Review: 414BC: Siege of Syracuse (solo game)

 

Worthington Publishing has a proven track record for producing compelling, historically-founded, fast-playing solo games. There has always been a space for solo games in the wargaming space, and not just because of a player’s inability to find someone else with the free-time, accessibility, and desire to play the game they want to play. A lot of people have woken up to the desirability of having a solo game or two (or twelve) to fall back on since the time of lock-downs and social distancing, and more than one publisher is putting more effort into making some or most of their games at least solo-friendly. To their credit, Worthington has always been operating in that space, so it stands to reason a solo-oriented series of games from Grant and Mike Wylie and the team would bring all of that experience to bear.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve been a Worthington booster for a while. When I started to get back into wargaming about a decade ago, two of my earliest game purchases were second-hand copies of Boots on the Ground (Worthington Games, 2010), and Richard Berg’s Turning Point (Worthington Games, 2009). With the advent of Kickstarter, I backed some (though certainly not all) of their campaigns. I own probably fifteen or more of their titles* and I have never been disappointed in one of their games.

That said, I didn’t back either the original Kickstarter campaign for 1759: Siege of Quebec (Worthington, 2018) or the later campaign for the three titles in the Great Sieges series. I considered backing both, but I balked. I didn’t get the order system and the static blocks. I was interested, but not enough to lay down the cash for something untried. I’ve come to these later, after they’d been in the wild for a while. I read the comments on Boardgamegeek, then took the plunge got Siege of Quebec. After playing that a half-dozen or so times I was hooked and went scrabbling for Siege of Malta and Siege of Syracuse. The later was the hardest to find, and I lucked out, finding a copy from France (happily all three are back in in stock from a second printing and available through the publisher).

414BC: Siege of Syracuse (Worthington Publishing, 2022) is designed by Dan Fournie, who also designed 1944: Battle of the Bulge (Worthington, 2020) and 1944: D-Day to the Rhine (Worthington, 2022), and who has prepared dozens of scenarios for GMT’s Great Battles of History (GBoH) series. It depicts – as it says on the box – the siege laid against the city-state of Syracuse in the year 414BCE. As with all the titles in the series, the Syracuse rules include a short but details historical note regarding the situation depicted.

 

Appearance

Each the Great Sieges series of games are beautifully presented, each with its own muted colour palette, simple graphical representation of the geographical situation, and a tactile sense of presence and movement with the use of wooden blocks to represent the combatant forces, support units, and in this case, the siege wall the Athenians race to construct to seal off the Syracusans from the outside world in an effort to shorten the siege. The wooden pieces are one of the truly charming elements of all of these games. There are no detailed resin figures of battle-grizzled soldiers and triremes; most of the pieces are simple elongated cubes, used to represent the troops fielded in various positions with one from each side serving as that nation’s Morale marker, the ship pieces have one end shaped to represent a ship’s bow, and the most ornamental feature is the crenulations of the two side’s wall pieces. It might be a cheap psychological trick, but placing and moving solid wooden forms with a little weight to them and that grainy texture beneath the coat of paint lends a more intimate sense of involvement in the action of the game.

Overall, the game is the complete package. The board is mounted, 22’ by 17’ – in my opinion, an ideal size for a solo game of this duration. Positions for the starting units are marked with each side’s colour in bold print on the map, with other manoeuvring and reinforcement positions marked in a muted shade of that colour.

 

Play

Fournie’s design has been informed by the overall design of Siege of Quebec, the first game in the series; the board, pieces, event cards, order matrix and order of play all share the family resemblance. If you’ve played one of the games, the others will feel familiar, but each is its own beast and offers its own unique set of challenges.

The Bot-deck is divided into two stages; the Syracusan stage and the Spartan stage. There is some programming involved with the events; the Spartan reinforcements are shuffled into the three earliest cards in the Spartan deck, then the Athenian reinforcements are shuffled into the next three, so you know these events will occur roughly in the middle of the game. Between them, the decks contains thirty-nine cards, but for a game with the Normal level of difficulty, you only deal off twelve cards for each half of the deck (technically ten plus the two proscribed cards for the Spartan deck), so you won’t see every event come up in every game.

"We'll build a wall, and we'll make the Syracusans pay for it."

With each turn, the player will choose an order to try to execute from a selection of seven options, then draw a card from the deck. The event is played first (the Bot’s turn, if you will, though it sometimes will come out in favour of the player). Then the counter-order is checked; this will tell the player which of four tables to roll on for the chosen order. If your order was to build the lowland wall, you’ll have a harder time of it if the Syracusans are defending the lowlands, or an easier time if they are instead defending the harbour.

