Stripped Down for Parts: Warsaw 1920

 

 

Regular readers will probably know by now that I live in an apartment with a wife and a cat, and very limited space for collection growth. So, it’s understandable that in the last couple of years I’ve become much more open to the idea of games without boxes. I feel like an idiot for not leaning into these kinds of games before; they often have a smaller table presence (though, as we’ll see, not in every case), lower counter densities, and play out in a shorter time than something that comes in a box on the same subject might.

It's in the bag. Um. I'll see myself out....

To wit, let’s look at Warsaw 1920 (Revolution Games, 2022). Originally published in 2020 by BonSai Games, and subsequently re-published for the Chinese market by Banner of war and Kilovolt Designs, Warsaw 1920 was designed by BonSai’s publisher, Yasushi Nakaguro, who also produced the map and counter art. The Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921 isn’t a particularly well-known conflict. There are a handful of games on the subject (the best known in the English-speaking world is probably Red Star/White Eagle (GDW, 1979), which was reprinted more recently in a Designer Signature Edition (Compass Games, 2019). The war is a crucial piece of European history for one significant reason, as indicated in Warsaw 1920’s sub-title, “Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe.” Poland was only ever meant to be the first stage of a greater expansion of Soviet influence. That the Soviet Army was thwarted in this ambition by the Polish Army, then the protectors of a country that had only become an independent nation once more after a declaration by the Central Powers, on whose side the Polish Legions had fought against their hereto oppressors, the Tsarist Russians, in November 1916. The fact that the Communist Red Army was kept at bay by the Poles may have informed Hitler’s reasoning in choosing to invade Russia in ’41.

Cover sheet. Spoiler alert: there's a sneaky PAC on the hiding out back.

Warsaw 1920 consists of a cover sheet that doubles as a Player’s Aid Card, a rulebook, one full-sized sheet of counters, and a full-sized map. It’s not exactly a tiny game, but the counter density is still fairly low, and so is the rules overhead.

The game’s cover sheet offers a portrait of Józef Piłsudski, who lead the Polish Legions in the Great War, and subsequently became the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the newly-established Regency Kingdom of Poland – which would soon become the Second Republic of Poland – leading the country’s military forces through no less than six wars between 1919 and 1922.

The game focuses on the Battle of Warsaw, covering the time leading up to the battle to its historical conclusion (in game terms, from July through August). The Polish forces were on the ropes until Piłsudski planned and executed a tactical retreat to defensible positions west of the Vistula River, and organised a flanking strike that took the Soviet forces off guard. Each turn represents a week, and the hexes are roughly 30km across.

Rulebook. Not as shiny as the cover sheet.

The full-colour rulebook is printed on a nice weight (around 90gsm) matte-finish paper and runs to twelve pages. Of those, the actual rules only take up about eight and a half pages, along with the cover page (a match for the image on the cover sheet – it doesn’t even mention “rulebook” on the front), an image of each side of the counter sheet, and a quick-setup  Order of Battle on the back cover, grouping the unit counters into their respective armies (for the Poles) or Fronts (for the Soviets).

Sample rules-spread. Well illustrated and easy to read.

The rules themselves are very well laid out in a crisp sans-serif font with which aficionados of Revolution games will be familiar. The section headings are highlighted, and the while rules-set is well illustrated. The print is a tad on the small side, but for just nine pages of reading, that can be forgiven. The rules are helpfully illustrated and, if you have any hex-and-counter wargame experience, quite clear and understandable. That’s a good start for any game.

The CRT.  Just one, but most of it is on the map anyway.

There is a Player’s Aid Card printed on the verso of the Cover sheet. It’s printed on a light card but still sturdy enough for the job. The PAC offers a magnified Combat Results Table and Terrain Effects Chart, and a list explaining the abbreviations used in the CRT.

Warsaw 1920 is built on a pleasantly uncomplicated system. That won’t translate to a simple game. I can see myself having to take the Soviets in any teaching games, although it won’t be a simple task for the understrength Poles either.

