Stripped Down for Parts: China's War 1937-1941

 

 

At the end of last year, I won a copy of Italy ’43 (GMT Games, 2025) in a prize draw, part of Grant Linneberg’s fourth birthday celebrations of his Pushing Cardboard podcast. The only thing was, I’d just been billed for a copy of Italy (along with a couple of other games) a week earlier. I suggested to Grant that he redraw the prize, but he was reluctant to do that. Instead, he said he’d talk to GMT and see if they would swap it out for a game I didn’t have.

To cut a long story short, a replacement game arrived earlier this week and I couldn’t be happier. China’s War: 1937-1941 (GMT Games, 2025) was a preordered game I had to drop at the last minute due to budget constraints. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the COIN system, but desgner Brian Train’s second contribution to the series, Colonial Twilight: The French-Algerian War, 1954-62 (GMT Games, 2017) is my favourite in the series. That, along with an abiding interest in the subject, put China’s War on my “opportunistic purchase” list.

In 1937, Japan had already occupied Manchuria for more than five years, setting up a puppet state, Manchukuo. Throughout that time, incidents sporadically flared between the Japanese military and the Chinese National Revolutionary Army. In 1937, such an incident occurred at Wanping, roughly ten miles south-west of Beijing, involving a missing Japanese soldier. The situation escalated quickly, and the event came to be known as the Marco Polo Bridge incident. Some historians point to this event as the true beginning of the Second World War, but most agree it was the starting point of the Second Sino-Japanese War. It’s this conflict that the game covers.

The box cover makes a bold, no-nonsense statement about what to expect. The picture captures so many aspects of the conflict in a single image. It shows members of the Eight Route Army – on paper a part of the National Revolutionary Army (the Nationalist military, commanded by Chiang Kai-shek) – readying for battle with Japanese forces along the Great Wall of China. The unit was a product of the Second United Front, the alliance of convenience between the Kuomintang (the central Nationalist military command) and the Chinese Communist Party, but while nominally part of the NRA, the Eighth Route Army was separate to the Kuomintang, taking orders directly from the CCP. China’s War could not have a more appropriate cover illustration.

Along with a reproduction of the game map, sample cards, and counters, the box back offers a brief note on the historical context and scope of the game, and places is in the broader framework of the COIN series. The playability graphics tell us the game is intended for players 16 and up (this is more legalistic for a COIN game, I think, than the usual 14+), that it can accommodate one to four players (and features a dedicated solitaire system), and that the game should play out inside of four hours. The Complexity rating it five out of nine (I would be inclined to nudge that up a notch) and the solitaire playability is rated at a full nine, due to the bespoke solitaire system included.

The Rulebook. As always, all forthcoming pictures come with the boilerplate apology
 for the shoddy, underlit, David Fincher-esque photography.  

GMT have seemed to standardise their booklet printing in recent times, though that could just be an artifact of the types of games I buy from them. All the GMT games I’ve purchased in the last year or two have had the same (very good) quality matt paper stock across rulebooks and any additional booklets, and China’s War is no exception.

Rulebook - sample spread.

The Rulebook is 24 pages in length. The rules are clear and readable and well laid out, with lots of box-text Design (beige) and Play (blue) Notes. The rules themselves cover just fourteen pages. The remaining pages are given over to the scenarios (five pages, which include a shot column of Optional Rules, a two-page Key Terms Index, a reproduction of the counter sheet, and Cover/Table of Contents page. The back cover has is blank. A blank page always feels like a missed opportunity but in this case, I can’t think of anything you could fit into a single page that would be of benefit to the game.

The Playbook.

The Playbook runs to twenty-eight pages and offers everything you might be looking for that didn’t make it into the Rulebook. This includes an eight-page Game Tutorial (example of play), a one-page Faction Interactions table, another single-page offering a pronunciation Guide for the unfamiliar Chinese location names and significant historical figures (including Wade-Giles and Pinyin transliterations), and eight pages of Event Tips and Background.

Playbook - sample spread (Extended example of play). All three booklets are lavishly
illustrated and full colour throughout.

A three-page historical background essay, three pages of designer notes, a one-page bibliography and list of production credits round out the booklet.

The solitaire rules guide, but you can call him Sun Wukong.

