Stripped Down for Parts: Guerre Eclair

 

 

Oh, happy day! Designer Yasushi Nakaguro’s Guerre Eclair (NUTS! Publishing, 2026) arrived a couple of days ago, but I had some things to finish off before I could pull it apart and have a proper look at it. The game was originally released by BonSai Games in Japan under the name The Rise of Blitzkrieg (BonSai Games, 2019). I own several NUTS! games, but this was the first game I’d ordered directly from the publisher. This was an impulse buy – not something I’m prone to – and shipping coset nearly as much as the (discounted) game itself. Looking back on it, I should probably held off and ordered it from Hexasim, along with La Der des Ders (Hexasim, 2025) and saved a few Euros on shipping, but Guerre Éclair did arrive inside of two weeks, which is quite impressive.

Guerre Eclair is the third in NUTS!’ Combat Rations series, following up from 300: Earth & Water (NUTS! Publishing, 2018) and Port Arthur (NUTS! publishing, 2020). The games in the series (thus far all reprints of BonSai games, as will be the fourth instalment – check out my interview with Mr Nakaguro for more) come in a uniform clamshell box, with a small, mounted board, nice components and cards

Each game in the Combat Rations series has had a different artist attached to the job. For Guerre Eclair, NUTS! went with Zuzanna Wollny. Ms Wollny is better known for her book and poster illustration work and for her truly stunning murals. The box cover is a sepia monochrome illustration reminiscent of a French soldier’s nightmares of the Front; tanks and dive-bombers baring down on the ill-lead defenders of the homeland. The result is effective and helps reinforce the theme and set the pace of the game. But it doesn’t set a rigid path for the rest of the art, as we will see shortly.

The clamshell box design. This appeals to my inner product engineer.

The defining feature of the Combat Rations series – for me at least – is the clamshell enclosure. The roughly C5 envelope-sized box is hinged and sealed with a magnetic clasp. Theis series isn’t the first to use the clamshell design (I have a couple of Osprey games that sport this style of case), and I don’t think it would be appropriate for a lot of games, but it’s a good fit for the Combat Rations ethos of short, numerically low-component, highly replayable games that will travel well – in a case or a backpack. If I was travelling with one, I would probably put an elastic band around the whole thing, just to be sure, but I’ve always had a belt-and-braces approach in regard to keeping things together.

Inside the box. This also doubles as a handy dice tray.

NUTS! Publishing always puts a premium on presentation, and the Combat Rations games are no exception. The inside of the box, looks like an ammunition box that’s been repurposed to hold a French infantryman’s personal effects. This was the same conceit that lined the Port Arthur box, only with a Japanese soldier’s ephemera. It’s an oddly affecting touch, bringing the historical event down to the level of the personal.

The box-back. 

The box-back description leads with a short description of the historical situation, the German invasion of Belgium, Holland, and France in May 1940, as well as a brief account of the game play. The usual caveats of two-players – I don’t see how you could play an effective solo game with the amount of hidden information crucial to play – and a recommended age of fourteen and up are advised. Forty-five minutes is the advised game duration, which I think would be true for anyone familiar with the game, but I’d anticipate an hour or so for an introductory game.

The rulebook.

The rulebook A5 in size, is printed in full colour on a good weight of low-gloss paper-stock. It runs to twenty pages, while the rules proper amount to eighteen pages (including nearly five pages of illustrated examples of play). The rules are pretty straightforward - number of the game’s concepts are familiar from 300: Earth & Water, but executed a little differently. 

Sample spread of the rules. The examples of play appear on a yellow background.

I’ll save the recounting of play for an AAR, but I would say that, in my experience with Mr Nakaguro’s games, simple rules bely rich, decision-point filled gameplay.My only complaint would be an unjust one; the font is a little small for me to read without glasses, but this is a grievance directed more at the injustices of age and decrepitude than the quality of the product, which is undeniably excellent.

The game board. Once again my crappy phone camera does not do justice
to the rather lovely artwork.

The map board is – as one would expect – small (roughly 11” by 17”); it is however mounted, and both attractive and functional. The art is a departure from the original Japanese release, which took a more utilitarian approach with a political-style map – it reminded me a little of the European campaign map in Hitler’s Reich (GMT Games,2018). Ms Wollny’s map is representative of the terrain encompassed in the theatre as it would appear during summer campaign; the lighter greens of the grassy fields give way to the dark, foreboding tones of the Ardennes. The movement in the game is point to point, with clear paths marked out between locations. Each location is defined by its shape; representing a town or city (ellipsis), a port (diamond, with an anchor) or a fortress (heptagon, with a turret silhouette). Belgian locations are marked in yellow, and the single Dutch city, Dordrecht, in orange. Control of locations is crucial to Grman victory, something we’ll touch on later. Finally, there are four Bases, three German – Saarbrücken, Prüm, and Düsseldorf – and one for the Allies – Paris, at the opposite end of the board.

