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.

 

 

State of Play: Freeman’s Farm 1777 (first two-player game)

  

So, last week I was running late to T’s place after helping run a public lecture; this week T was running late coming here because of something work-related, so I thought better of trying to cram in our last game of Napoleon 1806 (Shakos, 2019) and maybe not enjoying it as much, and opted or a game I knew would take a shorter time to work through. Having just played it only a couple of days earlier and wanting to reinforce the learnings from that experience, I set up Freeman’s Farm 1777 (Worthington Publishing, 2019), A recent acquisition that already written about as a solo experience. I was curious to see how T approached it. Freeman’s Farm is not your father’s wargame. It’s novel without sliding into novelty, but if you’ve been raised on a diet of hex-and-counter games, it might be a shock to the system.

Initial set-up, British view.

I needn’t have worried. Five years ago, T might have struggled with the foreignness of the game, but he took to it quickly. After a couple of halting rounds, we were scooting through it. I didn’t note when we started, but I think, with the explanatory notes ahead of play, we were still done in about an hour-twenty. Fast play isn’t the only criteria I judge games by, but needs must.

In my innocence, I thought the two-player version of Freeman’s Farm would be a little less brutal. In the two player format, just as in the solo-mode, you roll a handful of dice, as directed by the orders card for that particular unit. The difference is, when playing solo, a single six will be a hit on your target, a four or a five will cost them a morale point, and a single rolled one is an own-goal; you’ll say goodbye to one of your blocks. In the two-player version, the rolls are the same, but you’re looking for doubles. It sounds hard – how often are doubles going to come up on four or five dice, right? Well, I haven’t done the math on this, but more often than I would have expected.

Bad rolls happen.

I’m aware I keep comparing Freeman's Farm to Chancellorsville 1863 (Worthington Publishing, 2020), but it bares mentioning; in regard to combat, Chancellorsville is a slow grind, with corps butting up against each other and taking their licks. You have to spend your activations jockeying to engage the enemy in a favourable circumstance, then engage and pray for rain.  For all that, the game plays out quite quickly, about an hour-and-a-half for a solo game. In Freeman’s Farm, there’s less jockeying; the game puts you at the front of the action and hands you two ways to lose your units; by having you opponent hammer you repeatedly until you have no blocks left to represent your intact unit on the board, or to have your opponent hammer you repeatedly until you fail a morale test and your troops stalk off in disgust over your poor leadership and resource-husbanding skills.

One thing I left out of our game, at first accidentally, then on purpose, was the use of Momentum points to buy off Morale losses. It slipped my mind when I was briefly explaining the game mechanics. I remembered about eight activations in, but I decided not to complicate things further at that point. We did both use our generals to try to rescue units from Morale-roll failures, sometimes even successfully. We both bought a lot of tactics cards. T was better at using them at the opportune moment than me; I finished the game with maybe half a dozen unused Tactics cards staring up at me, although I did manage to save a unit in the last third of the game with a card that allowed me to change the face of one die after the opponent’s roll, turning a five into a one and costing Fraser a block. With more game-time I think we’ll both get better at using these.

Poor's regiment in the crucible.

At the end of the game – when both our orders decks had been exhausted – I had to revisit the victory conditions.  Either side wins a sudden death victory if three of the opponent’s formations are cleared from the board through block attrition and/or morale check failure. Technically, I had won the game two rounds earlier, with Hamilton’s unit’s breaking under the heat of battle (with his morale down to three points, it may have gone either way). I didn’t get off unscathed; Riedesel was a killing machine, and if he’d moved to his third position instead of trying to support Hamilton, then turned on Glover or Nixon, things may have gone differently.

At the end of a Monday night game, T and I will usually exchange a few words about the play of the game of a particularly good move or bad roll. The first thing T said at game’s completion was, “Can we play this again next week? I can see wat I did wrong and I want another go at it.” Which is pretty much what I’ve thought at the end of my first run at any Maurice Suckling game.

 

 

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.  

