The post Legends of the Arena is a Fast-Paced Brawling Board Game inspired by Super Smash Bros. appeared first on Graphic Policy.
Legends of the Arena is an intense brawling board game for 2-6 players inspired by Super Smash Bros. Knock your opponents out of the Arena and claim victory!
It’s been a long time since I did a Game Buzz post, but when your favorite board game designer is releasing his first original board game in eight years, you post about it. So, here’s my look at
Severton is an upcoming board game to be published by Albi that was designed by none other than Vlaada Chvátil. It’s his first board game since 2017’s That’s a Question – everything since then has been expansions or reskins of existing titles. In fact, I think it’s hist first non-party game since 2013’s Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends. The game is for 1-5 players, and is based in the world of Rychlé šípy, which is a Czech series I know nothing about. It apparently follows a group of young friends who have adventures together. Severton is a cooperative game, where players are taking on the roles of these youths to discover the secrets of Severton, a neighborhood in Prague that is ruled by Vonts.
The game comes with five scenarios, which progressively add new mechanisms. However, the rules do specify that you can replay them as much as you want because you’ll be making different choices each time to create a new experience. Additionally, there will always be five characters in the game, with some people controlling multiple characters in games with fewer players.
The game is played on a board, which the characters will move around. The five characters always start in a particular spot, but where they go from there will be up to the players. Additionally, there are ten progress boards in the game, two for each scenario. These are set up end to end, and you can change the difficulty of the game by flipping them to reveal more stars for a harder game. The left side of the board is reserved for the Vonts cards (group and movement). Some of these will be dealt out facedown, and Vont tokens will start in random spaces on the board. There is also an action deck from which each player will get four cards (some scenarios also give you other cards). The scenario will also direct you to set up a quest deck.
In the upper left corner of the map, there is a dial. This is used to track the phases of play, with a token moving clockwise as each phase is completed. This will continue until you win (or lose). There are seven phases: Actions, Vonts, Quest, Unrest, Vonts Refresh, Players Refresh, and Quest Replenishment.
If you complete your objectives, you win! If not, you lose. And that’s pretty much it.
Not really knowing the source material for the game, I don’t think I can really comment too much on the theme. My interest in this game exists solely because of Vlaada Chvátil. And I do think it looks pretty interesting – it’s cooperative and scenario based, which he has done well at in the past. It seems like a game that would be pretty fun to explore, with all the different Vont groups and characters and scenarios. The rules seem fairly straightforward and basic, and with no knowledge of what the scenarios entail, I don’t think I can make a judgment call of how they play out. But, I am a Vlaada fanboy, so I feel like I can trust his designs, even if it has been a while.
I look forward to hearing people’s reactions when the game comes out, which should be at Spiel in October. But that’s it for me today, so thanks for reading!
It’s been a long time since I did a Game Buzz post, but when your favorite board game designer is releasing his first original board game in eight years, you post about it. So, here’s my look at
Severton is an upcoming board game to be published by Albi that was designed by none other than Vlaada Chvátil. It’s his first board game since 2017’s That’s a Question – everything since then has been expansions or reskins of existing titles. In fact, I think it’s hist first non-party game since 2013’s Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends. The game is for 1-5 players, and is based in the world of Rychlé šípy, which is a Czech series I know nothing about. It apparently follows a group of young friends who have adventures together. Severton is a cooperative game, where players are taking on the roles of these youths to discover the secrets of Severton, a neighborhood in Prague that is ruled by Vonts.
The game comes with five scenarios, which progressively add new mechanisms. However, the rules do specify that you can replay them as much as you want because you’ll be making different choices each time to create a new experience. Additionally, there will always be five characters in the game, with some people controlling multiple characters in games with fewer players.
The game is played on a board, which the characters will move around. The five characters always start in a particular spot, but where they go from there will be up to the players. Additionally, there are ten progress boards in the game, two for each scenario. These are set up end to end, and you can change the difficulty of the game by flipping them to reveal more stars for a harder game. The left side of the board is reserved for the Vonts cards (group and movement). Some of these will be dealt out facedown, and Vont tokens will start in random spaces on the board. There is also an action deck from which each player will get four cards (some scenarios also give you other cards). The scenario will also direct you to set up a quest deck.
