very well done, and did I mention that they are one inch.

The game sequence is pretty simple. This is what it looks like:

Mission Setup
Squad Selection
Mission Execution
End-Mission Briefing

The Armies available are:

Japan - Both the Special Navy Landing Force, and Imperial Japanese Army
United States Marines
Commonwealth

Maps

The missions you can play are:

Jungle Patrol

Defend A River Bank
Capture A Bridge
'Wave Zero' - Amphibious Invasion
Demolition Squad
Destroy A Radio Station
Casualty Evacuation
'Line Of Fire' - Attack A Strong Position

Other than the slightly weird (at least for me) setup of the game, in most ways it is a normal tactical game. Tanks, mines, close combat etc. are all here among all of the other usual rules. The tanks you get to use include Shermans, Cromwells, Stuarts, Type 96 (Ha-Go), and the Type 97 Medium Tank. The rule book is well set out, and is easy to read and understand. This is the second game in the 'Rifles' games from Tiny Battle. The first game is 'Rifles in the Ardennes'.

I have to be truthful and say it took a few games for me to get used to the game. It did begin to grow on me. If you are in the mood for a quick, easy playing game about tactical warfare in the Pacific then I can recommend 'Rifles' with no caveats. Thank you Tiny Battle Publishing for letting me review this interesting game.

Robert

Tiny Battle Publishing:

https://tinybattlepublishing.com/

Rifles in the Pacific:

https://tinybattlepublishing.com/products/rifles-in-the-pacific

They are also publishing 'The Devil's To Pay' Hermann Luttmann's game on the first day of Gettysburg. I really like his games and especially the map look and style of his Gettyburg games. He designed 'Longstreet Attacks' about the second day.

https://tinybattlepublishing.com/products/the-devils-to-pay-the-first-day-at-gettysburg