Stripped Down for Parts: Burning Banners: Rage of the Witch Queen

 

Hefty. and very square.

 

And now for something completely different. I wrestled for a long time with whether or not to purchase Burning Banners: Rage of the Witch Queen (Compass Games, 2024). Firstly, it’s a big investment, both of cash and space (regular readers will know we live in a smallish apartment, and storage space is at a premium – I can no longer afford the shelf-space for “occasional” games). I’ve also been leaning harder into historical games over the last couple of years, selling or giving away many of the “family” games I’ve bought over the last ten or so years, and keeping just a handful of favourites.

In fact, around the middle of last year, I made the decision not to acquire Burning Banners. I drew a line under it and moved on, telling myself it’s too much to commit to. I’ve been divesting my collection of a lot of RPG material because I’ll never get around to using most of it. Since beginning A Fast Game, I’ve been doubling down on historical gaming, not all war-gaming exclusively, but I have avoided fantasy an sci-fi (that’s not to say I’ve cleaned house, but in the last three years I’ve bought just one Sci-fi game, To Honor Grandfather (Cheese Weasel Logistics, 2025), and that was pretty much solely because of the Traveller RPG connection (I have every intention of grabbing the Belter (Game Designers Workshop, 1979) re-release from Compass Games when it finally lands.*

That resolve was shaken by a couple of confluent events. First, I stumbled across a review by the gentlemen of The Player’s Aid in my YouTube recommendations, and my FLGS was selling copies for a very reasonable price†, along with a 10% discount because it was the end of the year and obviously that reignited my interest – fairly passively, but definitely kindled.

 

The cover illustration is a Chris Moeller original and a fan favourite (Billy Thomas mentioned it was one of his favourite covers during a recent Town Hall). It well conveys the feel and tone of the game inside; a group of heroes leading a haggard army against the titular witch-queen, Lilith and her horde of otherworldly minions. The rendering in purples, distant blues and browns make the banner titles in red and white pop on the box.

The cover also lists the six playable factions of the game; three “bad-guy” factions – Orcs, Goblins, and the Army of the Night – and three factions who may seem like good guys in comparison the others – the Oathborn, Fjordlanders, and the Eastern Empire.

I should just take a moment to mention the weight of the game. The box comes in at a little under 3.9kg (8½ lbs). If you have a bad back or impoverished upper-body strength, you may require the assistance of a burly friend or manservant to get the game home.

Box-back.

Burning Banners is a fantasy game, replete with the trappings of a fantastical setting. It’s set in the imaginary world of Kalar, where six races battle, sometimes in alliances, sometimes on their own, for supremacy, glory, treasure, and whatever the scenario’s victory conditions dictate. Let me say form the get-go, I get that fantasy games may not be your thing. But be in no doubt that Burning Banners is every bit a wargame; combat is gritty and sometimes lethal, and fortune smiles on the well-prepared.

The box-back offers a glimpse into the setting, with its rich internal history and lore. It also presents a taste of the gorgeous map art, some of the denizens of Kalar (the map extract and counters are shown at true size; 1” counters and 1 ½” hexes), and some sample cards and coins (the game even has a production component for each player’s forces).

The game breakdown is one of the nicest I’ve seen, with icons for each qualifier drawn from the game art. The game’s complexity is rated at low/medium; Burning Banners has two modes of play, the Basic Game is a straight-forward wargame of armies clashing and trying to gain the upper hand, while the Advanced Game introduces Heroes, Spells, and superior artillery (Monsters) to pound and confound the enemy. The scale of the game is one “Imperial League to a hex and a yearly turn cycle of four seasons, while each unit marker represents an Army or a Hero.

Popping the hood.

The game duration is listed as an hour plus, depending on the scenario (I’d estimate at least two hours for the shorter multiple player scenarios using the Advanced Games rules), and there are scenarios accommodating two to six players. Burning Banners’ solitaire suitability is given to be Medium, though I think that would be a little higher with the Basic Game scenarios, and the recommended age of players is, of course, fourteen and up.

The post cards. Superfluous, but they do look really good.

The first thing you see upon removing the lid is a small bundle of art prints. These are referred to on the back of the box as postcards. They serve no in-game purpose, but they replicate some of the character art from the game on a much bigger scale than you’ll see on the counters. I’m a bit ambivalent about this kind of thing in games, but I didn’t grow up in a world with videogame art books and people who collect pop-culture character bobbleheads as a retirement plan, so I’m not qualified to judge.

The Rulebook.

Burning Banners comes with three booklets; the Rulebook, the Campaign Book and a Traveller’s Guide to the World of Kalar. All are printed on nice, weighty semi-gloss stock, presented in full-colour and profusely illustrated, and rendered in a Palatino-reminiscent typeface and font size that never had me reaching for my reading glasses.

Sample Rulebook spread. Readable and well illustrated.

