Tag Archives: War Game

Preview: War Room by Larry Harris

April 22, 2021 5 Minutes

In the world of board gaming there are some games that almost transcend the hobby and reach out to popular culture to a point where a game can become a house hold name, something even your parents will likely recognize, something you can find on the bookshelf of your average joe. Games like RISK, Monopoly, Battleship and Stratego are some examples that spring to mind.

For people in the hobby of board gaming however there are other titles that have similar sentimentalities and are almost synonymous with board gaming history. These games might not transcend the hobby but they inspire the word “classic” and find common ground into conversations of your typical hobbyist. You would be hard pressed to find a board gamer out there who would not refer to the world war II grand strategy game of Axis and Allies as such a classic. The most popular of the Milton Bradly masters series games, Axis and Allies is for a great many old school board gamers one of their first experiences that broke them out of what is generally the accepted mass market board game lists. Most people have likely played RISK at some point in their life, but Axis and Allies was the cross over game for many that almost defined a persons transition from someone who sometimes plays board games to someone who is a board gamer.

You would be hard pressed to meet anyone in the world who hasn’t at least heard of RISK the board game, it’s almost on the same level as Chess or Poker, its embedded in global culture.

The guy we have to thank for Axis and Allies is Larry Harris Jr., a board game designer who unlike so many designers out there spent nearly a lifetime trying to perfect one game. Sure he designed a few others (not trying to sound dismissive here), but over the last 30+ years Larry Harris has tinkered with Axis and Allies almost exclusively, creating variations on the game and trying to perfect the original version. It is very clearly a labor of love and In interviews when he talks about Axis and Allies he doesn’t speak as a person who made a game for others to buy, but a guy who made what he viewed as the perfect world war II game that he wants to play himself. He designed Axis and Allies for him and his friends and as a gesture of good will let everyone else get a copy as well.

Axis and Allies has had many versions, variations (both official and fan made). In the war game hobby, it’s largely considered both a beloved classic and a design triumph.

It’s important to understand this aspect of Larry Harris because it is very rare for him to design and release something other then Axis and Allies. In fact designers of his caliber and attitude towards perfection are quite rare. When Larry Harris announced that he was making a new version of Axis and Allies, aka his dream project of an even larger and more epic version of the game, well, lets just say for us old school gronards and Axis and Allies fans this was the news of the century.

That game was finally kickstarted back in 2019 and found its way to table tops in 2020. That game is called War Room and today I’m going to talk a bit about why this game is so special and why anyone who loves the old classics like Axis and Allies should be paying attention.

War Room is a massive game in size and scale, but is in large part much easier to learn to play then Axis and Allies thanks largely to some very clever handling of certain elements like stress and production. It’s also a highly engaged game where most phases of the game are executed by all players simultaneously with teams cooperating.

Why Axis and Allies was so popular

Before we can talk about why we should be excited about War Room we need to talk about Larry’s first love, Axis and Allies and why it was such a popular game.

The thing you have to understand about the early days of the hobby is that their was a very clean divide in board gaming both as a hobby as as a design between games that were for the masses like Battleship, RISK or Monopoly and then there were games for gamers, things you probobly have never heard of like Rise and Decline of the Third Reich, or Ambush. Essentially the world of board gaming was divided between people who were making games they thought they could sell and people who made games for “gronards”, those beard scratching old fogies’ who believe games needed to be simulations of something and historically accurate. Games with 100 page rulebooks that complicated the shit to a point no reasonable human being could ever be expected to understand how to play and required a masters degree in English comprehension.

Axis and Allies among a few other games that should but won’t be mentioned changed all that. It was one of the first games that was released that had a manageable amount of rules that you could reasonably expect anyone to understand, while at the same time having that deep strategy and historical relevance of a game that old gronards would appreciate it. Larry broke the barrier between popular culture gamers and simulationist/historical war gamers. He gave us a crossover game that went beyond the simplicity of a dice chucker like risk and included the high level play of games like Third Reich which were the exclusive stomping grounds of veteran historical war gamers to that point.

“Chit” games are a style of game where many of the units and properties of the game are tracked via cardboard chits. These games tend to have a reputation for both being complex and fiddly, while not being particularly visually appealing.

Is the “Chit” game reputation well deserved? Perhaps. Games like Empire of the Sun laid out on the table certainly does not have the same visual sexapeal as modern games populated by miniatures and the complexity of the game is quite extreme.

For many, myself included, Axis and Allies invited you into a whole new branch of board gaming without making you feel stupid and that was both an achievement of design but also of production. Larry Harris understood the secret of games like RISK. It wasn’t that they were simple, it was that they looked amazing on the table top. Truth is that generally speaking, people are smart enough to figure out complex games but most gamers really don’t want to stair at ugly game boards and chits for 10 hours when playing one. Being a good game was simply not good enough, it needed some sex appeal.

Presentation was important, he understood that games were also toys and that people played games for the experience, not just for the deep strategy. He understood that war games in particular were about inspiring the imagination, giving players a sense that they commanded armies, that they were in charge of a grand strategy. He understood that games needed to inspire a feeling and a lot of that came from visuals.

More importantly however Larry Harris understood how far you could go with the rules before it was too far, too complicated, while at the same time, what within those rules would inspire conversation about strategy. Ask any Axis and Allies player how one wins the game with the Axis powers and you will discover that no two players will ever fully agree despite 40+ years of gaming analysis. The game wasn’t perfectly balanced by any stretch of the imagination, but what it was, was a game that said “hey, you can’t win as the Axis powers, I dare you to try”. It posed a challenge to players and this with its visual appeal has driven the success of the game for so many years.

The Problems With Axis and Allies

Suffice to say Axis and Allies despite being a stone cold classic to board gamers around the world for 40+ years, it had one key issue that most would generally agree on. A problem that actually most war games have, the hidden information problem.

The problem most war games have is that in an actual war, commanders and generals had no idea what the enemy was going to do. They would build strategies trying to predict their enemy and execute those strategies hoping they guessed right. This is a core premise that is very difficult to translate to board games and always had, commonly known as the fog of war.

