State of Play: Freeman’s Farm 1777

 

 

I recently acquired a couple of second-hand games, including John Poniskie’s Lincoln’s War (Multi-Man Pubishing, 2013), an old Strategy and Tactics issue 120 with an unpunched copy of Joseph Miranda’s first published game, Nicaragua! (3W, 1988), and the subject of this piece, Freeman’s Farm 1777 (Worthington Publishing, 2019). I’d been on the look-out for Freeman’s Farm ever since I started playing designer Maurice Suckling’s second release, Chancellorsville, 1863 (Worthington Publishing, 2020).

So, I got it, and I’ve played it. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that I like it. I’ll post a proper review when I’ve spent some more time with the game – this is based on my first solo outing, but I felt a fire in the belly to share some first impressions. So, here are some initial thoughts on Freeman’s Farm 1777.

Elegant solo mechanics

Chancellorsville 1862 was a development of the same system used in Freeman’s Farm 1777, but included a hidden movement system to create a fog of war effect. This involved screened-off mini-maps for the plyers to manoeuvre their own units until they will come into contact with units already on the main board, at which point they are transferred to the shared map and bloodshed is sure to follow. In the solitaire version of the game the hidden movement is approximate by a hidden movement track that the out-of-contact units move down when activated by the prompts on the opponent side’s bot order cards. The whole thing is quite elegant, perhaps the apotheosis of this design thinking.

Freeman’s Farm captures a different kind of situation; it was much more of a set-piece battle stretching over a few miles, not the contest of manoeuvre and hold spread along an entire valley. The bot opposition isn’t a deck in Freeman’s Farm. Instead, the bot responds to the turn of an activation card with each game turn. Where a human opponent will draw three activation cards at the beginning of the game, and maintain that hand-size throughout, the nonplayer side activates each unit as its activation card appears.

Each unit has a unit record card that lists what orders can be given to a unit when it is activated. In a solitaire game, the cards are flipped to their reverse side, which shows the hierarchy or orders for that unit’s activation. Upon activation, Fraser’s redcoats will always do (a), unless (a) is for whatever reason is impossible to perform, or has already been accomplished, in which case Fraser will do (b), and so on. The units each have a list of around four orders, to perform. This might sound clunky and proscriptive, but it it’s a logical progression of that each unit would be attempting to do as their part in successfully executing the battle, and it fits the design of the game very well, and after the first couple of turns, begins to feel quite natural. After one game I can’t say it feels like the game is responding to your actions in the same way that Chancellorsville does, but that might be a familiarity thing; I’ve played Chancellorsville quite a bit, but only solo.

Limited choices

The thing that struck me about Chancellorsville was just how structured the play was in the game. Units can only be ordered if you happen to have an activation card for that unit. An activated unit can move a space or two, can move an engage with an enemy or it can stand their ground and develop defensive fieldworks (at no cost to their ever- is diminishing cohesion). The board movement is severely prescriptive. Each position has two or more links to other positions only, though it would be possible – should you ever want to – to march a unit from one end of the map to the other, barring interception.

Initial board setup. Colonial skirmishers hold Coulter's Farm and the Mill (blue cubes).

The board in Freeman’s Farm is even more prescriptive. There are coloured markings dictating where each unit’s pieces start the game, and arrows to show their objectives.

Hamilton (on the British side) has one job: clear the Mill of colonial skirmishers, then take and hold Freeman’s Farm, which will then act as the fulcrum for Burgoyne’s overall plan. Fraser’s job is to attack and roll up the American left flank. The options are to fight, or to move and fight. Some units have the option of using their own troops to plug holes in other frontline units, but each one has a role and are expected to fulfill that expectation.

This makes the game sound like its lacking in dynamism. Those who don’t think a wargame is a wargame if it doesn’t have a hex-grip overlaid on the map are going to balk at this as soon as they look at the back of the box. But to my mind, Freeman’s Farm is even more dynamic than the games in Worthington’s Great Sieges series. The combination of activating units only when they are available to activate and limited options of what to do with them when they opportunity arises makes every decision a crucial one. You know what the enemy intends, and you must use every opportunity to thwart their intentions. I can’t go into tactics, having only played a single game, but I’m reminded of the Johnson quote; “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

Both a fast and a good game

I read the rules in a couple of hours over two nights a couple of days before I played the game. I took so long over them because I like to give rules a bit of time to filter through my head before re-reading them and making sure I’ve got it right (in itself, not guarantee). So, when I actually came to the game, I had a pretty good idea of what was happening. I’m sure my familiarity with Chancellorsville helped.

A bloody battle.

When I set up to play I got through two rounds before I realised I hadn’t set up the British cards on their solo side. That added a couple of minutes to reset the board and reshuffle the decks. In spite of this, I managed to set-up Freeman’s Farm, play through a whole game (finished three activations short due to the lack of forces left on the board after some particularly bloody fighting, and pack the whole thing up again in the under an hour-fifteen. And this wasn’t some simple distraction to pass the time, like filling a sudoku; the whole hour or so of play was an immersive – and extremely tense- experience.

I came away from Freeman’s Farm with the sense of needing to talk about it. I usually make it a rule to not talk about a game in any depth without playing it at least three or four times first. I’ve also tried not to say a lot about it. I want to keep most of it for the review, which you can probably expect in a couple of weeks. I can also report that, while Chancellorsville 1863 has indeed sold out, Worthington Publishing still has stock of Freeman’s Farm available.