The rulebook runs to sixty pages. The first half is devoted to the rules for the Basic Game, though more is presented here than will be used in the introductory scenario. The next fifteen pages of the rulebook cover the Advanced Game, introducing rules for Heroes, Monsters and how they and the various card decks interact with the game. The last quarter of the Rulebook offers a guide to the different card types (Hero, Magic, Treasure, and Blessing), a five-page glossary (always a good idea when presenting new concepts), and a helpful guide for reading the counters on the back cover.

The Campaign Book. Scenarios are called Campaigns in Burning Banners.

The Campaign Book boasts no less than twenty-nine scenarios (referred to as Campaigns in the game), with guidelines on how to link the final ten into a Grand Campaign of truly epic proportions (cue Battle of Five Armies music). The scenarios are really well laid out graphically, with easy-to-read symbology for the involved factions and their turn order, and colour-coded stat-block-style boxed notes highlight the pertinent information for each faction involved in the given scenario (Starting Income, Opening Builds – available currency for building your initial army and any bonus Heroes – and any Special Rules as applicable). Each scenario also includes a contextual paragraph placing the current campaign in the context of the larger history of the era.

Sample Campaign (No. 16 - three faction).

For the shorter Campaigns, everything fits onto a single page. As they get more complex, these expand to two pages, but are always laid out over an open spread – no needing to flip a page back and forth.

The Traveller's Guide to Kalar. Worth reading.

Also included in the game is a Traveller’s Guide to the World of Kalar. This is a sixteen-page distillation of the lore of the Burning Banners universe. This is a place that Mr Moeller has obviously inhabited for some time, fleshing out a history and pantheon of the game world as lovingly as Greyhawk or Glorantha.

The Traveller’s Guide has been prepared with an eye to brevity and humour. While this isn’t critical to game play, it’s definitely worth a read, and to have on hand for players acquainting themselves with the Heroes and events in the game for the first time and helps contextualise the action and the stakes as the Campaigns play out.

Four 22' by 17" mounted map sections that meet up perfectly.

Mr Moeller is first and foremost an artist; it was his job for many decades with Wizards of the Coast and is still his passion. This is obvious in Burning Banners and, to my mind, most clearly in the game’s map-boards. The map was hand-drawn in the style of fantasy cartography going back to the Lord of the Rings. This means that the illustrative quality of the play surface can only be appreciated from a single view, but this should hardly matter during play. Cities and settlements, terrain and rivers are all beautifully rendered and use a mix of textural cues and symbology to convey information about the battleground.

Sample map, laid out and looking really pretty.

The game map is divided into for mounted sections. Practically speaking, these fit together very well (immaculate edge-matching), and the segmented map allows for many scenarios to be played on one of two of the map sections, rather than having to clear the whole table for each Campaign. Each section is 22” by 17”, making the whole map roughly comparable to a two standard-sized map game footprint with a portrait orientation. The hexes are a full 1½” across, the better to accommodate the 1” unit markers.

Map detail. Nice.

The map is hand-drawn; every city, village, tower bridge looks a little different. There are coniferous forests further to the north and deciduous groves to the south. The overall effect is stunning, but these details aren’t all simply for show. Rivers are lined in black as far as they are navigable, and subtle symbology brings a wealth of usable detail to the board without taking away from the overall effect.

Counter sheet 7 - markers and currency (apologies for the reverse order - the pics loaded
on top of each other instead of consecutively, and I didn't have the patience to
fix it on the fly).

Counter sheet 6 - mostly Control markers.

Counter sheet 5 - Monsters (brown) and Sea Monsters (blue), oh my!.

Counter sheet 4 - Goblins.

Counter sheet 3 - Orcs (black edge) and Army of the Night (suitably red).

.

Counter sheet 2 - Fjordland (blue), Oathborn (grey) and some Army of the Night.

Counter sheet 1 Eastern Empire (purple) and Fjordland.

 

Burning Banners comes with seven easy-punch counter sheets. These are mostly populated with counters representing units – Armies, Heroes, Monsters, and Siege Equipment. There are, of course also markers and tokens used in play or for tracking activities, or for indicating factional control over locations are about ⅝” in size. Finally, coin tokens in 1s, 5s and 10s are available to keep track of the production economics of the game.

The unit counters are remarkable, not just for the (again) hand-drawn representations of the unit types, but for the clever economy of presentation. Central to the design is an image headed by a title explaining the unit type (some of the more common units have multiple illustrations depicting the same unit type). A coloured bar down the left edge distinguishes the faction, while a torn brown strip on the right will intricate if the unit has been damaged (on the verso of the counter or just started off as a weak unit. Each unit has a build cost in the top-right corner, in a point-up yellow square; this represents the cost to create or repair the unit. Some armies are Feral, wild beasts under factional control; these are marked by their production cost appearing in an elongated (diamond-shape) yellow square with a vulpine face in the bottom half.

An army’s Movement rating is indicated in the lower-right corner. In most cases this will be an unadorned number. In the case of Huge allies (wyrms, giant eagles, actual giants), this number will appear in a black hexagon.