Typically what happens in a board game is that one player makes a move, the other player see’s the move and then responds with a strategy accordingly. A strategy not based on the state of the game at the start of the turn, but at the end of his opponents turn. This is how it worked in most board games about war (and still does for the most part), especially Axis and Allies where a player would complete their entire turn before an opponent would act, resulting in full information disclosure about the activities on the board.. This however is never how actual wars take place, the kind of information you get from watching an opponent “make a move” would never actually be available to you in a real combat situation. You would have to give orders to your troops and put a plan in motion long before you ever got to see what your enemy was planning and you would be committed to that plan (too late to change your mind). This is what often made wars so messy, fog of war is a real thing.

War Room addresses this and I have to believe Larry Harris understood that this “information problem” was one of the key design issues with Axis and Allies that would result in the game being kind of predictable at times. Players could try different strategies, but those strategies would be revealed before opponents had to commit to any decisions in response. Hence like chess, you make your move based on the information of the opponents last move.

At the core of the War Room design, the game addresses this issue by using a method that strangely enough has been around for decades in another popular stone cold classic game called Diplomacy. The concept of hidden orders that are written down and submitted simultaneously by all participants, then executed in a turn order defined by a bidding process. This brilliant albeit very well known little design is one of the key elements to War Rooms core mechanic, notably addressing one of the key issues with Axis and Allies and in my humble opinion, one of the best evolutions of Axis and Allies.

Hidden movement/orders appears in quite a few modern games as well, many of which have broken my top 10 lists so I’m clearly a fan. Games like Game of Thrones the board game for example make excellent use of hidden simultaneous orders as just one example.

The Things That Make War Room Awesome

Ok so now that we have laid the foundation of the conversation we can talk about the game itself and there is a lot to cover here so enjoy the wall of text.

War Room as a game hangs on five core concepts.

Team Game

One of the big issues with games that have a 6+ hour timeline, in particular grand strategy games is that it’s very possible, in fact likely that some players will be eliminated from contention for the win half way through the game or perhaps even very early in the game. Those players are then forced to sit through hours of play with really nothing to drive them to care. They are going to lose and they will know that for 6 to 8+ hours.

This is one of the biggest issues with big board game classics like Twilight Imperium or Advanced Civilization for example. Long games you can effectively be eliminated from hours before the game will end.

War Room tackles this issue in a very simple and meaningful way. Its a team game. Axis vs. Allies. Your nation might be doing poorly and your contribution in the war may be limited, but you are part of a team trying to win the game together and hence, participating in creating the strategy that will hopefully help your team win.

This keeps everyone involved regardless of the situation of any given player. Its a very simple but very clever approach to solving this issue.

Hidden Action Sequence

In its most simplest form, each player for each nation they control, writes down the orders he wishes to execute for his units. Each player has a limited amount of orders they can give, hence they must choose wisely. Its important to understand that going into this sequence not being 100% certain of the turn order can be very troublesome to any planning. Part of creating the orders is bidding on the turn order with the very precious oil resources, one of the most important resources in the game.

In War Room you will execute more than just your movement/attack orders, your production choices are also hidden, another great addition to the fog of war effect.

This key design is what drives gameplay and I think is one of the more ingenious ways of handling what can often be a part of the game that creates a lot of downtime. Here all players simultaneously create their orders, teams working together on their strategy also creates a level of collaboration. In a sense it creates a great atmosphere at the table and I believe it to be one of the things that makes this game truly distinct from many other world war II games.

The Stress System

Another rather ingenious approach to design here, one of the key issues with area control war games is that often it really just boils down to who wins in key moments, or who has the most units on the board. It can be difficult in games like this to make an impact on an enemy who is clearly already winning the war. The stress system is how War Room attacks this problem.

It’s a very simple system. Anytime you lose a territory with a strategic value (which is most of them) or take a loss in units, you gain stress and as your stress reaches certain threshold you begin taking penalties to your resources and your ability to wage war.

The stress mechanic has a number of effects on the game, but the main one is that it drives the end game. Nations become worn down and eventually lose their will to fight leading to a natural conclusion of the game.

What this means in the scope of the game is that your can’t simply make a B-line for the victory conditions of the game focusing your entire army in one place, you must consider the world map as a whole and defend your positions or suffer under the weight of mini snipe attacks and watch your nation become worn down by stress even out of a winning position. The game doesn’t become about that one key battle or key strategic area, but the many battles around the world, each a potential stress point that can lead to the slow degraded performance of the whole nation.

Tactics Matter

One aspect of grand strategy games is that they zoom out very far to handle the scope of the game, which often results in the battle resolution systems being rather watered down abstractions, leaving you with a feeling that battle resolution is just pure luck of the die. Its a strange contradiction, where you play a 8+ hour game about a grand strategy but the actual individual battles boil down to a single roll of a D10 for example (I’m looking at you Empire of the Sun).

In War Room tactics actually matter. What units you bring to bare in a fight and how you decide to position them on the battlefield can turn a battle you might have lost into one you may win.

The battle board does slow the pacing of the game down as each battle on the board must be resolved individually but this creates an atmosphere that makes the game feel like a genuine war. Each battle becomes a mini event and though the game can still hinge on wild die results, you can do quite a bit with your tactical positioning to control the results of a battle.

The tactics board adds an element of focus to the game where battles become a feature rather then after thought of the grand strategy game. This is arguably the most controversial addition to the game as it does slow down the overall experience and is likely what leads the game into that 8+ rather then 5+ playtime.

If your more aggressive you may take bigger loses but you will also cause more casualties. You may know that a battle is lost, but may then focus on shooting down planes of your enemies to hurt their ability to project power in the future. Just a couple of ways where tactics and grand strategy come together in War Room.

Vulnerable Industry/Resources

War is about resources and one of the keys to any grand strategy game is the ability to attack your enemies supply lines, blow up their industrial centers to hurt their production and shutdown their transportation systems to hurt their mobility.

All of this is considered in War Room and all players must deal with the fact that they have vulnerabilities all over the map where they produce units and the method by which they transport them. Your factories can be bombed, your convoys transporting precious resources can be attacked, your rail lines can be bombed destroying your ability to move troops in your own territory.

This key addition helps the game become about something more then just taking territory, edging the generally simple gameplay into more complex strategies. To win, you want to crush your enemies ability to produce units and so attacking their resources is not only a viable strategy, it’s often the key to victory from a weaker position.

