1984: BattleTech: A Game of Armoured Combat

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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BattleTech infamously began life as BattleDroids. Originally published by FASA Corporation in 1984, for the second edition it would be renamed BattleTech because George Lucas and Lucasfilm claimed the rights to the term ‘droid’. It was also infamously, the game of ‘big, stompy robots’, but as BattleTech, it would go on to be so much more. In the forty years since its publication, this has included numerous expansions to the core board game, even more supplements adding rules and detailing the background to the game, several ranges of miniatures—both plastic and metal, over one hundred novels, a cartoon series, a collectible card game, and multiple computer games. These options have allowed fans to enjoy the setting in numerous ways, sometimes without even playing the core game, but the franchise has always been about the play of the boxed game that is BattleTech. This is a review of the second edition of BattleTech, published in 1985.

BattleTech is a turn-based multiplayer game, played on large maps marked with hexes and terrain with players fielding twelve-metre-tall humanoid armoured, fusion-powered combat units, weighting between ten and a hundred tons, called BattleMechs, or ’mechs. These are not robots, but are controlled by human pilots who will manoeuvre across the battlefield, exchanging fire from lasers, autocannons, missile-launchers, and the dreaded PPC or particle projection cannon. If close enough, they may even punch or kick each other, and if they have jump jets, launch a risky death from above attack. Over the course of a battle, a ’mech will build up heat due to movement and weapons fire, and if it cannot bleed off enough heat, the excess will impair its targeting systems, impede its movement, and potentially cause any ammunition it is carrying to explode or the ’mech to simply shutdown. Each unit is represented by one figure, an illustrated—front and back—cardboard piece that slots into a plastic base, and a record sheet. Each record sheet contains information about the amount of armour a ’mech has, how many weapons, and where the armour and weapons are located, as well as being used to track damage suffered and its location, ammunition used, and how much heat it builds up from one turn to the next.

BattleTech: A Game of Armoured Combat carries the description, “In the 30th century, life is cheap, but BattleMechs aren’t.” The box contains forty-eight playing pieces depicting the various BattleMechs, twenty-four plastic holders for them, one-hundred-and-twenty unit insignias for the game’s various armies and mercenary units, a forty-eight page rulebook, two full-colour card maps, and two six-sided dice. The forty-eight playing pieces are an inch high, whilst the maps measure twenty-two by seventeen inches, are marked in one-and-a-quarter inch-wide hexes, and are both identical. Each hex is roughly a hundred feet across. the game is designed to be played by two or more players, aged twelve and up. The basic unit in the game is a lance of four ’mechs, so with twenty-four plastic holders, it is possible for six players to field a lance each, two players to field three lances each, and so on. It is also possible for a player to control just a single battlemech depending upon the circumstances, such as a duel or a roleplaying situation.

The black and white rulebook covers everything that the players need to know about playing BattleTech. This includes its rules—going from basic training to advanced gunnery, expert and optional rules—as well details of fourteen different ’mechs. These range in size between 20 and 100 tons, and include the Marauder, Phoenix Hawk, Warhammer, Stinger, Locust, and BattleMaster. Many of these are regarded as classics even today, though lawsuits over who owned the rights to use their images, taken from various different Japanese anime, including Dougram, Crusher Joe, and Macross, would result in FASA Corporation withdrawing their original appearances and all art associated artwork from the game. These would be labelled as ‘the unseen’ by BattleTech fans, and were missing from the game for many years until a legal agreement was reached that allowed many of them to return.

The rulebook also contains the setting to BattleTech, which is explained in sidebars which run down each page. The setting is the Inner Sphere, a region of interstellar space surrounding Earth with a radius of roughly five hundred light years. It contains some two thousand settled worlds, reachable by both Faster-Than-Light travel and communication. Beyond the Inner Sphere lies the Periphery. In the thousand years that mankind has had Faster-Than-Light travel, no signs of sentient, alien life have ever been found. In the early thirty-first century, several hundred years after a civil war that saw the collapse of the Star League, the Inner Sphere is dominated by five Great Houses—the Capellan Confederation ruled by House Liao, the Draconis Combine ruled by House Kurita, the Federated Suns ruled by House Davion, the Free Worlds League ruled by House Marik, and the Lyran Commonwealth ruled by House Steiner. Each house claimed the right to be First Lord of the Star League, but none could agree as who was right, and in a series of Succession Wars, the houses have battled each other into technological decline. In that time, the battlemech has remained king of the battlefield, each house fiercely protecting the few battlemech manufacturing facilities each possesses and suffering from a decreasing capacity both to produce new ’mechs and repair them. A battlemech pilot is akin to a knight of old and many ’mechs are handed down through families. The last thing that any pilot wants to suffer is a loss of his mech and his becoming one of the Dispossessed. As well as presenting a history of the Inner Sphere and details of the five great Houses, the rule book also describes numerous mercenary units with their own histories and relationships to the Houses, plus the Bandit Kingdoms of the Periphery.

The background, essentially a ‘feudalist future’, provides reasons and rivalries in what is an age of continual war, that can explain the whys and wherefores of any battles that the players want to stage. If perhaps the rulebook is missing anything, it is some actual scenario ideas that the players can simply set up and play.

In terms of game, the players will roll for initiative and then alternate the movement of their battlemechs. A battlemech can walk, run, or jump—the latter requiring jump jets—which determines how many Movement Points it has to spend on crossing terrain. The terrain can be open or rough ground, cliffs and bluffs, light and heavy woods, and water. The heavier terrain costs more Movement Points to cross. Once movement has been completed, the players take it in turn to declare their attacks for their battlemechs and then roll for the attacks. Battlemechs are equipped with an array of different weapon types and sizes. Lasers can be small, medium, or large; short range missiles launchers fire volleys of two, four, or six missiles; and long-range missile launchers fire volleys of five, ten, or twenty missiles. Plus, there are an autocannon and the PPC. The different weapons have their own ranges, damage inflicted, and heat generated. Rolling to hit is based on the range and is modified by the gunnery skill of a battlemech’s pilot, the movement of both attacker and defender, terrain and cover, and lastly, any ongoing effects of heat for the attacker. The attacking player then rolls the dice, aiming to roll equal to or higher than the target number.

The location of successful hits is determined randomly as the targeting systems of the Inner Sphere are poor. This includes individual missiles for short range missiles, but groups of five for long range missiles. Damage is first deducted from armour in a location and when that is gone, from the internal structure. Critical hits on the hit location roll can bypass armour and automatically do damage to internal structure. Any damage to the internal structure has a chance to inflict damage to weapons or ammunition in a location, to the engine or gyro in the torso, to actuators in the arms and legs, and even the pilot himself on a headshot. Critical hits have severe consequences. Damage to a weapon will destroy it, ammunition will explode causing more damage, damaged actuators and gyro make the battlemech more difficult to operate, a damaged engine will increase its heat output and if it takes more damage cause it to explode and possibly kill the pilot, and head hits can also kill the pilot or knock out an important component. In the meantime, if damage exceeds the amount of internal structure, a leg or arm can fall off or be destroyed. Excess damage can also be transferred to other locations.

