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.