In the upper left corner of the map, there is a dial. This is used to track the phases of play, with a token moving clockwise as each phase is completed. This will continue until you win (or lose). There are seven phases: Actions, Vonts, Quest, Unrest, Vonts Refresh, Players Refresh, and Quest Replenishment.
If you complete your objectives, you win! If not, you lose. And that’s pretty much it.
Not really knowing the source material for the game, I don’t think I can really comment too much on the theme. My interest in this game exists solely because of Vlaada Chvátil. And I do think it looks pretty interesting – it’s cooperative and scenario based, which he has done well at in the past. It seems like a game that would be pretty fun to explore, with all the different Vont groups and characters and scenarios. The rules seem fairly straightforward and basic, and with no knowledge of what the scenarios entail, I don’t think I can make a judgment call of how they play out. But, I am a Vlaada fanboy, so I feel like I can trust his designs, even if it has been a while.
I look forward to hearing people’s reactions when the game comes out, which should be at Spiel in October. But that’s it for me today, so thanks for reading!
BGI 385 The One About a LOT of Red Ink for Companies”
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Discover Smallfolk, a cozy new Kickstarter game that blends world folklore, resource gathering, and storybook charm. Designers Gloria Lau and Alfie Wright share how they brought legends to life in a warm, tactical experience.
Peter shows you around the Esoteric Order of Gamers studio and game collection.
Spring has finally sprung down here in New Zealand, so what better time for a big Spring clean. And after that, what better time to show off the EOG games room and its huge collection of wonderful games, to you! It’s rarely this neat, so enjoy checking it all out while you can. There are lots of games, games, games, miniatures and of course – drums!
Ravensburger has released a new game, Flatout Games has announced Point Galaxy, and Codenames: Back to Hogwarts is coming soon.
The Coyote has invented a clever little bluffing game, in order to win his friends’ possessions. So prepare to use your wits to outsmart him!
After a somewhat longer break, we’re back with the American Revolution! We had concluded last time with the French entry into the war on the American side. Today, we’ll look at the cooperation between the allies, the British strategic shift to the south, and how these two impulses collided and gave way to peace – as always, with board games.
You can read all posts in this series here:
Before the Treaty of Alliance and the French declaration of war on Britain, France had supported the American Patriots materially. Now that France was a full belligerent, fighting forces would follow – first, the French fleet.
A naval force under Admiral Charles Henri Hector d’Estaing, carrying a few thousand French land forces, was dispatched to North America in summer 1778. They embarked on an ambitious combined-force scheme together with the Continental Army to take Newport from the British. American-French cooperation (as well as army-navy cooperation) proved difficult, and the operation had to be aborted. In one of the more dubious decisions of the war, the British abandoned Newport, one of the finest natural harbors in New England, voluntarily soon after.
As joint operations had not yielded success, the American and British forces would usually operate separately for the next two years. That meant that the Americans continued to bear the brunt of the struggle for North America. The French navy and army, however, were crucial in tying down British forces in the by now global struggle: British and French forces fought over the economically crucial “sugar islands” of the Caribbean. A French armada, strengthened by Spain which had recently entered the war, threatened to invade Britain itself in 1779. Even in far away India, British forces were challenged by the French and their local allies. Players of Imperial Struggle (Ananda Gupta/Jason Matthews, GMT Games) will recognize these as the four regions in which Britain and France fight for supremacy – with victory going to the player who can balance their interests in the four regions best, taking losses where they must while making bigger gains elsewhere.
The American Patriots had none of this strategic depth. If they were defeated North America, their cause would be lost. And even with French support, it did not seem like they could do more than brace themselves against the military and financial superiority of Britain… if so much. The harsh winter of 1779-80 decimated the Continental Army. Difficulties in paying the troops resulted in the mutiny of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Line regiments. The situation seemed so dire that Benedict Arnold, one of the most distinguished American commanders, betrayed the American cause (but failed to deliver the fort of West Point to Britain), serving in the British army for the remainder of the war.
Part of the American woes was the new British focus. As New England was lost to Britain, and too full of rebels to be retaken, the British turned their attention to the southern colonies which the believed to be populated by many British loyalists.
First, they advanced from Florida (supported by sea) into Georgia and took Savannah on December 29, 1778. A combined American-French land-sea operation failed to retake the city in June 1779. After this second joint operations failure, the French fleet relocated to the Caribbean. British forces under Charles Cornwallis laid siege to Charleston, South Carolina, the following March.