China’s War comes with a mature solitaire system. I haven’t kept up with the development of solitaire models in COIN games (my most recent is All Bridges Burning (GMT Games, 2020)), but this feels like a big step forward. The engine for the AI is a short tarot-sized card deck, which I’ll come back to later in the post.

Sun Wukong - sample spread (example of play).

The solitaire-system guidebook, which carries its title, Sun Wukong Card-Based Non-Player Rules and Reference Booklet like a mortar plate, shares its layout style with the main Rulebook. The booklet is comprised of six pages of rules (including a one-page list of important terms exclusive to Sun Wukong), Four and a half pages covering the Operations, Special Activities, and Events for the solo system, and thirteen-page Non-Player Example of Play, which will, no doubt, be crucial to understanding how the system works.

Faction Operations and Special Activities PACs. Nationalists (NRA)
and Japan, front and back.

And the Warlords and Communist Party of China (CPC), inside the fold.

The game comes with a plethora of player aids. There are four duplicate, bi-fold Player Aid Cards. Each panel offers the Operations and Special Actions options for the four factions – the Nationalists, Warlords, Communist Party of China (CPA), and Japan. These are pretty standard for COIN games and are printed on a nice weight of cardstock.

The two Propaganda (left) and General Assault Procedure PACs.

The game also comes with two duplicate single-panel PACs, covering the General Assault Procedure on one side and the Propaganda Round procedure on the reverse. You may be at odds with all the other factions, but you’ll still need to learn to share. The font is a little small for easy reading, but it has to be to keep the card’s parameters down to a single panel.

Event PAC (external - front page to the right).

Event PAC (internal).

A single Event Actions bi-fold PAC is also included in the game. This PAC covers the forty-eight separate events that appear in the Event deck and includes a procedural for dealing with Non-Player Factions during Propaganda rounds on the back.

Sun Wukong PAC (external).

Sun Wukong PAC (internal).

Finally, there is a single Sun Wukong Non-Player Aid Sheet. This PAC brings together the tables needed to run one or more NP factions through the game, including the Effective events for each faction, Piece Selection, Space Selection and Move priorities and Capability and Momentum instructions. It also features a listing of the Sun Wukong Golden Rules, so you don’t have to constantly refer back to the Rules and Reference Booklet.

The mounted game map. There's still a little lift in the seems. I usually put a couple of
other games on top for thirty minutes or so to get the mounted boards flat before
shooting, but this one was pretty good out of the box.

The game map is 22” by 34”, mounted and covers the roughly the eastern-most part of China from the coast to Yunnan and Gansu provinces. The board looks great, and references many classic COIN boards, like Andean Abyss (GMT Games, 2012) and Cuba Libre (GMT Games, 2013). The artist Matthew Wallhead has been responsible for cover-art and PAC and card artwork for several GMT games in recent years, including the most recent additions to the Levy and Campaign series, Inferno (GMT Games, 2023), Plantagenet (GMT Games, 2023), and Seljuk (GMT Games, 2025), and he was the cartographer for the sixth edition of the Pendragon RPG (Chaosium, 2024). This is his first game map for GMT. I’m keen to see what comes next from Mr Wallhead.

Twenty-two provinces are featured, varying from plains to rough terrain, and Lines of Communication are railroads and rivers. The play area is defined to the north (left) of the map is Manchukuo (Japanese-occupied Manchuria), which cannot be entered by any Chinese forces, and to the south by French-controlled Indochina, which is off-limits to all factions. As you might expect from a COIN game, the map-board also includes a Sequence of Play matrix for faction order, holding boxes for factions’ available units, Overflow boxes for crowded provinces, and a Victory Point track running along two sides of the board.

The counter sheet. There's a lot of redundancy built in, with twenty-seven of the
counters marked as "Spares," but that's better than a whole lot of unused board.

COIN games use a mixture of wooden pieces and cardboard counters in game play. The wooden cubes, discs and cylinders represent the forces and resources available to each faction, while the counters the status of popular opinion in the provinces, civil unrest and terror, and NRA/Japanese control over provinces, and of course each faction’s Victory Points and Patronage level on the VP Track.

The counters for COIN games are traditionally a mix of pre-rounded larger counters, other shaped counters (mostly circles, which I guess are technically also pre-rounded) and die-cut, half-inch punch squares that inevitably retain their corner tufts. The counters for China’s war are no exception. The counter sheet is a thick brown-core cardstock. The registration is good and the counters pop easily, even the die-cut squares.

