Review: Fire and Stone: Siege of Vienna 1683

  

 

Nominee: Best Gunpowder Game, Charles S. Roberts Awards, 2022

Siege games have always been a popular topic for wargames. I haven’t done the research to back this up, but I think it’s likely that siege games were the earliest examples of asymmetric conflicts in board wargames. The earliest siege-themed game I could track down was Asalto (also known as Assault and Citadel, among others), a variation of Fox and Geese dating back to the early nineteenth century. It characterised the asymmetric nature of siege warfare simply and effectively and is still worthy of consideration. 

Fire & Stone: The Siege of Vienna, 1683 (Capstone Games, 2022) is game of deep strategy based on one of the most famous sieges of the Early-Modern era. In 1682, Sultan Mehmed IV broke a twenty-year peace with the neighbouring Habsburg Empire. After some successes, the Ottoman army ventured deep into Habsburg territory to lay siege to the Empire’s capital, Vienna. The siege of Vienna lasted sixty days, from mid-July to Mid-September 1683, and if relief hadn’t arrived in the form of a joint column of troops from Poland and the Holy Roman Empire arrived within a day of the breach of its walls, the city would have almost certainly fallen. A near-run thing, and a worthy subject for a game treatment.

 

Appearance

The first thing to mention is Fire and Stone is a really gorgeous game. Capstone Games is better known as a producer of English-language versions of popular Eurogames like Ark Nova (Feuerland Spiele, 2021), Maracaibo (Game's Up, 2019), and Weimar: The Fight for Democracy (Spielworxx, 2023). There is a strong graphic theme that runs through every single aspect of Fire and Stone, from the constrained colour palette to the modest expediency of the map-board, the component illustrations (the ornate Soldiery of the Troop cards down to the simplicity of the spades on the Mining tokens). The artist on the project was Domhnall Hegarty, an Art Director by trade who also handled the graphics on a several of my favourite boards, including Navajo Wars (GMT Games, 2013) and Versailles 1919 (GMT Games, 2022), so it’s no surprise the game has such a solid and thoughtful presentation. More than simply looking good, every aspect of the visual and tactile design lifts the experience of the game to a higher level.

Set up and ready to play (Ottoman's POV).

Fire and Stone is a siege game. The action is localised, and the board reflects this. At one end is the edge of the Ottoman camp. After surveying Vienna’s fortifications, Ottoman engineers decided the most promising place to breach was the curtain wall between the Löbl and Burg bastions. Before this wall lay strata of outer defences – earthworks, redoubts, and trenches. Between the outer defences and the city walls lay the glacis, a clear field set at a gradient to the wall to slow the progress of an attack and give the defenders a free field of fire to wreak havoc on their assailants.

The board-side components of the game are made of wood, rendered in red for the Ottoman aggressors and yellow for the Viennese defenders. These include simple matchsticks representing improvised protective earthworks, corner-sets for structural fortifications, and more ornate cannon meeples in two styles for the Habsburgs’ defensive cannons and the Ottomans’ siege artillery.

Sample Strategy cards.

The cards are all of excellent quality, printed on a good weight of cardstock, and present in a good, readable font. There are three kinds of cards in play, and the two sides get their own decks of each. The Strategy cards are the most numerous; these are what you will play though for your actions each turn, either spending them to perform an action or triggering the card’s event.

Sample Tactics cards.

The smaller deck is made up of tactics cards, of which there are about a dozen. Each player will only draw five of these for the whole game (another nod to building replayability into the game). These, played at the right moment, can change the fortunes of a particular play, but will be unlikely to win the game outright. Three or for changes of fortune added together will nudge your cause further ahead.

Sample Army cards, Habsburgs (top) and Ottomans.

Finally, there are the Army cards. These represent the forces each side has at their disposal. Ton both sides, the cards are a spread of values between one and three points. Each time you get into a fight, you will pull out three army cards of your choice. Some events may push a card or two back to a second rank (these won’t participate in the fighting for that round), and some troops may not make it through the battle (these are removed from the game altogether). The ones that survive are exhausted for the current turn; these will return to the deck at the start of the next turn, but attrition is a danger to both sides.

