Stripped Down for Parts: Burning Banners: Rage of the Witch Queen

 

Hefty. and very square.

 

And now for something completely different. I wrestled for a long time with whether or not to purchase Burning Banners: Rage of the Witch Queen (Compass Games, 2024). Firstly, it’s a big investment, both of cash and space (regular readers will know we live in a smallish apartment, and storage space is at a premium – I can no longer afford the shelf-space for “occasional” games). I’ve also been leaning harder into historical games over the last couple of years, selling or giving away many of the “family” games I’ve bought over the last ten or so years, and keeping just a handful of favourites.

In fact, around the middle of last year, I made the decision not to acquire Burning Banners. I drew a line under it and moved on, telling myself it’s too much to commit to. I’ve been divesting my collection of a lot of RPG material because I’ll never get around to using most of it. Since beginning A Fast Game, I’ve been doubling down on historical gaming, not all war-gaming exclusively, but I have avoided fantasy an sci-fi (that’s not to say I’ve cleaned house, but in the last three years I’ve bought just one Sci-fi game, To Honor Grandfather (Cheese Weasel Logistics, 2025), and that was pretty much solely because of the Traveller RPG connection (I have every intention of grabbing the Belter (Game Designers Workshop, 1979) re-release from Compass Games when it finally lands.*

That resolve was shaken by a couple of confluent events. First, I stumbled across a review by the gentlemen of The Player’s Aid in my YouTube recommendations, and my FLGS was selling copies for a very reasonable price†, along with a 10% discount because it was the end of the year and obviously that reignited my interest – fairly passively, but definitely kindled.

 

The cover illustration is a Chris Moeller original and a fan favourite (Billy Thomas mentioned it was one of his favourite covers during a recent Town Hall). It well conveys the feel and tone of the game inside; a group of heroes leading a haggard army against the titular witch-queen, Lilith and her horde of otherworldly minions. The rendering in purples, distant blues and browns make the banner titles in red and white pop on the box.

The cover also lists the six playable factions of the game; three “bad-guy” factions – Orcs, Goblins, and the Army of the Night – and three factions who may seem like good guys in comparison the others – the Oathborn, Fjordlanders, and the Eastern Empire.

I should just take a moment to mention the weight of the game. The box comes in at a little under 3.9kg (8½ lbs). If you have a bad back or impoverished upper-body strength, you may require the assistance of a burly friend or manservant to get the game home.

Box-back.

Burning Banners is a fantasy game, replete with the trappings of a fantastical setting. It’s set in the imaginary world of Kalar, where six races battle, sometimes in alliances, sometimes on their own, for supremacy, glory, treasure, and whatever the scenario’s victory conditions dictate. Let me say form the get-go, I get that fantasy games may not be your thing. But be in no doubt that Burning Banners is every bit a wargame; combat is gritty and sometimes lethal, and fortune smiles on the well-prepared.

The box-back offers a glimpse into the setting, with its rich internal history and lore. It also presents a taste of the gorgeous map art, some of the denizens of Kalar (the map extract and counters are shown at true size; 1” counters and 1 ½” hexes), and some sample cards and coins (the game even has a production component for each player’s forces).

The game breakdown is one of the nicest I’ve seen, with icons for each qualifier drawn from the game art. The game’s complexity is rated at low/medium; Burning Banners has two modes of play, the Basic Game is a straight-forward wargame of armies clashing and trying to gain the upper hand, while the Advanced Game introduces Heroes, Spells, and superior artillery (Monsters) to pound and confound the enemy. The scale of the game is one “Imperial League to a hex and a yearly turn cycle of four seasons, while each unit marker represents an Army or a Hero.

Popping the hood.

The game duration is listed as an hour plus, depending on the scenario (I’d estimate at least two hours for the shorter multiple player scenarios using the Advanced Games rules), and there are scenarios accommodating two to six players. Burning Banners’ solitaire suitability is given to be Medium, though I think that would be a little higher with the Basic Game scenarios, and the recommended age of players is, of course, fourteen and up.

The post cards. Superfluous, but they do look really good.

The first thing you see upon removing the lid is a small bundle of art prints. These are referred to on the back of the box as postcards. They serve no in-game purpose, but they replicate some of the character art from the game on a much bigger scale than you’ll see on the counters. I’m a bit ambivalent about this kind of thing in games, but I didn’t grow up in a world with videogame art books and people who collect pop-culture character bobbleheads as a retirement plan, so I’m not qualified to judge.

