Review: French and Indian War, 1757-1759

 

 

Worthington Publishing (and the company’s previous incarnation, Worthington Games) have a long and deep connection with the French and Indian War, as the North American theatre of the Seven-Years’ War (1754-1763) between the empires of Britain and France and their subjects and allies in the New World. Hold the Line (Worthington Games, 2008), and its revision, Hold the Line: the American Revolution (Worthington Publishing, 2016), each saw its own French and Indian War expansion (Worthington, 2008, 2016).

I was on the fence about French and Indian War, 1757-1759 (Worthington, 2020) game when it was first announced. Because of financial pressures at the time, I didn’t end up backing the Kickstarter; shipping to Australia always add around half to two-thirds the cost of the pledge. I like a block game, and I was thinking about grabbing a copy through Noble Knight, but I already owned Volko Ruhnke’s classic, Wilderness War (GMT Games, 2001). With limited storage space and a lot of historical areas my smallish-but-respectable collection doesn’t yet cover, could I justify buying a second French and Indian War game.

What convinced me was Bill Molyneaux’s review of the game on BoardGameGeek. Bill designed the well-received Wilderness Empires (Worthington Publishing, 2015), as well as a sack-load of other games set around aspects of the conflict, and is a historian and heavily involved in the F&IW re-enaction scene. He said it was, to his mind, the best game covering the conflict (and mentioned that his son prefers it to Bill’s own game). I confess, I haven’t played Wilderness Empires, but Molyneaux is a consistently solid historical game designer, so his endorsement counted for something with me. After reading his thoughts in it, I pulled the trigger on French and Indian War.

Having played it now half a dozen times and spent a lot more time thinking and writing about it, I feel like I’m in a good position to talk about this game. Having said that, I feel like it eludes me somewhat. It’s a simple game, very easy to pick up. I’d say it’s an excellent game for introducing new players to wargaming, and to block wargames in particular. But underneath its veneer of simplicity, there’s an awful lot going on in this game, and I’m certain I won’t be able to cover it all in this review.

Appearance

French and Indian War, 1757-1759 (F&IW) is a spare game, the mounted board is a narrow, four panel item (11” x 32”), representing the region in which the bulk of the action in the conflict took place from the northern shores of the Great Lakes to the frontiers of Pennsylvania, New York state, and New England, with key locations marked out, along with paths connecting one location to the next. The colour pallet is muted but nonetheless quite attractive; highlights the action rather than smothering it. The board also features a Year-track (1757-59), and turn-track (11 turns with a possible 12^th on a successful die roll for a late winter), and points tracks for each side (running 0-12).

F&IW is a block game, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. If you’ve read this far, you’re probably a fan or at least curious. The blocks in F&IW are of a typical size for a block game (comparable to the Columbia Games’ block games or the Cavalry blocks used in GMT’s Commands & Colors family of games) The British blocks are in a red very close to the British Redcoat uniform crimson; the French blocks are in a rather pale blue (which is historically more fitting than the expected royal blue). Two sets of stickers are provided with the game; these are applied to one side of the blocks, and represent the three types of units available to the players (French unit stickers on the blue blocks, British on the red). The differences in the sets are purely ascetic. I went with the more conventional of the two sets.

Also included are a handful of small black cubes intended for track markers. There are several more then are needed on the board, so we placed an extra one or two (as appropriate) on the 0-box to mark when the twelve-point track had been lapped (i.e. a 0 block and a 3 equals 15 points, two 0 blocks and a 2 would equal 26 points). We also used a spare block as a mnemonic for the location of a battle, as the pieces are all removed to a battle board for combat.

The Battle Board is where conflicts are resolved. This is a thick 11” by 8½” panel with a combat ranks and instructions printed on one side. On the reverse side is a break-down of the historical set-up for the game.

The game comes with six custom dice, used in the combat rounds. Units hit on their own symbols, of which there is only one face on each die; Regular army units hit on their respective flags, Irregulars hit on crossed tomahawks, and Militia on a roll of crossed muskets. The game also comes with a single regularly-pipped six-sider, for rolling at the end of the game-year to see if a late winter allows an extra turn that year.

French and Indian War comes with two copies of the rule book; this is something Worthington started doing a few years ago, and it is such a boon. The rules run to eleven of the twelve pages, and these include solitaire play guidelines and the option for hidden simultaneous movement (the game also comes with a pad especially for recording your movements before the simultaneous placement), which I can’t speak to because we haven’t tried that, but now I’m really wishing we had for at least one game; when we get around to playing this again I'll make sure to use the hidden movement rules and report back. The last page has a map with abbreviations for the hidden movement mode, but it doubles as a player’s aid (a good thing there’s two copies of the rules).