Guerrillas and Action markers (left), Forces and Bases (right), and the
factional dice (top). I like the muted colour pallet of the pieces.

The wooden tokens included in China’s War are many and varied. The Japanese faction has blocks of two colours representing Troops and Police. The Nationalist faction has blocks representing troops, disks that represent bases (headquarters, supply dumps, etc.), and cylinders representing Guerrilla forces (guerrilla units are stencilled at one end; stencil end down means the unit is inactive, stencil up means it has been activated, which puts it in danger of being discovered). The Warlords also have Troops and Base markers. The Communists have no troops, only bases and Guerrillas.

In keeping with established COIN conventions, eight Pawn pieces are also included, four Black and four white. These can be used as mnemonic markers to remind the active player of Operations taking place in multiple locations on the board. Each faction also gets their own colour-matched die. This are a little small for my preference but given how much stuff is already packed into the box, I can appreciate why these were chosen. To be fair, they are quite good colour matches for the factions.

Sun Wukong AI cards (left), and the Event card deck. Syb Wuking is a reference
 to the Monkey King from the Chinese epic, Journey to the West.

China’s war comes with two decks of cards; the 52-card Event deck will be familiar to those who have played earlier COIN-series games, with 48 Event cards and four Propaganda cards. I’m not going to get into the functions of the cards here; I’ll go into that in greater detail when I write up an AAR. The second, shorter deck of 24 Tarot-sized cards is the engine for the Sun Wukong non-player system.

Both sets of cards look and feel nice. They are printed on the same weight of cardstock and are comparable to good commercial playing cards in terms of quality. Graphically, the Event cards are gorgeous. I’m always astounded at how many usable and thematically appropriate photographs are discovered for the modern-era COIN game decks. They are clearly presented and shouldn’t prove difficult at the table (unless you have a player who insists on picking up each freshly-turned card and examining it for three or for minutes before placing it back on top of the deck for the other players to view).

The Sun Wukong cards are a deck of twenty-four, divided into four sets of six, one set for each faction. These are printed on both sides, each set providing twelve possible AI response selections to a given game state on that faction’s turn.

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I’ve talked elsewhere on A Fast Game about coming up to a point where, due to the storage limits of our apartment, I have to start making some choices about collection development and shedding some of my games, but I’m beginning to realise now that the time to make those choices is already here. I’ve been pulling back from multi-player games in the last twelve months or so, concentrating mostly on acquiring and keeping solitaire (or solo-able) and two-player games. While COIN games have made great leaps in solitaire playability, they really are best experienced with four players. Luckily, I still have a weekly gaming group that is happy to occasionally indulge in multi-player wargaming.

Like I said at the start, China’s War was practically an auto-buy for me (budget permitting) for the subject and for the design pedigree. I’m really grateful to Grant Linneberg at Pushing Cardboard for the giveaway prize (and if you’re not already listening to Grant’s podcasts, do yourself a favour and check them out) the good folks at GMT for swapping out a game I’d already bought (directly from them) for one I had really wanted.

 

 

Stripped down for parts: Ordered to Die: the Battles for ANZAC Cove

 

 

The Commonwealth assault on Gallipoli in April 1915 is a key event in the Australian (and presumably New Zealander) collective psyche. Boys and men from both countries had gone to war before to further British causes, but the Dardanelles campaign was the first time these “Colonials” fought under their own flags.

It was also the brainchild of Fleet Admiral Winston Churchill, who always saw beyond the current situation to future possibilities. Removing the Ottoman Empire from the war would alleviate the situation on the Eastern Front in the short term but would allow Britain a greater hand in the Middle East in the decades after the war.

The campaign began inauspiciously and ended without accomplishing its objectives. The overall failure of the operation overshadowed the brilliantly executing withdrawal from the theatre under new leadership in December of 1915. It also birthed the old saw that Churchill was ever willing to fight to the last Australian, Indian, Canadian and South African.

Gallipoli: Ordered to Die (The Dietz Foundation, 2025) is a game simulating the battles fought over the first half of the eight-month operation. It was designed by fellow Australian Clint Warren-Davey, probably best known for One Hour World War II (Worthington Publishing, 2024) and more recently Werwolf: Insurgency in Occupied Germany, 1945-1948 (Legion Wargames, 2025), and the upcoming Reformation: Fire and Faith (Neva Games, ~2027).

