WELCOME TO PUNCHED ISSUE #4

Speaking of conventions, this issue of Punched has a review of the top wargame conventions in Europe. Obviously PunchedCON will be top of your list, but if for some reason Spain, France, Italy or Germany hold more appeal than the Midlands ( ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) then there’s plenty of great options, as you’ll be able to read all about.

Before getting onto that though you’ll want to read our profile of Mark Simonitch. A very nice, humble gentleman who knows a thing or two about how to design a brilliant wargame (and even more about how to design a wargame map!).

We’re then very privileged to have some great contributor articles. First up is one from Beyond Solitaire’s Liz Davidson. Probably the hobby’s most famous solitaire gaming commentator, she’s written a great article setting out her top five Ancient Rome-themed board games to play solitaire (spoiler alert: Pandemic Fall of Rome doesn’t quite make the cut). Her article is followed by a very interesting comparative review by Andrew Bucholtz of the deckbuilding wargames Hands in the Sea and A Few Acres of Snow. And then lots and lots of wargame reviews. Nestled in between all of that is our Spotlight On profile of Revolution Games. Phew.

My thanks to all the contributors to this issue, truly a stellar cast: Liz Davidson, Russ Wetli, Andrew Bucholtz, Scott Moore, Trevor Sturmy, Fred Serval and Neil Bunker. And thanks as ever to Donal at Ciotog Creative for the great artwork and design support for this issue.

Happy gaming! 

James – Spring 2022

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Hands in the Sea, A Few Acres of Snow, and the potential of deck-building wargames

A Few Acres of Snow introduced the deck-building wargame. Hands in the Sea successfully transported it to a new conflict. Might others follow?

BY ANDREW BUCHOLTZ

Daniel Berger’s Hands In The Sea, first published in 2016 by Knight Works Games, is a two-player deck-building wargame on the 264-241 BC First Punic War between Rome and Carthage. It builds on many of the mechanics used in Martin Wallace’s A Few Acres of Snow (2011, Treefrog Games), which covers the 1754-1763 French and Indian War in North America between Britain and France. Berger notes in the companion guide he was initially designing a more traditional card-driven game, but when A Few Acres came out, “Inspired and reinvigorated by Mr. Wallace’s design, I eventually decided to completely retool my own game based on his.”

Both games are for two players, both play in two hours or less, and both are relatively approachable (perhaps especially for those familiar with deck-building games in other genres). Both use many of the same mechanical concepts, right down to how many of the different actions work. And they also use the same argument to justify how limiting the timing of players’ specific offensives based on card draw – a consequence of the deck-building mechanic – is justifiable: in both conflicts, tightly-centralised command and control was not possible; one couldn’t simply wave a hand and expect things to happen.

Hands in the Sea is not clone of A Few Acres of Snow. Berger made thoughtful changes to fit the historical situation. And he created an excellent game in the process. His success is an indication that the deck-building wargame mechanics seen in A Few Acres can be transported to and tweaked for other conflicts.

Of course, these mechanics didn’t completely start with Wallace either. The deck-building engine at the heart of both A Few Acres and Hands has several predecessors, the most prominent being Donald X. Vaccarino’s Dominion (2008, Rio Grande Games). Many of the concepts are the same; you get a certain number of actions on your turn, you play cards for actions, and you draw back up to five cards at the end of your turn. The key innovation seen in both A Few Acres and Hands that make them a ‘deck-building wargame’ is the location cards.

In both games, you start with a small deck of cards, including some locations and some units. You build your deck not just by buying or drafting cards, but also by settling or conquering territory, which requires playing a connection, transport, and possibly a settler or military units. When you successfully take a territory through settlement or conquest, you gain not just a piece of your colour on the board, but also the card that matches the location. That card has connections to other nearby (or further away, by water movement) locations and often some symbols of its own. And there are plenty of angles to consider in both games beyond just expanding and attacking; the games also include economic actions, raids versus full conflicts, hand-management actions and more. Thus, some locations may be useful for some of those actions, but not for others.