General Insight

To me War Room appears to be a game that tries to be both a war game for the deep strategist, while a fun event game for the enthusiasts without underwhelming one, while overwhelming the other. I think mileage may vary here, but as a fan of games like Empire of the Sun and Paths of Glory, I don’t find the rules and strategies of this game to be underwhelming and given my local groups play games like Game of Thrones and even Twilight Imperium on occasion, I don’t see why they would struggle with the rules of War Room.

It remains to be seen however if an 8 hour war game about World War II is captivating enough for my gaming group to keep their attention. I know that with my gaming group, if they love a game 8+ hours is not a problem. We play RPG’s like Vampire: The Masquerade and miniature games like Songs of Ice and Fire that extend well past that play time on a regular basis and I don’t hear anyone complaining.

For me personally I see War Room as less a game in the strictest terms and more of a fun event that can be run a couple of times a year. To me, event games like Advanced Civilization, Twilight Imperium and Game of Thrones the Board Game are always the most memorable games in my gaming history. I don’t play them often, in fact, some I don’t play for years at a time, but when we do, its amazing and I hope War Room will be yet another addition to that glorious history of gaming events.

From a presentation angle War Room is absolutely gorgeous on the table. It screams play me, being huge, bright and exciting to be around. I love games that inspire the imagination and give you a sense of time and place, a game that gives you a role to play and makes you feel like the whole thing is part of a larger experience that extends beyond the game. I believe War Room to be such a game.

Finally I would argue that the game manages to be huge in size, epic in scale and visually appealing while not being fiddly. To me this is a big deal when it comes to selling the concept to my fellow gamers. Realistically speaking in our group we have a lot of games competing for our table time and shelf space, so we get quite picky about what we are willing to invest in. This is particularly true when we are talking about the big event games as we already have quite a few very established favorites. War Rooms sexy size and visual component combined with its epic scale and simultaneous action phases I think will all contribute to my groups adoption as a new member of this rather exclusive club, but that initial play experience is going to be critical to its long term success. Games like this typically only get one shot to impress, but I do believe War Room has the nuts and bolts to pull it off.

Board Game Reviews, Gaming Articles

Paths of Glory by GMT Games

March 17, 2021 5 Minutes

When I made my top 10 war games list last year I had just acquired Paths of Glory, played it once and though I was instantly in love with the concept, it was a game that I was yet to truly explore. Since then I have put quite a few games under my belt thanks to an amazing online community supporting the game and I’m at a point now where I think its time to give this one a proper review.

Paths of Glory falls into the CDG (Card Driven Games) category of war games which is a very specific albeit popular style of design in the spirit of giants like Twilight Struggle, Washington’s War and Empire of The Sun. All amazing games in their own right, but Paths of Glory even among this list of exceptional games has its own take on the concept and more importantly it covers a subject (World War I) with such class and elegance that it will take you from a person who neither knows or cares about World War I history to an absolute WWI history buff.

I think on a high level, Paths of Glory is broken down into three very distinct core game elements. The card driven mechanic which is the coveted link to the historical events of World War I and a key driver to the game. The tactical war on the main map which is a point to point system in which players jockey for position and fight for domination in the WWI theatre. Finally you have management of war resources abstracted in a wide variety of ways that give the game that tight, attrition feel WWI is so famous for.

Put them together and what you have is a game that is all about tension, attrition, and players trying to squeeze out every inch of blood, sweat and tears to get that breakthrough moment where one side collapses. Yet its also a game of massive comebacks where a single event can trigger huge swings in the war and this really leads the game to being a game about a story of the game. It gives it that re-writing history feeling and this is something you really notice when you have played several games and can make a comparison between different experiences with it.

The question that remains is do I like it and probobly from that very high level overview you may rightfully conclude that I do, however I think it has its own character and the real question is whether or not this is a game for you.

Overview

Final Score: (3.7) Great Game!

Paths of Glory is a two player game that will quite easily take about 6 to 8 hours to play. This is a long, heavy and fairly complex game with considerable amount of rules in its 34 page rulebook that comes with a fair amount of special cases and exception rules that will take quite a while for you to get your head around. You will spend several games learning how to play before you get it right and its going to take ten times as many games to learn to play the game well.

Players pick one of two sides of the war (Central Powers or Allied Powers) and starting in August of 1914 with the historical event known as “The Guns of August” the war kicks off with something of a slow burn.

The system tries to be historically accurate about the war and in that regard World War I wasn’t some big bang event, its something that continued to escalate over time slowly as more and more resources are dedicated towards the imperialistic efforts of key nations triggering more more countries to join the fight.

There are also mechanics that deal with the politics of the war, shining through in the card play but also key mechanics like mandated offensives which helps to illustrate that the war was not just run by generals making strategic decisions on the battlefield, but by global powers who even when being on the same side had political frictions and infighting. It’s a game about maneuvering events as much as it is about actual tactical warfare.

War itself is also quite difficult to predict, battles that seem like easy wins, stall, battles you thought would be attritions go surprisingly well. Their is a cadence here that feels like luck, but is more about being consistent with your planning. You can’t count on winning any one battle, but its about wearing down your opponent, tapping their resources and constantly pushing on them until something breaks.

Running the war in Paths of Glory, much as it must have been historically was about maneuvering around the many events that pushed the war in a direction that favors your plans, but because the game is a back and forth (You take a turn I take a turn), your plans are often spoiled by the action of your opponent to which you must urgently respond. While the war isn’t going to be won by the results of a single battle, every battle that does take place creates opportunities or emergencies that need to be dealt with quickly.

The whole game although its a slow, attrition, has a constant sense of urgency. You have a feeling that on your turn, with that one action and limited resources you have, you need to do a dozen things but end up only being able to do one. The feeling of having an endless stream of vulnerabilities all over the map creates a kind of stress and pressure, creating tension that climaxes slowly over time. At the same time you can create these emergencies for your opponent which forces them to be distracted by your activities elsewhere in the world.

There are these moments of recovery where the players have an unspoken agreement that the fighting has been too intense, neither side feeling comfortable enough to push forward resulting in a sort of recovery period and then there are moments when the fighting is so intense its almost like to wild barbarians swinging at each other with no regard to the possible consequences.

The map is big and busy, there is a lot of stuff going on here and the truth is that you can’t ignore any of it. Quite literarily every inch of this map see’s use in every game, there is no wasted space here.