On top of a formidably presented game, the publishers have included a twelve-page booklet offering a potted history of the lead-up to the siege and a reckoning of the particular events that unfolded over the months of the conflict, indicating those events reflected in the tactical and strategic cards but their deck prefix and card number. This also includes a brief Designer Notes article to finish off an immersive and informative read.

 

Play

Fire and Stone wears its Euro credentials on its sleeve but in its heart, it is an asymmetric historical conflict game of deep strategy. This is no system dressed up in historical garb. Every mechanical device put into service in Fire and Stone approximates an element of the complex and multifaceted story of the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683.

The game is played out over five turns (or possibly less) – if the Ottomans have not managed to take the city by the end of the fifth turn, a relief army arrives, headed by the famous Winged Hussars (a sixth space marked on the turn track).

At the start of the game each player draws five Strategy cards. These are your currency for taking action (up to five in a turn). At the beginning of the first turn, each player also draws five Tactics cards. These are often powerful adjuncts to actions in the game, usually spent during battles, but they are a finite resource, these five are all you will have for the entire game, and each can only be used once. They can tip the scales in a crucial battle, but the trick is recognising which battles are crucial (spoiler alert: they’re ALL crucial). There is a danger in saving these for later use in the game; like a person found dead from thirst in the desert with half a canteen of water, there is no value in hording them when they can be of use in the moment.

Habsburg and Ottoman cannons face off.

A turn involves each player (starting with the Ottoman player) taking turns to play a Strategy Card from their hand. When playing a Strategy card, the payer may choose to conduct and action or play the card’s Event. The actions each side may conduct vary a little; Ottomans can Bombard Habsburg fortifications, while Habsburgs can Barrage the Ottoman troops, potentially thinning the herd; the Ottomans – as the aggressors – can Assault a Habsburg-controlled hex, leading to a battle, while the Habsburgs can Sortie into an Ottoman-controlled hex adjacent to one of their own. Many of these actions can achieve an increase in your side’s morale, or conversely a drop in the other’s, sometimes both. This is important, because morale, like everything else in the game, is a limited currency, and one more way to defeat your opponent; when a side’s morale drops to zero, the other side claims victory.

Much of the game’s action is abstracted; Troops are represented by a deck of slender cards selected from a pool (deck) by each side for each discrete engagement. When a battle is instigated by either side, each chooses up to three cards from their troop deck. Each player has a selection of troops with values of one through three points. The Ottomans have a selection of twenty cards, the Habsburgs only twelve. These will be the troops deployed for this battle and are placed face-down in a row in front of the owning player (there are circumstances where the Ottoman player can increase the number of troops committed to battle, but for this illustration we’ll keep it simple). Each player may also play a Tactic card, also face-down, thought they are not obligated to do so. Once the cards have all been chosen, both sides reveal their hands and Tactics cards, and the effects of the revealed Tactics cards are applied.

Next, the attacking side must move one of his armies back to a second line for each enemy fortification in the hex where the battle is taking place (two for a structural fortification); the attacking player decides which troops to withdraw. Only front-line troops are tallied for the final resolution of the battle.

The fickle hand of Fate. Every round, you’ll want or need to do two or three things,
and have to respond to whatever the other side just did, which always leads
to challenging decision points in every card-play.

Finally, dice are rolled by each side; the Ottoman rolls one die for each of his cannons either in or adjacent to the attacked hex, while the Habsburg player rolls a die for every cannon still on the board. Each six rolled will eliminate a troop from the front line, and if there are more sixes than troops remaining on the front line, second-line troops are then eliminated. Eliminated troops are removed for the remainder of the game.

Resolution of a battle involves adding the values of any remaining troops on each player’s front line and comparing the results. The highest total wins, while draws go to the defender.

 The progress of the game is a slow creep for the Ottoman forces forward to the outer defences, then the glacis, and finally to the last defensive line. The final aim for the Ottoman player is to gain control of either the curtain wall hex or the two redoubts to either side of the curtain wall, and control is gained through combat, the exchange of lives for a few yards of ground. In this respect, Fire and Stone may well be compared to a World War I Western Front game, that both the actual siege and the action of the game are forgivingly shorter in duration.

