Rome Must Fall explores the logistics of war in one page

 I have really been meaning to look at Martin Melbardis and their company Solo Wargame. Specifically the Roll and Write war games. I’ve actually backed a few on Kickstarter and just needed to find the time/headspace to try them. Looking through the ones I have, Rome Must Fall seemed like the most newbie friendly so that’s what I started with.

I have to say that Print and Play war games have been around for a while. I think they might have been one of the earliest genres to get adopted. You can find Chit-and-Hex PnP games that are decades old. Heck, Malta Convoy is a roll and write war game from 2001. 

However, Solo Wargame’s mission statement seems to be to create PnP games that have the convenience of Roll and Write but have some heavier meat to them. I like Postmark Game’s Battle Card series but they are very light exercises.

Despite the name, you are actually trying to hold the Roman empire together in Rome Must Fall. The game is set in 425 AD and you are dealing with threats on… well, just about every side. 

You are dealing with six different fronts in the game, four barbarian forces and two raiders. Every loss to the barbarians makes you lose territory while losing to the raiders will cost you some form of resources.

The core mechanic is dice allocation. You roll six dice. You assigned them to each front. Then, the invading forces get to roll against you. 

You have a limited number of reserve tokens that you can use to increase your die, as well as limited access to some special abilities. Not only do you have to roll sixes to be able to use the special abilities each one is tied to a city on the map. If that city gets sacked, you lose that ability.

And, just to make sure it hurts, your six sided dice can get reduced to three-sided dice by certain losses.

If you lose too many key cities, you lose the game. If you can survive 12 turns, you win the game.

Simply put, you can’t win every fight. You have to pick your battles carefully and figure out what you can afford to lose. Your resources are going to get more and more scarce as the game goes on. Years ago, a friend told me that Advanced Civilization was about managing calamities over six hours. Rome Must Fall gives you that experience on one page in fifteen minutes.

To be honest, I haven’t played enough to figure out how much luck determines if you’re going to survive. I haven’t survived yet.

That being said, and I mean this as a compliment, Rome Must Fall feels like an older brother to the Battle Card series. It serves as both a small war game and a history lesson. However, while I feel that there is an optimal path in those games, there is too much going on in Rome Must Fall to have a single, scripted strategy. 

Rome Must Fall is a budget friendly, accessible experience. It is fraught with tension as you do your best to slow down the death spiral that is baked into the game. I’m glad I looked into Solo Wargame.

Finally actually looking at Battle Card Series 1

 Last year, I tried out Battle Card Marker Garden, which effectively was the prototype for the Battle Card series. (Come to think it, it also made me look at the Postcards From the Front contest)

I bought the Battle Card Series 1 at the start of the year as part of my buying the Post Mark Games catalog but I’ve only now played the first game in the series, The Malaysian Campaign.

Okay, the Battle Card series is a set of simple PnP solitaire one-page war games, although you can print the map and the rules on separate sheets and make them a two-sheet war games. You use dice as counters, with the pips being the strength of the unit, as well as a die for the timer and another for actually rolling on the Combat Results Table.

(As a longtime D&D player, I am found of CRTs. (Yes, I know D&D doesn’t use CRTs) Take care of all the math and try to make it work in your favor before you roll the die)

Each map has its own rules so is basically a standalone game. And each one is about a specific military action from World War II. I put it that way because I’m not sure what the line between a battle and a campaign is. 

The Malaysian Campaign has reinforced the opinion I got from the Market Garden prototype.

Okay, negatives first. As far as actual game goes, I don’t think there’s a lot there. The decision trees have been fairly limited. There seems to be really one course of action in each map and the dice have to be really nice to you to pull it off.  

Which sounds like a complete condemnation but that’s not the whole picture.

As history lessons, the Battle Card series are very engaging. And that is one of the goals of historic war games in general and I’m pretty sure the Battle Card series in particular. From that standpoint, the series works and works well enough to make the games worth experiencing.

Yes, even though I am not even close to an expert on WW II history, I am sure they heavily simplify the events. They are five minute games that play out in a maximum of six turns. They are clearly showing history in broad strokes. And I am sure that historians can show where they are wrong.