It’s a fantastic representation of the historical period and works to create a great table atmosphere that only a rich and deep war game like this can provide.

The fun can and does come to sudden stop however and this is one of my complaints about the game in that their are so many exceptions and sub-rules to rules that it seems almost impossible to play the game correctly. Its easy to forget rules like if the central powers reach Limited War on the war status track, Turkey enters the war or that on turns 1 and 2 of the game you get a -2 to attacking forts. These sort of exceptions and special rules require both players to be very well versed on the rules and be vigilant about their execution because ignoring such a rule can really unbalance the game. These rules exist for both historical accuracy and perhaps more importantly to maintain a good balance between the two asymmetrical sides.

Paths of Glory is a deep strategic experience, its a game that tells a story, but that experience and that story comes as a result of the well thought out and complex rules system that drives this game. It’s a strange setup because without these rules, these special cases and exceptions, it would probobly not be as good of a game. You might be tempted to think that if they just made this game simpler, it would be better but this is not the case. It’s specifically the attention to detail that brings this game to life and it would be a lesser game without those details.

Components

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: High quality components that are almost standard from GMT these days.

Cons: Chit tokens are tiny and handling them is a pain in the ass.

Paths of Glory has several different versions that have been printed over the years, the version I’m reviewing here today is the Deluxe 6th edition, the latest one available as of this writing.

This Deluxe edition comes with a two sided mounted gameboard that has on one side the classic original version of the map and on the other an updated more modernized version. Both are actually quite functional, but the updated version color codes the countries making it easier to quickly identify which locations on the map belong to which countries.

The quality of this mounted board is effectively the best possible, I don’t see any way to improve it. It’s sturdy, beautifully illustrated, easy to read with clear iconography. Though the map is extremely busy because so much information is on it, including all the various tracking and status boxes it can be a bit overwhelming, but everything has a purpose and it becomes second nature after a couple of plays to find everything you need.

GMT is quite famous for its card stock and quality, Paths of Glory gets the same treatment with quality so high that I’m certain it will last a lifetime of plays without wear and tear. Glossy, stiff cards that are easy to shuffle and really require no sleeves, they are that well made. The illustrations on the card depict the event of the card to such a degree that after playing the game a few times you know what the card does by looking at the picture. You really can’t ask much more of a game card then that.

The cardboard chits that make up the units of the game on the map are of great quality with legible font, they are very functional in that regard. They are chits however and are a pain in the ass to handle due to their size and the fact that you stack them on the board. Its a constant thing to have to peek under stacks and because the map is quite tight and the chits quite small, its a nuisance to handle them. This is almost universally true about all chit based war games but its particularly troublesome in Paths of Glory as its not a hex but point to point map so the chits must be placed in specific boxes that are exactly the size of the chits. One good bump can misalign all of the units and can easily ruin a game.

The chits are tiny, hard to handle and must be stacked during gameplay. I know this is a war game tradition, but yeah, I feel like a giant trying to pick up a piece of rice when playing this game. Tweezers come highly recommended.

I personally would like see these chit games use bigger maps and bigger chits because even though that may take more space and increase the cost, these games are lifetime hobby games, I don’t think players are going to mind shelling out a few extra bucks for a bigger, easier to manipulate game.

One complaint I also have about all chit games is that the chits are all very specific. For example their is a 1st army for Russia, that chit represents a specific unit in the game, linked to a specific card in the game. Lose that chit and you have a real problem and there are absolutely no spare parts in the game. You have to be really careful not to lose even a single piece in a game that has hundreds of tiny pieces the size of a finger nail. It seems almost inevitable that you will eventually loses pieces and replacing them is going to be a real pain in the ass.

I don’t know what the solution here is, but I think the best your going to do is make them bigger so your less likely to misplace them.

As a whole this is a game that looks beautiful on the table but that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I sometimes send screenshots of games in progress to my friends who roll their eyes at the tiny chits on a massive map, I don’t think they see the appeal but of course these are people who play games like Blood Rage filled with beautiful miniatures so I can understand a game with card board chits might not be as visually appealing to them.

For me personally there is nothing more gorgeous than a huge map of Europe filled with chits representing armies of thousands. Its a personal taste thing I suppose, but I think its beautiful and inspiring.

Theme

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: Captures the World War I theme well… I think.

Cons: World War I is not an easy theme to sell, its a quirky piece of history.

World War I is, well lets just say that in contemporary culture it’s something of a mystery. It’s rather strange because you can find a lot of World War II historical buffs, Napoleon Era Buffs, really almost any other historical period of conflicts will have sort of fanatics that know and are deeply engrossed by its history.

World War I for some reason is the one period in history very few people know about and when you look around the historical war game scene, their is not much out there that covers the subject.

World War I however just like any historical conflict has tremendous amount of subtle and interesting facts and events which can spark the imagination and the history nerd in all of us and Paths of Glory really tries hard to help players make that breakthrough.

It is a tough sell though and this is because a lot of the history is hard to contextualize in our modern understanding of world politics. People thought very differently during this period and the historical events really reflect that as you wonder, WHY? Like why the hell did they do this, what was the political or historical reason for it and Paths of Glory is not really trying to give you an answer, it assumes to a degree that if your interested you can look it up. Though its worth pointing out that in the rules book each card in the game has a historical factoid that explains the event in a more historical context, but you don’t really get this during gameplay.

There is a movie with a relatively young Kirk Douglass called Paths of Glory about World War I you can check out. Might help with the history a bit, but, no I have not seen it.

The end result is that it might be difficult for players to relate to the history and hence the game. Still, from what I can tell and I’m no World War I historian, this game does a fantastic job of bringing that history to life.

I found that after playing it several times I would say stuff like “man I need to get Romania into this fight” where prior to playing this game I’m not sure I could tell you much about Romania or find it on the map (I’m embarrassed to say).

You sort of get into it and its thanks to the games focus on trying to represent the WWI conflict in a less esoteric way. In a way the game tries to simplify the history a bit, not necessarly making it less about real history but more about being a game about creating your own history using real history. This is in big part because every card in the game represents a historical event, but you are not going to execute those cards in a historically accurate timing so you are creating your own version of WWI history. In this way the games subject matter becomes a bit more personalized, its not World War I, its your version of it.

