Stripped Down for Parts: Boots on the Ground, First Edition

   

  

Note: the Boots on the Ground Deluxe Kickstarter campaign is now live! You can back the game here. 

Boots on the Ground (Worthington Games, 2010) was, I think, the first Worthington title I ever bought, back when I first started to get back into gaming and might have been my first non-RPG purchase at that time. Thinking about it, it was probably my first intentionally solitaire-playable game as well, which was a novel concept for me at the time. I enjoyed it, played the crap out of it, then somehow lost it, probably in a house move. In a fit of nostalgia a few years back, I bought a second-hand copy on eBay for what I thought was a reasonable price, then put it on the shelf and forgot about it.

Worthington (now Worthington Publishing) has announced a second edition of designer (and Worthington stalwart) Sean Cooke's Boots on the Ground will be coming to Kickstarter in the next couple of months (you can lodge your email for notification of when the campaign begins here), so I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit the original.

It has to be said that the first edition box cover is pretty non-descript, with an admittedly arresting diagonal orange title banner on a background of that pixellated camo that was so popular around the time of the Second Gulf War. The box itself is a little lightweight; this was standard for Worthington releases around this time and had its pluses and minuses. It’s perfectly fine for a game with such light components, but sturdier boxes have become the standard for Worthington releases in the last several years, and the new game will have a mounted board, so this is a good thing all round.

The box back has aa brief description of what to expect with the game. Thinking about it, there weren’t many – if any – games dealing with modern warfare at the individual warfighter scale in 2010 that didn’t involve a video-game console, so Boots on the Ground really was breaking new ground in the board wargaming sphere.

The Component list includes a single counter sheet, 60 “Intel” cards, a gameboard (we’ll come back to this next), and a rulebook. Curiously absent from this list is the double-sided PAC (also printed on heavy cardstock, and the extra three cards presenting the eleven(!) scenarios also included in the game. Maybe they were left off on the principle of under-promise, over-deliver.

Something also worth mentioning is the versatility of the game. While I’ve only played Boots on the Ground solo, the box-back notes that the game can also be played by two players, either co-operatively or competitively (with one player controlling Alpha (Red) Team and the other Bravo (Green) Team, co-operating or racing each other to complete the mission objectives), or in a true competitive mode with the second player controlling the insurgent units.

Map panels, folded.

The play area consists of two three panel (21½" by 11" each) heavy card maps that meet along one edge to form a roughly 22" square arial view of a generic city-scape that could be Mogadishu or Aleppo or Mosul, set on a diagonal grid to regulate movement. The terrain is represented by a slightly blurred photographic-style image of buildings and criss-crossing streets.

The map. (This ain't no party, this ain't no disco.)

And I can already hear people whining, “Why did they have to go ruin a perfectly good game with squares instead of hexes?” I admit, I was a little taken aback when I first saw it, but the grid works in context of the game and what it’s setting out to accomplish. This is just an unboxing, not a review, so I’m not going to go into the game-play here. I’ll just say, I think it works.

Rulebook: no room for fancy title graphics - it's all business here.

True to Worthington form, the rulebook runs to a mere eight pages. Actually, the rules themselves come to just four-and-a-half pages, with a table of Units and Other Counters’ descriptions and game effects (so, technically also rules, but with pictures and colour-coding) covering two-and-a-half pages, and the final page given over to a “comprehensive” example of play. 

Rulebook (sample page).

Being so brief, the rules are a little terse, lacking much elaboration of the game's concepts. I don't think it would be an ideal first game for anybody with zero experience in wargaming. For such a lean set of rules, though, the game still offers a fairly robust play experience, with much of the step-by-step instruction coming from the card-driven play with the Event Cards.

Sample Cards. (This ain't no foolin' around.)

The game comes with a set of sixty Event Cards, which are revealed during play, and provide an element of fog-of-war to what is often already a tough gig. The cards aren’t all bad; from memory, about 75% are unfavourable events for the player, while 25% are more or less favourable. In any given mission you may only go through a third to half of the deck, which makes for good replayability, but in my experience it always felt like the unfavourable cards came up closer to 90% of the time, so there’s that.

Counter-sheet. No wasted chits here.

I bought my current copy second hand. Imagine my surprise when it arrived, and the counter-sheet hadn’t been punched. I’m a little surprised that I haven’t got around to punching this copy, but it’s a lucky thing because you get to see the first edition counters in their pristine glory.

Teams and markers (detail).

No surprises here, I think. The counters mostly represent the Special Forces and regular grunts, insurgents, Civilians (some of whom may be insurgents in disguise), and vehicles (which can sometimes be ridded to explode). The counters are clear and readable, and printed on pretty solid grey-core card stock. The Friendly and Enemy actors each have an arrow pointing to the top of the counter to indicate their sighting/firing facing. This dictates what each one can shoot at (and if they can be caught unawares).

Player's Aid Card.

The Player Aid Card is a two-sided card that reproduces the aforementioned Units and Other Counters Tables – two and a half pages of rules content, squeezed down into two sizes of an 8 ½” by 11” card. My only criticism would be that a duplication of the Sequence of Play would also have been useful. Maybe this will happen with the new edition.

Scenario cards (each scenario includes a set-up map).

As I already mentioned, the original version of Boots on the Ground came with no less than eleven scenario outlines, printed on 8½" by 11" cards, two to a side. The scenario notes are fairly bare-bones affairs, with the Current Intel (the situation on the ground, as per known enemy positions and mission-critical packages (like hostages or WMDs), then the mission success parameters for Solitaire, Cooperative and Competitive missions.

Sample scenario.

Also included is a BOHICA section (if you don’t know, look it up). This section offers some suggestions for mixing-up the game, adjusting the make-up of the team to make the scenarios more challenging.

Box interior (with card stash).

The set is rounded out with a box-insert to keep things from banging around too much in transit, and a box which snugly houses the deck of event cards AND the two large-ish white dice that accompany the game. The box is a good thing, because the cars in Boots on the Ground are square-cornered, and too much shunting around would make them nigh-on unplayable. And one of the gutters created by the box insert is just wide enough to accommodate the card-box. Even before the days of counter trays and sturdier boxes, Worthington has always been a class act.

Card and Dice box.

So that's Boots on the Ground in its original incarnation, a solid little game, and to my mind, well deserving of a second edition. From the little that has been revealed so far, it looks like the new version will keep the basic DNA, but will be get the full deluxe treatment with a mounted board, easy-punch, pre-rounded counters, and more. To be honest, I’m torn on whether to back it. The next cab off the Kickstarter rank for Worthington is slated to be Band of Brothers: Stalin's Favorites, which is a Shut-Up-And-Take-My-Money project for me. So, I should have have a few months to decide.