This leads to tough decisions on which locations you want. That’s especially true considering how the cards’ connections mean you need a certain set of cards to launch a particular offensive, to say nothing of needing to have the units that will do the fighting in hand. Empire expansion comes with efficiency trade-offs, and hand/deck management becomes a big part of both games. And the challenges of running an overseas 18th-century AD conflict (A Few Acres) or a closer 3rd-century BC conflict that still had limited communication with field commanders (Hands), are well represented by these general mechanics.

With A Few Acres specifically, it remains interesting to play today on several fronts. The map is heavily based on river and naval movement, and the connections aren’t equal for both sides, adding some levels to offensive planning. The French and British sides are quite asymmetrical, and there are several different ways to play both that can work depending on your opponent’s strategy.

A downside to A Few Acres is that the sole source of randomness is what cards you draw when, and the ability to thin your deck can reduce that to nil, which can set up one particularly dominant strategy. All other variability in that game is from player choices, so it can be extinguished with the same set of focused choices. Deck-thinning and particularly focused strategies both remain in Hands, but there are new sources of variability to consider.

Hands adds multiple layers of chrome on top of the A Few Acres engine, and does so to strong effect. One is the inclusion of strategy cards, which players can purchase for ongoing bonuses. These increase asymmetry, and the market mechanic for these diminishes predictability.

Beyond that, there’s the incorporation of fleets. A Few Acres has ship symbols for transportation and combat, which are retained. But Berger goes well beyond that in Hands by giving Rome and Carthage separate fleets they can build, move to different areas on the board, block opponents’ supply lines (often a crucial part of the game) and even use to fight with each other. And those fights involve die-rolling, further reducing predictability.

One last key change is the campaign sequence. A Few Acres has no rounds, and no in-game scoring. Hands has campaigns. The bottom card in the Carthage deck is always the campaign card, which triggers an end-of-campaign sequence of an event (which also adds variability), income, scoring, and strategy card cycling, so a lean Carthaginian deck will end campaigns faster than a bloated one. And the timing of those campaigns often matters, both for in-game positioning and potentially for victory.

It’s now 11 years since A Few Acres’ first publication, and six since Hands’ first publication. Both of these games are still a joy to play, and they suggest there may be room for more deck-building wargames on other historical conflicts. It would have to be the right kind of conflict; the card-draw randomness and limited location activation here might not work thematically for a modern conflict with highly-centralized command. But there are many historical conflicts where these kinds of command challenges might be a fit.

Of course, this idea has seen some growth in some areas since A Few Acres, with some historical games incorporating deck-building in other ways, and with Wallace taking this particular system to fantasy and space settings. There would seem to be a lot of room for further games with mechanical engines closer to the A Few Acres/Hands model, though. And in an era where we’re seeing great success for series of games based on similar engines, including COIN/Irregular Conflicts/Levy and Campaign/Undaunted and more, maybe we’ll get a full universe of this style of deck-building wargame some day.

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In our ‘Spotlight on…’ articles we interview war and strategy games publishers to learn more about their history, philosophy and games releases. 

In this issue we speak with Revolution Games, a US publisher that focuses on getting hex and counter wargames done right.

In the hot seat: Co-founder Richard Handewith.

BY JAMES BUCKLEY

Can you explain the background to Revolution Games and how it came about being set-up?

Co-founder Roger Miller and I had been playing wargames for more than 20 years and always had an interest in publishing and the mechanics of running a business. Around 2012 Roger was going through a tough time personally and so we decided to go into business and start Revolution Games. It was good ‘therapy’ for both of us. We could focus on a passion we had for gaming and running a business.

We have been in business for 10 years now and have published over 20 titles. It has been a great experience for us to see people play and enjoy our games. We are gamers at heart and understand the value a game can bring.

Do you have a particular ethos or unique selling point that forms the basis for the games that you decide to publish?

Since Roger and I are old grognards, we mostly feel comfortable with historical board games. We look for games that have unique mechanics while also providing somewhat historical results. That said, if a game were submitted to us that had great mechanics, was fully developed, and not on a historical subject, we would definitely consider publishing it

What have been the most popular games by sales in your catalogue?

Our bestselling game is Celles: The Ardennes; a small format Ziploc game on the Battle of the Bulge that has integrated movement and combat. It provides the gamer with a good intense game that can be played in 4 to 8 hours depending on experience level. Our bestselling game series is our American civil war ‘Blind Swords’ games. This elegant system was designed by Hermann Luttmann. We have had several different designers for the different games in the lineup. Longstreet Attacks: The Second Day at Gettysburg is the best seller to date in that system.