Also incorporated into the edges of the board are a turn track (five turns, each representing roughly a week across May and June), and a Momentum pendulum track. Momentum is treated as a currency in the game, allowing the players to spend points gained on small advantages.

The German Shield fronts, illustrated in the sepia tones of a dust-infused breaking dawn.

Associated with the German bases are three card shields. These will conceal the German player’s division of forces across the three bases. The German player divvies up his available forces across the three bases in response to their victory objectives (more on this when we gat to the cards), and in response to the Allied troop placement, which is completed first.

The German-facing side of the shields. These conceal the players distribution of troops
across the three bases.

The shields as printed double-sided on light card, each with a unique illustration on the opponent-facing side and the name of the base printed on the German player side. They are perfectly adequate to their task in structure and size and come pre-folded rather than simply scored on the fold, which is another nice touch. I don’t know about others, but I always seem to mess up and mis-crease at least one of the folds, left to my own devices.

Clockwise from Top left: French (blue), German (grey), and BEF (ochre) units,
and the two Tracking discs for the Tern and Momentum tracks.

The game has no counter-sheet, but instead uses little wooden meeples – soldiers and tanks representing French (blue), British (ochre) and German (grey) forces – where the BonSai release had similarly coloured cubes and discs. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded if the publishers had decided to go with blocks, but the end result is more evocative, with infantry and armour being instantly discernible, and more familiar to Euro-gamers trying out a war-game.

One thing I can appreciate is the attention to detail. The Allied and German tank pieces are different silhouettes. It’s a little thing, but it indicates the care that’s gone into the preparation of the game as clearly as a bowl of M&Ms with all the red ones removed.

Sample cards from the Operations decks for the Allied (left) and German players.

Guerre Eclair comes with three short decks of cards; an eighteen-card German deck, A fourteen-card Allied deck, and a four-card Objectives deck, as well as a single Surrender card. These are standard poker-sized cards, and are printed on a good weight of card stock. Guerre Eclair is a Card Driven Game (CDG), but instead of dealing off the top of the deck, the players can choose which cards they wish to utilise in that round. Cards can be spent to make a move action or utilised for their event. Some cards are only usable in combat for some kind of benefit

The cards are beautifully presented, with thematic art and clear instructions. The art is what I’d call realistic through an impressionist filter. Given the physical scale of the game, the development group may have been tempted to go with a cartoonish style for the artwork generally. Instead, the pictures maintain the serious tone of the game and its subject. Even the choice of fonts for the titles, each reminiscent of period propaganda posters from France and Germany respectively, maintain the thematic integrity of the art.

The four German Objective cards (only two ever in play, with just one revealed to the
Allied player and one hidden), and the Allied Surrender card. I've gone through the
rules once but am still at a loss as to the purpose of the Surrender card. I'm sure
I've just missed something obvious.

The game has four Objective cards, which provide the victory conditions for the Germans. This makes things interesting and adds to the replayability of the game. We’ve seen the same device in another France’40 game, Dunkirk: France 1940 (Worthington Publishing, 2018) but there’s an added twist here; at the beginning of the game, the German player draws and Objective card, then places it where both players can see it. This is the open objective. He then draws a second Objective card, but this one is concealed from the Allied player. To win the game, the German player must meet the demands of one of these Objective cards. This will be easier said than done; while the Germans have advantages in hand-size and a numerical superiority in available troops, the Allies only have to delay the Axis progress over five rounds to spoil a German victory.

The game also comes with four 10mm dice. I've yet to haven't to take the game out for
a spin, but I suspect there may be a case for a couple of additional bones to avoid
the occasional consecutive roll for numbers.

Finally, the game comes with four small but quite readable black six-sided dice. These are nice dice, with a good weight despite their diminutive size. The beauty of the clamshell case is the game comes with its own dice tray.

-----

I’ve been on a bit of a Napoleonics jag of late, so I think it’s time to mix it up a bit. A fast game is indeed a good game, especially on a school night, so I hope to get an AAR of our first Guerre Éclair game to you, faithful reader, within the next couple of weeks (in between further Napoleonic excursions, I'm sure).