 

The top of the Third.

Appraisal

Some will argue that Fire and Stone isn’t really a war game. I’m not going to jump into that particular briar patch; one can’t shift opinions already fully formed. I will posit that Fire and Stone is a deep historical simulation – dressed in the trappings of a Eurogame – the requires from its players particular consideration and careful resource husbandry. Fire and Stone is a conundrum. It’s a challenge whichever side you fight. After more than a dozen plays, I’m no closer to fathoming a clear course to a happy outcome for either side, which is, of course, a part of this game’s charm. Every game has had a similar beginning, but a radically different middle and end. A couple of games have played out to the final round (one to the penultimate card-play) for an eleventh-hour Ottoman win; in three the Habsburgs managed to hold out by the skin of their teeth to the arrival of reinforcements. Two victories to one side and another one to the other came from exhausting the opposition’s morale. Pasha Mustafa was strangled by the the Sultan's executioner for his failure at the Vienna siege and subsequent battle. Of the scores of ways to die in Fire and Stone, the one never mentioned is “old age.”

Habsburg defeat at the bottom of the fourth turn, with the Ottoman player breaching
the Curtain Wall and placing their Control marker.

The game is very well balanced, though it may not feel it at times, whichever side you are playing. The Ottoman player has more men at his disposal – more meat for the grinder – than the Habsburg player. In the beginning, at least, the Habsburg player has more artillery at his disposal, though this number will inevitably reduce with the press of the Ottoman’s advance.

For the Habsburgs, the situation can seem like a waiting game, trying to delay the progress of the Ottomans’ efforts until reinforcements arrive. This is deceptive. If they simply wait for help, the game will be over before the Fifth turn.

Fire and Stone is an immersive experience. What makes the game such a challenge is the sparse resources available to each side. I don’t think it’s possible to pick a plan at the beginning of the game and see it through to a successful end. Each turn of the card is a challenge. For both sides, each turn requires all of your attention to marshal your resources and survive well enough to function in the next turn. Victories in Fire and Stone are piquant, while defeats carry a familiar taste of inevitability. This game demands al your attention, all your resourcefulness and cunning, and may still find you wanting. All this makes for an extraordinary experience.

 

 

 

State of Play: Napoléon 1806 (5/6)

 

 

Gentle reader, an apology. After a drought of wargaming over the last several weeks, due to a perfect storm of preventative factors, I hope to now return to some regular reporting and reviewing. After a three-week hiatus (four if you count the week we played Fire and Stone: Siege of Vienna 1683 (Capstone Games, 2022 – game report here), involving two overseas trips and Hallowe’en celebrations for my adversary, and a mixture of technological failings and familial duties on my part, on Monday night T and I finally got together for game five of Napoléon 1806 (Shakos, 2019). This time out, we incorporated the last two components from the Rules for the Grognard that we hadn’t already adopted: the inclusion of cavalry units and free set-up. I’ll get back to these in a minute.

This was the penultimate game of my 6x6 excursion into the Prussian campaign, and if nothing else, the previous four games have highlighted for me just how little I know about Napoleon’s early campaigns into central Europe. The names of the battles sound familiar; Halle, Schleiz, Jena-Auerstedt. But I’m just not as familiar with this part of the Napoleonic era as I am with the Peninsula War. If anyone can recommend a good general history covering the rise of Napoleon through to about 1812, please leave me a note in the comments.

A neutral view of the antagonists facing-off.