The combat Strength of a unit is indicated in black or white bars, or a combination thereof, in the upper-right corner of the counter. White bars represent Light Dice (d6s), while the black bars indicate Heavy Dice (d8s). In combat, one die is rolled for each bar on the counter, of the colour matching the bar. Hits are 5s and up, so a one-third chance of a hit on a Light die, and a one-half chance on the Dark dice. In combat the Defender also rolls; every successful roll by the defender blocks (cancels) one of the Attacker’s hits. It’s an elegant mechanic for a less civilised age.

The Player's Aid Card, Front (right-side) and back.

And Inside the fold.

Burning Banners comes with two Player’s Aid Cards. These are 11” by 17” bi-fold cards and they are laid out rather brilliantly. The front panel covers Combat Resolution, the inner panels offer a clear explanation of the Turn Sequence, Actions, Free Actions, and the Winter season procedure (this kicks in with the Advanced Game), And the back panel offers an annotated Terrain Effects summary.

The nominal bad guys (vampires are still bad, right?).

The nominal good guys.

Each of the six factions has its own Faction Display, a small, double-layered board that houses the faction’s available armies, heroes and other markers, and reminds the player of the special attributes particular to that faction (e.g., the Fjordlanders are accomplished seafarers; they can move by ship as a free action, and can increase their sea movement by two).The  double-layer design with cut-outs for the units and other markers probably isn’t necessary, but it is a nice touch, and will probably appeal to gamers more familiar with Euro-games. Burning Banners is an obvious candidate for hobby gamers who have tried something like Scythe (Stonemaier Games, 2016) and are emboldened to try something more classically war-gamey but aren’t quite ready for Death in the Trenches (Compass Games, 2022).

The Season Display, kind of the odometer and fuel gauge of the game.

Game progress is recorded on the Season Display. This display card and the Magic Card Display, which is used in the Advanced game along with the cards, is mounted on a medium-heavy weight of cardstock (both are single sided). The Season Display has a Season Track representing three game years, Spring to Winter, a Turn Track for the participating factions, and an Income Track, for, well, keeping track of each faction’s current income. Each season is a Turn in game terms, and each scenario offers guidance as to the opening and closing of the given campaign; Campaign 17, for example, runs over six turns, from Spring of Year 1 to Summer of Year 2.

The Turn Track has six columns, each with three positions denoting the three phases of play each faction works through in their turn. The scenario notes dictate the order of play, and Faction Tokens are placed on the Turn Track for each faction represented in the current Campaign. This is a neat way to keep everyone on the same page, but for multi-player games, I think I’d be commissioning one (reliable) player to manage the admin of the tracks, to avoid overreach (that is, people reaching over the board, knocking pieces or – heaven forbid – drinks in the process).

The Magic Card Display, like it says on the label.

As previously mentioned, the game also comes with a Magic Card Display. This isn’t as fancy as the double layered Faction Displays – it’s simply a board marked with places to keep the fresh Spell and Treasure decks and the discard piles for the played Spell and Blessing cards. I’m just getting to the cards now, so you’ll have to bear with me for a moment.

As I’ve mentioned, The Magic Card Display and Season Display are presented on a nice weight of board, but I didn’t mention they also feature rounded corners. It’s a minor thing, but it demonstrates the careful thought that has gone into the production of this game. Along the sides of the

Four sealed card decks as they come, 206 cards in all.

Burning Banners is a card assisted game. At least I think it is. I’m only just starting to delve into the Advanced Game rules, but as I understand it, the cards are there to offer random adjustments, in the form of boons and Blessings, or acquired as Treasures.

Every fantasy story should have a little magic, and the cards are how this is introduced into the game narrative. There are three types of cards; Spells, Treasures and Blessings. The Spells and Treasures are drawn from shared decks, while each active faction has its own Blessing deck. During play, the cards a player as collected through the course of play (during the Arcane Study phase of a turn) can be spent to improve the odds in a fight or become “owned” by the faction in the case of Treasures.

The cards themselves are very nice, printed on a typically good weight of cardstock. They are attractive without being overdone – they don’t each sport individual illustrations or fancy fonts. Instead, they each sport a Title, a game function presented in a text box in the centre of the card in a eminently readable font and size, and some colour-text in a slightly smaller font at the bottom. Overall, great presentation, and nothing to distract from the gorgeous map and counter art.

Clarifications. Just don't call them errata.

Finally, the game does come with a couple of two-column sheets of notes. Before you start on a song and dance about errata in Compass games, the two sheets (two and a half pages) of notes are all Clarifications, note further explaining this or that rule where an early adopter of the game has found the Rulebook somehow lacking. I for one welcome these notes, I can be a bit of a meathead at times and any assistance is welcome.  