The Dietz Foundation ran a Kickstart campaign for Gallipoli concluding in July last year, and barely seven months later, it arrives. I think the game and the publisher are a good fit. This is only my second Dietz Foundation game, but it has all the hallmarks, including under-promising and over-delivering through the funding campaign (it was only announced after the campaign that the paper game-map would be replaced by a mounted map). 

The case is of standard dimensions, 1” deep and quite sturdy. The box art is simple and effective. I haven’t been able to ascertain if the illustration of Commonwealth soldiers charging into danger is an original piece by Jose Ramon Faura, who was also responsible for the map and counter art. Faura has form for the campaign, having also handled the art for Kieran Oakley and Russell Lowke’s Assault on Gallipoli (Gecko Games, 2022; Hexasim, 2024).

The Box-back.

The box back features a map extract and a selection of counters, shown to roughly actual size. It also offers a brief description of the scope of the game, and the number and length of scenarios – three, and all playable in roughly an hour. No mention is made of solitaire suitability, but it includes both an age recommendation (thirteen and up) and a warning (“Not suitable for children under three years”). Good to know.

The Rulebook. As always, apologies for the insufficient light for the photographs,
Take as a given that all the components look at least 70% better in real life
than they do here.

The Rulebook comes in at sixteen pages and is presented on a mid-weight, mid-gloss paper. The cover age offers a table of contents and a discrete listing of credits, and is decorated with the badges of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF), who made up the bulk of the Commonwealth troops at Gallipoli. The actual rules portion of the book covers barely twelve pages, including a couple of Optional Rules at the end. The remainder is given to Designer’s and Developer’s notes, and a brief combined bibliography, recommending Peter Weir’s film, Gallipoli, as well as online resources, podcasts, and of course, books covering the subject at length.

Rulebook - sample spread.

The layout of the rules is exemplary in offering an on-ramp to learning the game. Reminiscent of Lee Brimmicombe-Wood’s Wing Leader (GMT Games, 2015) rules, each page consists of two columns, a main column of rules text, and a narrower supplementary column offering space for notes, examples, and the sort of advice that doesn’t typically make it into a rules-set. Mr Warren-Daley is a high school history teacher, and G:BtD was designed with a mind to using it as a teaching tool to help students better understand the gruelling situation on the Turkish front. That said, there should be enough of a challenge here to satisfy the most grizzled grognard.

The map-board.

The board is 17” by 11”, mounted and rendered in sandy yellows and browns. Mr Faura has done a laudable job presenting the difficult terrain that faced the invading forces across the theatre of operations. Movement is point-to-point, with lines of advance marked with arrows, and the locations, called Spaces in the game, reflect of the names given to landscape features and tactical vantage points by the soldiers on the ground.

The Spaces are allotted numerical values, and it is by these that victory is determined. Each scenario has a point total the Commonwealth player must achieve to claim the win. A shortfall hands victory to the Turks. The board also features a Turn Track sporting boxes large enough to accommodate stacks of reinforcements due later in the scenario.

Counter sheet 1.

Counter sheet 2.

Which segues nicely to the counters. G:BtD comes with two counter sheets. The counters are 5/8”, pre-rounded, and punch pretty cleanly (just a trace of a centre-nub on the top edge). The counter count comes to 129 in all, of which just 87 are unit counters. The unit counters are illustrated by a soldier dressed in that unit’s uniform. The rules spell out that it’s not crucial to have the correct units placed in each space during set-up, so long as the unit values match the requirements for that position. Nonetheless, each Allied unit is identified by its parent brigade or division, each Ottoman unit by its regimental identification.

Other counters include Control markers to indicate possession of a Space, and Leadership chits, which may each be used once per game (some may be used once per turn – the single-use chits are identified with a red boarder) to bestow a small advantage to that player's troops in an engagement.

The Scenario Cards...

 The game offers three scenarios, The Landing (recommended as the starting point for anyone new to the game), The Ottoman Counter-Attack, and The August Offensive. Details for each scenario are printed on separate cards, including set-up guide for each on a reduced map.