Tell us about a forthcoming release that you are particularly excited about?

We have two new games that are currently in progress and should be released soon; Death of an Army: Ypres 1914 designed by Kerry Anderson, and Warsaw 1920 designed by Yasushi Nakaguro.

You typically focus on more traditional hex & counter war games – any plans for games in the more political-military sphere or using CDG mechanics?

We are open to publishing different types of wargames, but we have usually gotten submissions of traditional hex and counter games or area map games. One exception is coming in the next year: Eagles in the Sky, a WW1 air game that is card-driven with a display that records the relative positions of planes. As a grossly simplified explanation, think ‘Down in Flames’ meets ‘Upfront’.

Given the success Nuts! Publishing have had with reprinting Bonsai game 300 with a high-quality production approach – is this something you are now considering with your Bonsai ziplock games?

No. For a light war themed crossover game like ‘300’ the mounted board, wooden pieces, cards, etc. makes perfect sense as you are trying to reach a non-wargamer audience. But for our audience, which is more of the traditional wargamer, that type of production would not sell more Pacific Fury, Fury at Midway, or the upcoming Warsaw 1920.

We have tried producing games that are boxed only, ziplock only, or sold in both boxed and ziplock, and for the market we are hitting, all versions have sold about the same. We thought offering both ziplock and boxed would increase overall sales. It did not. It did make folks happy however in that they could get it the way they wanted, so that was a plus for us. If we made our games from Bonsai like ‘300’, boxes, mounted maps etc. it would also add substantially to the price and some parts could not be even made in the USA, and that has been something we have avoided.

You produce all your games in the USA – is there a specific benefit to you of that approach?

Yes, we produce our games in the US. It does cost more than producing a game in China, but it does provide us some advantages. The first is we are not as dependent on the supply chain issues the world is currently experiencing with the backlog in US and Chinese ports. Second, we don’t have a language barrier to overcome. We don’t have experience with printing and die-cutting and struggle with the industry terminology, thus we feel we reduce risk by producing here in the US. We have also been happy with the quality of product provided to us so far.

What is your favourite non-Revolution Games war game you are playing at the moment?

My favourite game right now is Enemy Action: Ardennes, designed by John Butterfield and published by Compass Games. Roger’s favourite game he has played recently is from Salerno to Rome.

The Valiant Defense Series

Historical tower defence

Dan Verssen Games 2018-2022

Summary: Meticulously researched and crafted solitaire games with the perfect blend of theme and mechanics

BY RUSS WETLI

Visit any of your favourite social media groups involving solitaire wargaming and inevitably you will see someone ask a question that goes something like this: “Hi! looking to try a solo wargame, where should I start?”. If you look at the thread of comments it won’t be very long until you see someone suggest one of the titles in the Valiant Defense series.  There is good reason for that.  

Each game in the series (Castle Itter, Pavlov’s House, Soldiers in Postmen’s Uniforms, and the forth coming Lanzerath Ridge) share many of the same qualities. They all are relatively simple to learn and they all tell compelling, interesting, and well-researched stories. This includes photos of defenders on counters and a companion book chock full of the historical notes.

The core gameplay of each game can be summarised as follows: you play the part of a small group of defenders, holding a position against overwhelming odds.  

Each game will feature an area you have to defend, surrounded by tracks that the enemy will appear and advance against your position. This is very similar to States of Siege games, only with the scale being at the tactical level. Also, (with one exception) like States of Siege, if attackers penetrate your stronghold, you will lose the game.

Also core to every game is the limited actions you can take with your defenders to hold back the tide. Each turn you will be faced with many things you need to do, but only a handful of options you can do. In another consistent design choice, each volume uses easy to read colour-coding to establish line of sight.  Each defending position is colour-coded to an attacking advance track. The defenders can only attack colours that match their positions.

Victory is usually determined in similar ways: first, if you were able to survive until the attack deck runs out, and second – if you did survive – calculate a score based on the game conditions compared to the actual historical outcome. This is very much a series pushing you to do better than the historic outcome.

