Review: Freeman's Farm 1777

 

 

As a reviewer, I’ve always felt like I’ve had a responsibility to maintain a level of objectivity when it came to the things I reviewed. I worked on my university's newspaper (a weekly, back then) for a number of years, and when I wrote about a band I liked or an author I respected, I’d be up-front about it from the get-go. So, without getting too fanboy-ish, I should say in advance that I really like the designer Maurice Suckling's games I’ve played thus far – I’ve reviewed two of them on this blog already, so that’s about 15% of the reviews published on A Fast Game thus far. And here’s another one; Freeman’s Farm 1777 (Worthington Publishing, 2019). This wasn’t by intention; it’s just panned out that way. Suckling’s published boardgames, four published so far, with a fifth slated for mid-2024 after a successful Kickstarter campaign, have been released by Worthington Publishing. I happen to be a fan of Worthington’s games as a rule. When I first played Chancellorsville, 1863 (Worthington Publishing, 2021; I wrote about this earlier in the year), I wasn’t familiar with Professor Suckling’s oeuvre. He is the designer 1565: Siege of Malta (Worthington Publishing, 2022), and the brilliant Chancellorsville, 1863, which shares its design DNA with Freeman’s Farm.

Since playing Chancellorsville, I’ve been keen to try Freeman’s Farm. A couple of months ago I managed to get a second-hand copy in very good condition. Now, after playing it several times, both two-player and solo, I feel like I’m ready to talk about the game.

Freeman’s Farm 1777 is a broad brushstroke simulation of the consequential battle at the end of Burgoyne’s Saratoga campaign during the second full year of the American Revolutionary War. The battle was supposed to be the culmination of the long march General Burgoyne had lead from Canada that began with some initial successes (the taking of Fort Ticonderoga and a qualified victory at the battle of Hubbardton) to a string of withering losses and costly wins, the worst being that of the Battle of Freeman’s Farm.

The British applying pressure on the Colonial right.

Appearance

Like every Worthington game I’ve ever come across, careful consideration has been put into every aspect of the production of Freeman’s Farm. The board is roughly 17” by 22” in size and mounted. The map represents the field of battle in the style of a map from the period. Like the board for Chancellorsville, there is no hex or grid overlay. Instead, initial positions for the units present at the battle are marked out in a bold colour representing the nationality of the units, while subsequent manoeuvre locations are marked in lighter hues, with guiding arrows to demonstrate which units can access these secondary and tertiary positions. The positions are also labelled and are referred to as such in the relevant units’ orders lists. The position of Freeman’s Farm, in roughly the centre of the play area, is tenuously held by skirmishers under Learned. If Hamilton (British Regulars) can dislodge these skirmishers (an attack order, with a successful hit to remove the skirmishers), that unit may move into the contested Farm space. Freeman’s Farm can also be occupied by both Learned and the Hessian mercenaries under Riedesel (green blocks, British left flank). In each of the left corners of the board (by the players’ orientations) is a Combat Results Table, both unobtrusive and useful, as this is a game of swift and heated action.

The game pieces representing troops are elongated wooden cubes, while artillery is represented by wooden discs. I like a game with wooden pieces; I appreciate the visceral sense of loss when a force is reduced block by block. Each hit will remove a block; for the British, some first hits will remove skirmishers, allowing them to traverse to more advantageous locations.

Units are also represented by cards, to be displayed before the player. Each card offers the choice of orders available to that unit when activated, the number of dice the unit will roll in combat and the special conditions in which they may gain an extra die, and most also present a Morale track to trace the unit’s diminishing cohesion. Each time a unit is ordered, it drops one Morale point. These can also be lost as a result of combat, and once a unit drops to six points remaining, the player must roll for a Morale check; if the result on a single die is higher than the unit’s current Morale level, that unit is broken and disbands.

Hamilton has taken Freeman's Farm, but can he hold it
under the pressure from Poor and Glover 

If one side can destroy – or cause to break – three of the other side’s rated units (i.e., a unit with its own Morale track; for these purposes, Breymann (Reserve) on the British side and the Colonial Artillery do not signify), they will win by sudden death victory. If the game plays out the full fifteen turns without a clear winner, the British lose the game. Historically, the British won a pyrrhic victory at Saratoga; while they held their ground and claimed the day, their losses were so grave as to make leave them in a weakened state for the following battle at Bemis Heights three weeks later, so the victory defaulting to the Colonial forces feels right.