...Which double as PACs.

On the reverse of each scenario card is a Quick Reference Sheet, essentially a player’s aid covering The Turn and Battle sequences, how to conduct actions, and the use of Leadership Chits in the game. It’s a nice touch, printing this on the back of the three scenario card, and economical – no matter which situation you are playing, there are always two PACs available.

The Historical essay booklet.

In addition to the game components, an essay booklet, The first half is a short essay prepared by Mr Warren-Harvey, briefly discussing the events of the initial landing; how the operation came to be, the factors leading to the soldiers being placed on the wrong beach and without the support of the combined French/British landing at Cape Helles, which was supposed to see Entente forces marching up the peninsula in 48 hours, but in truth saw the Allies thrown back into the sea in even less time, the travails of the ANZACs on shore and unsupported for those first few days, and how the 25^th of April evolved into a national Day of Remembrance.

The second half of the booklet is devoted to the remembrance of individuals who fought at Gallipoli. Some of those remembered survived Gallipoli to fight in France and Belgium. Others never left, like Pvt James Martin, who died of typhoid in October of 1915, at age fourteen, the youngest Australian service fatality of the Great War.

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You may have noticed I didn’t mention dice. That’s because the game is semi-deterministic, Battles are resolved by simply comparing the totals of force brought to the fight and determining a winner. Although it’s not quite that simple. Every time you engage in an attack, each of your units will take a step loss (this is done after the Attacking force strength is established). If the Defender’s total is higher than the Attackers (after any additional values such as Leadership chits or defending in elevated terrain have been added), then the Attacker retreats to their last location Space to lick their wounds. If the Defender falls short, he takes a single step loss to one unit and retreats, or they can soak the retreat by taking another step-loss. Combat is brutal and will always favour the defender. This might be the most realistic mechanism for WWI combat at this scale that I’ve come across; simple, bloody, and boiling down to deterministic arithmetic.

 

Stripped down for parts: Battle Commander, Volume I: Napoleon’s Italian Campaigns, & Expansion I

 

Funny story; back in January of 2023 (the same month I started writing A Fast Game), Carl Paradis, designer of the No Retreat! series and more recently Absolute War! (GMT Games, 2021), posted a request on a Facebook wargaming group looking for play-testers for a new Napoleonic wargame he was working on. Thought about it for a couple of days, then put up my hand, contacting Mr Paradis through Messenger. I didn’t hear back straight away – he was on a skiing jaunt. We played tag for a few weeks (between ski excursions), but a family crisis was sapping more and more of my time, and communications petered out. Okay, maybe not that funny.

A couple of days ago, the product of Mr Paradis’s (and several dozen others involved in development advice and playtesting) hard work arrived. Battle Commander, Volume I – Napoleon’s Italian Campaigns (Sound of Drums, 2025), along with its accompanying Battle Commander: Expansion I (Sound of Drums, 2025), is in the house, and if I’m honest, I think I’m glad I missed out on the playtest opportunity, because it means I get to experience game for the first time in its physical, tactile form. As I’ve said elsewhere on A Fast Game, Battle Commander was probably my most anticipated game of 2025.

Yes. I know it’s 2026, but Battle Commander was worth the wait. European publishers are… can I say, “bringing their best game,” in terms of overall production quality and components, and Sound of Drums is no exception. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Here’s a quick overview of everything that comes in the box, and its attendant Expansion pack.

The box, listing the six battles included in the package, but not giving much else away.

The trade dress is striking in its simplicity. The black background highlights the title and the Imperial Eagle, leaving no doubt regarding where this train is headed.

For everything I’ve read of Battle Commander leading up to actually receiving it, nothing prepared me for the magnitude of the box. This thing is huge;  12 ¾“ by  17 ½“, and 3” deep, to be precise. It’s even a little bigger than my Old School Tactical boxes (comparison shot below).

Let the box-size escalation battle begin!

The box itself is a little on the light side; it’s plenty sturdy enough for the protection of its content (this copy made it to Australia without a single chip or bruise); it’s just a tad lighter thickness than, say, the aforementioned OST boxes – probably not much more than half a millimetre. This may be intended as a feature, not a bug; using a roughly 2mm thickness card keeps the whole package lighter, which is important given the amount of wood and boards included in the game. The box also has enough space to accommodate the new components from Expansion I with no lid-lift.