Napoléon 1806 covers the period from the 8^th to the 21^st of October of that year, during Bonaparte's campaign against the Fourth Coalition. The game is only seven turns in full, so the action can move quite quickly, subject to the size of your formations and your luck with the card draws. As I’ve mentioned previously, the blocks represent the forces under the senior generals involved on each side during the campaign. The relative strength of each command is managed off-board, on a tally chart recording the disposition and exhaustion level of each unit on a side, information that is shielded from the other player. When moving a formation, the player declares the unit to be moved and draws a card, and the points-value of the drawn card dictates how far the unit can move. Blocks may move together in larger formations, but for each  

As mentioned, we used the free-setup rule for this game; the movement is point-to-point, with each point representing a town or city of the region, and the connections the road and path network connecting these places Some are superimposed with either a French or Prussian eagle; these mark the places at which formations may be placed. T played the French, as is his wont, and set up in an aggressive fashion; as the Prussians, I set up more defensively. It’s not really an option in the game for the Prussians to go on the offensive too strongly, too early. The odds are weighted on the side of the French, both in numbers (the French side fields one more formation than the Prussians) and in strength (most of the Prussian formations are under-strength, and while there are possible opportunities for reinforcements – two cards that can be played in the draw phase, if they happen to be drawn), these only add one infantry cube to a given formation, which in many cases won’t be enough to grant the unit an extra card in combat). 

I did place a double formation threateningly close to Bamberg in an attempt to tie-up some of T’s forces and limit his options. There are four cities on the board worth victory points – Erfurt, Halle and Leipzig (which begin the game under Prussian control), and Bamberg, which is the source of French supply, their anchor for the campaign. In the game these are referred to as citadels. Victory in Napoléon 1806 is points-based; one point for each enemy formation eliminated, with the four citadels worth varying numbers of points. Capturing all three northern citadels would all but hand victory over to the French, but the loss of Bamberg could draw a victory put of reach for the French player.  Not only did T keep two units close to Bamberg, but in a moment of analysis paralysis, he held another two or three units (I suspect one was a Cavalry token) in reserve at Münchberg, too distant to relieve the Bamberg protectors or to provide effective support for the Leipzig-Halle push.

Turn 3: Tauentzien's defiant stand.

As has happened in previous games, this one was dogged by rain (turns three and five). Rain is dictated by the draw of a card during the draw phase and only the; each turn begins with both players drawing three cards from their deck and placing them in their hand. If one or both draws a Rain card, that is placed in the Rain box for the turn. Rain adds an extra exhaustion point to every unit activated, whether they actually get to move or not, and adds an extra point cost to movement for the whole formation. If the rain card is drawn at any other time, it’s used only for it’s points or combat value, dependent on the draw.

It’s tempting to sit out the rain turns, especially with larger formations, but movement is crucial to the game for both sides, especially for the French, who have to bring their forces up nearly the full length of the map to traverse to challenge Leipzig and Halle if they are going to have a chance of winning.

Turn 4: a marked lack of progress on either side.

The free setup also worked against both of us to a degree. It’s been a month since we last played Napoléon 1806, and that distance worked against us. I think T had an overall ambition of racing to the Leipzig/Halle corner of the map and swiftly seizing them before I could reinforce the cities, then turning on Erfurt, but I don’t think he considered the logistics of that action too thoroughly before setting up. The French advance is often hindered by the lack of channels for forward movement. Moving a formation into a position already occupied by a friendly formation will halt your movement (though you only ‘pay’ for the distance achieved). Drawing a low-point card for the first formation in line will stymie anyone following, unless you can find them an alternate route, which I suppose is one of the joys of point-to-point movement games. From Münchberg there is only a single path north until you reach Hef, where the path branches into two paths. This is the most direct passage to Halle/Leipzig, and the only way to avoid the river crossings that may be dynamited by the uppity Prussians. Any stalling there due to a bad activation draw along there is going to slow you down for a turn, maybe two. That kind of delay will almost certainly cost the French player the game.

All the action at end of Turn 6. Blücher (activated, face-down) makes a
desperate run to slow the French progress toward Halle. The draw off a six-point
card - unlikely but possible - could put a French formation into the city in the next turn..

To be fair, I only sprung the free setup inclusion on him when he arrived. If T had been given more time to examine the situation, I think he would have placed things differently I should have put more thought into my placement as well. I was concerned about T pushing up through the forest in the south-west of the map, north of Bamberg (by orientation – upper right in most of the photos) and quickly closing the distance on Erfurt. I tended to pair-up my formations in an effort to make them more of a challenge, while pairing some weaker generals with Cavalry blocks to make them appear stronger. This backfired when T sent Murat and Brassiere against Tauentzien, who was backed only by a Cavalry token. The cavalry blocks don’t provide any assistance in combat; they are really there for bluff value only, to add a further measure of fog-of-war to a battlefield already soaked in it.