None of this really distracts from the game but I do believe knowing a bit about world war I history would probobly help you to play this game better. Like knowing that Romania while being a small country with limited troops played a pivotal role in history and you get a sense of that after you played a few times. Their position on the map, is quite critical and take could very well swing the war if they enter at the right moment. Just an example but its not something that is intuitively understood just by reading of the rules.

I think I could see this game being ported to other themes and being just as interesting, perhaps even more so, however as it stands as a world war I game I think the theme works quite well even if I don’t really have a real grasp on the historical period.

Gameplay

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: A deep, rich experience with heavy tension and massive scope that gives you everything you want from a historical war game.

Cons: The heavy rules weight and typical 8 hour play time makes this an experience not everyone will appreciate.

Paths of Glory is a complex game, to explain the gameplay in a review article would probobly take as many pages as the actual rulebook and I doubt I could do as good of a job as the actual rulebook does.

I think I will stick to my standard policy of assuming that since this is a very deep, strategic game that part of your research into this game will include familiarizing yourself with the rules and I will instead focus on my opinion about the gameplay to hopefully illustrate what I like and don’t like about the game helping you to make a decision about whether or not to invest.

Its worth noting however that playing Paths of Glory is more than just an financial investment in the game, its a considerable time investment and I think I would put this game into the lifestyle category of games for that reason. Its not something you can just pull off the shelf, explain the rules to a friend and go. This is a game to which two people must dedicate considerable amount of time before they play to understand and learn the game, then ten times that much time to learn to play it well, not to mention the typical 6 to 8 hours it takes to actually play. There is no quick fix for that when it comes to Paths of Glory, that is what it takes and you must embrace that or you probobly should skip it.

Fortunately there is a great online community that supports this game and there are a number of youtube tutorials that can give you a pretty solid start, Harsh Rules is a really good one. In the end however their is no substitute for reading the 34 page rulebook and both you and your opponent should read it cover to cover before playing. Not the most exciting thing you’ll ever do, but it is the path, I don’t think is avoidable if you want to play this game.

Paths of Glory is a multi tier game, meaning their are several core concepts working independently, but the entire thing comes down to a relatively simple back and forth action system. Each round players will take 6 actions, going back and forth and on your turn you will play a card.

That card can be used in several ways to take several different types of actions each with its own purpose and this is where the nuts and bolts of the game center on.

Each card represents an event and these events run the gambit from being political events, reinforcement events, special combat events and more. Each is representative of a piece of history and in this lays much of the games nuanced storytelling. You execute cards representing things that actually happened in history but because your doing it in your own order of play things aren’t going to play out like they did in real history. Paths of Glory is about writing your own history of World War I and this is really the fun of the game, seeing how your version of World War I actually differs from what actually happened.

The cards are the key to the game, but they can get a bit wordy. It takes an understanding of the game to understand what the cards represent, just one more thing that adds to what is a fairly steep learning curve for the game.

Maybe in your game the Allies go on the offensive and become the aggressor, perhaps Italy joins the war much later in your version of history, or perhaps the Americans never join the war. What is the impact, how does that change history, that is where the joy of that story your creating with your opponent comes from. There is all sorts of stuff that can happen, some of it you can control, some of it you can’t.

The main thing about the event cards is trying to figure out when is the best time to execute them and in this we could have endless debates about almost every single card. This is deepened even further by the fact that each of the two asymmetrical decks (central powers and allied powers) is split into three separate periods of play, divided into Mobilization, Limited War and Total War. When these periods execute and when you gain access to those cards depend on your sides war status which is something that is driven by how you play your cards so you have some control over when these cards come into play.

Werther its a good strategy to push war status or not is a subject for debate, but it suffices to say there is a great deal of decision depth here that will have your historical war game senses tingling. I love this aspect of the game and really it stems from my general love of card driven war games, after all, Washington’s War, Twilight Struggle and Empire of the Sun are among my favorite war games and they all use a very similar mechanic.

Instead of the events on the card you can use cards for their operational value, a number typically between 1 to 5 which is a reference to the card events general impact and value. The higher the operations value the more mobility and attacks you can get on the board so sacrificing an important event with a high operations value allows you to have a big impact in the tactical war on the board. This trade off is among the toughest decisions you have to make, but it goes even further then that.

Each card also has a reinforcement point value for each nation and can be used to resurrect and heal wounded armies. This is yet another use for the cards and another point of decison.

This balancing act of choosing what cards to use, when and for what purpose is really where the core of the games strategic gameplay and player decisions comes from. Its at the heart of the game and while there are plenty of other mechanics and gameplay elements I could talk about, this is the bread butter, this is the mechanic that makes Paths of Glory the award winning game it is.

These are tough decisions you make throughout the game and for the historical war game buff, the fun of the game. You these make this decision six times per round and there are potentially 20 rounds in the game if it does not end early which means that you are making a ton of decisions all the time in this game.

What is wonderful about this game is that it’s so painful, every time, round after round, action after action, you are forced to make a call about which card to play and what to use that card for. Its a pain of joy, it gives you the feeling of command over the war and when the game is over you can trace your victory or your defeat to how you played these cards and when you played them. That “I should have played X for Y” discussion after the game will have your head spinning and looking forward to the next time you play so you can do things differently.

There is a simple battle system here that I’m not going to get too much into because it is indeed quite simple. There is of course tremendous strategy in understanding positions, your odds, controlling supply lines and various maneuvers that you can make on the map that are quite important, but these fall into what I would call standard fare for a war game. The system is point to point rather then a hex grid, so there is a sense of tightness on the map where you have to pay close attention to how different areas are connected and this can be quite tricky as it really is a maze. This however adds to rather then takes away from the strategic depth, though it does add to the complexity of the games learning curve.

To me the game is the CDG mechanic and its executed brilliantly here making for a game of tough decisions, inside of a historical layer that comes through at every turn. The game captures the attrition warfare of World War I perfectly, while making sure that the game feels tight and tense so that players are always interested in what is happening. When its done, after 8 hours of play you look back on your experience and speak of it in terms of a story about your version of World War I. Its something that’s difficult to describe, but surely is a wonderful thing.

I certainly have my beefs with the game, there are a few cards I think could be better balanced, a few rules I think dive a little deeper then the game needed it to be, there is the quirkiness of the Near East Map and a few other things. To me none of these spoil the game, in fact I would be hard pressed to point out specific things and as you play the game more and more, coming to a higher understanding of its more subtle elements you also learn to appreciate some of the things that might otherwise come off as complaints.