To keep the games fresh, they all include various alternative variants to change the difficulty through use of tactics cards that will grant bonuses to the attack waves. Also, all except Soldiers in Postmen’s Uniforms include cooperative and competitive variants.  While these are first and foremost solo games, I will say these variants are perfect for teaching the game and sharing the story with someone. In fact, one of my early plays of Pavlov’s House was cooperatively with my son as he is a big fan of World War II history.

With all this said however, usually the next question would be, “But if I have one game in the series, do I need the others?”  My answer to this question is yes.

The reason for this is that designer David Thompson has taken time to match what appears similar mechanics, but tweaked to fit each volume specifically. 

The first volume: Castle Itter, has one of the most interesting stories. It is set in early May of 1945, just days before the end of World War II. French VIP prisoners, including former prime ministers and generals, hold out in a former castle turned SS prison camp with the help of US soldiers and defected German Wehrmacht soldiers against an SS assault.   

Castle Itter’s map includes 12 attacker spawn paths, which means keeping your focus across all the board is vital to success. A key mechanic is the escape action. If you can clear a path, one of the French defenders can escape and go for help. This aids you in the game perspective in that you shuffle in a game-ending card earlier if you can make the escape early. Otherwise, you’ll have to last the entire attack deck. On the flip side, Castle Itter has some of the lowest rules overhead, and is the title I routinely recommended for those completely new to solo gaming.

Moving on, Pavlov’s House, probably the most famous of the volumes, is the story of Soviet defenders holding out in an apartment building (named after Sgt Pavlov who led the assault to take the position). It was important to the defence of Stalingrad in Autumn of 1942, and the subject of much Soviet wartime propaganda.

In this title, the board is divided into three unique sections. The first is the bank of the Volga and is the operational level in which you must decide how to best support the defenders in the ‘house’. This is very much a resource management phase.

The second section includes the Wehrmacht approach, with six paths in which both enemy armour and infantry will try to storm the location.  This phase includes the infamous Stuka bombers which will bomb the operational side of the board, limiting your ability to re-supply and defend.

The last section of the board is your defenders in the house, in which you must deploy the soldiers to best cover each section of the attack. These three levels of focus are one of the reasons many people feel this is the best in the series.

Pavlov’s House is a step up in complexity from Castle Itter, but the resource management phase gives a different layer to consider vs. the purely tactical approach of Itter.  This would be a good entry for someone making a transition from Euro games to the wargaming space.

Soldiers in Postmen’s Uniforms, the newest title, is the story of Polish Postal workers in the Free City of Danzig during the first days of World War II when Hitler invaded Poland. This title is one of the more sombre in the series as historically, most of the defenders ultimately surrendered and were eventually executed by Nazi occupation forces.

Gameplay wise this is probably the most complex of the games. The interior defences in this game are much larger and include a vertical emphasis in which your defender move between stories of the post office.  

Also, this is the only game in the series in which the attackers can (and probably will) breach your defences. If they, do you must be able to attack and remove them, or you have to re-shuffle the current attack wave and go through a second time! This, along with floor clearing Howitzers in the final attack deck, make it one of the more challenging in the system, but also one of the most narratively focused, if that is something that appeals to you.

Lastly, I would love to give a sneak peek on the forthcoming volume, Lanzerath Ridge, which has just gone through Kickstarter and will hopefully arrive by late 2022. This game focuses on the first day of the Battle of the Bulge, in which single platoon held back a German Division for nearly 20 hours.

I playtested Lanzerath Ridge, and it has some big changes to some of the mechanics. For example, for the first time in the series different dice are used to illustrate attack values: D6 through D12 are used for increasingly powerful attacks depending on the defender and weapon used. Also, this is the first in the series in which an exhausted defender cannot recover by use of a standard action, only a command or assist action. This means that as you make attacks, you will not be able to use that defender again the rest of the attack wave. 

These streamlined mechanics, along with a new art direction by artist Nils Johansson, make this what I think might become the best one in the series yet. It is probably most similar to Castle Itter, and I think a great place to start. Veterans of the series will also undoubtedly like some of the rule simplifications.