The Syracusans will try to dismantle your siege wall, build their own counter-wall to block your progress, meet you out on the field of battle to thin your ranks, and damage your ships so you can’t interdict the city by sea. The enemy is cany and has many tricks up their sleeve. You can counter their provocations, but only one at a time, and each time at the cost of precious time, as dictated by the deck, in its role as game timer. Meanwhile, every loss you take, and every supply ship that gets turned away reduces your morale.

The solo game can end in two ways; either with the completion of the siege wall and enforcement of the sea blockade by the Athenians (victory), or by the Syracusan/Spartan deck running out before the player manages to accomplish these goals (failure, and a long journey back to Athens), the or by one side reaching a morale level of zero.

Appraisal

I really like the Great Sieges series. Each game offers a different experience but in a familiar way. Siege of Syracuse has unique aspects in the preloading of some events, and the more convoluted manner in which victory must be achieved. Like the others in the series, each time I get it to the table, it offers an evolving challenge that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

In preparation of this review, I played Siege of Syracuse again.  I haven’t played it in a couple of months – since January, and of the eighteen or twenty times I’ve played it, I’ve never beaten the Bot opponent. This time the start aligned; After pulling three Athenian leaders in the first half-dozen card-draws, things went remarkably smoothly. I completed the lowlands siege wall with nearly no resistance, though my navy was mauled early on and I struggled to get my ships repaired. Victory was attained with the final wall position filled and single ship managing to stay on blockade, with a mere two cards left. I’ll cherish this win because I don’t think I’ll see another one for a good ten or fifteen games.

My first victory

While the States of Siege series games all come with a two-player variant, I think I’m satisfied to keep them for solo play. They feel like solo games first and foremost, but that’s just my feeling. I’ve read reports from others who prefer them as two-player games.

One of the things I love about Worthington’s games is that they consistently live up to the playing time given on the game. If the box declares “Victory within an hour,” you can bet that – once you’re familiar with it – you’ll be done inside of an hour. Fifty minutes is my average for all three of these games now, with another seven or eight for set-up and repack. Victory isn’t guaranteed, but it’s often tantalisingly close, and you’ll probably have enough time left to set up and go again.

 

* After writing this, I went and checked the inventory and found I actually have no less than twenty-eight games from Worthington Publishing and their forerunner, Worthington Games. In all those, no disappointments.

State of Play: Plains Indian Wars

 

Slow week; T was interstate, so no game on Monday. Well, that’s not strictly true. I did a solo, four-handed run-through of a game I’ve had for probably about a year but hadn’t yet shared it with anyone, in anticipation of brining it to game night on Wednesday.

We were down one of our number for Wednesday game, with D was unavailable due to a work commitment, so that was the perfect time to bring over John Poniske’s Plains Indian Wars (GMT Games, 2022). I’ve been on a bit of a Poniske-jag lately, with playing though Ball’s Bluff (Legion Wargames, 2015), re-reading the Hearts and Minds (Compass Games, 2019) rules in anticipation of getting that to the table soon, and eyeing-off Fire on the Mountain (Legion, 2022)*. I’ve played Plains Indian Wars through four-handed on my own three or four times since it first arrived, and it struck me as a well-balanced game that represents a historically rather unbalanced.

I was in teaching mode on Wednesday and didn't take ay photos, so
here's a shot of my rehearsal game from Monday.

The US players have more going on. Of the seven discs drawn in a round, they control five between them. The Cavalry player also plays the Enemy Indian units. These units represent the native tribes who allied themselves with the US government in the hopes of supressing or wiping out their own traditional enemies.

The Settlers manage the Wagon Trains and the Transcontinental Railroad construction. These are practically automated functions and don’t take too long to manage (The railroad gets built depending on the presence of Settlers at the railheads; the existing Wagon Trains on the board move one space along the marked trails with two new wagon blocks coming on each round), but they do add to the down time for the Plains Indian players.

As the Plains Indians, the players have to reconcile themselves to not being able to defeat the US onslaught, but to curb it and hinder its progress where and as often as they can; there are always more settlers and more cavalry with each round.

In all the games I’ve played, the Railroad remained uncompleted more often than it got finished. Mostly due to the difficulties of crossing the Rocky Mountains. There’s a Settler action card that allows the player to complete the Rocky Mountains stage of the building in a single turn, but in Wednesday’s game that was the very last card drawn from the Settlers deck. Despite this, the US team did manage to complete the railway and bring the game to a conclusion on the cusp of the first exhausted deck.