For example while the Near East may seem like a pointless place where nothing happens in your first few games, as you become better at the game you start to see its potential and suddenly it can be as much of a hot spot as the Eastern or Western fronts. So the learning curve doesn’t really stop with learning to play, there is a tremendous amount of depth to explore in this game and as such, the more you play the more you learn to appreciate its various quirks.

The first couple of games you might wonder what the hell the Near East Map is for, it seems irrelevant to the game, but with some experience you eventually come to realize just how critical the efforts here can be to strategies on both sides.

I think the gameplay here is executed extremely well, this is a game that clearly had a design goal that it achieved. Its educational about its historical elements, it has a deep, thinky strategy, it puts players to constant and difficult decisions and the game has an almost exhaustive tension. Its just fantastic.

Replay-ability and Longevity

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: No two games will ever be alike, rich dynamics give this game infinite replay-ability.

Cons: You need a dedicate opponent ready to play repeated games to get the most out of this game which can be tough in any gaming circle.

I will make this short and sweet because I don’t think there is much to say here. This game has infinite replayability, there are so many dynamic elements here that even though the game setup is static, the resolution of the game is anything but. Its a card driven game, what cards you draw are going to define your actions and in my experience once you get past the first round, there is no way history is going to ever repeat itself.

As far longevity, I think a lot of that comes down to your personal preferences and whether or not you can find an opponent with a matching dedication. For me, this game is on my hobby table fairly often as I play it against online opponents, but finding another player with the same interest and dedication in real life has not been easy. Its a very niche thing and I think for most people this will be something of a dust collector just because of the nature of its complexity and general difficulty to get to the table.

You need to find a like minded war gamer with the same interest and I think that goes for all games in this category.

Conclusion

Paths of Glory is a deeply rich and rewarding experience, but its also a very demanding one. This is a difficult game to learn to play and its even more difficult to learn to play well. It’s certainly not a pick up and play type of game, it requires two dedicated players ready to invest the time to learn to play and that road is long and can be a bit frustrating as the game has a tremendous amount of rules weight and is filled with special case exceptions.

If you can get past that with a buddy however this is an absolute and unquestionable king of historical war gaming. For me its right up there with some of the stone cold classics like Empire of the Sun. It’s not just a game, its an experience.

You have to understand and embrace what your getting yourself into but for those of you out there who are looking for that next historical war game addiction I can’t recommend Paths of Glory enough. It’s amazing!

Board Game Reviews

Twilight Struggle by GMT 2005

July 25, 2020 5 Minutes

As a matter of principle I pride myself on the fact that I’m a diverse gamer who always keeps an open mind to any game, but for the past 15 years since Twilight Struggle released I have resisted it simply because I honestly have no interest in the cold war at all. Having lived through the tail end of it myself, even as it was happening I barely understood it nor cared to know anything about it.

Yet I find myself somewhat obligated to try it as a writer for a gaming blog to play games like Twilight Struggle that are universally hailed as masterpieces, in particular a game that held on to the number one spot on Boardgamegeek for years and still ranks in the top 10 today 15 years after its release.

Finally after years of avoiding it I gave it a try, first by playing the digital version and now the physical version. Today we review Twilight Struggle, 15 years behind schedule!

Overview

Final Score: (3.35 out of 5 Stars)

Designer: Ananda Gupta, Jason Matthews

Twilight Struggle is thematically a game about the cold war in which players via for power over a map of the globe in a “struggle for global supremacy. Always on the brink of nuclear war, players manipulate and maneuver the abstracted concept of influence on the board as they try to dominate entire regions from the America’s to Southeast Asia and everything in-between.

In more practical terms its a game about victory points, scored through a wide range of methods but most notably through the scoring cards that reward control on the map. Each round players can play only a single card at a time from their hand in a back and forth battle to manipulate the board and events on the global stage in their favor. This process is further complicated by the fact that there are American friendly cards and Soviet friendly cards in the single deck from which both players draw cards. Hence as an American player for example you will at times be forced to execute events on cards that benefit your opponent and vice versus, leaving much of the games strategy to timing. Any given card can be super powerful or super weak, depending on when it is played and much of the strategy and sort of high level thinking behind the game lives in this space of assessing when exactly that is.

The game largely comes down to who can best balance the benefits and drawbacks of the cards, timing of when they are played and smart positioning of your influence. There is some luck to the game as players take some of the more riskier moves like waging mini wars in different regions, performing coups or trying to win the space race, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that a skilled player will always win against a lucky player, hence the luck can be mitigated entirely through tactical and strategic game play.

Twilight Struggle is an award winning game and I have no trouble understanding why. Its a game that is incredibly simple to learn how to play, yet bottomless in terms of depth of strategy and gameplay, it is very much like a game of chess where learning the rules of the game is just the beginning of what is a much larger world that surrounds the mechanic.

There is of course more to it then this brief description but it suffices to say that the game looks far more complex then it is, though it has the look of a war game it most certainly is not one and the basis of its duel use card mechanic is a tried and true one responsible for some of the best games on the market today in the genre of historical war games.

The only question that remains is does Twilight Struggle really earn its keep with me, or is it like many of the top 10 contenders on Boardgamegeek overrated?

Components

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: Its a beautiful game, plain and simple, capturing via colors and art perfectly and the innate feel of the cold war.

Cons: Like most GMT games, the cards are of such high quality stock that they are almost too stiff to shuffle.

GMT games is probably not known for high quality components, though it should be! In fact they should be famous for changing the reputation of historical simulation games and war games in this regard, as the more commonly known “chit games” have always been notoriously poor quality. Back in the day when a lot of these types of “token based” war and simulation games where made they were known for having really shitty components, poorly written manuals for really complex games, lack of “color” and artistic style. They focused on gameplay but never components. GMT has changed all that and shown that you can have the best of both worlds.

