Review: Plains Indian Wars

 
 

Charles S. Roberts Award winner: Best Early Modern Wargame

At the end of the American Civil War, the drive west began in earnest. For decades, white people had set out into Indian territory to carve out a new life for themselves and their families, or to carve gold or silver out of the mountain-sides, or to find some promised land. Many died, and many of those were killed by native Americans who saw this intrusion as a threat to their way of life. After the Civil War, a confluence of events “back East” – social, political, and economic – opened the floodgates to tens of thousands, then soon after hundreds of thousands of people, each looking for opportunity and prosperity in the untamed West. And many Indian communities were summarily wiped out by settlers or government forces in retribution for individual attacks, or simply to remove a potential threat.  As big as the frontier was, it proved too small for white settlers and native tribes to coexist. The rest, as they say, is history.

Plains Indian Wars (GMT Games, 2022) is a high-level simulation of the interactions between the US Government, white settlers, and the resident Plains Indian peoples – the Apache, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Cheyanne, Comanche, Hidatsa, Kiowa, and Mandan nations – in a period of massive Western expansion, driven in a large part by the creation of the Trans-Continental Railroad by the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroad Companies. In a way, the creation of the railroad spelt the end of the indigenous way of life more completely than any other single factor; Plains people lived nomadically, following the massive bison herds’ seasonal migrations. Where the railroad track had been laid, the buffalo would not cross it; their roaming lands were permanently bisected.

 
Appearance
From the start, let me say that the whole game looks great. Terry Leeds was responsible for the board and the general art contribution to the game, and he has managed to create a game with simple components The game is played on a map representing the hereto “unsettled” territories of the United States of America, roughly from St Louis in the east to the Rocky Mountain range in the west, with slender portions of the Canada to the North and Mexico to the south. This map is divided into territories for movement and scoring purposes.

State of play at the bottom of the fifth (round).

The map feels like a period representation of the region; not a Corps of Army Engineers survey map, but like a massive painting commissioned by the directors of a railroad interest to place in their boardroom. The board accommodates nearly the whole game and its components, which is always as triumph of design. The game uses wooden cubes of various colours to denote the various factions’ forces, as well as the railroad (which has a dedicated track printed on the map) and the Wagon Trains (which traverse various historical trails, also incorporated into the map). The cubes are matched by wooden discs that are drawn from a bag at random for activation of each faction of game function.

Each player faction has their own set of fifteen tarot-sized cards, a mixture of Action and Event cards. These are beautifully presented, with many featuring period illustrations. The cards each relate to significant individuals, historic events and social phenomena from the period of the great westward migration, and each includes a short descriptive passage.

The Union Pacific forges westward.

Play
Plains Indian Wars supports two to four players; for a four-player game, each player controls one player faction – North or South Plains Tribes (NPT, SPT), The US Cavalry (which also controls the Enemy Tribes) or the Settlers (who also operate the proscribed functions of the Wagon Trains and the Railroad). For a two-player game, one player will control the NPT and SPT, while the other player handles all the government and settler functions. A three-player game is an option, but I’d advise having one player handle both Plains tribe factions and the other players each play the US Cavalry and the Settlers respectively for reasons that will become apparent.

The game is made up of an indeterminate number of rounds, with turn order dictated by the random draw of a coloured marker matching that faction or function. On their turn, a faction will play two of the cards from their three-card hand, one Action and one Event (if the player only has Event cards in their hand, they play one Event as an Action, as per instructions in the rulebook; if they only hold actions, they only play a single action). When the Railroad (black) or Wagon Train (white) markers are drawn, the Settler player places the railroad cubes or moves the Wagon Train cubes along their chosen trails respectively. When the Enemy Tribes (purple) marker comes out, the Cavalry player places a new Enemy Indian cube on a controlled territory and may move a group to instigate a fight with the Plains tribes. (This is why it could get boring, if two players with Plains tribe factions were only responding to one marker draw each and the third (government) was handling the other five.)

The combat system in Plains Indian Wars is simple and elegant, and deftly captures much of the nature of these conflicts. Each faction has its own specialised conflict dice, with hit and treaty markings, as well as blank faces. The two involved factions each roll dice; one if a single block is present, two for multiples. For each Hit face, an antagonist’s block is removed. Blank faces allow that many blocks to escape to an adjoining territory. If both factions roll Treaty-faces (but only if both sides roll such), any hits are ignored and the conflict is ceased in that territory – peace has broken out between the warring factions. No one retreats and no further conflict can be instigated in that territory for the remainder of that round.

The game can end in a couple of ways. If a faction deck plays its last card on their turn, the round is played to its conclusion, then scoring takes place. Or in the case of the Intercontinental railroad being completed on an activation, the game terminates with the last activation of that round. As an automatised game function, the Settler faction has some control over the building of the railroad; when the railroad marker is drawn, up to three blocks are place at each rail-head, so long as the territory adjacent to the rails is populated by Settlers; no settler blocks in attendance, no railroad.