The map. Nicer than I could capture with my inadequate lighting.

The game’s 22” by 34“ map covers an area reaching from Kraków in the west to Smolensk in the east and represents a goodly portion of 1920s Poland, a slice of Soviet Russia and an intrusion of southern East Prussia and Lithuania in the north-west. The art is simple and elegant – not at all cluttered – and will be nice to play on. It’s designed for two players to play facing the two short ends (the natural east/west positions of the antagonists). To this end, nearly all the charts and tracks for the game, already helpfully printed on the map-sheet, are oriented to the appropriate end. Only the Terrain Effects Chart and the Turn Track are oriented to the southern map-edge, to facilitate easier – or at least equally difficult – reading for both players. Each end has its own Combat Results Table, and the Polish end hosts the Victory Point Track, while the Russian end presents two Supply tracks, a longer one for the larger West Front units and a shorter one for the smaller South-West Front formation.

The counter-sheet. Also much nicer than it appears here.

The counters are nicely presented in a 5/8” die-cut, 176 in all, though not all are printed. The unit counters are clear and readable, and there are only about 90 of the across the two forces. Other counters serve various administrative roles, including Control markers, Supply source and Supply Status markers, and tokens for indicating isolated units.

The combat unit counters are simple and attractive, and easy enough to read. NATO unit type symbology is central to the counter, with the unit size above. The two sides are easily identifiable; red on white for the Poles, white on red for the Soviets. The units only have two factors to deal with Combat Strength and Movement. These are the large numbers below the centre symbol. The values on the left and right indicate the formation and unit number respectively.

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Warsaw 1920 has the makings of a neat little game playable in an evening. It fits the ethos of A Fast Game perfectly, and I think it will be a great and returned-to addition to the collection. As mentioned, this isn’t a mechanically complex game, but it reflects combat from a simpler time, and the simpler approach allows the player to concentrate on what should play out to be a tactically and logistically complex situation.

 

Stripped Down for Parts: Guerre Eclair

 

 

Oh, happy day! Designer Yasushi Nakaguro’s Guerre Eclair (NUTS! Publishing, 2026) arrived a couple of days ago, but I had some things to finish off before I could pull it apart and have a proper look at it. The game was originally released by BonSai Games in Japan under the name The Rise of Blitzkrieg (BonSai Games, 2019). I own several NUTS! games, but this was the first game I’d ordered directly from the publisher. This was an impulse buy – not something I’m prone to – and shipping coset nearly as much as the (discounted) game itself. Looking back on it, I should probably held off and ordered it from Hexasim, along with La Der des Ders (Hexasim, 2025) and saved a few Euros on shipping, but Guerre Éclair did arrive inside of two weeks, which is quite impressive.

Guerre Eclair is the third in NUTS!’ Combat Rations series, following up from 300: Earth & Water (NUTS! Publishing, 2018) and Port Arthur (NUTS! publishing, 2020). The games in the series (thus far all reprints of BonSai games, as will be the fourth instalment – check out my interview with Mr Nakaguro for more) come in a uniform clamshell box, with a small, mounted board, nice components and cards

Each game in the Combat Rations series has had a different artist attached to the job. For Guerre Eclair, NUTS! went with Zuzanna Wollny. Ms Wollny is better known for her book and poster illustration work and for her truly stunning murals. The box cover is a sepia monochrome illustration reminiscent of a French soldier’s nightmares of the Front; tanks and dive-bombers baring down on the ill-lead defenders of the homeland. The result is effective and helps reinforce the theme and set the pace of the game. But it doesn’t set a rigid path for the rest of the art, as we will see shortly.

The clamshell box design. This appeals to my inner product engineer.

The defining feature of the Combat Rations series – for me at least – is the clamshell enclosure. The roughly C5 envelope-sized box is hinged and sealed with a magnetic clasp. Theis series isn’t the first to use the clamshell design (I have a couple of Osprey games that sport this style of case), and I don’t think it would be appropriate for a lot of games, but it’s a good fit for the Combat Rations ethos of short, numerically low-component, highly replayable games that will travel well – in a case or a backpack. If I was travelling with one, I would probably put an elastic band around the whole thing, just to be sure, but I’ve always had a belt-and-braces approach in regard to keeping things together.