In fact, some of the GMT games on my shelf like B-17 Flying Fortress Leader and Empire of the Sun are among the most beautiful table decorations I own, with some of the highest quality components I have ever seen in a game. Twilight Struggle (current printing) benefits from this change and GMT provides truly high quality, gorgeous components for the game with an artistic flair that just fits. Yet their wise enough to understand that I want to pay for a game, not fancy miniatures, something that has grown incredibly tiresome in today’s gaming market where games are five times as expensive then they need to be just to have some plastic representation that serve no purpose in the game-play at all. This annoys me to no end and I’m glad GMT understands that good components does not mean wasting my money on pointless and usually unnecessary plastic sculpts while simultaneously ugly components devoid of any art or style, are just as distracting and disturb enjoyment of the game. The middle ground they found is exactly what I like to see in games today.

The mounted gameboard is astonishingly colorful, wonderfully illustrated and incredibly useful (for gameplay) in terms of organization and layout. It makes playing the game easier, faster and makes grasping its concepts simpler, serving not only the aesthetic but practical purpose for the game. I love that and GMT should be commended for how well thought out the game-board is. Somehow they managed to capture the color theme of the cold war as one might imagine it with the deep dark blood reds of the Soviets and the cool, clean blues of the Americans. This is a game-board you will just love owning, giving you that warm fuzzy feeling of money well spent.

The cards and tokens in the game are also of the absolute highest quality you can get, truly made to last with a lot of thought going into the legibility and usability of both, not overwhelming them with art and color but ensuring that each component has thematic weight and recognizably. In fact after a few plays of Twilight Struggle I can tell you what each card does just by the picture and I have the memory capacity of a goldfish. Unfortunately GMT has a tendency to make the card stock too rigid, they are actually difficult to shuffle.

I would not consider component quality a huge must for a game like this, but the fact that the components are great is a huge boon for the game, I love being surprised and impressed by something unexpected, it carries a lot of weight with me.

Finding opponents for Twilight Struggle can be difficult, but there is a digital version of the game that can help with that.

Theme

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: Its difficult to imagine a game capturing a theme better, this is the cold war in a box.

Cons: Your interest in the theme will have different mileage, its not exactly the most interesting of subjects.

I walked into Twilight Struggle with very limited if any understanding or interest in the cold war, yet after playing the game I have found myself engrossed in the subject going so far as reading books on the topic. To me, when a board game not only teaches but creates interest in a subject, its an automatic win in the theme department and Twilight Struggle has certainly done that with a very large, nuclear bang.

Twilight Struggle does an amazing job of creating that anxiety of the cold war in which there is a constant move and counter move as was often the case historically between the Americans and the Soviets. That feeling of being limited to what you can do out of fear of the ultimate consequence. There is a kind of sense of scale as well and the weight of players actions create a constant re-assessment in trying to understand the “why” of each play. Every card play, reveals something about your opponents strategy, yet you can’t help but imagine the world in which these events take place thanks in large part to the clever way in which cards and history are linked.

Because each card represents an actual event in history and the draw deck is broken down into early, mid and late war cards gradually shuffled into the main deck, their is a kind of progression through history that you feel through the cards as they are played. Even the focus of what regions are important, the fluctuations in where the influential political battlefields are and the places were it all takes place breathes life into the thematic and often historically accurate feel of the game, yet it is not scripted and each game you play you get a truly unique alternate version of history.

I think Twilight Struggle has done an incredible job of bringing the theme of the cold war to life, in particular in making you feel that anxiety of the era. Its truly an amazing sensation that even now I find difficult to describe but as I write I can’t help but to nod my head in agreement and understanding of why this game was both so popular, highly rated and won so many awards. Its a beautiful coordination between theme and game-play deserving of all its accolades.

Gameplay

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: The card mechanic is brilliantly done, with lots of difficult decisions and interesting strategies to explore while being relatively easy to teach the rules.

Cons: The game favors the soviets and the game suffers from an overwhelming expert syndrome problem that can make it difficult to induct to players.

Twilight Struggle is hardly the first game to make use of the card driven “operation costs” mechanic we see in the game at its core, but what is surprising is that a game with this mechanic could become such a hit with the general gaming public. Topping the charts on BBG (boardgamegeek), Twilight Struggle has achieved considerable acclaim considering its historical war game roots.

Though Washington’s War might look more complicated, it actually is at about the same complexity level to learn, yet much simpler game to get your head around the strategy and may actually be a better choice for inducting players into the genre of card driven historical war games.

We see this mechanic in classics like For the People, Washington’s War and Empire of the Sun, attributed largely to the wonderful designer Mark Herman. Yet Twilight Struggle somehow manages to improve on the concept mainly by simplifying it down to its basics and implementing it in a simple way mechanically while gripping tightly to the reason for its existence, that deep strategic core that drives paralysis analysis. I think Mark Herman is a great designer but he designs games for war gamers and it really took someone more in tune with the general board game culture to understand how to leverage this mechanic in a way that it could be absorbed by more casual gamers which make up the vast majority of people out there rolling dice. I really think its this leveraging of Mark Hermans great revolution in game design that has produced a game like Twilight Struggle, yet Ananda Gupta and Jason Mathews also really opened the door into some interesting elements of play that don’t really exist in the Herman design on which Twilight Struggle is based.

This is a mechanic you will be thinking as much about during the game as between games, as its a an endless well of potential and its why so many of Mark Hermans games are so highly regarded among war gamers, yet Twilight Struggle in my eyes simply does it better than all of its predecessors in many ways. Not necessarily because it goes deeper but rather by making the experience far more palatable, approachable and easier to absorb. Twilight Struggle is a game you can teach in 10 minutes flat with few “exception based” rules that can make so many historical war games difficult to manage at the table and while a novice opponent may struggle to beat a more experienced player speaking to its depth, it won’t be the result of not understanding how to play. This is a vast contrast to most games that use this card driven mechanic that really require considerable amount of study just to play correctly. One exception might be Washingtons War which I found had a very similar feel, yet lacked the depth of card play that Twilight Struggle has.

More than that however, Twilight Struggle creates a sort of static zone of gameplay. There aren’t infinite possibilities and combinations and though from play to play you will always be surprised by the way cards and situations combine, there is a tone to the game, a strategic playing field that a single person can absorb, understand and work within thanks to the fact that in playing the game your not constantly trying to remember the many rules and exceptions to interactions as is the case in so many of the games where this mechanic appears. Its why I say its a better version of the game as it has considerably fewer if any “gotcha” moments in the rules, yet has them in immense quantity in terms of game-play.