Lastly, as well as tracking ammunition use, a player must track the heat a battlemech generates from movement and weapons use as well as damage to the engine. Each battlemech comes with ten heat sinks which will bleed off a certain amount of heat, and more may be fitted, depending upon the design. Excess heat is retained until it is bled off via the heat sinks, meaning that a battlemech will probably need to firer fewer weapons and move a shorter distance to do this. One part of play is thus managing heat from turn to turn. Rushing into an engagement all guns blazing is likely to generate far too much heat, limiting tactical options in subsequent turns. Most battlemechs have an optimal range for its weapons so working within those parameters will also help in heat management. This is in addition to making the best use of the terrain to gain cover or if necessary, standing in the water to work off excess heat!

Rounding out the rulebook are expert rules that allow a battlemech to twist its torso as a reaction to change its firing arc, make physical attacks—including picking up a blown-off limb and using it as a club, charging, and setting fire to the wooded areas. There are also rules for battlemech design, enabling a player to create his own and then test them out on the field of battle. It is just four pages long, and even includes an example, but expands game play in a surprising direction, enabling a player to experiment beyond the fourteen official designs included in the game.

Physically, BattleTech: A Game of Armoured Combat is a good-looking game. It might only use cardboard standees, but they are attractive and they look decent on the very nice maps. The rulebook itself is in black and white and whilst packing a lot of detail into its forty-eight pages is easy to read and understand. This helped by examples of the rules throughout.

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Trever Mendham reviewed Battledroids in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 66 (June 1985). He said, “Overall, this is a well-written, easy-to-understand set of rules. Much of the design is clearly specific to robot combat and succeeds in capturing the flavour of this sort of battle. As it stands, Battledroids is a very good robot combat system, but very little in terms of ‘game’. The production value leads one to expect more.” before awarding it an overall score of seven out of ten.

In The Space Gamer Number 75 (July/August 1985), Aaron Allston reviewed the original game in ‘Featured Review: Battledroids’. His initial reaction was that the game was one of “…[G]iant Japanese robot combat.” and was surprised to discover that it was not, feeling that its “…[F]uture-era “dark age”” was “…[F]leshed out far more than is necessary for a boardgame.” He then said, “But none of it feels like the Japanese cartoons. Rules such as beat buildup and weary campaign background are just wrong for the genre. It’s rather akin to designing a roleplaying game where the characters have superpowers and skintight costumes - and then run about performing political infighting and corporate takeovers a la Dallas or Dynasty. As the Japanese models and cartoons become more common over here, more and more buyers will be purchasing this game expecting something like the source materials, and they’ll be disappointed as I was. They’ll have a decent enough game on their hands – but they may not want to play it.” However, he was more positive in his conclusion: “My recommendation? Buy Battledroids if you'd like a giant-robots boardgame that has nothing to do with the Japanese cartoons. It’s a decent game. You won’t throw away any of your other games to play Battledroids fulltime, but you’ll be adequately entertained.”

BattleTech was reviewed in Adventurer: The Superior Fantasy & Science Fiction Games Magazine Issue #7 (February 1987), alongside the expansions, CityTech, which added urban terrain, infantry, and armour, and AeroTech, which added aerial and space combat. Ashley Watkins made some comparisons between BattleTech and some of the anime titles that were the source material for game and overall, had few reservations, concluding that, “Battletech has a real science fiction flavour, and it’s not often that the elements of playability and background come together in an SF game. So get Citytech for the combat rules, Battletech you want to design your own mechs, Aerotech only if you want the variable geometry mechs, or want to play the space game. This game could well become a cult classic and I highly recommend that you give it a look.”

Dale L. Kemper reviewed BattleTech and CityTech in ‘Game Reviews’ of Different Worlds Issue 45 (March/April 1987). He countered some of the criticism of the game not being Japanese enough by saying, “Battletech surpasses other “Japanese robot”-type games on the market for the simple reason that its universe makes sense. The Battlemech vehicles in the game (many which resemble those from such Japanimation shows as Macross and its Robotec U.S. variant) are piloted military units with strengths and weaknesses. They resemble walking tanks alot more than they resemble the shape-changing robots popularized in the latest cartoons. Certain tactics will aid Mechwarriors in various situations and others will not. Practice and skill outweigh luck in this game.” Before moving on to look at some of the expansions, he concluded that, “All in all Battletech is a good introduction to the universe of the Succession Wars. It should whet your appetite for more and FASA plans on giving it to you. With all the addon games and rules, Battletech will be around for some time to come.” and awarded it three-and-a-half stars.

Steve Wieck reviewed BattleTech in White Wolf Issue #7 (April 1987), continuing the trend of reviewing alongside the supplements Citytech, Aerotech, and MechWarrior. He awarded BattleTech a rating of eight out of ten and said that, “If the true test of any game is its playability, then Battletech is a good system. It is extremely easy to gamemaster and fun to play, at an hourly price that eventually beats the movies.”

Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer Number 78 (April/May 1987) returned to BattleTech when Scott Tanner asked the question, “Feeling overwhelmed by the number of products for mechwarrior gaming? Here’s a survey of FASA Corps. BATTLETECH products.” in ‘Infotech on BATTLETECH’. He concluded his description of the core game with, “Battletech is a good game which stands on its own, but lacks in two important areas which the next two supplements cover; warfare in an urban environment and air combat.” The article also contained descriptions of CityTech, AeroTech, and MechWarrior.

Battletech was reviewd in ‘Role-Playing Reviews: Tickets to the stars’ in Dragon Magazine Issue #131 (March 1988) by Jim Bambra alongside the MechWarrior roleplaying game. He said, “The BATTLETECH game is a brilliantly conceived and presented game of robotic combat set in the war-torn universe of the Successor States.” before concluding about the game, “The BATTLETECH game system requires tactical thinking and detailed combat resolution, without becoming too mechanically complicated. Add in the background which appears in sidebars throughout the book, and you have a very good game rich in depth and technical information.”

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It is interesting to note that despite being a wargame, BattleTech has remained closely associated with the roleplaying hobby rather than the wargaming hobby. This can be attributed to a number of factors, such as its set-up of fighting with what are effectively giant robots not being a traditional subject matter for wargames—at least not in 1984, it being published by a roleplaying publisher, adverts for it being carried in roleplaying magazines, and for it being supported by a long running series of well-regarded fiction—at least within the hobby. Of course, BattleTech did have its own roleplaying game in the form of MechWarrior, but it has never been as popular as the core game and gained little traction outside of fans of BattleTech. Ultimately, for whatever reason, BattleTech has always been accepted alongside the roleplaying hobby rather than rejected by it.

From the basis of BattleTech: A Game of Armoured Combat has spawned a rich and detailed setting supported by numerous games and editions, as well as miniatures and more, but what has made the BattleTech franchise what it is today has to start somewhere. Returning to the original game and there is a pleasing elegance to BattleTech: A Game of Armoured Combat that is easy to grasp and play. What you might play is another matter, for whilst the background is excellent, the issue with it is that not much is made of it in the rule book. There are no scenarios or suggested battles and had there been, they would have drawn the players into the game and setting. That said, there are hooks here and there in the background that can be developed in scenario set-ups, especially in the descriptions of the mercenary units and the bandit kingdoms. BattleTech: A Game of Armoured Combat is still a very playable and enjoyable game with flavoursome combat and a good background.