Any way you go, if you are looking for a solo experience with huge narrative value about little-told stories, this series is one you should check out. Things to keep in mind about the series as a whole: it is at a tactical level, involving individual defenders, and it is a dice-chucking game. You’ll be rolling lots of dice. Also, a streak of badly rolled dice and unlucky attack cards in a row might end your game early. If those aren’t for you though, this might not be the series to check out. However, if you are okay with some randomness in your solo games, you really can’t go wrong with any volume in the Valiant Defense series.

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Ambon: Burning Sun & Little Seagulls

SNAFU Design, 2021

Summary: Not the most innovative design, but an engaging, fast and beautiful hex and counter game on an unusual topic.

BY FRED SERVAL

Following the attack on the US fleet in Pearl Harbor, the Japanese launched the Dutch East Indies campaign to secure much-needed oil resources. As part of this, in late January 1942 the Japanese started an offensive on a small island in the Moluccas. It was called Ambon, and it was home to a strategically-located airbase and a contingent of Dutch and Australian soldiers who defended it.

This is the setting chosen by designer Marc Figueras and Spanish publisher SNAFU to introduce us to their series of light hex and counter games called ‘Small Battles’. The game’s scale is sub-regimental, and each turn represents half a day, a logical choice for a battle of that size that gives the players a ‘mini-operational’ experience. The system makes it so that you are not focusing too much on the battle’s details. The players’ primary focus is on how resources are used to ensure, or delay, the Japanese control of critical points of the island.

For an experienced wargamer, the rules will feel obvious, even if they have a few wrinkles, such as:

• Sticky but non-blocking ZoCs: movement is not prevented but has a higher cost.
• Support units: engineers and HQs add a bonus for battle and rallying.
• Interestingly flexible stacking rules: overstacking is possible rather than having a strict limit, but will provide increasing penalties.

The game’s uniqueness comes from its setting; the island of Ambon has an hourglass shape and comprises mostly rough terrain or mountains. The result is some crucial choices that both players have to make during set-up. Once the Allied player has placed their potential mines on the different possible entry points, the Japanese player will commit to their invasion plan, choosing the sequence of amphibious assaults. As winning conditions are based on when specific key locations are taken (the earlier the better for the Japanese), most planning goes into this set-up phase.

After a couple of turns, once the Japanese have disembarked and are in position, the slow grinding of Allied forces begins. The game dynamics change and the Allied player focuses on finding opportunities to slow down the Japanese advance. My favourite aspect of the game is how it depicts this progression: each objective as a token, each beachhead a number. At the end of the game, you can look at the map and see the battle’s progression as each key location taken is on the turn track. Nils Johansson’s artwork brings the game to the next level by making this little narrative on the board a joy to look at.

After a couple of hours, sometimes earlier, the battle is resolved. Often, we could see if the Japanese player would be the winner a few turns before the end-game. Ambon is not an innovative game, but what it does, it does well, and interestingly tweaks a well-established formula. If you are looking for an engaging, fast and beautiful hex and counter game on an unusual topic, look no further, this is for you.

PS: not mentioned in the game, but noteworthy, in the aftermath of the battle of Ambon, Admiral Hatakeyama ordered the massacre of more than 300 Dutch and Australian soldiers in Laha (the town next to Ambon’s airfield). An act of butchery unfortunately not unusual for the Japanese Imperial army. In 1946 this episode was the subject of a military trial for 93 Japanese personnel involved in this war crime.

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Granada: Last Stand of the Moors – 1482-1492

Compass Games, 2021

Summary: a novel, gorgeously-produced, but under-developed game on a little-explored topic.

BY SCOTT MOORE

Granada: Last Stand of the Moors – 1482-1492, by first-time wargame designer José Antonio Rivero and published by Compass Games in 2021, is one of the few boardgames to tackle the several-century-long reconquista period of Spanish history. It is also, somewhat surprisingly, the first game to reuse the pioneering system that Matt Calkins introduced in Sekigahara a decade ago. However, Granada is a longer-playing and more complex game than its mechanical predecessor.

What first attracted me to Granada – in addition to the theme and connection to Sekigahara – was the artwork and graphic design from Iván Cáceres, one of the jewels in the crown of our hobby. His design aesthetic and attention to detail can be found throughout this product, from the box cover, through the medieval style of the card illustrations, to my favourite little detail: the rat depicted on the Out of Supply markers. The physical production of the game does not let down the stunning artwork, with a good quality mounted map, a large number of wooden blocks and other pieces, 158 cards, and several pages worth of player aids on card stock.