Don’t get me wrong I love Empire of the Rising Sun, Washington’s War and even Paths of Glory, but I never feel comfortable pulling these games out with a friend and saying “hey lets play a fun game” even though I desperately want to play those games with someone because they really are amazing. They just require a lot more explanation and understanding of rules to really play even remotely competitively and really the first few games of these great titles are going to be very much learning the rules games. Even after playing them many times, it still can feel like a bit of a grind to get through them. Twilight Struggle is the first game in this vein I have seen that I really believe anyone can learn to play in 10 minutes from opening the box and that just makes this a gem among gems.

Twilight Struggle gameplay is all about subtle plays and I have to admit the first few times I played it, even though it always drew me back, I felt helpless and limp. It was easy to learn how to play, but learning to play it well really required some study, understanding of the cards, the subtle interactions of those cards and the importance of key locations and most importantly paying attention to what has and hasn’t been played. In a sense this is a drawback of Twilight Struggle. It suffers from what I like to call “expert syndrome” where new players don’t have a prayer in hell winning against someone who has a few games under their belt, which notably is not an uncommon phenomenon among strategic war games, but at least the cause is not the lack of understanding the rules which is more typically the case with all other games I have played in this vein.

The game is full of cards like this one that if you don’t know about and understand that they are coming you can create circumstances on the board that will be easy to counter. Its expert knowledge like this you really need if you have any hope of winning a game.

When it comes to the road to experience mileage will vary, I have found some get it right away, others struggle with the subtle way the game is manipulated card play to card play. In fact I have found that non-gamer or casual gamers tend to pick it up faster then veteran gamers that enter the scene with a lot of expectation and assumption from the genre. This may explain why its so popular on boardgamegeek.

Still I found that when I teach the game I spend as much time explaining the rules as I do giving strategy tips and advice. Most players become competitive only after many plays and only IF they like the game initially which filters out a lot of people, in fact most people. If you can manage to find someone who sticks with it during this learning the strategy curve, the game not only becomes absolutely amazing, but extraordinarily diverse.

You will never play the same game twice especially since every opponent will ultimately develop their own style and approach to the game. That is assuming you can hook them which is a iffy proposition. The subject matter and the complexity of the strategy that really favors expertise can be a real turn off in the initial plays and it will take many plays for a player to really become competitive against someone who has already gone through this cycle of learning and developing their skills.

I do find some flaws with the mechanic as well. For one, its clear to me that the Soviet player has a significant advantage. This is not just a sort of personal opinion but a fact based statistical reality. No matter where you turn for these statistics, tournaments, online play in the digital version of the game or personal experience the win rate of the Soviet is ALWAYS much higher then the Americans. I think this is mainly because the turn order does not change and the Soviet Player starts with that powerful China card, but it could be a other subtle elements combined that drive the results.

This can be a deal breaker because all things being equal the Soviet player will win more often than the American player. An American victory is a far more respected and coveted thing in my eyes, but it does not change this simple flaw in the game.

At its core, Twilight Struggle is a game of chess, a battle of wits in which you analyze your opponents plays to asses what he may or may not be after and I think really experienced players will make intentionally misleading plays to try and trick their opponent into believing in certain assumptions. This of course assumes that both opponents are experts, so when novice players who don’t know the cards are involved this tends to carry considerably less weight if any, but I suppose to some extent this is always true about strategic war games.

Which brings me to my point. Twilight Struggle may indeed be a much simpler to absorb and understand game rules wise but it is no less deep and strategic then your typical high level war game which kind of creates an unusual circumstance in the hobby. Here is a game anyone can learn to play but it exists in that same plane as Empire of the Rising Sun or Paths of Glory. Removing the complexity is ingenious but it does result in this weird space were highly experienced war games playing casual gamers creates a very wide gap of gaming results.

I can say already now that I have a grip of this game that 95% of all people I play against I beat by the 3rd or 4th turn definitively in what can only be described as a crushing defeat. Its rare that I run across a player who has studied the game enough to really give me any semblance of competitive play. It did not take long for me to get here, but it did require a much bigger effort then simply a few plays. Reading and understanding the cards, the structure and format of the game where key to bringing me up to this level. This is the main distinction between war gamers and casual gamers, one studies games the other plays them, however when you make a game like Twilight Struggle that is interesting and simple enough for casual gamers, yet is very much on that higher plane of war gaming two worlds collide.

Replayability And Longevity

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: The various interactions of the cards and situations on the board can make this a puzzle to solve every time you play.

Cons: Strangely enough, it takes repeated plays before you really learn how to play well and once you do, the game starts to feel a bit scripted.

Twilight Struggle has been a top ten contender on boardgamegeek for over a decade and this comes to no surprise to me, however I personally believe that it can act as an entry point to a much larger world less visited by the casual gamers out there for which I appreciate it a lot more. Twilight Struggle can act as an introduction to the concept of true war high level war gaming and I think its a great place to start if you have interested in exploring this very different type of experience in the world of table top games. Washington’s War, Paths of Glory, Empire of the Sun and We The People are just some of the amazing games that use this core mechanic and are absolute gems worth your time to expand to.

That said, I do think that Twilight Struggle can become a bit scripted after sufficient plays, in particular if you are playing the same opponent repeatedly. I find most players find some rhythm to how they approach the game and so will you, so games can start to sort of meld together into a single memory.

Still I think there is definitely enough replay-ability to warrant a purchase of this game, I think I may have been spoiled by the digital version where I have already clocked over a 100 games. That is not something you are likely to do with the table top version.

Conclusion

What can I say about this game that hasn’t already been said by countless fans, its a gem worth your money. I would only caution those with no interest in the sort of historical war game genre that while this game is certainly not a war game, it definitely has that “history genre game” feel to it and that may be the reason I love it and someone else may not. It also requires repeatedly plays before you will really understand what to do and how to win, so you will loose a lot at first and there is no shortcut to that as the subtle ways the cards interact and what they can do needs to be nearly memorized to really get to that fundamental core strategy that fans of this game love.

At its core there is an amazing mechanic here and even if abstracted outside of the theme there are some amazing puzzles to solve generated dynamically through game-play. The game is full of really tough decisions, its over flowing with amazing “holy crap” swings and there is no such thing as a game you can’t come back from. I have one games where I’m at -19 points during mid war, so there is this really amazing “there is always a way to win” feel to it.

Great game, highly recommend it!

Gamers Dungeon

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