Tauentzien, to his credit, didn’t go down without a fight. The formation made its stand at Schleitz (as it appears on the game board), and held the town for the first round of combat in turn three (trading damage point for point, so no retreat required), and fell in the next turn. But his sacrifice meant that that two of T’s better units were tied up for two turns, and with only three turns left, he couldn’t draw a high-enough point card to bring the combined formation up to threaten Halle and Leipzig. Other forces came closer to threatening Erfurt, but I think that was a feint on T’s part; I suspect that of the two blocks one or both were cavalry tokens. T will normally not shy away from a fight, but he refused to engage combat on a couple of occasions with that formation. No so clever as he thinks.

State at end of Turn 7, from the Prussian side.
(Note the one  surviving Prussian Cavalry marker, to the left.)

This game saw a lot of jockeying for advantage, and a lot of false starts due to low card draws and inclement weather, but little actual confrontation. Tauentzien was the only casualty of the whole game, gaining T the only point shift, but his sacrifice probably saved the Prussian cause. There were other altercations (two near Bamberg), but nothing conclusive. Prussia won by default, maintaining control of Erfurt, Leipzig and Halle, but it didn't feel at all triumphant.

State at end of Turn 7, from the French side.

Next week, all things being equal, will be the last game in the Napoleon 1806 6x6 cycle. A considered review should follow soon after. Oh, and I now have both follow-up games; I ordered Napoléon 1807 (Shakos, 2020) from the good folks at Hexasim within days of receiving 1806, and couple of weeks ago, I managed to nab a copy of Napoléon 1815 (Shakos, 2022, and a nominee for the Charles S. Roberts Award for Best Napoleonic Wargame for 2022). I hope to get those to the table early in the new year, with reviews following.

End-game disposition of the French...

... And the Prussian formations. The two stray exhaustion markers are from
pretending to place them while moving Cavalry token, All part of the deception.

 

Stripped down for parts: Fire and Stone: the Siege of Vienna

 

Robert De Leskie’s Fire and Stone: Siege of Vienna 1683 (Capstone Games, 2022) is one of those games what will have the opinionated arguing for years to come: Is it a wargame? Is it a Euro? Is it trying to awkwardly straddle the two camps, pretending to be a wargame when it clearly isn’t because it has little cannon meeples and wooden fieldworks markers and… oh, wait…

For my money, Fire and Stone is clearly a wargame, even though it looks a lot like something that could take a prize at a German game industry convention. The theme is an episode in a much longer conflict between the Muslim Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Empire. In 1683 an 90,000-strong Muslim army marched on and laid siege to the fortified city of Vienna, outnumbering the defenders nearly eight-to-one. Historically, the city held out for fifty-nine days, until it was relieved by a cavalry army lead by Polish king Jan III Sobieski, and the siege was lifted.

Fire and Stone is an abstracted treatment of that siege. One player takes the role of the besieging Ottoman Turks, the other the brave Habsburg defenders facing overwhelming odds.

 

The box is a nice, solid with firm-fitting lid, but is still not too difficult to open. The box cover art is elegant in its simplicity, with the title appearing in a suitably archaic font, and embossed with the split sword insignia of the Ottoman Empire and the double-headed eagle of the Habsburgs.

The back of the box continues in the same thematic style, and advises that the game is for two players*, and that it recommended for players aged 14 and up, and should play in 60-90 minutes. These feel right, given the different play concepts introduced in the game (more about these in a review to come). It also reassures the player that knowledge of siege warfare is not require to play the game.

In fact, the whole package is so beautifully presented – the inside of the box-lid is illustrated with an image of the brutal nature of the fighting at the siege, while the travel insert (the shaped piece of card that stops the map-board and the components from moving around too much during shipping) shares some of the same graphic qualities as the box front, emblazoned with the tile panel and the crossed match-lock muskets, and a vivid splash of colour with the red Ottoman and Yellow Habsburg crests.