Friday Filler: The Top Gun Strategy Game

The last time there was a board game based on the 1986 film, Top Gun, it was Top Gun: The Game of Modern Fighter Combat, published by FASA, also in 1986. It was a game of aerial combat which took the players from Pensacola: Flight School to Miramar: Top Gun School and pitched them into simulated battles between the fighters from the USA, the USSR, and other world powers of the late Cold war period. It even included rules for incorporating the game into FASA’s BattleTech universe and allowed players to field atmospheric fighters against aerospace fighters, although the technologies between the two differ greatly. The Top Gun Strategy Game is the second board game based on the 1986 film and it is a very different beast.

The Top Gun Strategy Game is designed by Prospero Hall, the collaborative game design studio responsible for games such as Horrified and Jaws. Both of which are fantastically thematic designs and highly playable adaptations of their source material. Published by Mixlore, the Top Gun Strategy Game is designed to be played two to four players, aged ten and up. It draws directly upon the film itself, but does not send the players into direct combat—only mock combat—and employs the same two-stage game play as seen in Jaws. The players take the roles of Team Maverick/Goose and Team Iceman/Slider, pilot and WSO or Weapons System Operator, respectively. In the first half of the game, the ‘Volleyball Phase’, the two teams face off against each other on the volleyball court. The team that beats the other gains self-confidence or intimidates the team, which grants them an advantage in the ‘Hop Phase’ when the two teams engage in an aerial dogfight in an attempt to acquire valuable target lock on their opponent and so secure a swift victory. The game play will switch back and forth between the ‘Volleyball Phase’ and the ‘Hop Phase’ until one team scores sufficient points to win.

The components for the ‘Volleyball Phase’ consist of nineteen Volleyball cards, a Volleyball token, and a Volleyball Net, the latter two items in thick card. The Volleyball cards are divided into two identical sets, the same for each team, a pink set for Maverick and Goose, and a blue set for Iceman and Slider. Each set is laid out face down as a three-by-three grid on each side of the Volleyball Net and consists of five card types. When revealed, the Set card and the Bump cards allow the player with control of the ball to move it orthogonally to another card and reveal it. This can be one of his own cards or his rival’s across the net. The Set card allows the ball to be moved one space and the Bump card one or two spaces. The Spike card enables the controlling player to place the ball on one of his opponent’s cards which is still face down. The aim for each team is to find and reveal its opponent’s Whiff cards. When this happens, the team who reveals this, can draw Pilot Tiles or WSO Cards which will provide an advantage in the ‘Hop Phase’. Each team has three Whiff cards and once a team has revealed all three of its opposing team, it wins the volleyball match. The winning team decides who will play as the Attacker and the Defender in the ‘Hop Phase’.

In addition, there is a fifth card type, the Bump Save card. Each team can use it once to prevent a face-down card from being revealed. It is instead used as a Bump. Overall, the ‘Volleyball Phase’ plays quickly and easily, and has the feel of a volleyball game.

The components for the ‘Hop Phase’ are more complex. Each team has a Cockpit Shield, a set of Pilot Tiles and WSO cards, and a plane. In addition, there is a Hop Board, six Hop Scenario cards, a set of Waypoint Tokens, Target Lock Tokens, green Pilot Tiles, green WSO cards, and a set of four dice. The Cockpit Shields are used to keep each Team’s decision hidden, whilst the Pilot Tiles are used to determine a plane’s movement. Each Pilot Tile consists of two joined hexes, one indicating the plane’s starting position and finishing position and direction, as a potential change of elevation. Each plane slots into a stand on which its elevation can be adjusted to one of four positions. Each WSO card shows a hex grid at the centre of which is marked a plane. In front of it are several numbered ‘Target lock Attack Hexes’, whilst behind it are several ‘Countermeasure Defence Hexes’, again numbered. Each WSO card in a team’s hand can only be played once unless the Retrieve card is played, which returns all played cards to a team’s hand, but prevents them from attacking or defending that turn. The Hop Board shows a seven by eight grid of hexes of the skies near TOPGUN, the Naval Fighter Weapons School at Naval Air Station Miramar. The Waypoint Tokens are placed on the Hop Board on spaces marked on the Hop Scenario cards. These are double-sided and as well as hexes indicating where the Waypoint Tokens are placed, each Hop Scenario card gives the starting position and elevation for each plane. The four dice are marked with blanks and Target Lock icons and are rolled when attempting a target lock. The green WSO cards and the green Pilot Tiles show different ‘Target lock Attack Hexes’ and ‘Countermeasure Defence Hexes’ and manoeuvres to the standard ones which each team starts play with.

To play, a Hop Scenario card is selected, and the Hop Board set according to its layout. Each team chooses two Pilot Tiles and a WSO card. The Pilot Tiles are played, the defending team moving first, followed by the attacking team. This will result in a change of position and potentially, elevation. The WSO cards are revealed and if a defending plane falls within the ‘Target lock Attack Hexes’ marked on the WSO card, the attacking team rolls a number of dice equal to the number on hex that the targeted plane is in. The number of dice can be reduced if the attacking plane is in the ‘Countermeasure Defence Hexes’ marked on the defending team’s WSO card. Being at a higher elevation will grant an extra die, or lose a die if at a lower elevation. If a Target Lock symbol on any of the dice is rolled, Target Lock is achieved, and the attacking receives a Target Lock token.

Play continues like this from turn to turn until one team achieves a Target Lock, the defending team has collected three of the Waypoint tokens, or either team manages to achieve the ‘Flipping the Bird’ manoeuvre as per the film. Once achieved, the ‘Hop Phase’ is over. At this point, if a team has scored a total of twelve or more points from achieving Target Locks and/or collecting Waypoint Tokens, it has won the game. If not, play switches back to the ‘Volleyball Phase’, then to the ‘Hop Phase’, and so on until one team wins.

Physically, the Top Gun Strategy Game reflects it low price. The cards are a bit thin and do need to be sleeved if the game is be played more than a few times. The Volleyball Net is difficult to set up and to be honest does not add that much to the game anyway. The planes and their stands with their poles for changing elevation are decently produced and although slightly fiddly to use, do add a lot to the game and give it a sense of space. The rules are easy to read and understand. One last issue is the choice of colours. Pink and blue neon. Which do give the game a singular look.

The Top Gun Strategy Game is two games in one. The ‘Volleyball Phase’ is a short, primarily luck-based mini-game whose game play will quickly pale in comparison to the complexities and options in the ‘Hop Phase’. It also does not really work as a game for more than two players as there are not enough decisions to be made in playing it, whereas the ‘Hop Phase’ actually works better with four players rather than two. With two players on each team, one can be the pilot and one the Weapons System Operator, responsible each turn for selecting the Pilot Tiles and WSO card respectively. This forces them to work together as shown in the film as attacker and defender attempt to out manoeuvre each other and line up the Target Lock needed to win each ‘Hop Phase’. The Waypoint Tokens add a tactical element too, as the defending plane races through them to collect them and the attacking plane chases, attempting to stop it from collecting too many whilst the remaining Waypoint Tokens predict where the defending plane might be headed.