Inside the box. This also doubles as a handy dice tray.

NUTS! Publishing always puts a premium on presentation, and the Combat Rations games are no exception. The inside of the box, looks like an ammunition box that’s been repurposed to hold a French infantryman’s personal effects. This was the same conceit that lined the Port Arthur box, only with a Japanese soldier’s ephemera. It’s an oddly affecting touch, bringing the historical event down to the level of the personal.

The box-back. 

The box-back description leads with a short description of the historical situation, the German invasion of Belgium, Holland, and France in May 1940, as well as a brief account of the game play. The usual caveats of two-players – I don’t see how you could play an effective solo game with the amount of hidden information crucial to play – and a recommended age of fourteen and up are advised. Forty-five minutes is the advised game duration, which I think would be true for anyone familiar with the game, but I’d anticipate an hour or so for an introductory game.

The rulebook.

The rulebook A5 in size, is printed in full colour on a good weight of low-gloss paper-stock. It runs to twenty pages, while the rules proper amount to eighteen pages (including nearly five pages of illustrated examples of play). The rules are pretty straightforward - number of the game’s concepts are familiar from 300: Earth & Water, but executed a little differently. 

Sample spread of the rules. The examples of play appear on a yellow background.

I’ll save the recounting of play for an AAR, but I would say that, in my experience with Mr Nakaguro’s games, simple rules bely rich, decision-point filled gameplay.My only complaint would be an unjust one; the font is a little small for me to read without glasses, but this is a grievance directed more at the injustices of age and decrepitude than the quality of the product, which is undeniably excellent.

The game board. Once again my crappy phone camera does not do justice
to the rather lovely artwork.

The map board is – as one would expect – small (roughly 11” by 17”); it is however mounted, and both attractive and functional. The art is a departure from the original Japanese release, which took a more utilitarian approach with a political-style map – it reminded me a little of the European campaign map in Hitler’s Reich (GMT Games,2018). Ms Wollny’s map is representative of the terrain encompassed in the theatre as it would appear during summer campaign; the lighter greens of the grassy fields give way to the dark, foreboding tones of the Ardennes. The movement in the game is point to point, with clear paths marked out between locations. Each location is defined by its shape; representing a town or city (ellipsis), a port (diamond, with an anchor) or a fortress (heptagon, with a turret silhouette). Belgian locations are marked in yellow, and the single Dutch city, Dordrecht, in orange. Control of locations is crucial to Grman victory, something we’ll touch on later. Finally, there are four Bases, three German – Saarbrücken, Prüm, and Düsseldorf – and one for the Allies – Paris, at the opposite end of the board.

Also incorporated into the edges of the board are a turn track (five turns, each representing roughly a week across May and June), and a Momentum pendulum track. Momentum is treated as a currency in the game, allowing the players to spend points gained on small advantages.

The German Shield fronts, illustrated in the sepia tones of a dust-infused breaking dawn.

Associated with the German bases are three card shields. These will conceal the German player’s division of forces across the three bases. The German player divvies up his available forces across the three bases in response to their victory objectives (more on this when we gat to the cards), and in response to the Allied troop placement, which is completed first.

The German-facing side of the shields. These conceal the players distribution of troops
across the three bases.

The shields as printed double-sided on light card, each with a unique illustration on the opponent-facing side and the name of the base printed on the German player side. They are perfectly adequate to their task in structure and size and come pre-folded rather than simply scored on the fold, which is another nice touch. I don’t know about others, but I always seem to mess up and mis-crease at least one of the folds, left to my own devices.

Clockwise from Top left: French (blue), German (grey), and BEF (ochre) units,
and the two Tracking discs for the Tern and Momentum tracks.