The whole package comes in a sturdy two-inch box, adorned with an evocative cover illustration, presumably of Morgan’s Rifles sniping at the Redcoats gathering for a charge. As I’ve said, presentation is Worthington’s strong suit.

Nixon's chance to dislodge Phillips' guns.

Play Experience

Each player begins with a fifteen-card activation deck. These are shuffled and the player’s draw three cards from their deck. This is their starting hand. Beginning with the British, the players take turns playing an activation card, paying the one-point cost of activating that unit on its Morale track on their morale track for that unit, and then choosing an order from those listed on that unit’s record card. The active player also earns momentum points (represented by black cubes), which can be used as a form of currency in the game, to purchase rerolls or Tactics cards, of which there are always three on display in a tableau within reach of both players. These tactics cards usually offer some small advantage for play in a subsequent round (such as adding an extra die to an attack or forcing your opponent to reroll one die from their successful attack), though some have persistent qualities. At the end of the Colonial player’s turn, the cards all shuffle down a rank left-to-right, with the right-most card being discarded.

Each unit has a selection of orders it may carry out on activation, including movement or engagement orders, sometimes in unison. This may sound limiting, but it actually makes the play run more smoothly, and the orders are coherent with what actions that unit in its current position would be able to perform. Once you’re used to the sequence of play, the game finds its own cadence.

Brief respite (sample Tactic card).

Freeman’s Farm moves along quickly, both in two player and solitaire modes. The back of the box says “Victory within one hour,“ and as I have observed elsewhere, Worthington has the most reliable game-length advice of any game publisher I’ve come across. All of the games I’ve played – two-player and solo – have come in at between 45 and 55 minutes. That being said, it’s a pretty intense 50-odd minutes, and not for the faint of heart.

The best endorsement I can offer for Freeman’s Farm actually comes from my brother-in-law and regular gaming buddy, who was my first human opponent. When we finished the game with T’s defeat as the British; the first thing he said, was “Can we play this again next week?”

Appraisal

Freeman’s Farm is a new take on a pivotal Revolutionary War battle that has been modelled in countless wargames, including Worthington’s own Hold the Line: The American Revolution (Worthington Publishing, 2016).

Fraser's regiment breaks under the pressure.

Much like David Thompson, Maurice Suckling brings a unique sensibility to tabletop wargaming. Coming from a background in videogames, Suckling now teaches different aspects of game design and history at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York state. His upcoming games, Crisis: 1914 (Worthington, slated for the first half of 2024), about the events and negotiations in Europe that lead with tragic inevitability to the outbreak of the Great War, Peace 1905 (Fort Circle Games, ~2024), which simulates the peace negotiations held by the belligerents at the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War, and Rebellion: Britannia (GMT Games, ~2024), which has made the cut on GMT’s P500 list, all speak to a diverse interest both in history and in gaming.

Like Chancellorsville, 1863 and 1565: Siege of Malta, I cannot speak highly enough of Freeman’s Farm. I don’t think it will be as enthusiastically re-playable as Chancellorsville, which has a few more things going on mechanically (hidden movement in the two-player version and simulated hidden movement in the solo bot) which keeps it fresher, but that’s probably an unfair comparison.

On its own merits, Freeman’s Farm offers a simple and fast-playing but deeply immersive and tactically confronting play experience. It may seem like a one-trick pony, being essentially a single-scenario game with rigidly programmed movement and action, but that would be looking at it through the lens of hex-and-counter play. The rigidity of the options is the very thing that makes Freeman’s Farm such a compelling game experience. The inability to do whatever the hell you want at any given moment models the difficulties of command and situational awareness in the period and in this particular battle extraordinarily well. This is one of those games that will reward repeated play with frustration and understanding in equal measure.

 

 

Review: 1569: Siege of Malta (solo game)

 

2022 Charles S. Roberts Best Gunpowder Wargame Nominee

1565: Siege of Malta (Worthington Publishing, 2022) is an instalment of Worthington’s Great Sieges series. The series began with 1765: Siege of Quebec (Worthington, 2019), which received a Second Edition revision with the publication of Siege of Malta and 414BC: Siege of Syracuse (Worthington, 2022), which I reviewed recently. Much of what I had to say about the series is covered in that previous review. I intend to follow this review sometime soon with a further review of Siege of Quebec. By rights, I probably should have begun with that one, but it seemed right at the time to approach them in chronological order; that ad the fact that I have played Syracuse most recently and I’d been turning aspects of that one over in my head for a few weeks before putting metaphorical pen to paper.