The box back, hinting at such treasures within.

The box-back features a montage illustration of a game in play, overlaid with sample Leader and Event cards. The descriptive text sets the tone of the game and offers a brief explanation of the game’s features.

The Game Play Infographic advises that Battle Commander is intended for one to two players, that you can expect to complete a game in around 120 minutes, and (in case you missed all the other subtle clues scattered on the box-covers) the Period the game covers is “Napoleonic”. The Complexity is rated at five out of ten, with Solitaire Suitability coming in at seven out of ten.

The Rulebook. Not as imposing as it looks.

The Rulebook and Playbook are presented in A4 sizing (a tad taller and narrower than the Letter standard of American publications) and printed on a good weight of low-gloss paper. Running to 40 pages, the Rulebook presented in a two-column format, and is replete with helpful illustrations, which given the novelty of the game system would be deemed a necessity. This is an unboxing post, so I’m not going to go into rules and mechanics, but I will say Battle Commander has a really innovative approaches to activation and combat resolution. For more you’ll have to wait for my first time out AAR (with any luck, you won’t have to wait too long).

Rulebook - sample pages. The rules are eminently readable and very well illustrated;
a perfect game for visual learners. 

The actual rules of the game come to just twenty-eight pages (take out the illustrative explanations and examples and a couple of thematically appropriate lithographs, the text page-count comes out closer to twenty-three pages. The rest of the pages are given over to a two-page Table of Contents, two pages for solitaire play guidelines and rules and card clarifications, a four-page glossary, and a thorough Index on the back cover. Overall, the rules are clearly written and – as mentioned – handily-illustrated.

The Playbook.

The Battle Commander Playbook comes in at fifty-two pages. It offers a list of printed components manifest of the wooden game pieces and markers; along with the cover this accounts for the first three pages. The following twenty-six pages cover the base game’s six scenarios, along with two pages of Scenario Instructions, including advice on playing the Montebello scenario as an Introductory game with a slightly reduced rules scope (which is where I’ll likely start). The scenarios are presented in chronological order, and each one is laid out in the same format; a two-page spread covering Commanders and Morale. Reinforcements, a Friction of War Table and Special Events details unique to that scenario, exclusive Victory Conditions, and play tips; then a deployment map, and a scenario Order of Battle over the page (four pages in all to a scenario).

Each scenario is presented across two two-page spreads. The first spread presents all of
 the written details, such as special rules and victory conditions, an individual
Friction of War table(somebody's been reading their Clausewitz),
and a reinforcement and event timetable.

The second spread presents the scenario set-up on one page and an Order of Battle
on the other, illustrating the chains of command. Scenario presentation is
a strong point in Battle Commander.

The Playbook also includes a fifteen-page Example of Play, again copiously illustrated, three pages of Players’ Notes, three columns each of Historical and Designer’s Notes, and a column each of Credits (devoted to people involved and games that provided inspiration) and teasers of forthcoming products in the series. The credits read like a Who’s Who of Quebecois gaming aristocracy, and the next two volumes – covering the Egyptian Campaign and the War of the Fourth Coalition – offer a tantalising glimpse into what is intended to be a six-volume series.

Battle of Lonato map.

Battle of Castiglione map.

Battle of Arcole map (correct aspect).

The first thing you see when you open the box are the maps. There are six in all, one for each of the included scenarios, mounted on three 17" by 22" double-sided boards, each single-hinged like a Milton Bradley game. The boards are really quite nice to look at and should be a joy to play on. The maps are rendered in the style of ordinance maps of the period, with a little colouring for, well, colour. Towns and forts are presented as they would be on said maps, as are changes in elevation (pen-scratches to evoke rising slopes), rivers, main roads and trails (the latter distinguished by broken defining lines, to the main roads’ solid and distinct markings). The whole effect is transporting and evocative.

Battle of Rivoli map (correct aspect).

Battle of Montebello map.

Battle of Marengo map.

Movement is regulated by a patchwork of abutting squares, called Areas. This loose gridwork makes for a kind of intercessory form between a hex-grid (akin to Avalanche and an area-movement tangle. Movement is Area to Area, and which other Areas a formation can move to from its current location is surprisingly intuitive, though the rules and Players’ Aid sheet have the back of anyone needing to defend themselves form some blackguard opponent trying to undertake some ungentlemanly action. 