The Rulebook.

Burning Banners comes with three booklets; the Rulebook, the Campaign Book and a Traveller’s Guide to the World of Kalar. All are printed on nice, weighty semi-gloss stock, presented in full-colour and profusely illustrated, and rendered in a Palatino-reminiscent typeface and font size that never had me reaching for my reading glasses.

Sample Rulebook spread. Readable and well illustrated.

The rulebook runs to sixty pages. The first half is devoted to the rules for the Basic Game, though more is presented here than will be used in the introductory scenario. The next fifteen pages of the rulebook cover the Advanced Game, introducing rules for Heroes, Monsters and how they and the various card decks interact with the game. The last quarter of the Rulebook offers a guide to the different card types (Hero, Magic, Treasure, and Blessing), a five-page glossary (always a good idea when presenting new concepts), and a helpful guide for reading the counters on the back cover.

The Campaign Book. Scenarios are called Campaigns in Burning Banners.

The Campaign Book boasts no less than twenty-nine scenarios (referred to as Campaigns in the game), with guidelines on how to link the final ten into a Grand Campaign of truly epic proportions (cue Battle of Five Armies music). The scenarios are really well laid out graphically, with easy-to-read symbology for the involved factions and their turn order, and colour-coded stat-block-style boxed notes highlight the pertinent information for each faction involved in the given scenario (Starting Income, Opening Builds – available currency for building your initial army and any bonus Heroes – and any Special Rules as applicable). Each scenario also includes a contextual paragraph placing the current campaign in the context of the larger history of the era.

Sample Campaign (No. 16 - three faction).

For the shorter Campaigns, everything fits onto a single page. As they get more complex, these expand to two pages, but are always laid out over an open spread – no needing to flip a page back and forth.

The Traveller's Guide to Kalar. Worth reading.

Also included in the game is a Traveller’s Guide to the World of Kalar. This is a sixteen-page distillation of the lore of the Burning Banners universe. This is a place that Mr Moeller has obviously inhabited for some time, fleshing out a history and pantheon of the game world as lovingly as Greyhawk or Glorantha.

The Traveller’s Guide has been prepared with an eye to brevity and humour. While this isn’t critical to game play, it’s definitely worth a read, and to have on hand for players acquainting themselves with the Heroes and events in the game for the first time and helps contextualise the action and the stakes as the Campaigns play out.

Four 22' by 17" mounted map sections that meet up perfectly.

Mr Moeller is first and foremost an artist; it was his job for many decades with Wizards of the Coast and is still his passion. This is obvious in Burning Banners and, to my mind, most clearly in the game’s map-boards. The map was hand-drawn in the style of fantasy cartography going back to the Lord of the Rings. This means that the illustrative quality of the play surface can only be appreciated from a single view, but this should hardly matter during play. Cities and settlements, terrain and rivers are all beautifully rendered and use a mix of textural cues and symbology to convey information about the battleground.

Sample map, laid out and looking really pretty.

The game map is divided into for mounted sections. Practically speaking, these fit together very well (immaculate edge-matching), and the segmented map allows for many scenarios to be played on one of two of the map sections, rather than having to clear the whole table for each Campaign. Each section is 22” by 17”, making the whole map roughly comparable to a two standard-sized map game footprint with a portrait orientation. The hexes are a full 1½” across, the better to accommodate the 1” unit markers.

Map detail. Nice.

The map is hand-drawn; every city, village, tower bridge looks a little different. There are coniferous forests further to the north and deciduous groves to the south. The overall effect is stunning, but these details aren’t all simply for show. Rivers are lined in black as far as they are navigable, and subtle symbology brings a wealth of usable detail to the board without taking away from the overall effect.

Counter sheet 7 - markers and currency (apologies for the reverse order - the pics loaded
on top of each other instead of consecutively, and I didn't have the patience to
fix it on the fly).

Counter sheet 6 - mostly Control markers.

Counter sheet 5 - Monsters (brown) and Sea Monsters (blue), oh my!.

Counter sheet 4 - Goblins.

Counter sheet 3 - Orcs (black edge) and Army of the Night (suitably red).

.

Counter sheet 2 - Fjordland (blue), Oathborn (grey) and some Army of the Night.

Counter sheet 1 Eastern Empire (purple) and Fjordland.