The game has no counter-sheet, but instead uses little wooden meeples – soldiers and tanks representing French (blue), British (ochre) and German (grey) forces – where the BonSai release had similarly coloured cubes and discs. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded if the publishers had decided to go with blocks, but the end result is more evocative, with infantry and armour being instantly discernible, and more familiar to Euro-gamers trying out a war-game.

One thing I can appreciate is the attention to detail. The Allied and German tank pieces are different silhouettes. It’s a little thing, but it indicates the care that’s gone into the preparation of the game as clearly as a bowl of M&Ms with all the red ones removed.

Sample cards from the Operations decks for the Allied (left) and German players.

Guerre Eclair comes with three short decks of cards; an eighteen-card German deck, A fourteen-card Allied deck, and a four-card Objectives deck, as well as a single Surrender card. These are standard poker-sized cards, and are printed on a good weight of card stock. Guerre Eclair is a Card Driven Game (CDG), but instead of dealing off the top of the deck, the players can choose which cards they wish to utilise in that round. Cards can be spent to make a move action or utilised for their event. Some cards are only usable in combat for some kind of benefit

The cards are beautifully presented, with thematic art and clear instructions. The art is what I’d call realistic through an impressionist filter. Given the physical scale of the game, the development group may have been tempted to go with a cartoonish style for the artwork generally. Instead, the pictures maintain the serious tone of the game and its subject. Even the choice of fonts for the titles, each reminiscent of period propaganda posters from France and Germany respectively, maintain the thematic integrity of the art.

The four German Objective cards (only two ever in play, with just one revealed to the
Allied player and one hidden), and the Allied Surrender card. I've gone through the
rules once but am still at a loss as to the purpose of the Surrender card. I'm sure
I've just missed something obvious.

The game has four Objective cards, which provide the victory conditions for the Germans. This makes things interesting and adds to the replayability of the game. We’ve seen the same device in another France’40 game, Dunkirk: France 1940 (Worthington Publishing, 2018) but there’s an added twist here; at the beginning of the game, the German player draws and Objective card, then places it where both players can see it. This is the open objective. He then draws a second Objective card, but this one is concealed from the Allied player. To win the game, the German player must meet the demands of one of these Objective cards. This will be easier said than done; while the Germans have advantages in hand-size and a numerical superiority in available troops, the Allies only have to delay the Axis progress over five rounds to spoil a German victory.

The game also comes with four 10mm dice. I've yet to haven't to take the game out for
a spin, but I suspect there may be a case for a couple of additional bones to avoid
the occasional consecutive roll for numbers.

Finally, the game comes with four small but quite readable black six-sided dice. These are nice dice, with a good weight despite their diminutive size. The beauty of the clamshell case is the game comes with its own dice tray.

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I’ve been on a bit of a Napoleonics jag of late, so I think it’s time to mix it up a bit. A fast game is indeed a good game, especially on a school night, so I hope to get an AAR of our first Guerre Éclair game to you, faithful reader, within the next couple of weeks (in between further Napoleonic excursions, I'm sure).

Blog note: Big in Japan, redux

 

Yasushi Nakaguro was kind enough to forward me a copy of Bansai 28, the latest edition of BonSai Games house quarterly magazine, which arrived today. Mr Nakaguro's translation of my research article, The Value Proposition of Wargaming Awards - the Publishers' Perspective that appeared first here in A Fast Game, appears in this issue, along with news and game reviews, all in Japanese, of course. Each issue of Bansai also comes with a complete game; full-size map, counters, and a rules booklet (also in Japanese).

The game accompanying Bansai 28 is called Balkan Gamble, designed by Brian Train. It's a reworking of the original Strategy and Tactics release from 2015, The game is a counterfactual, exploring four separate operations in the Balkan Peninsula proposed by Churchill between 1943 and 1945: Operation Boardman (1943), a distraction from the real Operation Husky (Allied invasion of Sicily); Operation Zeppelin (1944), a notional plan to invade Greece and Yugoslavia (actually a cog in the broader Operation Bodyguard - the Allied deception operation shrouding Overlord); and Operation Gelignite (1945), an intended plan to insert Allied troops to to block the retreat of Army Group F (and to guard, against a Russian advance into the region) but was abandoned due to the shortage of available troops and matériel. A fourth scenario is also included in this edition; Operation SILVA (1950), a hypothetical (but all too believable) invasion plan to bring Yugoslavia into the Soviet fold.