Detail from the Castiglione map. Roads and trails pass from one Area to the next,
while watercourses meander between them.

The Area proportions of the maps are comparable to the hexes on a Command and Colors series game standard map, possibly even closer to Star Wars: Battle of Hoth (Days of Wonder, 2025). Every map has a turn track and Morale Track built in, running a long a single edge. 

Neutral Event card (left) and a French Leader Event card (as evidenced by the blue
background and Tricolore accent in the top corner). Event cards are drawn to
establish combat results (the matrix at the bottom of each card).

The Event deck verso (left)and a Coalition Commander. Commander cards are double-
sided, with a different commander on the reverse. The symbology around the portrait
 (clockwise, starting top-left) indicates that Lauer has a Skill level of One (single bar),
begins the game with five Order cubes and five Attack tokens, and has a Command
Range of Two (a radius of two Areas from his position). The shaded bars below the
portrait are the Commander's Positive (light shading) and Negative (darker
shading) Abilities. Oh dear. 

The game comes with two sealed decks of cards. Two types of cards appear in Battle Commander; Leader cards and Event cards. Each scenario will dictate each side’s leader, and each leader has his own set of Abilities which may have a positive or negative effect on play. The Event cards come in three flavours; French, Austrian (both event-specific to that side) and neutral (usable for their Event by either side). Battle Commander is a card-assisted game, so the Event cards are the players’ currency, and can be spent for attacks or used during a reinforcement phase to purchase Order cubes.

The French (top) and Coalition Army Management Mats. These are double layered, so
your Commander card shouldn't go slipping off the board with every errant breeze. 

Each side in Battle Commander gets an Army Management Mat. These are heavy, double-layer card place-mats, about the size of a birthday card, with recesses for the player’s Commander Card (the designated leader card for the current scenario), Reserve Orders, Attack Tokens and various event markers. It also offers various mnemonic cues for game functions and limits. These function as the players’ operation centres, with information coming in and orders going out. They are an elegant answer to the question of how to manage the player-logistics of the battle; I’m looking forward to trying them out.

The appropriately-designated Player Aid Sheet (External side). From the left, the first two
panels are concerned with combat procedures and results, the third panel covers the
Cube Draw procedure and the guidelines for solitaire play.

Inside the Player Aid Sheet are a guide to Terrain Effects on movement and combat (left),
an overview of the Rules of Combat and explanation of Commander Abilities (centre),
and a miscellany of other important, though less commonly required rules (right).

The Player Aid Sheets for Battle Commander are tri-panel, double-sided sheet printed on the same paper stock as the booklets. The Game comes with two copies (the manifest in the Playbook declares the game comes with two copies, mine arrived with just one; I will follow this up with Sound of Drums). 

I'm actually considering photocopying and laminating the most commonly used panels at least, maybe all six panels. This is more a reflection on my play preferences than any criticism of the product, but I'd be curious to hear what readers think on this matter.

EDIT: I had commented on the missing Player Aid Sheet. After I posted this SDfP, I checked the Gamefound page and saw Carl Paradis himself had got back to me. Here is his reply, verbatim:

Yes indeed. there was a production mishap in China, it was identified, but it was not fixed, for unknown reasons to me. Sorry about that! All in all: The publisher knows about this, and the play aids will be reprinted, on card-stock, as originally intended, two copies per game, and sent to customers. They'll post info about this ASAP. There is a delay as it's still the Chinese New Year holiday and the good people there are not responding right now.

Coalition (left) and French Infantry units.

As I understand it, the stencilled unit pieces were always intended to be made of wood, while the various markers for tracking Morale and VPs, indicating that an Infantry unit had formed square or that a Cavalry squadron was charging, and so on, were going to be cardboard counters, but an early stretch goal in the Gamefound crowdsourcing campaign saw all of the components improved to wood as well. I was originally ambivalent about this – I don’t mind mixing media in board components – but having seen the end result, I’m very glad the campaign did so well. Everything in the way of both units and markers just looks and feels right.

Cavalry units (top) and the special Initiative Marker included for crowdfunding backers.