This isn’t an easy game for wither side to win, but it is probably an easy game to lose. Both sides made beginner’s blunders strategically, but at scoring the clear winners were the Plains Indians, who scored convincing seven points ahead of the US by managing to hold on to much of their territory in the face of an intransigent foe.

*I also own Devil Dogs: Belleau Wood, 1918 (Worthington Publishing, 2019) and have the reprint of Berlin Airlift (Legion Wargames, 2023~) on CPO order with the publisher.

State of Play: not Undaunted: Normandy, but some Aces of Valor

 

 

After a game-free Easter weekend, Monday night was supposed to be Undaunted: Monday. I had set up Scenario 6: Desperate Withdrawal. But, alas, T came down with fluey symptoms and begged off. Making lemonade out of a cancelled game, I packed everything up to ensure it would be a lot easier to set up when we next play (hopefully Monday next week).

In the upside, I have finally got Aces of Valor (Legion Wargames, 2023) to the table. This was an exploratory session; I set it up for a short campaign (eight missions), using the British mid-war planes (Sopwith Camels). I read the rules when I first received the game in the mail, maybe two months ago now, and gave them a quick run-through last night. Setting it up, I realised I hadn’t taken due care in divvying up the counters into appropriate groups when clipping them. The set up took an age, mostly from having to sort through several piles of markers for each tracking token. The planes I’ve started to divide into four separate baggies; Early- Mid-, and Late-era, and support planes (two-seaters and bombers) for each nationality. The British and Germans are done (and labels for the French and US planes), and I’ve divided the target markers into static and mobile, just to make it a tad easier to find the marching infantry or supply depot.  

The first mission, a recon photo op of a supply depot – three fighters and a two-seater – went almost without a hitch; smooth flight out, thanks to the presence of light cloud, located and photographed the depot (two passes, worth six Mission Points), while the fighters found and disposed of a tank (random event) at the site. On the return journey the flight took some AA fire over the enemy trenches, catching one of the rookie pilots for two points of damage, but all made it safely to the home field. I spent one well-earned Mission Point on repairs to the damaged kite, and decided not to convert any of the remaining MPs to Victory Points in case we needed them for more repairs from the next mission.

The second mission was a bombing run – two bombers with a four-fighter escort, as luck would have it (random roll) on the very depot we’d reconnoitred on the first mission. The flight took the same course as the previous mission, but before they had even reached the Entente trench-line, they encountered a flight of Dr-1s lead by Baron Manfred himself (the planes feature first names of the pilots, and the best fighters feature the names of each nation’s highest-tally aces).

This was where the wheels started to come off. The combat system is an abstraction based on each pilot’s Initiative (IN) score, a combination of the plane’s and pilot’s capabilities with a d6 result added to it. Each plane can only fire on the next enemy plane down the IN track. The British pilots rolled generally better than the Germans – Manfred and Billy ended up sharing the 15 box on the track and so couldn’t actually take on each other – but the bombers shared the lowest box and took a hammering from the surviving German fighters. Both bombers had to dump their bomb loads (behind their own lines, but thankfully over a forested area, away from troops or towns) and turn back, so at the end of the second round the Germans and British all broke off in turn and headed back to their respective home airfields to lick their wounds. I didn’t work out the Mission Points hit for the mission failure, but it will probably wipe me out of all my accrued points. In the mean time, I realised there were at least a couple of mistakes I made. The German fighters may not have actually attacked on sighting the British flight, as they were outnumbered 5-6 (if you count the bombers). Also, I never allowed the bombers to fire back at their assailants; Two seaters and bombers have a rear gun (indicated by a reverse arrowhead at the back of the plane) that allows them to defend themselves when fired upon. This should happen simultaneously with each attack, and may have proven enough to convince the Germans to break off before engaging for a second combat round.

I was considering restarting the whole campaign, but as it’s a learning game, I’m inclined to start over from the beginning of the second mission. I had to break the game down (we need somewhere to eat dinner), but a few hastily scribbled notes in all I’ll need to pick up where I left off. Hopefully I’ll manage to get back to the action later in the week. Watch this space.

State of Play: Undaunted: Normandy (4/6)

 

Monday night T and I continued with my 6x6 play roster, knocking over my eight game out of the 36 total. We played Undaunted: Normandy, scenario 5: Crossing the Vere. We started a little later and usual, and playing at T’s, I had to set up when I arrived. I carelessly skipped scenario 4 by mistake and didn't realise until I'd completely set this one up, but this one was an interesting choice, so we weren’t too fussed.