At its heart, Plains Indian Wars is an area control game. A significant portion of each faction’s Victory points come from who holds what ground. The onus is somewhat on the Plains tribes to maintain as much of their territory as they can in the face of the encroaching settlers, and to take and hold as many of the Enemy Tribes (Purple bordered) territories as they can; the Plains tribes don’t gain points for these, but they will be penalised if they don’t hold a majority of the enemy territories in their respective regions. The Plains Tribes also gain points if the railroad remains uncompleted at the end of the final turn, and for each Wagon Train block eliminated (these blocks go onto the Planes tribes’ scoring track. The US players gain points collectively for the territories held and the Wagons that make it to the Rocky Mountains, as well as the completion of the railroad.

Slow going for the Central Pacific Railroad

Historically, the best the Plains people could do was a strategy of hit and run attacks on vulnerable targets, while harassing the US Cavalry forces sent against them, avoiding larger-scale conflicts where they could. As a Plains tribe player, you must do your best to hold back the tide of settlers pushing into your lands with a strike and evade strategy, all the while taking on the Enemy tribes in their home territories, and preventing as many Wagon Trains from completing their journey as you can. As the government and the migrating settlers, your job is to push the Indians further to the south and north, claim lands in the name of Manifest Destiny, and get the Intercontinental Railroad built. That last part requires Settlers to be present all the way along the path on which the railroad is being built, and fending off attacks from hostile Indians; no easy task, but nothing worth a damn ever is.

 
Appraisal
I’ve been meaning to write up a review of Plains Indian Wars since I started this blog. Personally, this was one of my favourite games from last year, though it has proven to be somewhat divisive among the people I’ve played it with. After playing the game, hard-bitten grognards have expressed their sense of sadness over the tragic inevitability of the fate of the Plains Indians. I found it hard to separate the action in the game from the history It simulates; every Indian victory was pyrrhic and short lived. Any tribal leader who actually managed through armed resistance to draw a new treaty or concession from the government would nearly always live to see that agreement rescinded within a generation or – more likely – within a decade. But, for me at least, one of this takes away from the challenge presented in the game or the pleasure in the playing of it.

Overall, the game runs smoothly, and once everyone understands what they are trying to achieve, in moves along at a brisk pace (individual moments of analysis paralysis notwithstanding). The US players have more board-time than the Plains tribe players, an artifact of the additional functions of the Wagon Trains and the Railroad falling to the Settlers player, and the activities of the Enemy tribes to the Cavalry player, the random turn-order helps keep everyone engaged in the game. Even with all a table of newbies, I’ve found each game I’ve played or adjudicated to finish within two hours. Plains Indian Wars does not outstay its welcome. 

An outbreak of peace.

For such a seemingly one-sided conflict, Plains Indian Wars is remarkably well-balanced. I’ve played the game seven or eight times now, and no faction or side seems to have a clear advantage. While chance plays a part, both in the drawing of counters for turn-order and the caprices of the dice-rolls, a sensible new player will have a good chance of keeping up with or outstripping more experienced players.

Some have criticised PIW as being too much a Eurogame. I can’t see it myself. The underlying system is similar to Academy Games’ Birth of America series, 1812: The Invasion of Canada (2012), 1775: Rebellion (2013), and 1754: Conquest – The French and Indian War (2017). Having never played any of these, I can’t really speak to how PIW compares with them. I would say though that Plains Indian Wars is a reasonably accurate, if abstracted, representation of a significant conflict in North American history. I get that some people may find it difficult to make the leap from counters with numerical values to blocks with no clear value of strength or effectiveness, but what makes a wargame isn’t the accuracy of the order of battle, but the designer’s intent; the way the rules work and the elements of the game interact can transform a game into a simulation of a historical event or process. All the elements of Plains Indian Wars work together to create a bird’s eye view of this period of history in all its tragic glory.

Three made it; many didn't.

Designer John Poniske is no stranger to difficult or sensitive subjects in his games. His published games include Amigos and Insurrectos: The Philippine Insurrection,1899-1902 (Battles magazine #11, 2016), Maori Wars: The New Zealand Land Wars, 1845-1872 (Legion Wargames, 2018), Bleeding Kansas (Decision Games, 2019), and Wolfe Tone Rebellion (Compass Games, 2023). Poniske is a retired History and Journalism teacher, and the fundamental drive to educate as well as challenge and entertain comes through in all his games. My only disappointment with Plains Indian Wars was the lack of any historical essay or designer’s notes. I’ve read fairly extensively about the period for a separate, so I have some understanding of the historical background. There are short notes on the cards, offering some historical context regarding the events and personalities represented, but after the embarrassment of resources provided with Ball’s Bluff (Legion Wargames, 2015), the absence of any elucidating material with PIW was felt.

Plains Indian Wars recently won the Charles S. Roberts Award for Best Early Modern Wargame, voted best in a field that included The Red Burnoose (Hit ‘Em With a Shoe Games, 2022) and Votes for Women (Fort Circle Games, 2022). While I might have issues with the title of the category, the win is a Best Among Equals kind of deal.

* I should note that PIW comes with a separate set of solo rules, developed by Etienne Michot, which offer different models of solitaire play for playing either the Plains tribes or the US government / settlers, with variations of play. I haven’t tried these out yet – the games I’ve played solo I have played out four-handed to familiarise myself with the game with the aim of teaching others. I have read though the solo rules, and, when I’ve had the chance to play thought them a couple of times, I’ll give a report on how well they play.