State of Play: 300: Earth & Water

 

 

Another week, another short game crammed into seemingly ever-tightening window of opportunity. Early this week, T and I carved out an hour-something of evening to try out 300: Earth and Water (Nuts! Publishing, 2018). This isn’t a new game but It was new to us; I’ve only had it a couple of weeks, and while I was keen to try it out, other games arriving around the same time tool precedence like Saigon 75 (Nuts! Publishing, 2023), of which you can find a brief session write-up here).

I’ve felt like my time isn’t my own of late. There are a number of reasons for that – one of which I should be posting about soon – but this isn’t helped by my gaming buddy, T’s variable availability. So, against this backdrop, we got together to do something I have always made a point of not doing; we sat down to play a game the rules of which I hadn’t quite finished reading, let alone absorbing. Thankfully, 300 is a very easy game to pick up and to teach. The rules are clear (not always a given they’ve been translated from another language), with good examples, and the concepts are familiar enough from broader gaming experience to present no real hurdles to play.

Opening set-up, but incorrect orientation. the long sides should face each player.
Also, the cards (right) tend to get lost in the table-cloth pattern. 3 out of 10 for
presentation (the photo, not the game, which is really quite nice).

300: Earth and Water is an asymmetrical game, built around the theme of the contentious relationship between the Persian Empire and the uppity Greek city-states. The game plays out over five rounds. Each round represents an opportunity for the Persians to stage an expedition into Greece to conquer new territories. In each round, the two sides gather their resources (in the form of resource points, the currency the players use to purchase both their land and naval forces and the means with which to order them), then comes a series of card plays. Players take turns playing a card from their had (each has a maximum of six), which they can use for the event on the card or as an action to move armies or fleets. A player can pass one round, then play a card the next, but when both players pass, the round ends. I the scoring stage of the round, each player counts the number of cities they control; these numbers are compared, the player with the higher number winning the difference between the two numbers in points, which are recorded on a pendulum track. The first player to eight points, or whichever has pints at the end of the fifth round, is the winner.

Ephesos falls (well, for one round - I took it back in the next round). If T had taken
Abydos instead, he could have destroyed the Pontoon Bridge (bottom centre), and
given me a headache.

Everything about this game is elegantly simple, except for the actual play, which presents both sides with compellingly difficult choices at every stage. The game requires planning in the face of limited knowledge of the enemy’s plans. The Persian side always spends their resource points first, of which they have twelve. After seeing how the Persian player has outfitted himself for the coming campaign, the Greek player can spend his six points accordingly. Fleets cost two points for the Persians and one for the Greeks, while armies and cards cost one point each for both sides. Being a learning game we each bought a mixture of military resources and cards with every turn, T tending to match the number of cards with which I – as  the Persians – had furnished myself.

Sometimes things don’t go as planned; Twice, and in consecutive rounds, I drew a card with the event, “Sudden Death of the Great King”, which takes effect on drawing. The event declares the Persian ruler has died, and the campaign for that round has been cancelled, with no points awarded to either side for that round.

I managed to build the ponton bridge across the Hellespont early in the game, which meant the Persians weren’t restricted to ship-borne movement to take ground. The Greeks, while weaker, weren’t without teeth – a naval invasion and successful combat taking one of the major Persian city of Ephesos saw early gains in points, but a slow and steady onslaught by land saw the Persians claw back a slim lead to finish the game on two points.

The board at correct orientation, at the close of the game (a close-run thing).

This is a small package, with a roughly 11” by 17” mounted board and some wooden markers, cards and dice, all fitting into a digest-sized box with a magnetic closure, but 300: Earth and Water offers a lot of game. It’s very much on the strategy-puzzle end of the spectrum, which won’t appeal to everyone, but for a short game, it’s intellectually challenging and a very satisfying experience. It's only been one game, but I can see where I made early mistakes as the Persians, and I’m look forward to trying the game as the Greeks.

300: Earth and Water is also available to play for free on Rally the Troops, if you’d like to try it out before parting with your hard-earned, but with Christmas coming up, this would also make a nice little stocking stuffer that you probably won’t resent having to play with a junior recipient (and it would be a little more personal than an Apple Music voucher).

 

 

2024 Q3 Report: Three steps forward, two steps back

 

  

The reactions of everyone at the table when I pull off some
ill-advised stunt that should never have worked.

October snuck up on me, so this Quarterly report is a tad late, and I’m writing it between other things so it will be shorter than my usual meandering musings. The simple fact is, there isn’t that much to report.

 

The year (so far) by the numbers

So far as the blog is concerned, I feel like I’m falling behind a bit. This year our household has been beset by infirmity and family travails. Nothing any reader could possibly also point to in their own life, but to quote Ally McBeal, “It’s worse because it’s happening to me.”

I had pruned down my goals for the blog this year to what I thought were reasonable, achievable parameters: reach 200 posts and post 20 game reviews – these were to two key planks. Not counting this one, I am up to 147 posts. To make 200 posts I’ll have to be posting something every second day, and some consecutively. This was a goal for the sake of making a goal. It doesn’t mean that much, I’d rather post something I’m confident is worth reading than running out – which I think I’m accomplishing – so I’m less concerned about that one.

The reviews are another matter. I really thought I’d be able to post twenty game reviews in 2024 Since the last Quarterly Report, I’ve posted two reviews (for Commands & Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010) and Undaunted: Battle of Britain (Osprey Games, 2023), bringing the total up to seven this year. I have three more partially written, but I want to pull each of the games out again and refresh my thinking about them before completing the write-ups).