 

 

Review: Chancellorsville 1863 as a solitaire wargame

  

Chancellorsville 1863 (Worthington Publishing, 2020) is, in broad terms, the spiritual successor to designer Maurice Suckling’s earlier game, Freeman’s Farm 1777 (Worthington, 2019). The two games share a similar quality, with the game board of each looking more like a tactical map of the conflict represented than any kind of conventional playing surface. I confess, when Freeman’s Farm appeared on Kickstarter, I balked at it. I’d been a frequent backer of Worthington’s campaigns, and had never been disappointed with a final product, but looking at that map, I could not make the imaginative leap to it being an interesting tactical situation to play. So, when the Chancellorsville KS campaign came up, I didn’t really consider it for the very same reason. I was also put off a little by the hidden movement mechanism (again, mostly through a lack of understanding – I can be a bit thick, sometimes).

I think I stumbled across a video review of Chancellorsville 1863 on YouTube, and as I watched it, I became more intrigued by the ideas and mechanics embedded in the game. It helped that the reviewer was both enthusiastic and articulate about what made the game work so well. If I find that review, I’ll add a link to it here – it as definitely worth the time, and will probably explain some things better than I can here.

I managed to score a copy a little before Christmas (a very happy day; Tarawa 1943 arriving in the same package). I unboxed it, read the rules through, and even set it up to get a feel for it, but I didn’t tackle it immediately. I think I was still a little intimidated by the prospect.

So far, I haven’t had the chance to play Chancellorsville against a real opponent; that particular pleasure awaits. I did hold off playing it for a while because I really wanted to try it as a two-player game, but I got fed up waiting. My curiosity got the better of me. Reader, I played it alone.

Before I go on to the game play, I want to spend a moment on just how  beautifully and thoughtfully this game has been put together. The board is mounted (not to everyone’s taste – which I get – but I like them), with the operational map centre, two reduced maps at one end for tracking hidden units in the two player game, and various place-holds and tracks for general and solitaire play. With the exception of the cards you’re holding, everything fits neatly on the board. And the whole thing is so damn visually appealing. The units are long wooden blocks with the commanders of each division or corps stencilled on them in clear white print. The momentum points and redoubt markers are also painted wooden cubes, and the map, and all the printed titling on the board, match the style of cartography and typesetting of the era. The attention to these details elevates the play experience. Of course, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s familiar with Worthington’s recent game output.

An unnecessarily thorough victory

Chancellorsville plays like it was always intended to be a solo game. Nothing about the solo experience feels like an add-on or an afterthought. The victory conditions are the same as if you were playing face to face, and the hidden movement is abstracted to a track on the board. A deck of cards (actually, two decks of cards – one each for the Union and CSA forces – allowing the player to take either side in the battle) dictates the movements and functions of the opposing side. You would think that the random element to the opposition’s orders would lead to wasted or self-defeating action, at least from time to time, but the orders are drafted in such a way that there is rarely a wasted action. The “Bot” keeps you on your toes. Each card will order two or three units, with prerequisite conditions and alternative orders, so it’s unlikely the opposition will do nothing in their turn (this has happened occasionally, but it just leaves me feeling like the game is planning something even more vindictive for the next round).

I initially played as the Union, and I only won on my fourth time out. I still haven’t won playing the Confederates. On the face of it, the game feels weighted toward the Bot; the opposing side isn’t hampered by the cost of a cohesion point for each movement, and will often get two attacks in a single round. But this is balanced by the You-the-Player accruing Momentum points and having sole access to the tactics cards on which to spend those points. Also, the first couple of games, the Bot deck felt awfully shallow for what I had to accomplish in terms of victory conditions, but having played it some more – and actually winning once or twice – it now feels pretty well balanced; still a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.

I’m looking forward to a time when I can get Chancellorsville 1863 to the table against another actual human being, if nothing else than to try out the hidden movement the way Maurice Suckling intended. In the meantime, this game offers a really satisfying solo experience.