The rulebook is printed on glossy, fine-quality paper, and is very well laid out, with a decent-sized font and two-column format. Illustrations and descriptive examples make the whole package clear and easy to understand; despite some different concepts appearing in the game, you won’t need a degree in ludology to interpret these rules.

Along with the rulebook, a booklet of historical and designer notes is also included. I always appreciate the extra effort that goes into design notes and a good bibliography (part of the joy of a new wargame is learning about the period and events it highlights), and putting it all into a separate booklet is really a cut above the standard.

The board is about 23” by 16.5”, in muted tones of browny-greys and greens, representing the Ottoman camp, the staging area before the outer walls (glacis), the two sets of bastions and the Curtain Wall, which the Ottomans must breech to fulfill one of the paths to victory. It is divided into huge hexes that take up most of the play area, but are only four columns deep and three rows wide (4” hexes. This isn’t a game of manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre, but one of slow advancement and dogged defence; a war of attrition.

Two player’s aid cards are included in the package (no expense spared). These are identical, except for the Ottoman split sword on a red background or Habsburg double-headed eagle on a vivid red background. The PACs are as clear and well laid-out as the rulebook, with turn structure, battle process and exceptions all spelt out concisely.

But for me the best part of the whole package is the components. There are wooden pieces representing cannons and fieldworks, thick cardboard area control markers and shovel tokens to draw for mine actions (and a pair of lush draw bags to put them in).

Everything as it comes in the box. You can't see them very well in this photo,
but the turn, morale and battle markers are all screen-printed wooden pieces.

Mine draw tokens and Control markers.

The cards are printed on good stock. Each side has three decks; one each of strategy cards and tactics cards, and a slimmer reck representing their side’s fighting forces. Each of the strategy cards has a note as the bottom tying that card’s action to a particular event or mundane occurrence during the siege, and there are more of both the strategy and the tactics cards than you will use in a single game, adding baked in replayability to the package.

Sample Strategy cards.

Sample Tactics cards.

The Army cards represent a spread of forces displaying a strength of 1, 2 or 3, but each is denoted with a particular troop type that participated in the siege. These are beautifully illustrated in a style reminiscent of the era.

.

Sample army cards.

A lot of care has gone into the design and production of Fire and Stone. It is a gorgeous game to look at with a nice, tactile experience of play. The brightly coloured pieces really pop on the muted-palette board, and the card illustrations add to the verisimilitude of the experience. The reality of the situation is perhaps restricted to the little historical notes on the base of the cards, and the historical notes that come with the game, which are well worth the time to read them.

 

* Given the nature of play (lots of concealed information), Fire and Stone is low on the solitaire-playability scale. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it – I got familiar with the game the same way a lot of people do, playing two-handed – but for the best experience, this is a game you want to play with a friend.

State of Play: no 6x6 progress, but a siege at Vienna

 

 

With T overseas, I corralled B for an off-the-books Monday night game. I had proposed Great War Commander, but given the late hour we were starting, I thought better of it and brought Fire & Stone: Siege of Vienna 1683 (Capstone Games, 2022).

Nice art.

Fire & Stone was a fairly recent acquisition and a bit of an impulse buy. I’d read some good things about it and the small scale of the play area (three by four hexes) intrigued me. I basically bought it to bring an order up to free shipping. (Why is it we’ll happily spend an extra $60 or $70 to save $10 on postage? Tune in to my new psychology blog Why We Do Dumb Things Pretty Much All the Time.*)

Anyway, I was running late, and with the set-up of a still unfamiliar game, we agreed to play it through as a learning game. We ran through four of the five rounds (each round is up to five actions per side). B would have a different take, but I could see my Habsburgs loosing through army elimination withing another couple of actions to the withering onslaught of B’s Ottoman infidels, or from a complete collapse of morale, so we called it. Next time we’ll both be more familiar with how the gears of the game mesh, and I think I’ll be trying a fighting withdrawal strategy.

I'll be posting a Stripped Down for Parts of Fire & Stone later today or tomorrow, so there's something to look forward to. Until then, marvel at the little tiny cannons!

 

* Or read Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, and/or You are Not So Smart, by David McRaney