The Top Gun Strategy Game is an odd game. An aerial combat game combined with a volleyball game and done in neon colours like the cover to an eighties’ computer game. Nor is it a ‘strategy’ game, but rather one that is tactical and that really only in the dogfights. The ‘Volleyball Phase’ does not add all that much to the play of the ‘Hop Phase’ and actually having to go back, set it up again and replay it soon becomes a chore, especially if there are four players, because it leaves a player on each team with little to really do. It is possible to alternate, but it does not really matter that much in what is a random phase anyway. Thankfully, the ‘Hop Phase’ offers actual decisions and a little deduction to work out the best Pilot Tiles and WSO card to use, and whilst the Hop Scenario cards add some variety in terms of set-up, it is not that much.

Ultimately, the Top Gun Strategy Game is a game for the fan of the film who does not mind playing the odd board game. For the regular board game player, there is not enough depth to the game to really want to replay it more than once or twice and it is certainly too light a game for devotees of aerial combat games. Prospero Hall has designed some excellent games, matching up mechanics with theme to create some excellent emulations of the films they draw from, but the Top Gun Strategy Game is not one of them. The best of the Prospero Hall designs do two things. One is to engage the players in the story of the film or source material, the second is to enable them to play and make that story their own, but the Top Gun Strategy Game only just achieves the first and never manages the second. If you feel the need for speed, then the Top Gun Strategy Game might be all you need, but there are definitely better and more fun air combat games available that do not require you to simulate a game of volleyball.

1959: Risk

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles—and so on, as the anniversaries come up. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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1959 marks the publication of two classic wargames. One is Diplomacy: A Game of International Intrigue, Trust, and Treachery, the other is Risk: The Continental Game. Although they are both set in past times, one Napoleonic, one Edwardian, they could not be more different. One is card and dice driven and has been hugely successful, probably the most successful mass market wargame ever published, but the other is entirely trust and decision driven. The former is Risk, the latter Diplomacy. Both are sixty years old in 2019.

Risk was originally invented and released in France in 1957 as La Conquête du Monde—The Conquest of the World—by French film director Albert Lamorisse. It was then bought by American publishers Parker Brothers and released as Risk: The Continental Game in 1959, later as Risk: The Game of Global Domination. Today, it is published as Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest by Wizards of the Coast as part of its Avalon Hill brand. Although the game has seen numerous variations and alternative settings, such as the acclaimed Risk Legacy or Risk 2210 AD, the core game remains much the same as the original. Two to five players (although it comes with six armies), aged ten and up, attempt to defeat each others’ armies and conquer the world.

Risk is played on a map of the world, each of the six continents colour-coded and divided into separate territories, for a total of forty-two. Some of the continents are connected by sea routes, for example, Brazil to North Africa or Iceland to Greenland, allowing sea travel between territories, but otherwise, Risk entirely concerns itself with land battles. There is a card corresponding to each territory and these forty-two territory cards are used to determine the initial placement of the players’ troops. The cards are also marked with one of three symbols—infantry, cavalry, or artillery—and when collected in suits of three (one of each, three of the same, or two of the same and a wild card), they can be turned in to gain a player new troops. To gain new territory cards, a player will need to attack the territories of his rival players, defeat their troops, and capture them.

Game set-up is simple. Each player receives his army and is dealt a random set of territory cards. These indicate where his troops start, the player placing one or more troops in each of these starting territories. The cards are then handed back to form the deck from which a territory card is drawn when a player captures one or more territories on his turn. On his turn a player receives new troops according to the number of territories and any whole continents he holds, makes as many attacks against his rivals as he wants, and then moves any of his troops to adjacent territories as long as there is always one unit left in each territory. Each army consists of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, with the cavalry pieces being used to represent five infantry and artillery used to represent ten. Neither cavalry and artillery have any other role in the game bar to make mass troop handling easier.

Battles are handled simply enough. The attacking player makes his attack with between one and three troops, whilst the defending player defends with between one and two troops. The attacking player rolls a single red six-sided die for each of his attacking troops, whilst the defending player rolls a blue die for each of his defending troops. The highest die rolls from each side are compared with each other, the higher result of a pair defeating the other and resulting in removal of the defeated enemy troop unit. Ties are awarded to the defending player, but where the defending player can only defeat a maximum of two attacking troops in an exchange, an attacking player can defeat both defending troop units with a good roll. The attacking player can continue attacking until he runs out of troops or he captures the territory he is attacking. If the latter, then he draws a new territory card.

Play continues like this until one player has defeated his rivals and conquered the world. This then is Risk, a game about the ‘risk’ of attacking the enemy, defeating them, and capturing their territory. It is not a game about defence or withstanding your opponents’ attacks—although that will happen in the game—but a game which rewards the attacking player who is successful in capturing territories. The rewards are always more troops and come in various ways. Capture and hold more territories and a player will be rewarded with more troops at the start of his turn; capture and hold a continent and a player will be rewarded with more troops at the start of his turn; and capture more territories and a player will be rewarded with a territory card each turn, which suites of three can be turned in at the beginning of his turn for more troops. Notably, each time a player hands in three territory cards, he is rewarded with more troops than the last player who did so, whether that was himself or a rival.

Famously, Risk is more a game of luck than skill or strategy. It rewards success or luck by giving the winner more troops with which to defeat his rivals. Of course, his luck can change and go the other way, but the result either way is a fairly long game, especially the more players who are involved, with not a great deal for the players to do when it is not their turn. On the plus side, the simplicity of the rules make Risk easy to teach and learn, then set up and play.

This though is Classic Risk, a game of global domination played until one player resoundly defeats the others. In today’s version, Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest, it is only one of several game types suggested—and not even the first. ‘Game 1: Secret Mission RISK’ is the first and the default game in Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest and sees each player assigned a secret mission card from the twelve included in the game, for example, ‘Destroy all ORANGE  troops’ or ‘Conquer the continents of EUROPE and AUSTRALIA’. Should a player meet all of the conditions of his secret mission card, then he wins the game. This can happen even if another player unintentionally helps him out, for example, if a player defeats all of the orange troops, then the player with the ‘Destroy all ORANGE  troops’ secret mission wins.

‘Game 1: Secret Mission RISK’ counters one of the criticisms of Risk, providing more focused objectives for a shorter game. ‘Game 2: Classic RISK’ is what the standard game of Risk was before the introduction of secret missions and will be the version remembered by many when they recall the game. ‘Game 3: RISK for 2 Players’ requires one player to defeat the other, but adds a neutral army which can both players can attack, yet when one player does so, the other player rolls for its defence. Otherwise, this two-player variant plays the same as the classic variant. Lastly, ‘Game 4: Capital RISK’ gives each player a headquarters located in one of their territories. This version is won by capturing all of your opponents’ headquarters.