Play

The forces in French and Indian War are comprised of regiments Regular (professional) soldiers, cohorts of Militia, bands of Irregular units (Indians and Rangers), and naval units for gaining or challenging control over the Atlantic. These units are represented by labelled blocks, Red for the British and their allies, light blue for the French and their Indian tribes allied to Louis. The strength of each unit is indicated by a decreasing number of pips on the sides of the edges of the block sticker; as is typical with most block games, when a unit takes damage, the block is rotated counter-clockwise so that the upper edge always represents the current strength of the unit (i.e., a four-pip regular unit takes a hit; it is rotated so the upper edge now shows three pips). Combat rounds go rank by rank; first Irregulars, then Regular troops, then Militia. Defenders roll first, and hits are taken immediately, so there’s always the possibility of disadvantage as the attacker, especially when attacking a fort or a port settlement (attacking Irregulars and Militia roll with one les die on their first round).

The game is divided up into three years of 11 or 12 turns to a year, depending on the roll of a six-sided die to determine whether Winter sets in early or late (on a roll of 4-6, the players get one more turn for the year; on a 1-3 the snow comes early). Each location has a victory point score, which also corresponds to how many units can winter in that location. A winter garrison can exceed the VP number by one irregular unit and take no penalty, but any further units will take a one-pip drop in their strength (reflecting desertions, Militia members returning to their homesteads, etc.). Getting caught with a larger formation in a small town can be devastating.

The play action of French & Indian War is deceptively simple; with each turn, each side – beginning with the British – may move a unit of units from one location. These units can move from their point of origin to a single location, or they may disperse to separate adjoining locations, but most can only move to an adjacent location. The exception to this is the Irregulars – the allied Indian tribes and local Ranger units – who can move to a second connected location.

When you arrive at a location already inhabited by the enemy, you fight. The number of pips across the units in a rank dictate how many dice you roll for that rank, and you hit on that ranks’ symbol (crossed hatchets for the Irregulars, crossed muskets for the Militia, and the Union Jack and Fleurs de Lys for the British and French Regulars respectively). In this game the dice are unforgiving. Whatever you are fighting with has a one-in-six chance of raining hurt down upon the opposing side. Sometimes a whole round or two of combat will prove ineffectual for both sides. But occasionally a single roll can be devastating. Only occasionally, though (statistics say so). Being a block game, you don’t know what your opponent has placed where until you test it, and in this, combat can have as much use as a method of probing for intelligence as its more obvious purpose. Knowing where the other side is strongest can deliver vital information regarding your opponent’s intentions.

For all the reduced movement options and sometimes sluggish combat resolution, French and Indian War is a remarkably fast-playing game. Our first run at it had all the usual qualities of a learning game, and so ran to about two hours and twenty minutes, but from the third game on, we managed to keep play within the 90 minutes suggested on the box. French and Indian War is a tight game that flows easily, so long as you’re not given to labouring over every difficult choice.

Appraisal

F&IW involves a combination of strategy, guesswork and, to a degree, dumb luck, though not as much as it might appear on the face of it. To win, one side must gain a clear ten-point majority in points at the end of a year, after any territorial gains have been tabulated. Each unit destroyed offers the victor a single point, but you’re not going to win by killing the enemy. Taking territory is where the points are, but it’s not enough to push the enemy out of his homes; to claim a location as a prize, one of your units must reside there at the close of the year. That means, to have a chance at winning that ten-point lead, you will have to spread your forces fairly thinly in an effort to gain those extra victory points. And if you don’t win the game that year, you’ll be spending turns gathering up your units for another fight or two before trying to claim all that territory again. This also means that a fight to the death isn’t in your interests. If you knock out two of the other guy’s units but lose one or two yourself, you may not be able to cover the terrain you need for those elusive points. French and Indian War is a long string of difficult choices.

While it is a relatively simple game to learn, and only really has one scenario (two if you count the historical set-up and free placement as separate scenarios), French and Indian War is a rare gem of a game; I found it reveals its depths slowly, rewarding multiple games with new insights. It elegantly captures the difficulties of waging a frontier war with restricted movement options, limited resources and manpower, and a mutual enemy in the harsh North American winters I’d put it on the same level as the best of Columbia Games' block games. I think the key to approaching the game is to adopt a guerrilla mindset, more Mao Zedong than Antoine-Henri Jomini. It was impossible to run a set-piece decisive battle in the vast wilderness the Great Lakes region in the mid-eighteenth century. Most actions in the game are small concerns, with one side conceding the ground and backing off to maintain their force strength of another day. Sometimes it can feel like whack-a-mole; each side is limited in its resources and stifled in its manoeuvre options, and I can see how some might find the frustration insurmountable, but its these elements that make the game such a strategic showpiece. It’s difficult to spring a surprise on your opponent when it takes your forces three turns to get into a position to pounce. This game rewards a flexible approach to fighting, and makes unanticipated demands on its players.

I’m sure some folks will balk at the ponderous nature of F&IW; the limited movement, the potential for successive rounds of ineffectual combat, and the requirements of winter-quartering potentially chewing up your last three or four moves for the year. But all these aspects work together to abstractly recreate the difficulties of fighting a war in the truly untamed and inhospitable environment of the Great Lakes region. Dealing with these restrictions through the course of play elevates this game of simple mechanisms into a deep historical simulation. French and Indian War is a deft and elegant example of game design.