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I am pleased to report that I have punched some Burning Banners counters and pushed them around the board a bit. While I’ve started going through the Advanced Game rules, I want to play through the introductory scenario a coupe more times to bed down the learnings from the Basic Game before I punch any more counters, maybe even run through it with a second player. I’ve been reluctant to go for multi-player games in recent years, but Burning Banners is a game that will appeal to the Wednesday group (which often swings between four and six players), and there are a lot of two-player scenarios included as well. As I mentioned, a big selling point was it being a Chris Moeller game – like John Butterfield’s output, I’ll pretty much try anything Mr Moeller chooses to release (that I can afford). I’ll write up an AAR for the first competitive game, and see how we go from there.

 

* Since writing this unboxing, I’ve noticed a serendipitous connection among the games mentioned here. Burning Banners designer and illustrator, Christopher Moeller was also responsible for the Compass-version Belter counter graphics. Needless to say, they look quite nice.

† At least it was a reasonable price to my mind. Milage may vary.

 

 

2026 Q1 Report: Supplies and Demands

 

 

9th Division Army Service Corps, Tobruk, September 1941
(Courtesy of the Australia War Memorial).

Three months into the new year, I find myself feeling like a bit of a fraud. A Fast Game began a blog about playing wargames, but there hasn’t been a lot of games played lately. Life, family illness, and associated stresses intrude on plans, or weariness overtakes the planner. Either way, I’m left with feelings of guilt over missed opportunities. This leaves me in a funk, a little black terrier growling and pulling at my trouser leg.

Writing is the best salve for this funk, but I’ve been wilfully ignoring this avenue out of Achillean stubbornness (I’ll come back to this later in the post). I think I’m digging my way out of that funk now. The terrier is in the corner, chastened but alert.

Overall, I’m a little disappointed with my written output these last three months – the quantity thereof, of the quality I’m quite chuffed – and dissatisfied with my own participation in the hobby. Through the course of preparing this report, my view of the last three months of A Fast Game has softened a little; I do feel like I’ve achieved some joy in some areas, in spite of not meeting my own expectations in others. On balance, it hasn’t been a bad quarter.

 

Incoming

In previous quarterly reports, this section has been called Games Purchased, but most of the arriving games in a given quarter have been ordered and paid for in advance, sometimes a year or more earlier. So, I’m changing it to “Incoming” partly in keeping with a martial theme, partly because some quarters it can feel somewhat like a barrage.

Overall, I’ve received twelve wargames and two expansions/supplements in the last three months. Q1 2026 was the Quarter of Big Boxes. No less than three games arrived in 12” by 12” shells (see the photo attached). A GMT P500 order arrived with two Mark Simonitch games (and a mounted board for Italy ’43 (GMT Games, 2025)) and Unconditional Surrender! Western Campaigns (GMT Games, 2025). I also received Battle Commander, Volume 1 (Sound of Drums, 2026) and its first expansion, and Gallipoli: Ordered to Die (The Dietz Foundation, 2025), both crowdfunded through the usual channels. 

Q1 haul. Not pictured; Bansai 28, Paper Wars #84 (Autumn 2016). 1846: The Race for the
 Midwest is an honourable mention. I've never played an 18XX game, and the price was
very good, so I grabbed this and 1777: Year of the Hangman (Clash of Arms, 2002)
as a job lot.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that Brian Train’s latest COIN game, China’s War (GMT Games, 2025) was subbed-out for another title I won in a raffle draw. I was particularly heartened to receive a contributor’s copy of BonSai Games’ Bansai 28. I’ve bleated about this enough – you can read about it here – but, but by happy coincidence, it included a a revised edition of the game Balkan Gamble, also designed by Mr Train. He was kind enough to forward me the English language rules and scenario details (the game covers four planned but unexecuted invasions of Greece/Yugoslavia between 1943 and 1950). This is near the top of my to be played.  And as if the gods themselves smiled down on the exchange, a copy of Mr Train’s Finnish Civil War (Compass Games, 2016) in issue 84 of Paper Wars arrived (with Battle Commander, but that’s a story for another time) on the same day as Bansai 28. China’s War arrived the following week.

The others were opportunistic purchases, on my part – get ’em before they’re gone. I've already posted an unboxing of War & Peace, Seventh Edition (Avalon Digital, 2025); the others will be forthcoming.

 

Games played

This will be short. And embarrassing. In the last three months I think I’ve played maybe nine games or less to completion, depending on how you define complete. When I’m playing a game two-handed, I’ll sometimes stop when a probable conclusion is clear, when it would be impossible for one side to make it out of the hole they’ve dug, and those last three or so rounds would just be a slow attrition, delaying the inevitable.

I’ve also played out the first couple of rounds of a handful of games, only to pack them up again before I’ve reached the meat of the game. These last three months have been a season of disruptions. This happened twice with The Battle of Blenheim, 1704 (Legion Wargames, 2018), and twice again in the last several weeks, with Battle Commander, Vol 1.

French Regulars and Guard advance on brittle Spanish militia (Valour and Fortitude).

T and I haven’t met for a game since a couple of weeks before Christmas. We thought we may be able to squeeze one in tonight (the last day of March), but circumstances would not permit. The reason for our extended break is also the cause of much of the stress across the extended family these past months, and a big contributor to my not clocking more games recently.