This version has a new engine under the hood, making it a sister game to Summer Lightning (Lock 'n Load Publishing, 2011) and Winter Thunder (Tiny Battle Publishing, 2015; BonSai Games, 2025). I haven't played either — I had a second-hand copy of Summer Lightning bought out from under me when I wasn't quite quick enough — so I'm keen to try this one out. I contacted Mr Train via his blog, and he forwarded me the English-language rules and charts. So, the revised Balkan Gamble will join the (rapidly growing) queue.

In the meantime, I should have an unboxing post of my "most anticipated game for 2025" (when speaking of crowdfunded games, a single quarter drift is doing pretty well), Carl Paradis's Battle Commander, Volume 1 (Sound of Drums, 2025). That should be the next thing posted, with a couple of other unboxings to come. I feel like A Fast Game is becoming more like a showroom lately, but gaming has been scarce this year, and games worth writing about scarcer. That should change soon. In the meantime, thanks for checking in.

 

 

Line of Fire: a fast interview with Yasushi Nakaguro of BonSai Games

 

 

Yasushi Nakaguro is a game designer and publisher at BonSai Games and the quarterly magazine, Bansai in Japan. In the English-speaking wargaming world, Mr Nakaguro is arguably best known for his game, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: War in Asia and the Pacific (BonSai Games, 2017), which appeared in issue 9 (2019) of Multi-Man Publishing’s Special Ops magazine and was subsequently nominated for a Charles S. Roberts Award in the Best Magazine Board Wargame category.

Mr Nakaguro was generous enough to take some time out to answer a few questions, which lead to a few more. What follows is a true account of our email conversation – well, a lot of it – lightly edited for the sake of readability.

 

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A Fast Game: How old were you when you came to wargaming, what were your earliest (or most memorable) game experiences, and when did you decide to design games yourself?

 

Yasuki Nakaguro: In 1980, I was 12 years old. I could show you a wargame advertisement in the comic magazine that tells me about wargames.

Then, accidentally, I met Midway (Avalon Hill, 1964) in the hobby shop and I purchased it instead of the plastic model.

Midway made me crazy... I played it with my friends every day after school – IJN [Imperial Japanese Navy] was one of the hot topics for us because the plastic model series "Waterline" was booming [AFG note - these kits are 1:700 scale a little large for table-top play, but are still available from Tamiya and other manufacturers].

What I learned about wargames through [playing] Midway is that regardless of the scale the game simulates, it's crucial to include the following three dimensions:

1) Strategy: Multiple conditions exist for winning the game (war), and players can choose among them.

2) Operations: Players can plan and execute the means to achieve those strategic objectives.

3) Tactics: The ability to employ techniques to execute operations more effectively.

It is desirable for each dimension to maintain consistency with the historical period the game portrays.

Avalon Hill's Midway, First Edition (photo: Paolo Desalvo, BGG).

In the next year, many Japanese publishers were born and the first Japanese wargame magazine, Tactics (Hobby Japan, 1982-1992) was published. I was totally fascinated by the articles about Midway in that magazine (translated from General magazine).

BTW, you could read about the history of the wargame in Japan here.

In my teenage years, I published [a] wargame fanzine with my friends. One of them designed the original wargames for the fanzine (Iwo and The Air Raid at Taranto), then I did the same thing (Terrible Tarawa).

 

AFG: Many of your games model events in the Second World War. Do you enjoy this period most, or do WW2 games sell more quickly than other historical games?

