One of my more recent discoveries… and it is all about discovery itself: You want to discover the other player’s secret identity, which you do by catching up to them on the circular track. Of course, your opponent wants the same, and so both of you try to go as fast as they can by enlisting the most helpful of your suburban neighbors (all of which are anthropomorphic animals) to your cause. Yet you must always select two cards from your hand for recruiting, place one of them face-up and the other face-down – and then your opponent gets to select one of them (and discover if they made the right choice).
The numbers on the cards signify how many steps you take according to how many copies of the card you have – the Sentinel (Aufpasser) starts slow, but is great with 3+ copies, for the Double Agent (Doppelagentin), 2 copies is the sweet spot, and while the Daredevil (Draufgänger) might be helpful initially, enlisting the third of them will lose you the game.
Can you bait them with the great face-up card and take the even better face-down card for yourself? Or can you trick them into thinking that this is just what you want them to do, so they select the face-down card which turns out to be utter trash? Such are the thoughts of retired agents.
Let’s not even get into the intricacies of the instant victory (by enlisting enough codebreakers) or instant defeat (by enlisting too many daredevils), or the special equipment you can buy from the black market in the advanced version. Agent Avenue has you outwit, outbluff, and sometimes outluck your opponent in 10 to 20 breezy minutes.
I have sung Heat’s praises in general in the farewell post on new-to-me games. Here, let me expand on the Schwerpunkt of its mechanics – heat management. Heat represents the strain on your car. In game terms, that’s heat cards clogging up your hand. They cannot be played (ugh) and not even discarded (double ugh), thus costing you both raw power and flexibility. The only way to get rid of them is to shift down and let your machine recover in low speeds… while watching everybody else get ahead of you.
While you can crash your car (from stress rather than heat), the upturned yellow car was the doing of a player with the flair for the dramatic.
So, should you avoid heat at any cost? – No! You will to take a certain amount of it to win. Sometimes you need to crank up your speed quickly, sometimes you want to boost a movement to put yourself in a position where you can slipstream past opponents. If you have a low-gear stretch soon after taking on the heat, you might be able to shed the heat before it did any damage. The intriguing gamble of how much heat you can incur and how to get rid of it without sacrificing speed is the heart of Heat.
And my favorite non-historical game of the year was…
The Catan Card Game has a special place in my heart. It was the first board game I ever played with my friend F., and after F.s death left only M. and me as two sides of our original Magical Triangle, the Catan Card Game turned into a mainstay of our meetings. We used to play the Expanded Basic Game but tried the Tournament Game this year – which means instead of having all the cards from the base game and potential expansions at your (aleatory) disposal, players use a pre-constructed deck of 33 cards.
My university deck could not pick up steam quickly enough against the raw productive and commercial power of my opponent’s deck.
That provides plenty of personalization. We used a university-based deck and one which aims for fast city construction and trade dominance – two very different approaches which both worked well (one victory per deck). And the joy of playing is complemented with the joy of deck construction. I already have some ideas on my mind for a future deck.
And what were your favorite non-historical games this year? Let me know in the comments!
One of my more recent discoveries… and it is all about discovery itself: You want to discover the other player’s secret identity, which you do by catching up to them on the circular track. Of course, your opponent wants the same, and so both of you try to go as fast as they can by enlisting the most helpful of your suburban neighbors (all of which are anthropomorphic animals) to your cause. Yet you must always select two cards from your hand for recruiting, place one of them face-up and the other face-down – and then your opponent gets to select one of them (and discover if they made the right choice).
The numbers on the cards signify how many steps you take according to how many copies of the card you have – the Sentinel (Aufpasser) starts slow, but is great with 3+ copies, for the Double Agent (Doppelagentin), 2 copies is the sweet spot, and while the Daredevil (Draufgänger) might be helpful initially, enlisting the third of them will lose you the game.
Can you bait them with the great face-up card and take the even better face-down card for yourself? Or can you trick them into thinking that this is just what you want them to do, so they select the face-down card which turns out to be utter trash? Such are the thoughts of retired agents.
Let’s not even get into the intricacies of the instant victory (by enlisting enough codebreakers) or instant defeat (by enlisting too many daredevils), or the special equipment you can buy from the black market in the advanced version. Agent Avenue has you outwit, outbluff, and sometimes outluck your opponent in 10 to 20 breezy minutes.
I have sung Heat’s praises in general in the farewell post on new-to-me games. Here, let me expand on the Schwerpunkt of its mechanics – heat management. Heat represents the strain on your car. In game terms, that’s heat cards clogging up your hand. They cannot be played (ugh) and not even discarded (double ugh), thus costing you both raw power and flexibility. The only way to get rid of them is to shift down and let your machine recover in low speeds… while watching everybody else get ahead of you.
While you can crash your car (from stress rather than heat), the upturned yellow car was the doing of a player with the flair for the dramatic.