Like Dan Fournie with Siege of Syracuse, Maurice Suckling has taken the basic concepts and elements of form and play from Siege of Quebec and made Siege of Syracuse a familiar but very different beast. These changes may seem superficially simple, but they radically change the experience of the game. Siege of Syracuse, I’d argue, is a departure from its progenitor, but Siege of Malta is its own journey altogether.

Starting set-up for the Turkish player

Appearance

Siege of Quebec set the parameters of style and tone of play for the series; a card driven AI which also acts as a timer for the game, simple tactical map-board (contained to a manageable 17” by 22”) with abstracted movement and combat with plain wooden blocks for various units, and a limited colour pallet. This actually helps to focus the attention on the play of the game. The board remains both attractive and functional, and uses every part of its limited area.

The board features a map of the main port of Malta, including the harbour fort of St Elmo and the fortified cities of Birgu and Senglea (the bastion of the knights of the Order of St John and the sites of the Turkish siege). Inset maps track troops at the Mdina fort (elsewhere on the island) and the gathering of area for the Knights’ reinforcements’ staging area in Sicily.

Battle attrition. Not a game for the faint of heart.

The board also features a Morale Track identical to the one featured in Siege of Quebec, with the double spaces for the higher reaches of the track. Also featured are several short tracks to monitor the use of various resources available to the two sides, such as the Turks Ammunition levels and other resources available to each side.

As with the other games in the series, the components are simple wooden pieces, like elongated cubes, about three-quarters of an inch long (that’s an estimate; I haven’t measured them), with the Turkish ships represented by simple, boat-shaped blocks (one end shaped like a ship’s bow). One of the Turkish blocks is used to represent the siege tower when in operation, standing on its end; functional and surprisingly effective, visually.

Siege tower in place - for now.

Play

As with French and English in Siege of Quebec, it is possible to play either the besieging Turks or the besieged Knights in Siege of Malta. Each side has its own orders chart and a corresponding bot deck to provide the actions and countervailing orders of the opposing side. One radical difference is that in the other games in the series, you cannot duplicate orders consecutively; each order must be different from the previous one selected, but you could feasibly play the same two or three orders alternately through the entire game. In Siege of Malta, you must play each order once, in any sequence you wish, but every order must be given before the chart resets. There are even a set of seven cards for the two factions to place upon each order as it is played. There is a way around this for the Knights, but it comes at the cost of a Defiant Speech (more on these later).

Cards are provided to cover each played order - no doubling-up.

Each turn, the player will choose a hereto unplayed order, then draw a card. The card will (usually) present an event that it resolved immediately, and offer a counter-order; the counter-order will tell the player which of the four results tables on which to roll. To resolve the success or not of the order.

Essentially, the Turks have to capture the fort of St Elmo, the fort of St Angelo/city of Birgu, and city of Senglea (the fort at Mdina doesn’t count to the victory, but securing it makes some actions in the game easier for the Turks), and have at least one ship in the harbour to claim victory, whereas the Knights merely have to wait out the siege until the Turks ship out for Cyprus. This makes it sound easy for the Knights, but the Turks had superiority of numbers and access to supply lines off island (as reflected in the Turkish adversary deck).

 

Appraisal

Siege of Malta is, to my mind, the most complex of the three Great Sieges games (so far). That’s not to say it’s more difficult, but there are more things happening on the board than in either of its stable-mates. As with the other games, the player can double down on a crucial play by playing one of four Aggressive Commander actions for the Turks or one of two for the Knights. This difference is caused by the other two Knights’ spots being reallocated for Defiant Speech actions, of which there are also only two. A Defiant Speech action can be used in two ways; to immediately reset the orders display, making all the orders once again available to the player, or to burn the Bridge of Boats running between the walled cities of Senglea and Birgu.

A lot of historical events have been built into play, like the Turkish siege tower (allowing a +1 to some rolls, though the tower can be destroyed by the Knights in certain circumstances), and the way the Knights can destroy the bridge of boats for a one-point morale boost, but can no longer move troops between Birgu and Senglea, limiting their defensive options. Then there’s the diminishing Turkish ammunition, their musketry and Janissaries options (limited resources to apply and -1 or a re-roll respectively in certain situations) and the corresponding Greek Fire and Elite Knights for the order of Saint John. With only three each of these, the player has to weigh up the benefits of using each option carefully.