The reviews are funny beasts. In the first year of A Fast Game, reviews tended to be the more popular posts, outstripping unboxings and game reports by nearly 2-1 on average. This year the responses have been wildly disparate. The C&C Napoleonics review has been very popular, with over 400 views (it’s impossible to tell how many people are reading through to the end, or even just looking at the pictures), while the Undaunted: Battle of Britain review has only had a half-dozen reads (although, to be fair, the C&C Naps review was featured in the GMT newsletter, which reaches a much wider audience than I would normally find).

Another unboxing I haven't quite got around to yet: Imperial Bayonets: 1870,
Sedan - We Were Not Cowards (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2020).

Given the way the last three months have played out, I’m not confident of reaching the twenty-review target, but I will press on regardless. I want to post reviews of Brief Border Wars (Compass Games, 2020) and Commands & Colors: Medieval (GMT Games, 2019) in the next two or three weeks (for C&C Medieval, this will be in line with the release of the game’s first expansion, Crusades I: Mid-Eastern Battles I (GMT Games, 2024), which will cover 250 years of fighting in the eastern Mediterranean; Brief Border Wars 2 looks like it will get a first-quarter 2025 release).

I posted fifteen unboxings in the third quarter and look to match this number between now and Christmas. Some to look forward to are A Most Fearful Sacrifice: theThree Days of Gettysburg (Flying Pig Games, 2023 – I’m not happy with a couple of the photos I’ve taken for it), and Flanks of Gettysburg (Compass Games, 2024 – hopefully arriving in a couple of weeks) which also boasts maps by the late Rick Barber, as well as my GMT sale-scores and a couple of other bits and pieces. I went into hock recently to buy a second-hand copy of Granada: Last Stand of the Moors, 1482-1492 (Compass Games, 2021) for a surprisingly low price (not cheap, but not the kind of expensive that games with wooden components usually pull these days). I was even more surprise to find the game was still in its shrink-wrap. Granada is the spiritual successor to Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan (GMT Games, 2011), using the same model for combat resolution, but in a slightly more forgiving way. And word is it plays out slightly quicker than Sekigahara, which is totally in my wheelhouse.

 

Playing with statistics

I’ve wound back on writing up the session reports. This is partly because I’ve been playing less games of late. The group swung back into role-playing games of late on Wednesdays, and I’m missing as many Monday night games with T as I’m making. Lately I’ve been making T play games I’ve been reviewing (the last month it’s been C&C: Medieval), which he doesn’t seem to begrudge. All up, I posted twenty session reports over the last three months, which is a little higher than I anticipated. The fact is, however, these are consistently the least-read posts on average. I try to keep up an output of two to three posts a week (sometimes they’ve been a little more sporadic than that of late, but I think I’m getting back into the rhythm). It begins to feel like a waste of time to put a lot of effort into something only half a dozen people might read (or just click on, thinking it was something else). By and large, unboxings and reviews vie for the most widely-read accolades, with session reports languishing in the field. I’ll still write games up if I have something interesting to offer about them, but I can’t maintain the excitement for another cavalry stoush in C&C: Medieval.

Another cavalry stoush in Commands & Colors: Medieval

One of the downsides of gathering more games is the fact that I haven’t been keeping up with playing them all, or even most of them. A back-of-the-envelope calculation seems to confirm what I suspected; after getting above 35% of owned games played around the beginning of the year, I’ve likely dropped to about 28% with the newly introduced titles. The anecdotal evidence bears that out. In my Q2 Quarterly Report I mentioned receiving We Are Coming, Ninevah (Nuts! Publishing, 2023) and that I was looking forward to getting it to the table. This still hasn’t happened, despite the game having a robust solo mode. A more rigorous interrogation of the numbers – removing expansions from the count – might raise the result a percentage point, but the fact remains, I haven’t been keeping on top of playing the new games as rigorously as I ought. Admission is the first step to a cure, so I’ll redouble my efforts to get more games played, and maybe even report on the ones I like.

In keeping with this intention, I’ve finally dipped my toe into a greater world of online board wargaming with Rally the Troops. If you're like me and came late to the party, Really the Troops allows you to play board wargames online without having to install an interface, like VASSAL or Board Game Arena. You set up a user account and pick a game to play. If you haven’t got an opponent, you can post a game and leave an open invitation. There are no charges, no advertising. One notable aspect of the games of RtT is that the rules and game functions have been incorporated into the code; the game itself will only let you do what the game rules allow.

Something for Everyone: the current selection of games on Rally the Troops.

Rally the Troops began solely as the work of Tor Andersson, a Swedish wargamer and computer programmer, and a patron saint to shut-ins like me. The site currently hosts twenty-one games, with the blessings of the games’ publishers (so far, nine different companies are represented, including the likes of Columbia Games, GMT, Hollandspiele and Fort Circle Games).

A friend from a local wargaming group on Facebook – I’ll call him T2 – has been coaching me on the whys ands wherefores of Mark Herman’s classic, Washington’s War (GMT Games, 2010). I’ve been handed my hat once already, and I fully expect t lose the second game as well, but I won’t be so easily pushed aside this time. 

If anybody reading this uses Rally the Troops and would like a game, look me up (username: jonboywalton), so long as you don’t mind a slow progression maybe three or five actions a day. My first game with T2 took the better part of a fortnight because of conflicting schedules. But the game was had, the loss felt, and it’s left me eager to explore more.