However, the Battle Card series gives you an interactive overview of battles and campaigns, a Cliff Notes version. They are very accessible, even to someone like me whose war gaming experiences are limited. And they point me in the direction if I want to do more reading, research or  gaming.

I don’t know if people who are active war gamers would get much out of the Battle Card series. But I think they are ideal for casual gamers like me. I can honestly picture them as ideal for class room use.

I feel that the Battle Series is the weakest product from Post Mark Games. Because Voyages and Aquamarine and Waypoints are very good and very accessible games with a lot of nuance and replay value. However, I will also stand by my continued recommendation that folks should just buy their entire catalog.

Postcards of war

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve found Battle Card Market Garden an interesting little work. The game really plays itself but it’s an interesting to show Operation Marker Garden on a post card.

Looking into it a bit more, I quickly learned it was from the Postcards From the Front game design jam. (Not a contest!)  (https://itch.io/jam/postcards-from-the-front) It’s a collection of almost fifty postcard war games. They range from small scale hex-and-chit games to much more abstract interpretations of conflict.

While I am not really a war gamer by any stretch of the imagination, I still find this collection fascinating. Honestly , that’s just because the printing effort is one page per game and many of them are either solitaire or have solitaire options. 

I can’t decide if my interest in these small scale games is a compliment or an insult to war gaming. War gaming’s roots are in historical simulation and I assume post card games fall short of war college standard.

But I also have to admit that I’m not being fair to postcard games. Tactics and Strategy Magazine has been including a complete war game since 1967. And magazine inserts are clearly a step between World in Flames and postcard games.

Looking back, the first time I heard about postcard war games was Postcard From The Revolution, which came out in 2004. As a format, it may not have taken the world by storm but it’s stuck around for at least twenty years.

More than that, many of both the postcard games from the jam and other places I’ve seen are focused around specific historical events. Heck, one of the non-historic games about ants and termites was designed by an entomologist.

In short, if an educational component is something you are looking for in a war game, this jam has that. I have learned about the Great Emu War of 1932. I learned that Jose Garcia saved the Alhambra from being blown up. I found out Germans impulsively sacked Rome in 1527. Even if I never play any of the games, I’m learning stuff.

I don’t know if I will play any games from the Postcards from the Front jam but I have gotten plenty out of looking at it.

A blurry snapshot of Operation Market Garden

First off, I am not a war gamer. I have played war-themed games and I have played a few games that actually cross the line into what I think can honestly be called a war game but I don’t have the drive or interest to be what I could call a war gamer.

( would say that the definition of a true war game is realism. I mean, military colleges use war games to train folks about fighting actual battles. War games, at their ideal, are simulation. They may be asking what would happen if chaos marines were real but it really feels like the details are what define war games. Feel free to disagree)

But the brevity of Batrle Card: Market Garden has kept my eye on it. There are four locations and the game lasts six turns. (So, there really aren’t any details.)  it’s a postcard sided game with six markers so crafting it takes minimal work.

Then I saw someone made a web implementation of it. And that’s what it took for me to actually try the game lol

After I tried it a couple times, I looked at a review of the game. Jon Ericson wrote that the game was made up of forced decisions. You either decide to defend or attack at contested locations. You can move forward but only into allied controlled locations. And you have to make those movements or lose.

At the same time, Battle Card: Market Garden is still enjoyable. Part of the fun does come from the fact that it’s a five minute distraction. You don’t expect much from a postcard PnP that is six turns long.

But really, what makes Battle Card: Market Garden is interesting is rhe actual subject matter. Operation Market Garden is one of those fascinating pieces of history. If the Allie’s had managed to cross the Rhine and had a foothold n the other side, it would have changed the course of WW II. And this game gives you a snapshot of the event. A blurry, Polaroid snapshot but a snapshot none the less.

I’m not going to play Battle Card: Market Garden over and over. Being able to play it online means I won’t bother cutting out the counters for the physical game. (I do wonder if would work well in the classroom, given how short some students’ attention spans are) And I am glad I’ve finally tried it.