Something I have played quite a bit these last three months is minis games. I participated in a couple of miniatures games using the Valour and Fortitude rules (Perry Miniatures, 2022), which is fast becoming the go-to rules for a sweep of periods. This quarter we’ve played an American Revolutionary War action and an early Peninsular War game.

Not quite a free-for-all (Jugula).

We also had two consecutive weeks of Gladiator games, Spartacus: a Game of Blood and Treachery (Gale Force Nine, 2012), which was mechanically elegant and a brilliant engine builder but didn’t blow my socks off, and Jugula (Studio Tomahawk, 2014), which did. Spartacus is more about building your ludus and stabbing your competition in the back, and the side-spectacle of the gladiatorial combat almost a distraction. Jugula is all arena combat, with a brilliant card-based system where the deck both offers advantages and determines your fate at each exchange of blows. If swords and sandals are your thing, hunt down a copy of the Jugula rules and decks (you’ll need one deck for each team, but there are lots of options for your team).

We who are about to die... (Jugula).

 

Blog matters; or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the box

This Quarter I’ve posted just nineteen entries to A Fast Game (including this one). In my last Quarterly Report, I mentioned I was hoping to improve the posting count from 2025, but that Quarter I put up twenty-two posts all up. There are a lot of little contributing factors at play here, but I want to look at one here in particular.

Like I said at the start, I started A Fast Game to talk about playing games. In spite of barely getting any table-time in the last three months, I still think of myself as a wargame player rather than a wargame collector. So, it wasn’t much of a shock when I realised unboxing posts made up a third of the entries posted in the last three months (compared to just two AARs), and three of those went up consecutively. This isn’t really a problem– I treat unboxings like a community service and try to make them informative and entertaining – but lately I’ve been hyper-conscious of A Fast Game starting to look like a big advertisement. Or the online equivalent of a used car lot.

I have about four unboxing posts in various states of completion and could probably have upped the quota for Q1 so something like last year’s levels, but I realise now I’ve been self-editing my posting. I’ve got four games that arrived between January and now that I’d like to write up, as well as another eight or ten from last year. If I had pushed through and finished some of these, I probably would have felt better overall about the blog, and would probably have written more overall, not just the unboxings. I hope I’ve turned a corner with actually playing games, but I’ll also try not to let my embarrassment form not posting AARs get in the way of posting unboxings.

Another thing regulars may have noticed is I’ve added a new, if infrequent, feature to A Fast Game. Q1 saw two short-form interviews, with designer/publisher Yasushi Nakaguro and social media impresario Grant Linneberg. This is something I’be been thinking about for a while. I want to present short interviews with a relatively concentrated focus on a given subject. I’m still finding my feet a little with it, but the reception so far has been encouraging. I’m currently lining up another interview and have a few other subjects in mind. It will stay an infrequent addition to the stable, but expect to see more of these.

Early action in the Battle of Montebello (Battle Commander).

The other big news is that just yesterday (at time of writing), A Fast Game passed the 75,000 visits mark. To put that in context, starting out I just about reached 500 views in the first six months of posting (and I think about 10% of those were me making sure all the links worked live), and about fifteen months all up to get to 10,000 views.

The view count is a pretty high-level metric and doesn’t mean much; in a previous job I was responsible for reporting on a handful of metrics, and the Marketing division was in love with the overall site visit metric because it just kept going up, in spite of the fact that the actual number of visits per month was circling the drain.

I don’t know how many of those visits result in the reader glancing over what’s on offer and digging further or just bouncing off and checking out YouTube videos instead. A Fast Game isn’t monetised, and I don’t want to pay for Google Analytics, so I can only extrapolate from the meagre data provided in basic Blogger.

The simple analytics you get with Blogger show you the Top Referrers and Top Referring URLs – who is sending readers your way, and how they are getting there. These usually pick up less than ten percent of the overall visits for a given duration (I have it set up for the last week’s activities). So, while I get readers from recommendations on other websites, the majority seem to come through the front door; that is, the come to the general blog address and see whatever I’ve posted most recently, then sometimes they’ll go rummaging through the back-catalogue.

Traffic report.

As I’ve said previously, I’m really appreciative of the mentions I get on other blogs and elsewhere (you know who you are), but the bread and butter of the blog is people who presumably have A Fast Game bookmarked and drop in every other week or so to see what’s going on. In this case, the referrals are gravy, and I return the favour when I can. Referrals must be how most people find A Fast Game in the first place. A Google search for <”a fast game is a good game” blog> brought up half-a-dozen links each to old Armchair Dragoons’ Tuesday Newsday posts and GMT Games’ product pages, but no direct link to the blog (I’m sure this would change if I turned on Adsense).

I mostly write A Fast Game for myself. I go down statistical rabbit holes and chase down obscure facets of art history because that’s what interests me. But the knowledge that people are coming back to read what’s on offer, and occasionally even comment on it, brings its own reward. Thanks for coming along.

 

An international audience.