Benjamin Lincoln, who had commanded the American troops in the unsuccessful counter-offensive at Savannah, was put under enormous political pressure not to let Charleston, one of the most important cities in the south, fall into British hands. Retreat was thus impossible. Yet the defense of the city against superior British forces was doomed. Lincoln surrendered in May 1780.
Cornwallis also beat the new American commander in the south, Horatio Gates, at Camden (and thus cut Gates, the hero of Saratoga, back to size again). As the British general was poised to invade North Carolina, Washington dispatched Nathanael Greene to take command in the south.
Greene’s approach aimed to elude a decisive engagement. Contrary to British assumptions, the south was not rife with British loyalists. The crown was only supported where Britain could enforce loyalty – on the coasts, and wherever Cornwallis’s army was at the moment. And Cornwallis could not be everywhere. Small American forces under guerilla leaders (like “The Gamecock” Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion, on whom the movie The Patriot is based) chipped away at British forces and support. While Cornwallis beat Greene at Guilford Court House and Eutaw Springs in early 1781, he could not reverse the south’s affiliation to the Patriot cause.
Cornwallis lost patience with the indecisive campaign against Greene’s Fabian strategy. In 1781, he boldly struck into Virginia. His supply was to come from sea via the port of Yorktown on Chesapeake Bay. If Virginia, the largest and most populous southern colony was taken and thus the south cut off from the north, Greene would have to surrender – or so Cornwallis thought. Cornwallis’s good strategy rating in Washington’s War makes it likely that the British player will let him pursue similarly active campaigns… and hopes not to get caught by superior force.
Cornwallis’s plan was risky. Virginia was much closer to the American and French main forces than the Carolinas. The French commander Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, urged George Washington to confront Cornwallis. And thus a third joint operation began: Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, a French volunteer in the Continental army, marched American and French forces to Virginia.
Cornwallis responded in the typical British manner: He fortified Yorktown and confidently relied on British naval superiority to keep his options open. That confidence was shaken when the French instead of the British navy showed up in Chesapeake Bay. The British sent a fleet of their own, but the resulting naval battle of Chesapeake Bay failed to expel the French fleet (September 5, 1781).
Washington and Rochambeau took command of the combined army and invested Yorktown. As Cornwallis had failed to tenaciously defend the outer defenses, assuming he would be evacuated by the Royal Navy, the sieging forces advanced quickly. Cut off from supplies and under bombardment from the allied artillery, Cornwallis surrendered on October 17, 1781. His entire force of almost 8,000 was captured (with another 156 dead). French and American total casualties (dead and wounded) were barely over 200.
The war in the colonies had been unpopular in Britain for some years. Parliament was unwilling to expend more money on it, and thus the British forces deployed had never again reached their peak strength from 1776. With one of the two main British forces in the colonies lost, so was the parliamentary base for the government. When the Whig opposition’s motion to end the war in North America carried a majority, Prime Minister Frederick North resigned in March 1782. “North’s Government Falls” is the end of a game of Washington’s War, and can happen anytime between 1779 and 1783 (provided the event is face-up in the respective year).
North’s successors had to make peace with four separate enemies – the United States, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. The American negotiators Benjamin Franklin and John Jay proved most skillful in this complicated multi-sided diplomacy. They secured diplomatic recognition for the United States as well as the western domain all the way to the Mississippi and important fishing rights in the Atlantic. The Peace of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783.
The king of France had little time to enjoy his triumph. The war expenses incurred in the American Revolutionary War contributed to the financial crisis which resulted in the French Revolution (whose protagonists were in turn inspired by the American ideas of liberalism and republicanism) just six years after the Peace of Paris.
Britain, on the other hand, bounced back from the setback in North America. The country’s naval, commercial, and financial strength was still intact. Britain would orchestrate the coalitions against revolutionary and Napoleonic France until the final victory at Waterloo in 1815, ushering in a century of British global dominance.
And the United States? They remained within their own hemisphere for the time being. Only occasionally drawn into conflict with their erstwhile French allies or old British enemies, the United States dealt with their westward expansion and economic development. Despite its unresolved conflict internal conflict about slavery, the American republic remained an inspiration to European liberals and democrats who strove to follow the example begun 250 years ago.