Physically, Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest looks, feels, but is not as cheap as it  should be, given the quality of its components. The armies included in the game—the infantry, cavalry, and artillery—are of cheap plastic, the cards of thin card, and the game board, although illustrated with an attractive map, on slightly thick card rather than being mounted. The map board does not quite sit flat and will need to be weighted down. Fortunately, the rulebook is neatly laid out, easy to read, and comes with a little playing advice, making it the best produced item in the less than sturdy box.

Many will claim that Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest is a classic game. This is undeniably true, but not because it is a good game. It is not a good game because it takes too long to play, because it luck based, because it favours the victor and so often leaves the other players with long periods with nothing to do. All of these are acknowledged issues with the game, some of which are addressed by the different game types in the current version. Yet this does not mean it is unplayable nor inaccessible, but does often mean that other games are designed as the anti-Risk, just as some games are designed as the anti-Monopoly.

Rather Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest is a classic game because it is the most mass-produced and most sold wargame of all time, having been on sale in toy shops, department stores, game shops, and on-line for sixty years, and thus been on our shelves for just as long. Where games like Monopoly, Cluedo, and Scrabble are the games of our childhood, acceptable to all of the family, Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest is one step away from those, acceptable still, but not to all of the family because of its subject matter and playing time. Like those other games it benefits from simple rules that everyone can understand and quickly master, so can be played by anyone, no matter what their skill level is. Indeed, despite it being a confrontational wargame, such is the element of luck in the game, the losing players can blame invariably part of their loss down to the dice rather than their lack of skill or their opponent’s greater skill. 

Ultimately, Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest is our first experience with wargaming, an acceptable introduction to the hobby and a childhood classic worth revisiting out of nostalgia rather than because it is a good game. Accessible, playable, but at best a stepping stone to better and more interesting games. 

1959: Diplomacy

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles—and so on, as the anniversaries come up. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

1959 marks the publication of two classic wargames. One is Diplomacy: A Game of International Intrigue, Trust, and Treachery, the other is Risk: The Continental Game. Although they are both set in past times, one Napoleonic, one Edwardian, they could not be more different. One is card and dice driven and has been hugely successful, probably the most successful mass market wargame ever published, but the other is entirely trust and decision driven. The former is Risk, the latter Diplomacy. Both are sixty years old in 2019.

Published in 1959 by Games Research Inc. and later Avalon Hill, but now Wizards of the Coast under the Avalon Hill brand, Diplomacy is the grandfather of grand strategy games, an exploration of European national and political tensions prior to the Great War. A game of trust and negotiation, it appeals to the historian and the diplomat, whether that is the armchair historian or diplomat—like you and I, or the actual historian or diplomat—famously John F. Kennedy and Henry Kissinger. It is a game of decision and trust and negotiation, there being no dice or luck involved whatsoever. Designed for two to seven players aged twelve and over, in Diplomacy each player will control one of the great European powers—Austria-Hungary, England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Turkey—and will have under his command a number of armies and fleets. He will also hold his traditional or home provinces that his country held in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Between them are several neutral provinces, such as Norway, Tunisia, Portugal, Bulgaria, and so on. Switzerland is also neutral, but cannot be entered by any army. Some of these provinces, both home and neutral, are supply centres. Possession of these enable a power to build another army or fleet, likewise loss of these will force a power to disband an army or fleet. There are a total of thirty four such supply centres on Diplomacy’s map of Europe. If one player or power controls eighteen of these, then he wins the game. Winning though, is far from easy, and can take anywhere from between four and twelve hours—Diplomacy is a long game and it takes dedication to play.

Diplomacy is played out year by year, with two turns—Spring and Fall (Autumn)—per year beginning in 1901. On his turn, a player writes orders to each of his fleets and armies. These are to Hold (stay in position), Move (to an adjacent province), Support (support another army or fleet in moving into a province), or Convoy (a fleet transports an army across a sea province to another land province). Once written down, the orders from all powers are resolved simultaneously and this sets up the primary difficulty in taking provinces. All units are of equal strength or value—there is no rolling of dice or means to determine the strength of an attack or unit—and so when two opposing units attempt to capture the same province or one attempts to force another from a province, nothing happens. To successfully attack and hold a province, a player needs to support the attacking unit with another unit in another province. This can be a unit belonging to the attacking player or that of an ally. If successful, the defending unit can be forced to retreat, the attacking unit taking the province.

These orders are issued twice a year, but after the Fall turn, if a player has captured a Supply Centre, he can build a new army or fleet in one of his home provinces. If a player has lost a Supply Centre, he loses a unit. Play proceeds like this, from year to year until one player or power captures the eighteen supply centres necessary to win the game.

Now mechanically, this sounds simple enough, and it is. Within a turn or two though, as the powers send their armies and fleets out to capture first the supply centres in neutral territories they will clash with rival powers. Then, once the neutral supply centres have been captured, the powers will be brought into direct confrontation, and at this point, a stalemate is likely to ensue… In order to break such a stalemate, the powers and thus the players will have to co-operate and form alliances, much like the Entente Cordiale between France and Great Britain and the Triple Alliance formed between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. This is where Diplomacy begins to get interesting, challenging, and duplicitous.

Writing the orders for each turn—Spring and Fall (Autumn)—per year takes a few minutes, but a fifteen minute phase is allowed before this for negotiation between players. During this time, they can negotiate what they will write as their respective orders, reach agreements, form alliances, and so on. This might be to support an allied player’s move into a particular province, hold against an enemy, allow a convoy move for an ally, and so on. Forming alliances makes their member players very powerful, but the question is, how far can they trust each other? For not only is it within the rules of Diplomacy to reach agreements and make alliances, it is within the rules to break them as well. A betrayal and a breaking of an alliance at the right time can break a stalemate and hopefully give the betrayer the advantage to defeat his former ally, who is unlikely to make the same mistake of trusting the betrayer twice...

It is this capacity to break alliances, typically to the detriment of one member over another, to betray the trust between allies, which gives Diplomacy its primary reputation, that of being a game which breaks friendships. That though, is really down to the friendship rather than the game itself, because the game can be played by more mature players who will not necessarily put their friendships to the test by playing Diplomacy. By modern standards, if you can play The Resistance or Battlestar Galactica, both with built traitor mechanics, then Diplomacy should not be so of a test of friendships. But arguably, those games have traitors built into them by design and from the start, so the players know what to expect and can blame the game’s mechanics as much as the player betraying them. In Diplomacy is there no inbuilt mechanic for there being a traitor and it comes about through play and duplicity rather than anything else. Further, because of the trust placed in fellow allies, the betrayal of trust is likely to be all that more painful…

Nevertheless, forging the trust between players and building alliances is very much part of the play and the skill in Diplomacy. For it is a game built around negotiation and interaction as much as it is ordering fleets and armies across Europe—and in fact the need to make those order calls for that negotiation and interaction. 