Extracurricular activities

Nothing to report on this front. If I haven’t had the time or opportunity to play wargames, I certainly haven’t had the capacity to play-test anything. That may change in the future, but I can’t promise anything.

 

Next steps

Last year I wrote the first part of what I envisioned would be a three-part exploration of Block Wargames, why and how they do what they do. It started as a two-parter, but after rethinking it, I edited down the second part and posted it under the title Not Created Equal: a Block Wargame Primer, Part 1 – Commands & Colors; an odd place to start, but there you go. I’ve been meaning to get back to it for a while, but I’ve finally started to sketch out a couple more chapters (to make it a four-part series in all, maybe five if I can maintain the momentum), and I hope to get at least another one up on the blog before the end of June. I may even rework the first chapter to bring it more in line with the others (no promises there, I hate reworking old material).

I’d like to do another research article as well; I have an idea of what I’d like to look at, but I’m struggling with the methodology. If I can crack that nut, you may see another long-form piece later this year.

In the meantime, expect to see more unboxings, hopefully some AARs, maybe another interview or two. I especially can’t make promises when other people are involved – I’m at the whim of their schedules and commitments. The interviews are fun to do, and after I fire off the first batch of questions, I can get on with something else until I get a reply.

So as always, expect more of the same. Thank you for reading this far, and for coming back to A Fast Game if you’re a regular. If you can keep showing up, I should be able to keep it interesting. And I’ll try to be less morose this quarter.

 

 

Stripped Down for Parts: War & Peace, Seventh Edition

  

 

Mark McLaughlin’s War & Peace (Avalon Hill, 1980) is something of a legend in the wargaming world. It’s one of those titles that has stood the test of time, being reborn in successive editions over the last forty-five years, each time maturing, streamlining, and growing a little in its scope. I really thought when it came out that War and Peace: Game of theNapoleonic Wars (One Small Step, 2020), with its gorgeous presentation and mounted boards, was going to be the final word on the game. This was the sixth edition of a really well-regarded game, and with a single print-run, that edition became a collector’s item really quickly, and the price went up accordingly.

At 4 1/4" deep, it's nearly as thick as its namesake novel.

I was hunting around for a copy of the One Small Step version for a couple of years when a War & Peace, Seventh Edition (Avalon Digital, was announced. Avalon Digital released a computer version of W&P, which they had to name Napoleon’s Eagles, which is pretty much a straight port of the One Small Step game to the online environment. To be honest, I was a bit sceptical about a computer game company producing a print version, but some early pics assuaged any fears. So, when a FLGS (one state over) had about a dozen boxes arrive, I knew I had to grab a copy.

Before we get to the cover illustration, I have to talk about the box.  Have a growing collection of the 12” square boxes favoured by European publishers (the Conquerors series from Shakos and the recent Second Edition of Unhappy King Charles (Phalanx, 2024) feature this size of box, but Compass has also gone this way with Burning Banners (Compass Games, 2024) and Engine Thieves (Compass Games, 2025). I don’t have anything square boxes in principle, but they have proven to be a little more difficult to shelve. Now I have more than two or three, I can probably devote a single bottom shelf to elephantine boxes and just let them stick out an extra inch or so.

This is the deepest 12” square box I’ve bought, coming in at a tad over four inches in depth. In truth, an inch could have been shaved off this depth and it would still accommodate its contents, though thinking about it, the extra height may be to allow for the punched counters in their baggies, but we’ll swing back around to these later. The box itself is of solid construction, with a nice seal between the two shells, but so tight at to be difficult to open, but not given to slippage either.

The box cover features a painting called Bataille de Friedland, 14 juin 1807, by French artist Émile Jean-Horace Vernet in 1835 (the same illustration adorns the cover of the Rulebook). Vernet, a noted painter of martial scenes and patronised by Napoleon III, would have been about eighteen when news of the battle filtered back to France. You can see the original if ever you visit Paris; for the inconvenience of a half-hour train ride, and another hour or two queuing, you can glimpse the painting hanging in the Galerie des Batailles in the Palace of Versailles.

The box back offers a capsule history of War & Peace, along with a component list and some sample cards and counters. The complexity of the game is rated in the low region of High (about a seven out of nine on the familiar GMT scale), and solitaire suitability is rated at low Medium (about a four out of nine). I think I’d quibble with both of these; While I haven’t gone through the entire rules thus far, from what I’ve seen, I’d place the game at a solid five (a little lower perhaps if you ignore all the optional rules), and I can see the game playing quite sell in a two-handed solitaire mode (not ideal, but practicable. Player count is advised to be 2-5 and appropriate age is 14+, which sounds about right, and playing time is given as 2+ hours (dependent on the scenario chosen).

The Rulebook.

The rule book comes in at twenty well-illustrated pages, though not all of these have been utilised. The cover incorporates an easily navigable Table of Contents, and the basic rules come to barely more than fifteen pages. The game’s optional rules (which I’d be reluctant to leave out except in games teaching complete novices), come to barely another two pages.

The Rulebook - sample pages.