 

Burning Banners comes with seven easy-punch counter sheets. These are mostly populated with counters representing units – Armies, Heroes, Monsters, and Siege Equipment. There are, of course also markers and tokens used in play or for tracking activities, or for indicating factional control over locations are about ⅝” in size. Finally, coin tokens in 1s, 5s and 10s are available to keep track of the production economics of the game.

The unit counters are remarkable, not just for the (again) hand-drawn representations of the unit types, but for the clever economy of presentation. Central to the design is an image headed by a title explaining the unit type (some of the more common units have multiple illustrations depicting the same unit type). A coloured bar down the left edge distinguishes the faction, while a torn brown strip on the right will intricate if the unit has been damaged (on the verso of the counter or just started off as a weak unit. Each unit has a build cost in the top-right corner, in a point-up yellow square; this represents the cost to create or repair the unit. Some armies are Feral, wild beasts under factional control; these are marked by their production cost appearing in an elongated (diamond-shape) yellow square with a vulpine face in the bottom half.

An army’s Movement rating is indicated in the lower-right corner. In most cases this will be an unadorned number. In the case of Huge allies (wyrms, giant eagles, actual giants), this number will appear in a black hexagon.

The combat Strength of a unit is indicated in black or white bars, or a combination thereof, in the upper-right corner of the counter. White bars represent Light Dice (d6s), while the black bars indicate Heavy Dice (d8s). In combat, one die is rolled for each bar on the counter, of the colour matching the bar. Hits are 5s and up, so a one-third chance of a hit on a Light die, and a one-half chance on the Dark dice. In combat the Defender also rolls; every successful roll by the defender blocks (cancels) one of the Attacker’s hits. It’s an elegant mechanic for a less civilised age.

The Player's Aid Card, Front (right-side) and back.

And Inside the fold.

Burning Banners comes with two Player’s Aid Cards. These are 11” by 17” bi-fold cards and they are laid out rather brilliantly. The front panel covers Combat Resolution, the inner panels offer a clear explanation of the Turn Sequence, Actions, Free Actions, and the Winter season procedure (this kicks in with the Advanced Game), And the back panel offers an annotated Terrain Effects summary.

The nominal bad guys (vampires are still bad, right?).

The nominal good guys.

Each of the six factions has its own Faction Display, a small, double-layered board that houses the faction’s available armies, heroes and other markers, and reminds the player of the special attributes particular to that faction (e.g., the Fjordlanders are accomplished seafarers; they can move by ship as a free action, and can increase their sea movement by two).The  double-layer design with cut-outs for the units and other markers probably isn’t necessary, but it is a nice touch, and will probably appeal to gamers more familiar with Euro-games. Burning Banners is an obvious candidate for hobby gamers who have tried something like Scythe (Stonemaier Games, 2016) and are emboldened to try something more classically war-gamey but aren’t quite ready for Death in the Trenches (Compass Games, 2022).

The Season Display, kind of the odometer and fuel gauge of the game.

Game progress is recorded on the Season Display. This display card and the Magic Card Display, which is used in the Advanced game along with the cards, is mounted on a medium-heavy weight of cardstock (both are single sided). The Season Display has a Season Track representing three game years, Spring to Winter, a Turn Track for the participating factions, and an Income Track, for, well, keeping track of each faction’s current income. Each season is a Turn in game terms, and each scenario offers guidance as to the opening and closing of the given campaign; Campaign 17, for example, runs over six turns, from Spring of Year 1 to Summer of Year 2.

The Turn Track has six columns, each with three positions denoting the three phases of play each faction works through in their turn. The scenario notes dictate the order of play, and Faction Tokens are placed on the Turn Track for each faction represented in the current Campaign. This is a neat way to keep everyone on the same page, but for multi-player games, I think I’d be commissioning one (reliable) player to manage the admin of the tracks, to avoid overreach (that is, people reaching over the board, knocking pieces or – heaven forbid – drinks in the process).

The Magic Card Display, like it says on the label.

As previously mentioned, the game also comes with a Magic Card Display. This isn’t as fancy as the double layered Faction Displays – it’s simply a board marked with places to keep the fresh Spell and Treasure decks and the discard piles for the played Spell and Blessing cards. I’m just getting to the cards now, so you’ll have to bear with me for a moment.

As I’ve mentioned, The Magic Card Display and Season Display are presented on a nice weight of board, but I didn’t mention they also feature rounded corners. It’s a minor thing, but it demonstrates the careful thought that has gone into the production of this game. Along the sides of the

Four sealed card decks as they come, 206 cards in all.