 

YN: To be honest, and [this is] just my thoughts, the hottest topic of wargames in Japan are:

1. Pacific War

2. Japanese History (Sengoku Jidai)

3. WW2 Eastern Front

4. Other WW2 battles

5. Others

On the business side, I should design or publish the PTO [Pacific Theatre of Operations] WW2 games -- also as I wrote, I was an IJN boy.

In my interest, however, I'd like to design the games that I have interest in depending on the time.

AFG: You have also designed games set in the ancient world, the Russo-Japanese War, and even a couple of fantasy and science fiction games. What other periods would you like to explore in games, or maybe are already working on?

YN: Depending on the time :)

Now, I was fascinated by the history of Hittite and designing the game by using [a] wargame context. I like to play games designed in a wargame context, such as Sea & Steel: Columbus' Voyages (Neva Wargames, 2025).

 

AFG: When you talk about enjoying games in a wargame context, what do you mean, exactly? Do you mean games that come to their subject like a wargame?

 

YN: I wrote “context,” but “mechanics” might be easier to understand. While it's true that wargames simulate “warfare,” they also sometimes make players feel the historical nature of the themes they handle. That's why I chose the word ‘context’ rather than “mechanics.”

Map art for The Rise of Blitzkrieg (BonSai Games, 2019) (photo: Rodolphe Duhil, BGG).

 

AFG: We should be seeing English and French language version of Guerre Éclair (Nuts! Publishing, ~2025; originally released by BonSai Games, 2019 as The Rise of Blitzkrieg: The Fall of France, 1940), the third in the Combat Rations series, coming out in 2026 from Nuts! Publishing. Are there any other games you have designed in the pipeline to be released in English?

 

YN: Nuts! Publishing will publish Norway! and The Punic Wars in the future. I have other plans with other publishers but have not decided yet.

The Punic Wars (BonSai Games, 2022), slated for release in Nuts! Publishing's
Combat Rations series.

AFG: What are you currently working on (that you can tell us about)?

 

YN: Other than Rise and Decline of the Hittite Empire, I'm designing Stalingrad 20 and Midway 2. The latter is the revised version of my first Midway game.

 

AFG: Some songwriters talk about a song by someone else that they believe is so good they wish they had written it. Is there a game, or a game-mechanic, created by somebody else that you wish you had done? (This might be a different way of asking what your favourite game (or mechanic) is from someone else, or it might be a mark of respect for another inventor).

 

YN: The wargame context I wrote [see above] means the marriage historical topic and game mechanics. I like any wargame that I feel about this marriage. In other words, it's like this.

As you know, haiku involves composing poetry within strict rules and a limited number of words. Writer Maruya Saiichi described this as “the task of packing jewels into a jewel box.” Within the constraints of using the war game context—though defining “war game” here is extremely difficult, I imagine readers share some common understanding—I enjoy games that recreate history.

Though I'm embarrassed to mention my own work, 300: Earth and Water (BonSai Games, 2018; Nuts! Publishing, 2021 – you can find a review here) is a historical game yet is clearly designed within the war game context. Mechanics like Action/Event, Dice Rolling, and Point-to-Point Movement used in that game are commonly found in war games. Even if the mechanics originate from war games, I love games where you feel history when you play them, and that's the kind of game I want to design.

I'm a designer but also a publisher, so I wonder if this is the answer or not:

There are many good wargame designers in Japan. My priority is introducing them to the world via my brand -- When did Rommel get his goggles? (Bansai #20; BonSai Games, 2024) by Nanka Waguri, and The Pacific War: Deadly Bloody Battles of Combined Fleet (Bansai #12, BonSai Games, 2022) by Yoshio Kubota will be published in English.

 

The Pacific War (Bansai #12) Rulebook (photo: Rocky Mountain Navy, BGG).

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Thanks again to Yasushi Nakaguro for his patience and openness, and for agreeing to be the first interview to appear in A Fast Game. It's my hope that Line of Fire will become an occasional but regular feature of the blog.