Liberty or Death (Harold Buchanan, GMT Games)
Imperial Struggle (Ananda Gupta/Jason Matthews, GMT Games)
Washington’s War (Mark Herman, GMT Games)
Allison, Robert J.: The American Revolution. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, New York City, NY 2015 is exactly what it says on the tin.
Higginbotham, Don: The War of American Independence. Military Policies, Attitudes, and Practice, 1763-1789, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN 1977 covers not only the campaigns, but also the political, social, and economic dimensions behind them.
To celebrate our Fall 2025 issue of Casual Game Insider, we're giving away amazing prizes worth over $1,000 to 41 lucky winners! Don’t miss your chance to win—enter today!
BGI 384 The One About De Minimus Becoming De Maximus
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I am usually sceptical about new versions of classic board games – but I had to admit that Catan New Energies is a great version of the game. It has the basic game mechanics of gathering resources to build roads, cities and towns to get points to win the game. But there are enough added features to make it interesting and different.
Each player has their own box which contains their Towns (settlements), Cities and Roads, event discs, fossil power plants and renewable power plants. This does help speed up set up.
The game plays very much like the original with collecting resources to build more Towns & Cities. Even though some of the resources are called different things in this version – wood, brick, natural fibre (was sheep), food (was wheat) & steel (was ore), the colours and images are almost identical – so we just call them their old names. The extra resource of science does add a nice addition, and it allows you to buy the different power plants. (Science cards are collected when you collect resources from a city. So instead of getting 2 resources for the city, you get 1 and a science card.)
Unlike original Catan – you always start by pulling out a hazard token – once you have 3 of the same type you must instantly complete the consequence of that hazard. They are just a small hinderance or bonus (depending on your local footprint). The amount of hazard tokens pulled is determined by the global footprint: Every time you build a city or town or fossil plant – the global (and your local) footprint goes down. But each time you build a renewable plant – they both go up. The one thing we forgot on our first game was key – if there are no more tokens to pull from the bag – the game ends there and then. And points don’t matter – the winner is the person with the best local footprint. So, buying lots of fossil plants may be cheap – but they could cost you the game!
But – you do want to build plants though as they produce lighting/energy which do a few things. They are similar to the fishes in the Traders and Barbarians expansion – get enough and they are any resource you like or remove a hazard from one of your towns or cities. They can also increase the number of cards you can have in your hand before the robber takes them. This is a very handy bonus for when you just can’t get the cards you need.
All in all, I do think Catan New Energies is a good stand-alone version of Catan. It has all the basic elements to make it a Catan game, but enough added to make it while buying another version of the game. You can order this at: https://www.bgextras.co.uk/catan/other-catan-games/catan-new-energies
The post Catan New Energies first appeared on Board Game Extras.BGI 383 The One About a Shockingly High Valuation for a Publisher
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Peter unboxes The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship by Z-Man Realms!
Pandemic is a game that doesn’t really excite me much anymore, and I’ve played the spin-off Clone Wars and been underwhelmed. But this new evolution of the system by Matt Leacock has received great reviews and I’m very much looking forward to trying it out. In the meantime, here’s an unboxing, partial graphic design critique, and at the end, a tip to make the spectacular dice tower look even better!
Our fourth and final post in the Wallenstein series! As biographies go, this one ends with the death of the protagonist… before we take a look at the world he left behind, and round it out with a little overview of how contemporaries and later historians saw Wallenstein. Let’s go!
You can read all posts in the series here:
As we have seen in the last post, Wallenstein had contrived to make many enemies. His only supporter, Emperor Ferdinand, feared to be upstaged by the seemingly all-powerful general. The news in late 1633 – Wallenstein treating with the Swedes, Wallenstein letting Thurn go free, Wallenstein not defending Regensburg and Bavaria, Wallenstein refusing to support the Spanish mission to the Netherlands – mixed with their tendentious interpretations by the Bavarian and Spanish parties at court convinced the emperor that Wallenstein planned betrayal. To forestall this, the Imperial War Council secretly decided to relieve Wallenstein of his command on December 31, 1633.
Wallenstein and his intimates did not know about the dismissal, but they sensed the shifting wind. His brother-in-law Adam Erdmann, Count Trčka, and his marshal Christian von Ilow had Wallenstein’s officers sign a statement of loyalty to their commander in his winter quarters at Plzeň on January 12. They hoped that this show of unity in the army would remind the emperor that he needed his general. The opposite was the case: Ferdinand took it as another sign of treason.