Burning Banners is a card assisted game. At least I think it is. I’m only just starting to delve into the Advanced Game rules, but as I understand it, the cards are there to offer random adjustments, in the form of boons and Blessings, or acquired as Treasures.

Every fantasy story should have a little magic, and the cards are how this is introduced into the game narrative. There are three types of cards; Spells, Treasures and Blessings. The Spells and Treasures are drawn from shared decks, while each active faction has its own Blessing deck. During play, the cards a player as collected through the course of play (during the Arcane Study phase of a turn) can be spent to improve the odds in a fight or become “owned” by the faction in the case of Treasures.

The cards themselves are very nice, printed on a typically good weight of cardstock. They are attractive without being overdone – they don’t each sport individual illustrations or fancy fonts. Instead, they each sport a Title, a game function presented in a text box in the centre of the card in a eminently readable font and size, and some colour-text in a slightly smaller font at the bottom. Overall, great presentation, and nothing to distract from the gorgeous map and counter art.

Clarifications. Just don't call them errata.

Finally, the game does come with a couple of two-column sheets of notes. Before you start on a song and dance about errata in Compass games, the two sheets (two and a half pages) of notes are all Clarifications, note further explaining this or that rule where an early adopter of the game has found the Rulebook somehow lacking. I for one welcome these notes, I can be a bit of a meathead at times and any assistance is welcome.  

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I am pleased to report that I have punched some Burning Banners counters and pushed them around the board a bit. While I’ve started going through the Advanced Game rules, I want to play through the introductory scenario a coupe more times to bed down the learnings from the Basic Game before I punch any more counters, maybe even run through it with a second player. I’ve been reluctant to go for multi-player games in recent years, but Burning Banners is a game that will appeal to the Wednesday group (which often swings between four and six players), and there are a lot of two-player scenarios included as well. As I mentioned, a big selling point was it being a Chris Moeller game – like John Butterfield’s output, I’ll pretty much try anything Mr Moeller chooses to release (that I can afford). I’ll write up an AAR for the first competitive game, and see how we go from there.

 

* Since writing this unboxing, I’ve noticed a serendipitous connection among the games mentioned here. Burning Banners designer and illustrator, Christopher Moeller was also responsible for the Compass-version Belter counter graphics. Needless to say, they look quite nice.

† At least it was a reasonable price to my mind. Milage may vary.

 

 

State of Play: Brothers at War: 1862

 

 

Charles S. Roberts Award nominee: Best American Civil War Game (2022)

 

I’ve been eager to get Brothers at War: 1862 (Compass Games, 2022) to the table since it arrived around the middle of last year. It’s a brigade-level command game covering four battles from the second year of the American Civil War that haven’t traditionally got much if any attention, especially at this level. The production quality is solid, map art is provided by the designer, Christopher Moeller (who also designed Napoleon’s Eagles: Storm in the East (Compass Games, 2020), and the upcoming Burning Banners (Compass Games, ~2024)). The maps are both gorgeous and functional, with lexes large enough to accommodate two of the .75” counters side-by-side.

The Fifth Virginia Cavalry choose the better part of valour.

I took Moeller’s advice for my first outing (a two-handed solo run) and set up the first scenario (numbered Scenario 5) for the Battle of Fox’s Gap (a narrow pass west of Turner’s Gap, and a minor but crucial action which was a pivotal part of the general unpleasantness at South Mountain). This scenario is an ideal introductory situation to get to know the rules. It has a low counter density overall, starting with just two full brigades and a cavalry brigade, and only adding a single brigade each for the US and the CSA as the action continues.

Brothers at War uses a chit-pull activation mechanism, making it especially friendly for solo play. Each unit begins with two tokens in the draw cup, along with two timer chits. When the second timer chit is drawn, the turn is over; the turn marker is shifted the next turn, and the drawn chits go back into the draw cup.

The object of the scenario is for the Union forces under Scammon to take (control) either Wise House or Hutzel Farm, and the Confederate player must prevent this from happening. At first blush, the situation would appear to be fairly one-sided, with Scammon’s three regiments spread out across the board (and his rather ordinary attached artillery some distance behind), while Garland has five regiments at his command, two of them already occupying Wise House, and a detached command of Stuart’s Cavalry under Rosser – mounted infantry and horse-drawn light cannon – screening the meandering western approach to Hutzel Farm. But Scammon’s regiments are not to be sneezed at.