In the sixty years since it was first published, there have been many editions of Diplomacy, published by many different publishers. The current version is the fiftieth anniversary edition published by Wizards of the Coast as part of its Avalon Hill imprint. It comes with eighty-four army counters and eighty-four fleet counts for the seven great power; one-hundred-and-forty-seven control markers to indicate who has control of the various supply centres; a large game board depicting Europe marked with the provinces held by the great powers at game’s start and the neutral provinces; a pad of maps for marking up orders; and the rulebook.

All of the components are solid, although it would have been nice if the armies and fleets had been wooden rather than the sturdy cardboard they are. The map is very clear and easy to read. As is the rulebook, although it would have been nice if some colour had been included in the maps used to show the examples of play. Although the rules are simple, time is taken to go through them with plenty of examples and explanations. There is also advice on how to play with fewer players and an example play through of the first seven turns of the game. This is a typical race for the supply centres in neutral territory. It is a pity that there are no illustrations for these moves, but it encourages the player to act them in order to see how the game plays.

Diplomacy is a game which demands the full seven players—it is not as fun with fewer—and the time in which to play it to its final outcome. Of course, few of us have that opportunity as often as we would like and almost from almost the very start, the play of Diplomacy was conducted via the post and in fanzines, then later online, so that games can be conducted at a more leisurely pace with greater scope for negotiation (and betrayal). Its age, its theme, and its set-up means that there has probably been more written about Diplomacy and how it can be played than any other game, except Chess (which of course, is centuries older). By modern standards, at the height of the Eurogame, Diplomacy is too confrontational, too much the wargame. It could be argued that from the start, though not necessarily later on in the game, its situation places the players and their powers finely balanced against each other. Breaking that is part of winning the game and even though Diplomacy is not strictly a wargame, it is not a Eurogame either. 

The lightness of the mechanics and the historical set-up, means that Diplomacy has the capacity to be something more. As a game of confrontation and negotiation between the European powers prior to the Great War, it has the capacity to work as an exploration of the nationalism, the politics, aims, and international relations between the powers. There is scope here for roleplaying too, as the players take on the roles of the Kings, Emperors, Sultans, Czars, and Presidents leading the great powers , and by increasing the number of players, perhaps their various ministers and generals. Such scope lies outside of Diplomacy as it comes in the box and arguably it would also require at least one Game Master.

Again by modern standards, Diplomacy is a game design with flaws. Its play is too long and by its very nature, will lead to player elimination who will have nothing to do whilst the surviving powers jockey for position and then confront each other. These are likely to be contributing factors to the game not being as popular as it once was. Another factor may well be the theme to Diplomacy, that of the great powers of Europe prior to the Great War, no longer having the significance that it once had, as those events were within living memory when the game was first published. And yet, Diplomacy: A Game of International Intrigue, Trust, and Treachery remains a classic because it emphasises the negotiation and interaction aspects of playing it as being key to the wargame aspect and mastering that is the path to victory—eventually. 

Gibsons 100: L'Attaque

Gibsons is one hundred years old. Founded as H. P. Gibson & Sons Limited in 1919, it is the oldest manufacturer of board games in the United Kingdom as well as a noted manufacturer of jigsaws. In its time, it has been famous for publishing the classic strategic games of the 1970s and 1980s—Civilisation and Kingmaker—but before World War II, it was famous for publishing a quartet of early military strategy games. Known as the ‘big four’, the quartet consisted of Dover Patrol, L’Attaque, Aviation, and Tri-Tactics. Of these four, Gibsons has published L’Attaque in a brand new edition to celebrate its centenary. Originally marketed as the ‘game to rival chess’, L’Attaque is an abstract war game designed for two players, aged eight and up. The new edition remains relatively unchanged bar the inclusion of a set of the rules rewritten for clarity and a facsimile of the original 1925 rules.

Originally, a French game designed by Mademoiselle Hermance Edan who received a patent for a ‘jeu de bataille avec pièces mobiles sur damier’ (a battle game with mobile pieces on a game board) in 1909, the game was named L’Attaque by its French publisher, Au jeu retrouvé, before H. P. Gibson & Sons Limited purchased the English language rights to the game and published it in 1925. In this game two armies will face off against each other over a set of three rivers. In the original, the opponents were the English and French armies, but they have since been simply named the red and the blue armies. Played out on a nine by ten grid of squares with three rivers at its centre, the aim of the game is to defeat your opponent by either capturing their Flag or forcing him into a stalemate where he cannot move his pieces.

Both armies are identical, consisting of thirty-six pieces made up of the following in ascending order of value and rarity: Scout (2), Sapper (3), Sergeant (4), Lieutenant (5), Captain (6), Major (7), Colonel (8), Brigadier (9), and Commander In Chief (10). Each army also has a several Mines and a Flag. Although the artwork on the front of the pieces is the same for both sides—essentially an interwar period style English army—the backs of the pieces are either plain blue or plain red. A higher value piece beats a lower value piece, but several pieces have special moves. Thus, the Spy is easily defeated by every other unit, but defeats the Commander In Chief; when revealed, a Mine blows everyone up in adjacent squares, except a Sapper who defuses the Mine; and Scouts have unlimited, orthogonal movement. All other units are capable of moving just the one space, either backwards or forwards, left or right.

Set-up is simple enough. Each player takes his army and places its pieces on his side of the board, keeping all of the fronts and thus the types of pieces facing him, and the plain, coloured back facing his opponent. He is free to place his pieces where he wants, although Mines cannot be placed near the rivers. In general, each player will place his Flag at or near the back of his forces, as far away from his opponent’s forces as possible, protected by one or more Mines. On his turn, a player moves one piece. If it is in front of an opposing piece, then the player can declare an “Attack!” When this happens, both attacker and defender reveal the attacking and defending pieces, the highest ranked piece typically beating the lower ranked piece. Pieces of equal value defeat each other. The beaten piece or beaten pieces are removed from play, but a good player should endeavor to remember which pieces have defeated his own and so work to bring a piece of a higher value to defeat them. During the initial stages of the game, the two armies will be probe each other’s forces attempting to defeat or determine which pieces are which, whilst in the later stages, players will bring up their heavier units to defeat their opponents’ stronger defenders.

Some pieces are easier to identify than others, of course. The Scout is easy to identify simply by his extended movement, so a player may want to be more circumspect in revealing that until necessary. Similarly, Mines and Flags can be identified by the fact that neither moves, but that sets up the possibility of a trap. A player could keep a high value unit immobile throughout a game to lure his opponent in and so eliminate a piece attempting to locate and capture his Flag or locate a Mine. This can be effective if the attacking unit is a Sapper, which would deny a player the all important ability to defuse Mines. Once this trap is sprung, the high value piece is free to move and openly attack and defend.

With a playing time of twenty minutes, L’Attaque is surprisingly playable for a game that is over a century old. It is not a sophisticated game by modern standards, but it has given rise to many imitators, most notably Stratego, and was highly popular in its day. Nor is it a particularly deep game and the suggestion that it is a ‘game to rival chess’ is really hyperbole upon the part of the publisher.

Physically, the production values of the centenary version of L’Attaque are really quite lovely, whether that is the rich red box, the artwork on the playing pieces, and the heavy mounted board. The rules are printed on a slim, but heavy card sheet, whilst the inclusion of a facsimile of the original rules is a nice touch.