One thing I already love about Battle Commander is the thought that has gone into the unit representations. Infantry units are sticks or bars with crossed muskets, Cavalry are square tiles representing squadrons, and Artillery batteries are denoted by their canon stencils and the rhomboid shape of their tiles, suggestive of sturdy redoubts or hastily constructed fieldworks. Tor my money, the physical presence that wooden pieces lends to a game add immeasurably to the experience of play.

Artillery units and Garrison markers (top), and a mix of markers, including Victory Flags
 (earned by taking possession of key locations during play), Morale markers (the snare
drums) and the Eagle-adorned Turn marker.

As I said, I don’t want to get too deeply into the rules, but I wanted to note the way the unit status work. At full fighting strength (Steady), an Infantry unit’s stencil faces up. With the first cohesion hit the unit is reduced to Shaken, the stick is rotated to the stencil facing the owning player. With another hit, the unit is Disrupted, and the stick turned to the stencil facing down. Cavalry units only have two statuses, Steady (face up) and Disrupted (face down). Simple and immediately readable without the need for status markers. Shaken/Disrupted markers are also included for those who prefer a clearer visual indicator.

Clockwise from top-left: Grand Charge markers (the long bars with the centre peak),
Attack (red) and Special Attack (grey) Tokens; Disrupted/Shaken markers; Order /
Activation Cubes; and Column (the longer bars) and Formed Square (black cubes
with white outlines). I've probably missed a couple in the mix.

Battle Commander also uses a novel cube draw activation mechanism, an evolutionary step up from the system we’ve seen in Academy Games’ Birth of America series. Instead of individual factions’ turn order, the coloured cubes drawn from an opaque receptacle supplied by the players (a coffee mug, ramekin or bag) represent orders. Some (the Blue and White cubes) favour one side or the other – that faction gets to perform an Order, then their opponent may commit a Reaction Order – while other cubes trigger specific types of Orders or Actions (e.g., a Yellow cube draw allows Reinforcement and Rally Order, a Black cube draw ends the turn). But I’m straying into the thickets here, so I’ll stop myself here and save it for the AAR.

Bringing order to confusion. Or at least a semblance of order.

A fitted card box insert does its best to keep everything organised, but edge-up storage is going to inevitably see some shifting of baggies and cards. There is no way all those components are fitting into a GMT counter tray (trust me, I tried), but I’m sure it won’t be long before Cube4Me comes up with a solid solution to this. Part of the reason is a feature rather than a bug; the box is designed to accommodate the fourth board and other components from the Expansion I set. This is probably why the Expansion just comes in an envelope. I’m not too OCD about keeping the original surrounds, so this suits me. The Upcoming list in the main Playbook mentions a second Expansion for Volume I, which will include six more battles (five maps, so maybe three double-sided boards). I’d hope this comes in its own storage.

BC Vol. I Expansion I.

I also received the first Expansion pack for Battle Commander Vol. I at the same time. This pack adds six more scenarios – three using the extra map-board provided with the Expansion, and three using the Rivoli map from the base set.

Inside the Envelope. English-readers, take heart. The Expansion comes with two play-
books, in French and English. Presumably it was cheaper to produce this way than
individual Expansion sets for each language. Sound of Drums is also releasing
Battle Commander - through their partners - in German and Spanish versions.

The thirty-two-page Playbook accompanying the Expansion is printed on the same quality paper as the other booklets from Volume I and presented in the same fashion. It covers the aforementioned scenarios in the same thorough detail at the main set’s Playbook and offers some additional Designer’s Notes.

Battle of Caldiero map.

Battle of Mondovi map.

The board accompanying the Expansion offers two fields of battle; Caldiero (the Playbook includes scenarios for the First and Second Battles of Caldiero, 1796 and 1805 respectively), and Mondovi. I confess to complete ignorance of all three battles, and if anyone can recommend a good book specifically on the Italian campaigns I would be in their debt.

The twenty-card deck included in the Expansion, also comes in French (left). 

The Expansion also includes an additional twenty cards; five new Commander cards and fifteen more Events and Leaders cards to supplement the existing deck. The cards are of the same superior quality as those from the core set.

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So, there you have all of the parts that make up Battle Commander, Volume I and its accompanying first Expansion. There is a lot of play here, and in the short term I will be clearing the decks to spend what time I have available on playtesting (more on that in a future post) and trying out this really gorgeous Napoleonic tableau.