Blog Note: Big in Japan

 

Last year I researched and wrote up my first research feature for A Fast Game called The Value Proposition of Wargaming Awards - the Publishers' Perspective (I also wrote a TL/DR summary for the time-poor and attention-deficient). I contacted dozens of publishers in North America, Europe, and Asia, asking them about their experiences receiving nominations for or winning wargame awards. Nearly half of the companies I contacted replied – something I’m still humbled by – and one of the publishers that replied was veteran designer Yasushi Nakaguro (arguably best known in the West for his game, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: War in Asia and thePacific (BonSai Games, 2017), which appeared in Issue 9 of MMP’s Special Ops magazine) who runs BonSai Games in Japan. Mr Nakaguro was in the unique situation of having three games of his design nominated, released by two different avenues, BonSai and French publisher, Nuts! Publishing (I’ve written about one of these titles, 300: Earth and Water (BonSai Games, 2018; Nuts! Publishing, 2020) here).

BonSai is a small operation with a comparatively large output; along with a fairly busy release schedule of wargames both locally designed games and English-language titles translated to Japanese, BonSai also produces a quarterly wargaming magazine, Banzai, which includes a game in every issue (like the rest of the magazine, the rules are presented in kanji, although translations are sometimes posted to a given game’s BGG page).

I’m delighted to report that the Value Proposition of Wargaming Awards article is going to feature – translated into Japanese, of course – in the next issue of Banzai, no. 28 which, according to BonSai’s most recent newsletter post, will be available at their online store from February 20. If you’d like a copy (and why wouldn’t you?), best get in quickly as the previous three issues at least have completely sold out pretty soon after release.

 

 

Stripped Down for Parts: Port Arthur

 

Charles S. Roberts Award 2024 nominee for Best New Edition of a Previously Published Game

 

Port Arthur (Nuts! Publishing, 2024) is the second release in French game company Nuts! Publishing’s Combat Rations series. Both this and the first in the series, 300: Earth & Water (Nuts! Publishing, 2021 – you can read my review here) were designed by Yasushi Nakaguro and previously published in Japan by BonSai Games, as is the projected third game in the series, Guerre Éclair (Nuts! Publishing, ~2025), originally released as The Rise of Blitzkrieg: The Fall of France, 1940 (BonSai Games, 2019), is due out later this year.

Port Arthur is an asymmetric game about the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. This conflict saw the defeat of the Russian Empire and the removal of its navy as a credible force on the world stage, and started the Japanese military on a road to national domination and empire building which would lead with tragic inevitability to the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, and the nation’s wholesale defeat for years later. It’s a big canvas to be covered by such a small game, but 300: Earth & Water deals with successive generations of Persian rulers trying to bring a few belligerent city-states to submission (and failing each time, historically). Mr Nakaguro is adept at drawing the key threads from historical conflicts and weaving them into compelling, playable narratives.

Port Arthur shares the signature Combat Rations series magnetic clasp
clamshell enclosure. All up, it's a gorgeous package.

Like 300: Earth & Water, Port Arthur comes in a clamshell-style box, fastened with a magnetised clasp. I was a little suspicious of these when I first got 300, but the box both opens easily and secures well. It no doubt helps that the materiel of the game collectively doesn’t weigh too much. The box is roughly the size of a fat B5 envelope, or a 280-page Picador paperback (or a bit shorter than a VHS cassette case), so they’ll slip easily into a briefcase or backpack for a traveling game.

The artwork for the whole package was provided by game artist, Maud Chalmel. Ms Chalmel is an accomplished illustrator in the area of family games, but I believe this her first venture into wargaming. Some people have talked about Port Arthur having a cartoonish quality to the artwork – a view get if based on the box-cover alone – but taken as a whole this description does the work justice. Ms Chalmel brings to every aspect of the game an art-nouveau quality that is both historically appropriate - it was popular in fin de siècle Europe and elsewhere and itself references the influence of the Ukiyo-e tradition. The result feels appropriate for the subject, and the whole effect is really quite stunning.

The box back.