When Wallenstein had been dismissed in 1630, it had caused both the emperor and the electors immense anxiety about his possible reaction. He had taken it meekly then, but what would he do now? As the emperor and his advisors had resolved that Wallenstein was a traitor, they expected the worst – insubordination, rebellion, joining his army with the Swedes. That needed to be forestalled. A secret court found Wallenstein guilty of treason on January 24, 1634. The court reached out to three of Wallenstein’s officers which they deemed reliable – Wallenstein’s second-in-command, Matthias Gallas, the commander of the embattled left wing at Lützen, Ottavio Piccolomini, and the tenacious defender of Dessau Bridge, Johann von Aldringen. To them, they gave the delicate task of delivering Wallenstein to Vienna – dead or alive.
The three executors of the imperial sentence faced a daunting task. Wallenstein was popular with the common soldiers whose pay was guaranteed by their general, not by the emperor whose coffers were notoriously empty and whose will to pay the army notoriously limited. The officers seemed more promising, as they were honor-bound to the emperor, but they had also sworn loyalty to their commander. Gallas got in touch with those they deemed reliable and instructed them not to follow any orders from Wallenstein, Trčka, or Ilow.
By that time, Wallenstein’s health had deteriorated even more. He was barely able to leave his bed and sometimes could not even sign documents. All the while, he waited for a reply from Hans Georg von Arnim on the potential peace with the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg.
Trčka acted on Wallenstein’s behalf in the day-to-day affairs, confident in his command over the soldiers. Only deep into February did it dawn on him and Wallenstein’s other intimates that imperial agents were prising the army away from them – officer by officer, regiment by regiment.
Nothing was left to Wallenstein but flight. On February 23, he and those faithful to him made away to Cheb, accompanied by a few regiments of loyal troops. They had been joined by the regiment of Colonel Walter Butler on the way and counted on the garrison of Cheb under the command of John Gordon. Both Butler and Gordon had been contacted by the three conspirators who urged them not to obey Wallenstein. For the time being, Butler and Gordon prevaricated.
As Cheb is in the northwestern corner of Bohemia, Wallenstein could easily leave Bohemia for Saxony or be joined by Swedish forces. That put time pressure on Butler and Gordon. If Wallenstein fled, they would be held responsible. If they arrested him, he would be freed again if the Swedish arrived. Thus, they resolved to murder him and his associates.
Gordon invited Trčka, Ilow, and a few more Wallenstein intimates for dinner up in Cheb’s castle on February 25th – together with Wallenstein, who declined on grounds of his constant bad health. Gordon and Butler, both present at dinner, had a group of soldiers commanded by captain Walter Devereux come in, declare for the emperor, and murder Wallenstein’s associates. With all of them dead, Devereux took his small group down to Wallenstein’s residence in the town. They found Wallenstein in bed already. As he got up, Devereux stabbed him to death.
Wallenstein’s death is handled in a rather detached manner in Cuius Regio (Francisco Gradaille, GMT Games, forthcoming): Like every other leader, Wallenstein has an initial and a last year of service (1625 and 1634, in his case). In the leader deployment phase before the campaigns of 1635, the player will have to remove Wallenstein. Death – be that from plague, battle, or murder – is inevitable and pre-ordained.
The Catholic player in Thirty Years War: Europe in Agony, 1618—1648 has more freedom. As we have discussed in the last two instalments of the series, Wallenstein can be dismissed and recalled in the game. And if he proves to be too influential (and comes close to the threshold at which his influence would give the Protestants a Major Victory), he can also be assassinated (and thus be removed from the game permanently). There is, however, no inevitability of Wallenstein’s death: As his influence is only raised from recruiting troops, taking cities, and successfully attacking with him, the Catholic player can just forgo those, not use Wallenstein anymore and let him live out his old age in peace. Somehow, this never occurred to the historical Ferdinand II. Implicitly, the game’s treatment of Wallenstein’s assassination posits that the active threat which Wallenstein posed in Ferdinand’s view was nothing but a fabrication of the emperor’s paranoia, and that the emperor remained firmly in command at all times.