Crook's 11th and 36th Ohio break form to cross into the walled paddocks.

I’ve played out the opening couple of rounds twice so far. The first game I played three rounds, to get the feel of how the rules worked, before getting down to a proper game. In both instances, Scammon was the first draw, and each time the 23rd Ohio moved quickly and effectively to engage Rosser’s unmounted screen. In both instances, the screen was pushed back (the first time it was nearly annihilated – not just disrupted – but there are provisions a player can take to keep their brigades intact). When Rosser got his chance, he pulled both his mounted infantry and his paltry cannon back along the wide-curving road to Hutzel Farm. Even combined, the light brigade is no match for the 23^rd Ohio fighting in the open.

This game does a lot of things I’ve seen in other games, but it does them differently, and the overall effect is really quite good. The chit-pull activation adds a measure of drama to the back-and-forth of the action; nothing new, especially for ACW games (Herman Lutmann’s Blind Swords system springs to mind), but the inclusion of the timer chits ratchets up the tension a little. Each battle represented in BaW has its own bespoke Activation track. During a turn, each activation chit is placed on the track in the order drawn. If a timer chit is drawn and placed in a position on the track with a matching clock icon, another (third) timer chit is placed in the mix. Remember, on the second timer chit draw, the turn comes to an end. One turn in my full game only saw three on-board brigade activations (plus one free activation for Crook’s (Union) brigade, just coming on that turn, which began on the track), from an in-pot total of nine activation chits. This unreliability really adds to the “no plan survives contact with the enemy” vibe of the game.

Activation chits to be drawn.

The units do something interesting as well. Various regiments have differing strengths going into a fight. The steps aren’t captured on the pieces, though. Rather, the overall brigade strength is recorded off-board, on a brigade track. Each brigade has its own quota of Reserves, and these can act like hit-points for any of the regiments from that brigade. The counters have two sides, but these represent the disposition of the unit. For infantry, the sides are formed or unformed. Unformed units are much less restricted by terrain but field a slightly lower weight of lead in combat. The Cavalry units are either unmounted (fighting like light infantry, as was the doctrine of the time) or mounted, and artillery, of course, are unlimbered and capable of firing but not moving, or limbered (on the reverse side) and mobile but mute.

Brigade leadership is represented by a Brigade commander marker, bearing the name and a portrait of the commander and a coloured band, which is shared by all the units in their command for easy identification (not a new idea, but one more thing I like about this game). For all the individual regiments to be “in command” they have to be placed within four hexes of their leader marker. A leader can’t be targeted by the opposing side, and they can be repositioned after the regiments have all move/d acted to best fit the situation. If a regiment is out of range of their leader, they will need to perform a Command check at the beginning of their next activation. If they fail that, the unit is automatically disrupted and is limited in its actions until it is back within command. I can see there might be instances when it would be worth the gamble to purposely place a unit out of command and hope for the best, but I’d be hard-pressed to make that call.

Confrontation at the Wise House.

Early in the ruckus (and under threat of decimation from the 23^rd Ohio) Rosser’s mounted troops pulled back to all the way to Hutzel Farm, which they may not have had to. On retrospect they could have had a couple of fall-back positions for defence in the unlikely event of the 23^rd pushing ahead on the long road and trying to take Hutzel Farm, though the stone walls of bordering the farm’s fields would have lent he cavalry better cover. Wise House is the more obvious target, being closer to the starting point of the Union and there is a road leading to Hutzel Farm from Wise House, which the Confederate forces could use to reinforce Hutzel Farm if the Scammon had tried to circumvent Wise House in favour of the second target. And then there is the issue of Scammon keeping his forces in his command radius; not impossible, but a big ask, even for his seasoned troops.

Due to time constraints, I wound the scenario up after the seventh turn of nine. At that point a Union win seemed inevitable. G.B Anderson’s brigade was set to enter the fray in the next turn, but unless they received their second activation immediately after the first “free” activation, and maybe get a couple of timer chits in quick succession, it was unlikely they’d make enough haste to change the outcome. I called it as a likely but costly Union win.

An early round. Scammon received the first activation
in the first five consecutive turns.

I’m still getting to know the BaW system, and I’m certain I made a few mistakes on this first run, but at first blush, I really like how the narrative unfolds. Brothers aw War was the first game I settled on for my 5x3 challenge for 2024. I think the hard part will be stopping at just three games.