Happy thoughts about what I think is ‘Ameritrash’

As I’ve mentioned, I was surprised (but not disappointed) to find that I had a number of games that fell into the Ameritrash camp in long term storage. Basically light war games with big maps and lots of dice chucking.

I’m not sure if the term Ameritrash is still used. If it is, it doesn’t seem to be used either as a pejorative or as a rallying cry. (And, no, I don’t miss those days. And, as my gray hairs indicate, I remember back when the term got started being used) If it is still in any use, it’s probably because no one has found a catchier term.

I credit Kickstarter for fewer faction wars in the board game world. Kickstarter created a marketplace for more diverse games that could pick and choose from different schools of game design. Warring camps just aren’t as interesting in that environment.

I have read (and I agree with this) that the defining characteristic of Ameritrash is theme. (Direct conflict is a close second) Narrative and identity are a big part of it. Changing the theme of an Ameritrash game changes the experience. Rex might use the same mechanics as Dune but it’s not the same experience.

I also feel like Ameritrash is the junction point of a lot of different design schools. The influence of war games is obvious, since so many Ameritrash games are war games with more focus on gonzo than simulation. But the narrative structure of RPGs is there are well. And I feel like I’ve seen elements of German Family gaming with economic and infrastructure building.

But not abstracts. Abstract games are about as far from Ameritrash as you can get. Go and Axis and Allies don’t talk to each other.

And, honestly, Ameritrash may be the most vague school of game design. Is Muchkin Ameritrash? It doesn’t have dice or a board but it has theme and conflict. Is Britiania Ameritrash or just a light historical war game?

I have a lot of happy memories for these big, crazy games. There really is a Hunter Thompson gonzo level of craziness and gusto baked into so many of them. But I also know why it’s been so long since I’ve played one. They take a whole evening to play :D

Come to think of it, I usually played them with my D&D groups. I guess we were looking for games that were the length of a D&D session! 

It takes time to be immersed in a theme. Shorter play times don’t work as well for the big gooey games that I’m looking at. Not entirely impossible. The Awful Green Things From Outer Space proves that. But that’s an exception, not the rule.

I’d like to revisit this kind of gameplay some time. I just hope I can stay awake to the end :D

A Rusty Throne is a war game for folks who don’t know war games

 I am both the perfect audience and the worst commentator for A Rusty Throne. It’s a solitaire war game that feels like it was designed for those of us who don’t know much about war games. (My war game days were back in high school and that was a…while back)

It’s a PnP game. There is a board, which takes up only one page and consists of nine areas, and a small deck of cards. Beyond that, all you need is ten tokens for you and ten tokens for the AI king.

The idea behind the game is that the king has gone insane and you’re trying to take over the island kingdom. You know, in order to save the kingdom. I’m sure A Song of Ice ans Fire didn’t inspire the theme at all. Your goal is to control all four of the castles in the board. You lose if you lose your home castle.

The game is entirely card-driven. The cards have symbols for combat, actions for the king and command points that you pay for your actions. 

There are actually only two actions in the game. Adding forces to a castle you control and movement. Combat happens when troops live onto an enemy-occupied space.  And combat is pretty simple and symbol-based. Swords remove troops. Shields block swords. Then add up surviving troops and bugles. Higher number wins and the losing troop is shoved off. If there’s nowhere to run, they are destroyed.

While the game is simple; even for someone like me who isn’t war game savy, it is very procedural. The hardest part is getting all the steps in the right order without missing any.

I have to note that the game balances you being able to think and the king taking actions (sometimes randomly) from cards by making the king a lot stronger than you. The king outnumbers you at the start, goes first (which is particularly strong in battle) and has a higher stacking limit.

One lesson even I have learned is that you are not going to to win if you charge in Leroy Jenkins style. The AI king is stronger than you and you are going to have to use finesse to win.

A Rusty Throne has been an interesting experience for me and it is a game I plan to go back to. Frankly, between the relative ease of play and construction, I think this is a game that you should make and try even if you are just a little bit interested.