Wallenstein had grown rich on land which had been taken from those the emperor had declared rebels. He ended up on the other side of this bargain. His estates in Bohemia and Silesia were seized (Mecklenburg was lost to the Swedes anyway). A good deal went as spoils to all the officers involved in the conspiracy against him. Gallas, Piccolomini, and Aldringen became great magnates, and those on the lower rungs of the plot did not go unrewarded either, down to an additional month’s pay for all the soldiers in the garrison of Cheb whose only contribution had been to stand by idly while Wallenstein was murdered. The rest of Wallenstein’s estates were sold by the emperor to fix some of his short-term financial problems. Wallenstein’s widow Isabelle kept nothing. Only when she pleaded mercy (instead of justice) from the emperor did she receive a small estate to live on.
Wallenstein had died when the war had already been raging for sixteen years. It would last another fourteen before peace was finally made in 1648. Any time Emperor Ferdinand II had been in a position of strength, he had not made concessions to form a lasting peace, but instead increased his demands, prompting the interventions of first Denmark, then Sweden, and finally France (shortly after Wallenstein’s death).
Ferdinand II died in 1637. At the time of peace, the new emperor Ferdinand III was mostly ruined. Protestantism survived, protected by German princes and foreign powers. Sweden controlled the Baltic Sea. Any hopes of imperial hegemony in the empire or of Habsburg hegemony in Europe were dashed. After Spain had conceded Dutch independence, it fought on against France, and lost that war, too, along with its European primacy.
Wallenstein remained fascinating to his contemporaries after his death, and would continue for centuries. Assessments close to his own time hewed closely to the religious beliefs of the writer: Catholics tended to see Wallenstein as a traitor (following the official account of the emperor), Protestants made him into a Machiavellian mercenary leader, often contrasted with the heroic “Lion from the North” Gustavus Adolphus.
Later treatments focused on individual aspects such as Wallenstein’s purported dependence on astrology. You will have noticed that this is the first time since our first post that astrology is mentioned – because there is no evidence that Wallenstein was more interested in it than his contemporaries, let alone that he made decisions based on horoscopes. The speculations on this issue are based in the accounts of those who bore witness against Wallenstein shortly before and after his death, taking pains to stress anything which might indicate that Wallenstein was anything but a devout Catholic. The idea of Wallenstein, the Star-Seeker, is particularly prevalent in the German mind, as playwright Friedrich Schiller dedicated a trilogy of plays to Wallenstein’s last weeks – and presents the general as an indecisive fatalist, done in by his own passivity as well as the cabals of those around him. That’s (masterful) fiction – but it hews close enough to history (Schiller had taught history at the University of Jena and even written a major book on the Thirty Years’ War) to influence anyone whose first contact with Wallenstein was through Schiller’s plays.
By the time document-based historiography had been firmly established in the 19th century, pre-established views on Wallenstein had become so solidified that historians still argued within their confines – mostly on the matter if Wallenstein had, in fact, betrayed the emperor. Slowly, the view that he had not gained ground.
Interpretations of Wallenstein in the 19th and 20th century often were inspired by current politics: Catholic German nationalists hailed Wallenstein as a proto-Greater German unifier. Czech historians like Josef Pekař adopted their compatriot as a proto-nationalist transcending the multi-national Habsburg Empire. Hellmut Diwald saw in Wallenstein the necessary authoritarian answer to overcome foreign domination of Germany (and subsequently plunged himself into New Right revisionism).
When stories of “Great Men” had decidedly fallen out of favor in academic history, Golo Mann revived the genre with his biography of Wallenstein, testing the limits of academic writing with his literary ambitions. His book dispelled some of the myths around Wallenstein and retained others.
Currently, Wallenstein’s heritage as a Bohemian, a nobleman, a (converted) Catholic, and a magnate have received more attention. History is never completed, but only enriched with more perspectives. Wallenstein’s life and its subsequent interpretations are thus also lessons in historiography.
Cuius Regio (Francisco Gradaille, GMT Games, forthcoming)
Thirty Years War: Europe in Agony, 1618—1648 (David A. Fox/Michael Welker, GMT Games)
A recent biography which succeeds at dispelling the Wallenstein myth is Mortimer, Geoff: Wallenstein. The Enigma of the Thirty Years’ War, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2010.
For an older, more encompassing biography with literary aspirations, see Mann, Golo: Wallenstein. His Life Narrated, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York City, NY 1976.