Scenario 5 saw the introduction (for us) of snipers and a heavier support weapon, the German's mortar. T, as per our usual practice, played the Germans. The pressure is really on the American player to perform. The Germans have freedom of movement, their scouts having covered an entire half of the playing area (at the cost of only one extra Fog of War card in their starting deck, where the Americans start with only their spawning tile scouted).

Achtung! Scharfschütze!

I used my NCOs to bolster as many unit cards as I could into my deck as they appeared. I was a little cocky when I noticed had both my Platoon Sergeant and Squad A leader in my opening hand. The Americans also had their Platoon Guide for the first time (the Germans didn’t need theirs, but it may have thinned their more martial options a little more if he’s been included), and I was able to get some extra milage form my scouts with his help. T after a slower start, T got his Riflemen up into a wooded tile overlooking the bridge om my right, and his machine gunners set up where he spawned. From there he was able to lay suppression fire and immobilise my Riflemen and pick them off with his Riflemen, Mortar rounds and one lucky shot from a scout.

B Squad was the first to be pinned. I managed to secure the bridge on my left but couldn’t get my surviving Riflemen over to the second bridge before they too were mowed down. A solid win to the Germans.

I’m still amazed how well the Undaunted mechanics simulate squad-level operations. It seems counterintuitive that a deck-building mechanic could so accurately model the staggered, back-and-forth, attritional nature of the Western front at this scale, but it does. T commented over the table, “This must have been just what it was like. So much of the time you can’t get where you need to go, or you can’t accomplish what you need to when you get there.”

While we’re on the subject, Liz Davidson hosted a really interesting forum on the development of the Undaunted series on Fred Serval’s Homo Ludens YouTube channel just recently. I recommend you check it out if your interested in the game(s), how it came to be, or generally how games get produced these days. Well worth the hours’ time-investment.

State of Play: Lassalle (Napoleonic miniatures rules)

 

Last Wednesday B had the table set up for a Napoleonics minis game, which is always a treat. B is an artist when it comes to miniatures, and it’s his 28mm Napoleonic-era minis that are the heart and soul of his (must be several hundredweight of lead) collection. For this session we used B's recently acquired copy of the Lasalle 2nd Edition rules (Sam A. Mustafa, 2021).

The scenario was a defensive situation, with a brigade of reasonably good Spanish troops and a regiment and attached heavy cavalry squadron of Portuguese allies – K and me respectively – holding a defensive line anchored by two towns (the Portuguese held the hill on the right flank) against an onslaught of two reinforced brigades of French line – under the command of D and H – and their attached heavy cavalry (deftly handled by B, hanging back, waiting for an opening).

We managed to complete three rounds during the evening’s play. Where we left it, things were looking perilous for the Allies, with a cavalry breakthrough on the Portuguese flank, while the Spanish had given as good as they got. The game was completed the following night by B and K, and, as expected saw a French victory.

The Lasalle rules were written by Sam Mustafa, the designer responsible for Blücher (2015) another Napoleonic rules-set that offers the option of using cards to represent forces instead of minis. Of course, most people seem to choose to play Blücher with their miniatures, but nonetheless, the option is there. Sam is a prolific wargame designer whose interests stretch from the Roman Empire (Aurelian, another card-option tabletop game), to the Age of Reason (Might & Reason, Maurice, and a card game Your Majesty), the American Civil War (Longstreet), to the Second World War (Rommel, and recent addition, Nimitz). If you like pushing tin, you’re probably already familiar with Mustafa’s oeuvre; if not, check out his work.

6x6: First Quarter Update - some catching up to do

 

I first started writing this blog as a way of keeping on track for my stated commitment to a 6x6 challenge; playing six selected games at least six times throughout the year. I added some further stipulations; these had to be games I’d owned for a year or more but hadn’t got around to playing yet, and I had to play them against a face-to-face opponent for them to count toward the tally – I chose to not count two-handed solo games. Three months in and I’ve already fallen behind on my stated goal. So far, I’ve managed to get two games from my short list to the table, a total of five times; twice for Napoleon 1806, and three times now for Undaunted: Normandy. So, I’m four behind the nine I should have completed in three months to maintain momentum. The goal is still achievable, but I’ll have to be more goal-oriented in my gaming, at least in this respect. To be fair, the majority of January was lost to sickness, but I did get a handful of solo games to the table, as well as playing some family games with my wife, and much enjoyment was had.