Thew back of the box is less forthcoming about the game than I would have expected. It begins with a paragraph referencing the key events of the Russo-Japanese War – the invasion of Korea and the battles of Mukden (on land) and Tsushima (at sea), and the subsequent destruction of Russia’s Baltic Fleet. The box-back also lets us know that this is meant to be a two-player game for players fourteen and up, and that the playing time should clock in at around 40 or so minutes.

The rulebook - sixteen pages of full-colour goodness (about fourteen pages
of rules, including illustrations).

The rulebook for Port Arthur has been printed on a good weight of a higher gloss paper (the kind more commonly seen in Euro-games) and runs to just sixteen pages. I am still going through the rules but, so far, the English translation is solid (unlike a lot of European publishers, Nuts! tends to print separate copies in French and English), and I don’t anticipate any difficulties getting the game to the table, barring the usual time and opponent-availability issues.

The mounted map. Lush.

The board is gorgeous. It might well be one of my favourite game boards for its appearance. Like 300, it is a small, for panel – A3 paper sheet-sized – mounted board, covering Japan, the Korean Peninsula, China, Manchuria, and Russia, with the surrounding waters divided into sea areas, and holding boxes for the ports of Vladivostok, Port Arthur, and Diego Suarez. Movement is regulated by point-to-point locations on land, and by area movement for sea-borne ships.

Along the left edge of the board is the game’s scoring track. Like 300, the game scores on a pendulum track, beginning at zero, and scoring at the end of each turn. Unlike 300, there is no sudden death victory if a side reaches the maximum points (five) – the game plays out for the full six turns. At the end of the game, Japan has to have points on their side of the scoring track, and maintain control of Mukden to gain a win, otherwise its an automatic win for the Russians.

Two A5 punchboards. The counters come out cleanly - no sanding.

The counters are pre-rounded easy-punch pieces printed on a heavy weight grey-core cardstock. The majority of the counters represent the ships of the Russian and Japanese fleets, but game markers and a turn track are also included in the mix. There is also a Port Arthur Blockade marker that gets placed n the board when the Japanese player manages to restrict navigation to and from the port (the actual locations of Vladivostok and Port Arthur on the map are indicated by colour-coded anchor symbols linking the holding boxes to their geographical position.

As with everything else, the counters and markers just look really good. The ship counters are rectangular and feature a full-strength side on the front and a damaged side with a slightly greyed-out image on the back. The Russo-Japanese War was rough on the Russian navy, which ended up loosing the bulk of not one, but two fleets.

Player Aid Card. Small but useful.

Port Arthur comes with a single, double-sided Player Aid Card, printed on a really light cardstock. The front offers set-up notes and an annotated Sequence of Play, while the verso presents further notes for conducting sorties and naval operations, and naval battles. Two PACs would have been nice, but a lot of games deliver a single

Dice and meeples.

The game also comes with six dice and six Japanese soldier and officer meeples. The dice are on the smaller side, but that’s fine in a travel-size game. The meeples are used to mark locations on the Manchuria land-track where the Japanese player has conducted successful attacks. I get that fancy meeples (these do look very cool) are a selling point for some, and Nuts! Publishing is a business with a reasonably large footprint in the family game market as well, but for my money I would have been happy with wooden cubes or discs as markers. This by no means detracts from the game, I just don’t think it will add all that much to my experience of it.

The box interior art; a really nice finishing touch to an all-round attractive game. 

The box interior art found in Port Arthur is one of those strictly unnecessary but really nice details that Nuts! Publications often squeeze into their publications. While it doesn’t add anything to gameplay, it The enclosure is styled as an occasional box for keeping photos and other mementos that might be kept by an operational officer to remind him of home. It’s thoughtful and eloquent, a reminder of the humanity of those involved at the very outset of one of the most inhumane periods of modern history.

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So, that’s Port Arthur. Add one more title to my TBP list. I would like to get an AAR posted in the next month or two, but I really can’t promise that. It does look like an interesting and challenging game though, and with a play-time of about three quarters of an hour, it’s definitely a contender for a weeknight turn