Birgu and Senglea, with the Bridge of Boats still intact.

Like the other games in the series, Siege of Malta is well balanced – read difficult but winnable. Out of around seventeen solo games, fairly evenly split between the two sides, I’ve won the solo game once playing the Turks and twice as the Knights. On balance, I think it’s a little tougher to win as the Turks; they are doing the heavy lifting – the Knights will win if they can deny a Turkish victory until the deck runs down (representing the point of time in which the Turks must set sail to avoid the winter storms). But both sides provide their share of challenges (and the occasional reprieve from the opposing deck).

After playing this game so often, I’ve got the set-up time under five minutes, and the playing time for a medium challenge game (24 cards) down to under an hour. If you have a couple of hours to kill, this is the perfect distraction; after you inevitably lose the first game, you will want to immediately play a second game to save your wounded pride. Or you can play through once as the Turks and once as the Knights and make your own judgement on who has the easier time of it.

In the roughly four months since I received Siege of Malta and Siege of Syracuse, I’ve played each about a dozen-and-a half times and neither game has got stale for me. They still offer challenges and surprises, and victory is never guaranteed. I have yet to play either in the difficult mode (reduced or increased deck size, depending on whether you are the aggressor or the defender), so there is that particular joy to look forward to. All in all, 1565: Siege of Malta is an elegant game that is quick to set up and play, and has built-in replayability rewards repeated play. I think it’s a good investment.

 

 

Review: 414BC: Siege of Syracuse (solo game)

 

2022 Charles S. Roberts Best Ancients Wargame Nominee

Worthington Publishing has a proven track record for producing compelling, historically-founded, fast-playing solo games. There has always been a space for solo games in the wargaming space, and not just because of a player’s inability to find someone else with the free-time, accessibility, and desire to play the game they want to play. A lot of people have woken up to the desirability of having a solo game or two (or twelve) to fall back on since the time of lock-downs and social distancing, and more than one publisher is putting more effort into making some or most of their games at least solo-friendly. To their credit, Worthington has always been operating in that space, so it stands to reason a solo-oriented series of games from Grant and Mike Wylie and the team would bring all of that experience to bear.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve been a Worthington booster for a while. When I started to get back into wargaming about a decade ago, two of my earliest game purchases were second-hand copies of Boots on the Ground (Worthington Games, 2010), and Richard Berg’s Turning Point (Worthington Games, 2009). With the advent of Kickstarter, I backed some (though certainly not all) of their campaigns. I own probably fifteen or more of their titles* and I have never been disappointed in one of their games.

That said, I didn’t back either the original Kickstarter campaign for 1759: Siege of Quebec (Worthington, 2018) or the later campaign for the three titles in the Great Sieges series. I considered backing both, but I balked. I didn’t get the order system and the static blocks. I was interested, but not enough to lay down the cash for something untried. I’ve come to these later, after they’d been in the wild for a while. I read the comments on Boardgamegeek, then took the plunge got Siege of Quebec. After playing that a half-dozen or so times I was hooked and went scrabbling for Siege of Malta and Siege of Syracuse. The later was the hardest to find, and I lucked out, finding a copy from France (happily all three are back in in stock from a second printing and available through the publisher).

414BC: Siege of Syracuse (Worthington Publishing, 2022) is designed by Dan Fournie, who also designed 1944: Battle of the Bulge (Worthington, 2020) and 1944: D-Day to the Rhine (Worthington, 2022), and who has prepared dozens of scenarios for GMT’s Great Battles of History (GBoH) series. It depicts – as it says on the box – the siege laid against the city-state of Syracuse in the year 414BCE. As with all the titles in the series, the Syracuse rules include a short but details historical note regarding the situation depicted.