The struggle is real

This isn’t to say I’ve been sitting on my hands. Most weeks I have two game opportunities. Mondays (usually, sometimes it gets pushed through unforeseen circumstances to Tuesday), I’ll get together with my brother-in-law, T. Early in this project, T graciously agreed to help me in my 6x6 quest, and he’s been my opponent for all five completed games played thus far. Due to various circumstances, we don’t usually get to begin playing much before 9:00pm*, so whoever is hosting will set up a game beforehand. So when we’ve played a T’s house, it’s usually too difficult to bring a 6x6 game and set it up, then play through an entire game (although we have done this once with Undaunted: Normandy; I’d selected and ordered the tiles and built the decks and draw stacks earlier in the day for a quicker set-up time).

I also have a regular Wednesday night gaming group. When I joined the group, about sixteen years ago, it was almost exclusively for roleplaying games. These days (and about eleven personnel changes later) our nights are spent fairly equally between RPGs, boardgames and miniatures battles (our host, B, has an extensive collection of minis from a variety of eras and conflicts, but Napoleonics is a group favourite). This provides the variety in my gaming life, and introduces all of us to games we probably would not have otherwise ever come across. I’m not a minis guy myself, but I appreciate the opportunity to push lead around the table once in a while.

Since the beginning of January, I’ve played no less than eighteen different games. Of those, five have been dedicated solo games (Skyhawk, Tarawa 1943 and the three Great Sieges Series games from Worthington); one (Chancellorsville 1863) is a two player game with a solo option; two were two-player games I played tow-handed solo (Ball’s Bluff and LaPrimogenita) two were Napoleonic miniatures rules-sets (Shadows of the Eagles and Lassalle); and three were boardgames that, while involving conflict of one manner or another, I couldn’t in good conscience call a wargame (Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition, Banish the Snakes, and Apocalypse Road).

Non-list wargames played included Commands and Colors: Ancients – Greece and the Eastern Kingdoms and Battle Line (arguably also not a wargame, but the dressing and mechanics suit the depicted situation very well); both of these were Monday games with T. While we’ve played a lot of Roman-era C&C: Ancients before, the Greece and the Eastern Kingdoms scenarios were new to both of us, even though we’ve owned a set each for four or five years. So, that’s an accomplishment of sorts as well.

Keeping this record has made me more aware of what I’m playing, and how lucky I am to have two face-to-face gaming opportunities a week. It’s also made me put more thought into what I want to play, and what games I buy. I’ve noticed I’m thinking a lot harder about what games I want to get to the table, and about the kind of “aspirational purchases” I’ve made in the past. I have a bit of the completionist in me, and some games I’ve bought simply because I had the fist one and the other ones make a set. I’m trying not to do that anymore. Well, at least not as often. And I’m making a greater effort to play the games I already have. I haven’t stopped buying new games, but I want to be sure that I will actually play them.

Doing this has also made me think more deeply about games, about the philosophy of play, and about what I’m looking for in a game. Everyone has their own expectations, their own ideas oof what makes for a good game or and worthwhile simulation. This is something that interests me deeply, and I’d like to do more introspective, navel-gazey stuff in the future. Feel free to skip these posts if it’s not your thing.

I’ve also started putting reviews up on this blog. I started writing movie reviews for my local gaming group’s newsletter when I was fifteen, and through my years at university I spent way too much time writing all kinds of reviews – books, CDs, films, art exhibitions, theatre and opera performances – and too many interviews to count for the uni newspaper. I always intended to write up considered reviews of my 6x6 games, after I’d played them half a dozen times and gained some deeper understanding of them, writing reviews felt like a natural progression from the State of Play reports I was already writing, so expect more of them.

You’ll only read reviews for games here that I really enjoy and I think deserve a wider audience. I’m not going to be hitting companies up for review copies of games because I only want to write about games I feel positive about. Everything I review will be either something I’ve bought myself, or somebody else’s game that I’ve played and thought deserved some attention.

This project has gotten larger than I anticipated, and I’m enjoying the writing as well as the playing. I made myself a promise that I’d keep this going through the end of 2023, but as long as I’m enjoying it, I’ll keep posting stuff here.

 

* Due to the later start on a Monday, we usually have a window of about 1½ hours or so to play a game. This is the reason why we’ve clocked more Commands and Colors games between us than anyone else I know; For the first seven or eight years we only played C&C: Napoleonics, at around forty-five or so games each year. It’s also the reason, “A fast game is a good game,” became a kind of mantra at the table, and was the obvious choice for the title of this blog.