A quick glance at the rulebook makes clear that this is not an entry-level wargame. The core rules cover 12 pages of very small text, with an additional 3½ pages of ‘Special Rules’ and 1½ pages of rules for optional components. Although, at its heart, Granada is a relatively simple game, some of the mechanisms are not easy to learn from the rulebook, and there is a significant amount of chrome. The player aids, while comprehensive, are too wordy to be easy to use for quick reference, and suffer from having the same small font size as the rulebook.

Granada is an engaging game with interesting mechanics, offering players some tense tactical decision-making, even if the strategic options are not as broad as the map complexity and unit numbers might suggest. As such, it is a great effort for a first-time wargame designer. However, there are number of issues which detract from the play experience, and which suggest that there was not enough development by Compass Games. At a practical level: critical card information is hidden when holding the cards in hand, and unit information is difficult to quickly scan as there is not enough space on the map to easily display the blocks (or there are too many blocks). There is perhaps too much chrome, as it slows down the game without adding much to the decision space or to the atmosphere. Furthermore, I believe there are simply too many points on the map, too many units, and too many cards. Some judicious trimming of rules and components could have made Granada a more elegant and playable game.

In conclusion, Granada is a physically-impressive product that has interesting gameplay, but also some significant – and perhaps unnecessary – barriers to learning and playing.

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Iron, Blood, Snow & Mud

PHALANX, 2022

Summary: A quick-playing East Front game where the weather is as important as the armour

BY NEIL BUNKER

It is said that, in Russia, there are only three seasons: summer, winter, and mud.

Summer: warm and dry with temperatures reaching 30°C; winter: long, bitterly cold with temperatures plummeting far below 0°C.

Sandwiched between these two extremes is Mud. Snow melt turning open countryside and unpaved roads into a near-impassable quagmire during the thaw and again at the end of summer with the arrival of rain.

The mud seasons are known as ‘Rasputitsa’ and their impact on military campaigns in Russia is legendary. Months of mud slow the progress of advancing armies to a crawl, interrupting supply across a vast territory and leaving forces on the front lines unprepared for the harshness of winter. In 1812, the French Army of Napoleon Bonaparte experienced the full extremes of Russian weather in their march to, and eventual retreat from, Moscow, during which soldiers, exhausted, weak from hunger and exposure, simply lay down and died on the frozen ground.

The German army, during the long, bitter fighting in the years that followed the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, suffered a similar fate. Rapid early advances slowing, stopping, and then freezing as the weather took its toll on men, horses, tanks, and artillery alike.

It is against this backdrop that the forthcoming Iron, Blood, Snow and Mud, a low complexity wargame from PHALANX, asks us to lead the armies of the European Axis powers and the Soviet Union at the turning point of the Second World War. In just 90 minutes, 2-players can recreate the struggle for the Eastern Front on their gaming table. The game is available for pre-order via the Make Games Happen program. I had the opportunity to playtest it several times earlier this year.

The Axis player must take advantage of the early initiative and air superiority to seize control of the key locations in the heart of the Soviet Union. Using Convoy movement to strike fast at the central cities of Kiev and Kharkov, and to Blitz onwards towards Stalingrad, the fortress city of Sevastopol and the industrialised South. In the North, Leningrad offers the chance to open a supply route into the countryside and advance into Moscow itself. To capture Stalin is to end the war early.

Meanwhile, the Soviet player must hold on in the face of the Axis onslaught.

The enemy’s rapid advance and overwhelming strength seem unstoppable; however, overstretched supply lines are easily broken, partisan’s hinder movement and, as time and attrition take their inevitable toll on the invaders, the Soviet Army grows stronger.

Armoured divisions are fearsome weapons, yet it is with the Infantry that the power lies. Effective in even the harshest conditions, they support your armour and surround the enemy, each new advantage becoming another die cast in the fight against the Axis. With enough dice and a lucky roll entire divisions can fall, and it may be possible to turn the tide of the war and counterattack into Axis territory.

However, as you fight in this world of Iron, Snow, Blood, and Mud, remember: the weather doesn’t care whose side you are on.

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