All the booklets included in the game are printed on a nice weight of gloss paper – not so glossy as to be difficult to read under overhead lights – and are presented in about a nine-point Garamond font, facilitating ease of reading and comprehension. All are set in a two-column format, and the light buff background colour also adds to the readability.

The Standard Game Scenario Book.

The Standard Game Scenarios booklet offers the details of the games thirteen stand-alone scenarios. The booklet shares the same production properties as the Rulebook and comes in at twenty-four pages.

The Standard Game Scenario Book - sample page.

Presentation of the scenario information is standardised and each includes a historical introduction, a list of required game equipment, Victory Conditions, Special Rules pertaining to the given scenario, Initial deployment of forces, a schedule of Reinforcements and Replacements, and other scenario noted (provided by that scenario’s designer).

The Grand Campaign Scenario booklet.

The Grand Campaign Scenario gets its own booklet, which is only appropriate given the scope of this particular undertaking. Covering the duration of the war from 1805 to 1815, this will not be seen out over an afternoon, or likely even a weekend. To be honest, I doubt I will ever attempt the Grand Campaign, but one should never say never.*

The Grand Campaign allows for the involvement of two to five players, though I’m not sure I’m convinced the player controlling Russia would have as rich a game experience as the other players in a five-player game. But I haven’t played War& Peace in any iteration yet, so perhaps I shouldn’t be too quick to judge. This booklet is the longest of the quartet, running to twenty-eight pages.

A Soul for War & Peace booklet.

The One Small Step edition of War & Peace (the 6^th Edition) was the benchmark for the game when it arrived, and many of the same people have been involved in the further deluxe-ification of the 7^th Edition. This edition introduces two new components to the game; a deck of Event Cards (which we’ll come back to) and an extra booklet, A Soul for War & Peace.

A Soul for War & Peace - sample pages.

Also twenty-four pages in length, the booklet offers the optional rules for the use of the Event cards in both the scenarios and the Grand Campaign, and a brief catalogue of each card’s properties. This takes up the first eight pages of the booklet.

The remaining sixteen pages offer no less than eleven new scenarios, including a couple of pre-Napoleonic scenarios covering the early conflicts of the revolution and the Polish Russian War of 1792. This makes for a total of twenty-four scenarios, mostly playable in an evening or afternoon. For me, that alone justifies the price on the sticker.

The Operation Methods pamphlet. Good reading (don't show your opponent;
better he learns by example).

The last of the paper items in the manifest (and first out of the box) is the Operational Methods pamphlet. This is a small, four-page leaflet outlining Le Bataillion Carré, an operational formation that can be replicated in the game to good purpose. The pamphlet outlines the uses and benefits of this manoeuvre in play.

The shrink-wrapped counter sheet set. Ten sheets in all.

The Seventh Edition boasts ten sheets of counters. All of the game’s counters and markers are pre-rounded counters. The count comes to 1,210; there are no blanks, so I assume there is some redundancy built in. Come to think of it, this may be the reason for the extra space inside the box.

Sample counter sheets. You get the idea.

The counters are very nice, printed on a heavier weight white-core cardstock than I would have expected, given there are ten sheets of them. The unit counters represent various Infantry, Cavalry, Naval Squadrons and Transport fleets of the combatant nations. The background colour denotes the unit’s country of origin (some smaller principalities, seventeen in all, are tied to larger nations; these are referred to as Satellite Powers and are identified by a one- or two-letter initials on the counter, e.g., H for Holland, Pm for Piedmont, Sw for Sweden). For a grand tactical level game, War & Peace offers an extraordinary level of detail. Cavalry units are divided into three types – Regular, Guard and Cossack – and across the various nations’ infantry, no less than five types are identified. The named infantry types are all essentially militia-grade units (exhibiting lower Morale ratings), but it's a nice historical detail that adds a touch of jouissance to the proceedings.

Sample Infantry, Cavalry and Naval counters. The yellow stripe indicates these
are troops related to Minor Powers.

As mentioned, the counters are pre-rounded, and about 9/16” (roughly 14mm) in size. Each unit counter has a Morale rating represented in pips above the national flag (top-left of the counter), an initial to confirm its type (I for infantry, C for cavalry, etc.) and a prominent digit in the bottom right corner identifying the unit’s strength. This may be 1, 2 or 5, and larger units can be broken down to multiple smaller units as need be.

A sample of French Leader counters. The Portraits are remarkably effective.

Leaders are represented by separate counters. These counters feature a portrait (remarkably recognisable for the size in many cases), the Leader’s name across the top of the counter, and a numeral that represents the Leader’s Command Value. This number will modify roll results on the Combat Results Table.

The game map (taking up one end of my 8' by 4' dining table) a slightly better picture
of the map can be found here (picture courtesy of Robert Carrol).