On the reception of Wallenstein and his changing image from his contemporaries all the way through the 20th century, see Bahlcke, Joachim/Kampmann, Christoph: Wallensteinbilder im Widerstreit: Eine historische Symbolfigur in Geschichtsschreibung und Literatur vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert [Conflicting Conceptions of Wallenstein: A Symbolic Figure from History in Historiography and Literature from the 17th to the 20th Century], Böhlau, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2011 [in German].
For a short introduction to the Thirty Years’ War, see Schmidt, Georg: Der Dreißigjährige Krieg [The Thirty Years’ War], C.H. Beck, Munich 2010 [in German].
A magisterial monography on the entire war is Wilson, Peter H.: Europe’s Tragedy. A New History of the Thirty Years’ War, Penguin, London 2009.
And, we’re back! Here with another edition of Off the Shelf, let’s look today at
FUSE is a 2015 game designed by Kane Klenko and published by Renegade Games. It’s for 1-5 players, and is a real-time dice-rolling game where you are trying to defuse bombs in your spaceship within ten minutes. There are several games in the FUSE family now – along with the original, which got a new edition in 2019, there’s Flatline (2017 – this one is about saving patients injured in the original game’s attack) and FUSE Countdown (2023 – this one adds new stuff to the FUSE system, including multi-colored dice and roles).
At the start of the game, each player gets two cards (four in the solo game). You’ll then deal cards into a deck based on the number of players and desired level of difficulty, and shuffle them. Deal out five face-up cards, and then add six bomb cards to the deck.
There are no turns in this game. You start a ten minute timer (and Renegade has one on their app that will mock you throughout play) and start drawing dice – one per player in a 3-5 player game, four with two players, three in solo play. These are rolled, and each player will take one (two with two players, all in solo play). The chosen die (or dice) must be placed on a valid spot on a card. Most spots either have a specific number, a specific color, or both. Some have number or color of your choice, but these usually have to be identical (or not) to something else on the card. Sometimes you just need to place dice on the card, but other times you need to stack them into columns or a pyramid.
If you cannot place a die, you must roll it, then you must remove another placed die that matches the number or color of the rolled die. Once everyone is done, unused and discarded dice go back in the bag and you do it again.
When a card is completed, it is set aside into a score pile and you take a new one from the array in the center of the table. This card is immediately replaced with the top card of the deck. If it’s a bomb card, all players must discard a die that matches the number or color of the bomb card. The card then goes into the score pile and is replaced.
The game ends in two ways – either all cards are removed from the center of the table (deck is empty, all face-up cards are taken), or you run out of time and blow up. Either way, you score the points from your defused cards, two points per bomb card, ten points if you won, and one point per 10 seconds left on the clock. This is just for reference purposes to see how well you succeeded – you win if all bombs get defused.
I got my copy in 2016, winning it in some Twitter contest that I don’t remember. According to my logs, I’ve played it 53 times since then, most of which were solo. In fact, I’ve only played a couple of times with multiple people, and neither of them were terribly successful. There were too many times when players started bickering over dice they needed when someone else also needed them, and that wasted too much time. That led me to the conclusion that I much prefer it as a solo game, where I get to make my own decisions and am not beholden to others. Though I would like to try two players sometime.
The game is played in real-time, which is a turnoff for some people. It is highly stressful, as you only have 10 minutes to complete your bombs. And if you’re not rolling well, it can be pretty frustrating. But that’s part of what I really like about it – I think the tension works really well, and it ends up feeling like a really quickly played puzzle.
I happen to really enjoy real-time games. But I know there are a lot of people who don’t – the tension of not being able to pause and think can be highly stressful. For me, it works well. I love thinky games where I need to consider my options and make a reasonably educated move. But I also like chaos, and nothing says chaos like “you only have ten minutes before your ship explodes.”
The cards are pretty well laid out. The patterns are pretty easy to identify, and the dice fit in all the squares on the page. I do really like the 3-dimensional patterns as well as the 2-dimensional ones, because you have to be thinking about what has to come first. The bomb cards add an extra wrinkle to the game, and while it’s a sigh of relief when one comes up and you have nothing that matches, it’s pretty frustrating to discard something when they do.
Overall, the game is pretty high on the luck factor. You have to draw the right dice, roll well, and complete whatever challenges the game throws at you. You can try to strategize what bombs you want in front of you, maybe having a mix of easier and more complex patterns, but if only one or the other is coming out, you’ve got to deal with it. I personally love the 6-point bombs, as they always stack and are just a lot of fun to complete overall.