 

Appearance

Each the Great Sieges series of games are beautifully presented, each with its own muted colour palette, simple graphical representation of the geographical situation, and a tactile sense of presence and movement with the use of wooden blocks to represent the combatant forces, support units, and in this case, the siege wall the Athenians race to construct to seal off the Syracusans from the outside world in an effort to shorten the siege. The wooden pieces are one of the truly charming elements of all of these games. There are no detailed resin figures of battle-grizzled soldiers and triremes; most of the pieces are simple elongated cubes, used to represent the troops fielded in various positions with one from each side serving as that nation’s Morale marker, the ship pieces have one end shaped to represent a ship’s bow, and the most ornamental feature is the crenulations of the two side’s wall pieces. It might be a cheap psychological trick, but placing and moving solid wooden forms with a little weight to them and that grainy texture beneath the coat of paint lends a more intimate sense of involvement in the action of the game.

Overall, the game is the complete package. The board is mounted, 22’ by 17’ – in my opinion, an ideal size for a solo game of this duration. Positions for the starting units are marked with each side’s colour in bold print on the map, with other manoeuvring and reinforcement positions marked in a muted shade of that colour.

 

Play

Fournie’s design has been informed by the overall design of Siege of Quebec, the first game in the series; the board, pieces, event cards, order matrix and order of play all share the family resemblance. If you’ve played one of the games, the others will feel familiar, but each is its own beast and offers its own unique set of challenges.

The Bot-deck is divided into two stages; the Syracusan stage and the Spartan stage. There is some programming involved with the events; the Spartan reinforcements are shuffled into the three earliest cards in the Spartan deck, then the Athenian reinforcements are shuffled into the next three, so you know these events will occur roughly in the middle of the game. Between them, the decks contains thirty-nine cards, but for a game with the Normal level of difficulty, you only deal off twelve cards for each half of the deck (technically ten plus the two proscribed cards for the Spartan deck), so you won’t see every event come up in every game.

"We'll build a wall, and we'll make the Syracusans pay for it."

With each turn, the player will choose an order to try to execute from a selection of seven options, then draw a card from the deck. The event is played first (the Bot’s turn, if you will, though it sometimes will come out in favour of the player). Then the counter-order is checked; this will tell the player which of four tables to roll on for the chosen order. If your order was to build the lowland wall, you’ll have a harder time of it if the Syracusans are defending the lowlands, or an easier time if they are instead defending the harbour.

The Syracusans will try to dismantle your siege wall, build their own counter-wall to block your progress, meet you out on the field of battle to thin your ranks, and damage your ships so you can’t interdict the city by sea. The enemy is cany and has many tricks up their sleeve. You can counter their provocations, but only one at a time, and each time at the cost of precious time, as dictated by the deck, in its role as game timer. Meanwhile, every loss you take, and every supply ship that gets turned away reduces your morale.

The solo game can end in two ways; either with the completion of the siege wall and enforcement of the sea blockade by the Athenians (victory), or by the Syracusan/Spartan deck running out before the player manages to accomplish these goals (failure, and a long journey back to Athens), the or by one side reaching a morale level of zero.

Appraisal

I really like the Great Sieges series. Each game offers a different experience but in a familiar way. Siege of Syracuse has unique aspects in the preloading of some events, and the more convoluted manner in which victory must be achieved. Like the others in the series, each time I get it to the table, it offers an evolving challenge that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

In preparation of this review, I played Siege of Syracuse again.  I haven’t played it in a couple of months – since January, and of the eighteen or twenty times I’ve played it, I’ve never beaten the Bot opponent. This time the start aligned; After pulling three Athenian leaders in the first half-dozen card-draws, things went remarkably smoothly. I completed the lowlands siege wall with nearly no resistance, though my navy was mauled early on and I struggled to get my ships repaired. Victory was attained with the final wall position filled and single ship managing to stay on blockade, with a mere two cards left. I’ll cherish this win because I don’t think I’ll see another one for a good ten or fifteen games.

My first victory

While the States of Siege series games all come with a two-player variant, I think I’m satisfied to keep them for solo play. They feel like solo games first and foremost, but that’s just my feeling. I’ve read reports from others who prefer them as two-player games.

One of the things I love about Worthington’s games is that they consistently live up to the playing time given on the game. If the box declares “Victory within an hour,” you can bet that – once you’re familiar with it – you’ll be done inside of an hour. Fifty minutes is my average for all three of these games now, with another seven or eight for set-up and repack. Victory isn’t guaranteed, but it’s often tantalisingly close, and you’ll probably have enough time left to set up and go again.

 

* After writing this, I went and checked the inventory and found I actually have no less than twenty-eight games from Worthington Publishing and their forerunner, Worthington Games. In all those, no disappointments.