Of course, there is a wonderful sense of nostalgia to L’Attaque and this centenary edition does much to enforce that. As an artefact in itself, the game is nice celebration of the publisher’s birthday, but L’Attaque can still serve as an introduction to both early games and to wargaming, to bring new players into the hobby, and with a short playing time, to serve a diversion between longer games too. L’Attaque is a lovely piece of history—both gaming and ordinary history—which plays up to our nostalgia.

Your First Miniatures Wargame II

Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City has proved to be both successful and popular, having sold many, many copies and worn awards, including an Ennie Award and the UK Games Expo award in 2016. The skirmish fantasy wargame from Osprey Publishing presented clearly written and presented rules with depth, but not complexity, an easy to understand  and develop set-up, and a relatively low level of investment by the hobby’s standards—just ten figures per warband plus the terrain and scenery. The end result was to make Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City a very accessible game, suitable as an introduction to the hobby as much as it is a lighter alternative to more formal and heavier battles.

Although a number of supplements have been published for Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City, now Osprey Games sets sail very far away from the frozen city to a tropical paradise of constantly shifting jungle covered islands, hidden ruins, strange reptilian races and sorcerous snake-men, monsters out of time, and exotic mysteries. This is the Ghost Archipelago, a vast island chain, covered in the ruins of ancient civilizations, which disappears for centuries only to appear again in the far reaches of the southern ocean. When the Ghost Archipelago appears, pirates, adventurers, wizards, and legendary heroes all sail to its many shores in search of lost treasures and powerful artefacts. The Ghost Archipelago has reappeared and some of the descendants of those legendary heroes are drawn to the islands by their very blood! Their forebears drank from the fabled Crystal Pool that lies at the heart of the Ghost Archipelago and so gained abilities far beyond those of normal men. Their descendants possess only the weakest versions of these powers, but perhaps if they find the Crystal Pool and drink of its waters, they can become equal to their legendary ancestors!

This is the setting and set-up for Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago – Fantasy Wargames in the Lost Isles, a separate campaign and expansion to the world of Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City. It is designed for use with 28 mm miniatures, ten per player, a twenty-sided die or two, and lots of jungle style terrain. As with Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City, Northstar Miniatures manufactures figures specifically designed for use with Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago – Fantasy Wargames in the Lost Isles.

Just as in Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City, players in Ghost Archipelago control bands, but here they are not lead by Wizards, but by Heritors. Their ancestors were the legendary heroes who drank from the Crystal Pool and each Heritor is capable of amazing feats of strength and agility and other powers by drawing upon the power of their blood. For example, Burning Eyes freezes a target preventing them from acting, Ironskin reduces damage taken, and Trickshot, which negates modifiers for cover and terrain. A Heritor begins play with five Heritor abilities and each has a utilisation number which is rolled over to use the ability. A Heritor is not limited in the number of times he can use his abilities in a turn, except that each time after the first, it gets progressively more difficult to use an ability and he suffers Blood Burn, losing Hit Points of damage each time an ability is used. So Heritors can be really powerful, but at some cost, and a player should be careful when choosing to push his Heritor’s abilities with Blood Burn.

In general, a Heritor gets better at using his abilities as learning new ones takes time. There is a greater sense of physicality to Heritor abilities rather than the arcane spellcasting powers of Wizards in Frostgrave. This is not to say that magic does not play a role in Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago as each Heritor is accompanied by a Warden who will help the Heritor navigate through the islands. Dismissed as hedge-wizards and animists by the Wizards of Frostgrave, these spellcasters specialise in elemental and primal forces—they are Beast Wardens, Earth wardens, Storm Wardens, Vine Wardens, and Wave Wardens. The rest of a band consists of standard crewmen and specialist crewmen. The former are simple soldiers, whilst the latter are specialists such as Archers, Pearl Divers, Tomb Robbers, Savages, and so on. Many of these are nicely thematic and support the exoticism of the setting.

Mechanically, Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago uses the same rules as Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City, the same stats, and the same play set-up. Anyone coming to Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago from Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City will certainly find much which is familiar. It uses the same twenty-sided die mechanic, with players needing to roll higher than a target number, adding the appropriate attribute and a successful roll also determining how damage is inflicted, for example. 

Just like in Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago, bands in Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago are primarily involved in exploration and scavenging. Where the terrain in the far off city of Felstead is frozen and littered with ruins of streets and squares, the terrain in the isles of the Ghost Archipelago consists of steamy jungles, liana covered ruins, and so on (the rules suggest using aquarium terrain, which is nice advice). Each band has a ship which allows it to reach the islands and which can be upgraded to provide in game benefits. These ships do not actually appear in the game, although the boats each band uses to reach the shores do and the rules allow for battling over them when they appear. For the most part, bands will be competing and confronting each other over treasure, but every band is really hunting Map Stones. Collect all ten of these and a Heritor will have the complete map to the Crystal Pool and essentially won the Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago campaign. Truly the Heritor will have inherited his ancester’s powers.

Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago comes with plenty of support in the form of treasure and strange artefacts, details of both Heritor abilities and Warden spells, eight scenarios, and a bestiary of animals, monsters, and strange races. The bestiary includes dinosaurs (Saurians) and sentient races like the Dricheans and Snake-men, and demons and aquatic species. Together, these both support the given scenarios and allow the creation of further scenarios. 

Physically, where Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City was swathed in blue and white reflecting its cold, cold setting, Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago – Fantasy Wargames in the Lost Isles is green and tan, representing the lush jungles and the sandstone blocks of the ruins. The book is clearly written, but does involve flipping back and forth a bit to create characters and playing the game. It is liberally illustrated with photographs of miniatures in action and full colour, painted illustrations. These are all really evocative, suggesting how the game is played and providing inspiration.

Beyond the confines of Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago – Fantasy Wargames in the Lost Isles there is scope for expansion aplenty. Perhaps guidelines for handling crossovers between Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City and Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago – Fantasy Wargames in the Lost Isles since the two take place in the same world, exploring what happens when the Heritors find the Crystal Pool, setting sail aboard ships for naval combat, and so on. Although the same mechanics and the same set-up are used in Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago – Fantasy Wargames in the Lost Isles as in Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City, this new set of rules and new setting feels very different. It is not as arcane or as chilly, drawing things such as Pirates of the Caribbean and the legend of the Fountain of Youth, to give a more verdant and exotic feel, with less of a sense of ruin, but much more of the unknown, and with the inclusion of Heritors, Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago – Fantasy Wargames in the Lost Isles has a more physical feel.

Your First Miniatures Wargame Companion

As the title suggests, Frostgrave: Into the Breeding Pits is a supplement for Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City, the fantasy wargame skirmish rules published by Osprey Publishing. Both Frostgrave and its first supplement, Thaw of the Lich Lord are set in ancient city of Felstead, a city of magic and wizardry which has long fallen into an ice age all of its very own. The difference with Frostgrave: Into the Breeding Pits is that it is not set in the city of Felstead, but below it. For amongst the various rules included in the supplement are those for taking the skirmishing, wizard-led bands into the great dungeons and caverns beneath the city where ancient wizards once experimented upon and bred monstrous beasts in great pits. The secret of these Breeding Pits and the knowledge of the Beastcrafters are just two of the treasures to be found in the catacombs. In addition, Frostgrave: Into the Breeding Pits includes new magic, new scenarios, new soldiers, new treasures, and more.