So, yeah, this is a favorite game of mine to play solo. I’m doing it as part of my 10×10 this year (ten games ten times each in a year), and have been enjoying it. I’ve lost more than I’ve won, but I always have a good time. I’ve currently got it at #5 for my Off the Shelf rankings.
That’s it for today! Thanks for reading!
And, we’re back! Here with another edition of Off the Shelf, let’s look today at
FUSE is a 2015 game designed by Kane Klenko and published by Renegade Games. It’s for 1-5 players, and is a real-time dice-rolling game where you are trying to defuse bombs in your spaceship within ten minutes. There are several games in the FUSE family now – along with the original, which got a new edition in 2019, there’s Flatline (2017 – this one is about saving patients injured in the original game’s attack) and FUSE Countdown (2023 – this one adds new stuff to the FUSE system, including multi-colored dice and roles).
At the start of the game, each player gets two cards (four in the solo game). You’ll then deal cards into a deck based on the number of players and desired level of difficulty, and shuffle them. Deal out five face-up cards, and then add six bomb cards to the deck.
There are no turns in this game. You start a ten minute timer (and Renegade has one on their app that will mock you throughout play) and start drawing dice – one per player in a 3-5 player game, four with two players, three in solo play. These are rolled, and each player will take one (two with two players, all in solo play). The chosen die (or dice) must be placed on a valid spot on a card. Most spots either have a specific number, a specific color, or both. Some have number or color of your choice, but these usually have to be identical (or not) to something else on the card. Sometimes you just need to place dice on the card, but other times you need to stack them into columns or a pyramid.
If you cannot place a die, you must roll it, then you must remove another placed die that matches the number or color of the rolled die. Once everyone is done, unused and discarded dice go back in the bag and you do it again.
When a card is completed, it is set aside into a score pile and you take a new one from the array in the center of the table. This card is immediately replaced with the top card of the deck. If it’s a bomb card, all players must discard a die that matches the number or color of the bomb card. The card then goes into the score pile and is replaced.
The game ends in two ways – either all cards are removed from the center of the table (deck is empty, all face-up cards are taken), or you run out of time and blow up. Either way, you score the points from your defused cards, two points per bomb card, ten points if you won, and one point per 10 seconds left on the clock. This is just for reference purposes to see how well you succeeded – you win if all bombs get defused.
I got my copy in 2016, winning it in some Twitter contest that I don’t remember. According to my logs, I’ve played it 53 times since then, most of which were solo. In fact, I’ve only played a couple of times with multiple people, and neither of them were terribly successful. There were too many times when players started bickering over dice they needed when someone else also needed them, and that wasted too much time. That led me to the conclusion that I much prefer it as a solo game, where I get to make my own decisions and am not beholden to others. Though I would like to try two players sometime.
The game is played in real-time, which is a turnoff for some people. It is highly stressful, as you only have 10 minutes to complete your bombs. And if you’re not rolling well, it can be pretty frustrating. But that’s part of what I really like about it – I think the tension works really well, and it ends up feeling like a really quickly played puzzle.
I happen to really enjoy real-time games. But I know there are a lot of people who don’t – the tension of not being able to pause and think can be highly stressful. For me, it works well. I love thinky games where I need to consider my options and make a reasonably educated move. But I also like chaos, and nothing says chaos like “you only have ten minutes before your ship explodes.”
The cards are pretty well laid out. The patterns are pretty easy to identify, and the dice fit in all the squares on the page. I do really like the 3-dimensional patterns as well as the 2-dimensional ones, because you have to be thinking about what has to come first. The bomb cards add an extra wrinkle to the game, and while it’s a sigh of relief when one comes up and you have nothing that matches, it’s pretty frustrating to discard something when they do.
Overall, the game is pretty high on the luck factor. You have to draw the right dice, roll well, and complete whatever challenges the game throws at you. You can try to strategize what bombs you want in front of you, maybe having a mix of easier and more complex patterns, but if only one or the other is coming out, you’ve got to deal with it. I personally love the 6-point bombs, as they always stack and are just a lot of fun to complete overall.
So, yeah, this is a favorite game of mine to play solo. I’m doing it as part of my 10×10 this year (ten games ten times each in a year), and have been enjoying it. I’ve lost more than I’ve won, but I always have a good time. I’ve currently got it at #5 for my Off the Shelf rankings.
That’s it for today! Thanks for reading!
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