The original Avalon Hill release of War & Peace included four mounted map sections covering (roughly) Spain, France and Italy, Prussia and Austria, and Imperial Russia (incorporating Poland). This allowed for shorter campaign scenarios to be played out on just one or two maps (though its debatable if this was intentional of merely a happy accident; Avalon Hill games of the time all came with sectional mounted maps). With the One Small Step edition of the game, the map was redrawn for a more thorough and geographically accurate representation of the European theatre, with a mor familiar (less elongated) view of the Continent.

The Seventh Edition map is close to the Sixth Edition, but with a couple of differences. The map proper appears to be generally rendered a little lighter in hue compared to the Sixth Edition, making it a tad more readable at a glance. Looking at pictures of the Sixth Ed. map on BGG, there seems to have been some minor changes made to the non-cartographic elements on the board, but the map has been essentially retained, which is a good thing; it’s a really gorgeous map.  The map board also incorporates the Year and Month Turn Tracks (turns in War & Peace represent a calendar month), a Production Track, two Combat Boxes, check-boxes for Foreign Wars, Current Weather Chart, Naval Economic Warfare (by percentage of impact), and an Alliance Display for easy identification of pro-, anti- and neutral nations. These are all tucked up in the top left-hand corner of the board. Elsewhere located on the board are a track for the state of progress of the Spanish War, an inset map of Egypt and Palestine – covering the range of Napoleon’s early Oriental adventures – and a map of the world marking the centres of overseas trade and sea routes for the Naval component of the Grand Campaign Scenario.

Player's Aid Card - front.

Player's Aid Card - verso.

War & Peace, Seventh Edition comes with a single Player’s Aid. This is a three-panel PAC offering an abbreviated Turn Sequence (front panel), an Expanded Sequence of Play and a Campaign Turn Sequence (inside the first fold), complete Combat related tables – Combat Sequence, Combat Results and Combat Loss charts, and Optional Tactical Matrix charts (for use with the optional Tactical markers). Naval Battle and Damage tables, a Weather table, Attrition Table and Terrain Effects Chart also feature. Two would be nice, but the game is already loaded for bear, and the decision to go with a single PAC may have been related to weight as much production cost.

Allies Leader Display.

   

French Alliance Leaders Display (left) and French Allies Leader Display.

There are two sets of Leader tracking displays, an elongated (one and a half panel) card for the Allies Leader Display and two single-panel cards for le joueur français; the French Alliance Leader Display for the permanent French Leaders, and the French Allies Leader Display, representing those Austrian, Prussian and Spanish generals who may, through the course of the game, be serving under one of the various alliances France managed to force upon their conquests through the extended war. These are used in the Grand Campaign Scenario.

The Force Pool Display; handy for acquainting yourself with the minor powers
and their affiliations. Also crucial to the Grand Campaign Scenario.

The Force Pool Display is also used exclusively in the Grand Campaign game. This is a pity, because it’s packed with really useful information, listing all of the vassal principalities of the various powers (i.e., the Western, French, Prussian, Austrian and Russian Minor States}. If you never play the Grand Campaign – and to be honest, I think I’m unlikely to ever experience that particular pleasure – it would be useful to consult this chart as a PAC for keeping track of all of the lesser allies.

The optional Card Deck (use of the card deck in the game is optional;
the cards come with the game regardless).

The Random Events Deck has been introduced in this edition, and its use is purely optional. While you don’t have to play using them, the deck will offer some extra frisson and unexpectedness to the conventional game. Presented as a deck of playing cards, each also offers an Event that will adjust some factor of play. The two black suits are side-specific – Clubs are pro-French and the Spades anti-French in their respective events, and the events of the two red suits are more generally beneficial to whichever side happens to draw them. When the cards are in use, if a player draws a card that benefits them, they may choose to play it immediately or to hold on to it, undisclosed. If a card beneficial to the other side is drawn, it must be revealed and played immediately.

Four decades of players have enjoyed War & Peace without cards, so presumably this Is why they are one of the optional rules. There’s obviously enough game here to keep people enthralled, even with the two-colour maps of the original edition (simpler times), and for my first time or two out, I’d like to try the game as it was originally intended, but I do like random events in play, whether from cards or a table, so I’m keen to try these out as well.

The cavernous box, treasonous dice (just give them time) and a truly
numerous bundle of baggies.

Two dice are included with the game. These are white with black pips, and they will provide the illusion of chance in my inevitable failing rolls. The game also comes with the largest wad of baggies I’ve ever seen in a single game, twenty-eight in all, not counting the enclosure bag.

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War & Peace seem like a pretty straight-forward game. As I said at the start, it’s remained in print, off and on, through multiple editions over forty-five years. People have fond memories of playing Anzio (Avalon Hill, 1969) or Storm Over Arnhem (Avalon Hill, 1981), but few games from the “Golden Era” have weathered as well as this.

I’m looking forward to getting this to the table, and after a couple of double-handed games, to introducing it to other gamers. I the meantime, it joins the queue, but it may get nudged up a few places; regulars will be familiar with my appetite for Napoleonics.

* I can think of two situations in which I may be able to embark on the campaign game, but both of these are incumbent on leaving it set up in situ at somebody else's house for maybe a week.