The ‘dungeons’ below Felstead comes in two forms. The first is that of huge caverns containing ruined city blocks, just like that on the surface, but enclosed in darkness and perhaps a little warmer and damper than above. This uses the standard set-up for the game. The second is that of the traditional dungeon a la Dungeons & Dragons, a labyrinth of connected corridors and chambers, but with dead space—dirt or rock walls—between them. This is the dungeon set-up and it has certain limitations on game play. In particular, ceilings limit the use of Leap as an action, dead space between the corridors and chambers limit the range of the Plane Walk spell, while in both set-ups, the need for artificial lighting limits how far you can see and the ceilings limit the vertical space and movement. Burrowing creatures though, have the ability to burrow through dead space.

Several new rules bring the mainstays of dungeon adventuring and exploration—random encounters, secret doors, and traps—into Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City. In addition to a slightly more controlled method of placing treasure at the start of the game being given, treasure below Felstead has another effect. It can trigger a potential random encounter, not where the treasure is, but somewhere in the dungeon, its location determined by a random player. Although the newly appeared creature—or creatures—must be placed away from any warband, it can be placed so as help or hinder a warband. Above ground, in the standard set-up, the discovery of secret passages allows a figure or warband to effectively pass through vertical terrain, whilst in the dungeon set-up, they can pass through dead space. In either case, these secret passages are unstable and collapse once they have been traversed. A trap is triggered when a player rolls a one on his Initiative check. Some of the traps are traditional—caltrops, poison darts, pit traps, and so on, but others are particular to Frostgrave, such as ‘Nullwave’, which will cancel all spells currently in effect, and ‘Pick Pocket’, when a thief appears and snatches the victim’s most prized possession, including the treasure being carried. In many cases, victims of traps can roll to avoid their effects.

All three sets of rules nicely handle mainstays of dungeon adventuring and exploration in neat, efficient means. The only caveat would be the instability of secret passages. It would have been nice to have included an optional rule for marking them as stable and so allowing them to be used more than once, perhaps with an increasing chance of collapse as they are used more and more.

The most notable form of magic included in Frostgrave: Into the Breeding Pits is that of Beastcrafting. A Wizard cannot become a Beastcrafter at the start of campaign, but must instead find the Book of the Beastcrafter and then brew the Elixir of the Beastcrafter. When this is imbibed, the Wizard gains the Beastcrafter trait. With it, the Wizard becomes slightly bestial and gains both a bonus to the Control Animal spell and more options as his Animal Companion, but soldiers are less inclined to join his warband. Available at Level Five and above, the Beastcrafter trait can be upgraded at Level Ten and Level Fifteen, each time the wizard becoming increasingly bestial, until he hybridises into an animal-like form. Together with the spells Animal Manipulation and Animal Mutation, which allow temporary or permanent change respectively to an animal under a Beastcrafter’s control, the Beastcrafting rules enable a player to field an animal focused warband. It helps of course that the Animal Mutation spell can be used to change an animal so that it can carry treasure; after all, who needs hands?

Besides the Animal Manipulation and Animal Mutation spells, Frostgrave: Into the Breeding Pits introduces a new spell type—the Reactive spell. This enables a Wizard to cast a spell in response to a spell cast at him. Deflect allows a Wizard to reflect a spell cast at him away from him and even back at the caster, whilst with Capture Incantation a Wizard can trap the vocal component of a spell cast at him and store for later use, even using to create a scroll with it using Write Scroll. Other Reaction type spells include Slowfall, which slows someone falling so that they land safely and Energy Lash, which reaches out and damages and stops anyone coming too close to a Wizard. This brings a bit more of a back and forth flow to combat in Frostgrave, but casting a Reaction spell does use up a Wizard’s next activation.

The supplement includes and new scenarios, all set underground. In ‘The Moving Maze’, the competing warbands must cope with fungus-infested ruins which actually move from one round to the next; in ‘Here Comes the Flood’, the warbands explore a giant sewer system unaware of a giant trap they have unleashed; and ‘The Breeding Pit’ sees them discover one of the Beastcrafters’ ancient laboratories and are beset by random encounter after random encounter. In ‘The Rats in the Walls’, the warbands delve into passageways rife with giant rats and collapsing ceilings, while in ‘Mating Season’ sees the warbands caught up between two of the gigantic, acidic-larvae spitting, beetle-like Devourers bent on crossing the same area as the warbands to reach other and mate, whomever and whatever stands in their way. Unlike in Thaw of the Lich Lord, these five scenarios do not represent a campaign, but rather just a selection of scenarios. It is a decent mix, but it does seem like a shame to missed out on the opportunity to build a campaign—not necessarily a full campaign, but for example, three or four connected scenarios—in which the warbands learn of the legends of Beastcrafters and the Breeding Pits, discover that the legends are true, and go on to get the Book of the Beastcrafter and the knowledge to manipulate and control beasts and animals.

Other additions include the new soldiers, the Trap Expert and the Tunnel Fighter. The first, as written, seems better at setting traps off rather than avoiding them, so might need a simple rewrite, whilst the second, is better at discovering secret passages and sneaking up on the opposition. A new random encounter table includes more living creatures, which is simply because it is warmer underground. It includes new creatures listed in the supplement, such as Basilisks, Gnolls, Hydra and their variants, Hyenas, Minotaurs, and Two-Headed Trolls. A hoard of new treasures is also detailed, such as Bear Armour—for armouring your bear companion, the Book of the Beastcrafter, Iron Collar which allows better control of wolf companions, and Spectral Blade, which reduces the effect of non-magical armour worn by opponents.

Physically, Frostgrave: Into the Breeding Pits is a well-presented book. The artwork is excellent, full colour paintings of both Wizards, Beastcrafters, and beasts, interspersed with photographs of miniatures in action. The book could do with an edit here and there, and a rule or two could do with a clarification, that of the Trap Expert Soldier in particular.

Frostgrave: Into the Breeding Pits feels like an inferior book in comparison to Frostgrave: Thaw of the Lich Lord, though the fact of the matter is that Frostgrave: Thaw of the Lich Lord is more focused, whereas Frostgrave: Into the Breeding Pits is more of a miscellany with a theme. It is a pity that this theme—of beasts and Beastcrafters—is not supported with a campaign of its own, but its addition brings a theme that can be explored in the long term through a Wizard’s development as a Beastcrafter. The other new rules are good additions to the game and help enforce the differences involved in exploring the underworld compared to the surface world, whilst the rules for Reaction spells will make confrontations between warbands just that little bit more dynamic. Overall, Frostgrave: Into the Breeding Pits provides solid support and options for Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City.

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Osprey Publishing will have a stand at UK Games Expo, which will take place between June 2nd and June 4th, 2017 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.