So, should you avoid heat at any cost? – No! You will to take a certain amount of it to win. Sometimes you need to crank up your speed quickly, sometimes you want to boost a movement to put yourself in a position where you can slipstream past opponents. If you have a low-gear stretch soon after taking on the heat, you might be able to shed the heat before it did any damage. The intriguing gamble of how much heat you can incur and how to get rid of it without sacrificing speed is the heart of Heat.
And my favorite non-historical game of the year was…
The Catan Card Game has a special place in my heart. It was the first board game I ever played with my friend F., and after F.s death left only M. and me as two sides of our original Magical Triangle, the Catan Card Game turned into a mainstay of our meetings. We used to play the Expanded Basic Game but tried the Tournament Game this year – which means instead of having all the cards from the base game and potential expansions at your (aleatory) disposal, players use a pre-constructed deck of 33 cards.
My university deck could not pick up steam quickly enough against the raw productive and commercial power of my opponent’s deck.
That provides plenty of personalization. We used a university-based deck and one which aims for fast city construction and trade dominance – two very different approaches which both worked well (one victory per deck). And the joy of playing is complemented with the joy of deck construction. I already have some ideas on my mind for a future deck.
And what were your favorite non-historical games this year? Let me know in the comments!
Long-time readers of this blog know my infatuation with Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series. I have been reading the series since 2018 at the appropriately epic pace of one book per year (and last year, I skipped). Masters of Rome reading was always a highlight of my literary year – the high drama, the broad historical canvas painted with a myriad of characters, events, and microplots, and, most of all, McCullough’s readiness to engage the ancients on their own terms, with ever so many pages dedicated to this legislation or that campaign.
McCullough had planned to end the series after the sixth instalment (The October Horse, which covers the years 44 to 42 BCE). Only her fans’ pleas convinced her to write Antony and Cleopatra. Maybe that shows a little bit – the book takes a long time (say, the first 200 pages) to hit its stride, and never quite reaches the heights of previous instalments. Yet that mostly shows how good these books were (peaking with novel #5, Caesar), as this conclusion to the drama of the late Roman Republic was still one of my favorite historical novels in 2025.
Clarissa Oakes (Patrick O’Brian)
I’m continuing my re-read of the Aubrey-Maturin series, that delightful panorama of life at sea (and land!) during the Napoleonic Wars. Among the Aubrey-Maturin novels which I read this year, my favorite was #15 – Clarissa Oakes.
Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin want just one thing: Leave New South Wales and its mixture of brutal government (instigating clashes between the officers and men) and anti-Irish fervor (which gets Stephen into trouble). However, when the ship is out at sea, they realize that one of the younger officers has smuggled out a convict from the penal colony – an enigmatic young woman, who is bound to attract the attention of several of the men. No other book in the series makes so good on the premise of the characters being confined to a small ship, unable to avoid each other. And Clarissa, the escapee, is not just a plot device, but a complex and compelling character in her own right.
And my favorite historical novel of this year was…
A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles)
„Where is it now?“, asks the poem which kicks off the book – “it” being purpose. Having been written after the failed Russian revolution of 1905, the poem is widely seen as a call to action and inspires Russia’s revolutionaries… and thus they do not sentence the aristocratic author Count Alexander Rostov to death when he returns to Russia after the October Revolution. Under house arrest at the Hotel Metropol in Moscow, he will spend the next thirty years rethinking and rediscovering his purpose. It will not count as a spoiler that he finds it in putting his abilities to good use and connecting with his fellow human beings – of course he does. Yet the point of the book is not the goal, but the winding way there, told with grace, nuance, and originality.
While the ending might be a bit kitschy, the unique protagonist, the cast of intriguing side characters and the delightful prose made this my favorite historical fiction read of the year.
Have you read any of these books – and, if so, what did you think? And what were your favorite historical novels of the year? Let me know in the comments!
Long-time readers of this blog know my infatuation with Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series. I have been reading the series since 2018 at the appropriately epic pace of one book per year (and last year, I skipped). Masters of Rome reading was always a highlight of my literary year – the high drama, the broad historical canvas painted with a myriad of characters, events, and microplots, and, most of all, McCullough’s readiness to engage the ancients on their own terms, with ever so many pages dedicated to this legislation or that campaign.
McCullough had planned to end the series after the sixth instalment (The October Horse, which covers the years 44 to 42 BCE). Only her fans’ pleas convinced her to write Antony and Cleopatra. Maybe that shows a little bit – the book takes a long time (say, the first 200 pages) to hit its stride, and never quite reaches the heights of previous instalments. Yet that mostly shows how good these books were (peaking with novel #5, Caesar), as this conclusion to the drama of the late Roman Republic was still one of my favorite historical novels in 2025.
Clarissa Oakes (Patrick O’Brian)
I’m continuing my re-read of the Aubrey-Maturin series, that delightful panorama of life at sea (and land!) during the Napoleonic Wars. Among the Aubrey-Maturin novels which I read this year, my favorite was #15 – Clarissa Oakes.
Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin want just one thing: Leave New South Wales and its mixture of brutal government (instigating clashes between the officers and men) and anti-Irish fervor (which gets Stephen into trouble). However, when the ship is out at sea, they realize that one of the younger officers has smuggled out a convict from the penal colony – an enigmatic young woman, who is bound to attract the attention of several of the men. No other book in the series makes so good on the premise of the characters being confined to a small ship, unable to avoid each other. And Clarissa, the escapee, is not just a plot device, but a complex and compelling character in her own right.
And my favorite historical novel of this year was…
A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles)
„Where is it now?“, asks the poem which kicks off the book – “it” being purpose. Having been written after the failed Russian revolution of 1905, the poem is widely seen as a call to action and inspires Russia’s revolutionaries… and thus they do not sentence the aristocratic author Count Alexander Rostov to death when he returns to Russia after the October Revolution. Under house arrest at the Hotel Metropol in Moscow, he will spend the next thirty years rethinking and rediscovering his purpose. It will not count as a spoiler that he finds it in putting his abilities to good use and connecting with his fellow human beings – of course he does. Yet the point of the book is not the goal, but the winding way there, told with grace, nuance, and originality.
While the ending might be a bit kitschy, the unique protagonist, the cast of intriguing side characters and the delightful prose made this my favorite historical fiction read of the year.
Have you read any of these books – and, if so, what did you think? And what were your favorite historical novels of the year? Let me know in the comments!
As the year comes to a close, I’ll do my usual end-of-year posts: My personal top three in a range of categories. As tradition commands, we’ll begin with the games that I played for the first time this year. Here are the best three.
I’m not much of a Formula 1 fan – from my point of view, nothing much happens during the races (after the start, that is), and in many years, even the championship as such is a bore because one driver/car combo is just too dominant. (This year has been excitingly different in that regard.)
In the box: Another close finish!
Heat, however, takes just the exciting parts of racing and puts them together in an enthralling package of evocative mechanisms – downshifting before corners (and upshifting afterward), and the delicate balance of how to deal with the psychological stress on the driver and the physical stress on the car (the eponymous heat). And as the main planning phase is done simultaneously, there’s minimal downtime even with the full six players.
I’m excited to learn new things from and with games. One topic I knew next to nothing about is the 14th century in India. That, however, has changed a bit now due to Vijayanagara, a COIN-lite treatment of the collapse of the Delhi Sultanate’s hegemony under the challenge of invasion from the north (Timur’s Mongols) and centrifugal forces in the south (the nascent Bahmani Kingdom and Vijayanagara Empire). Every game of Vijayanagara tells a variation of that story.
The Delhi Sultanate (black) is under heavy pressure from the Vijayanagara Empire (yellow) and the Bahmani Kingdom (turquoise). From the implementation on Rally the Troops!
Chaos – some games hate it, others, like Time of Crisis, embrace it. Whoever wants to be Roman emperor in the tumultuous third century must be prepared to deal with a whole whirlwind of challenges: Angry mobs want to drag your governors into the gutter, Barbarian tribes stand ready to cross the border into your provinces, and, worst of all, the rest of the Roman elite wants to be emperor, too, and will gleefully take whatever you possess.
Red has declared himself emperor! Yet Yellow runs a compact dominion in the east, ready to move into Italy or break away from the empire. From the implementation on Rally the Troops!
I have been thwarted in my imperial aspirations by my fellow bloggers Alexander and Grant from The Players’ Aid as well as Dave and Michal, and have been loving every minute of it. Time of Crisis has been my most-played game overall this year (with 14 individual plays of it), and rightly takes the crown in this category.
What were your favorite new-to-me games this year? Let me know in the comments!
As the year comes to a close, I’ll do my usual end-of-year posts: My personal top three in a range of categories. As tradition commands, we’ll begin with the games that I played for the first time this year. Here are the best three.
I’m not much of a Formula 1 fan – from my point of view, nothing much happens during the races (after the start, that is), and in many years, even the championship as such is a bore because one driver/car combo is just too dominant. (This year has been excitingly different in that regard.)
In the box: Another close finish!
Heat, however, takes just the exciting parts of racing and puts them together in an enthralling package of evocative mechanisms – downshifting before corners (and upshifting afterward), and the delicate balance of how to deal with the psychological stress on the driver and the physical stress on the car (the eponymous heat). And as the main planning phase is done simultaneously, there’s minimal downtime even with the full six players.
I’m excited to learn new things from and with games. One topic I knew next to nothing about is the 14th century in India. That, however, has changed a bit now due to Vijayanagara, a COIN-lite treatment of the collapse of the Delhi Sultanate’s hegemony under the challenge of invasion from the north (Timur’s Mongols) and centrifugal forces in the south (the nascent Bahmani Kingdom and Vijayanagara Empire). Every game of Vijayanagara tells a variation of that story.
The Delhi Sultanate (black) is under heavy pressure from the Vijayanagara Empire (yellow) and the Bahmani Kingdom (turquoise). From the implementation on Rally the Troops!
Chaos – some games hate it, others, like Time of Crisis, embrace it. Whoever wants to be Roman emperor in the tumultuous third century must be prepared to deal with a whole whirlwind of challenges: Angry mobs want to drag your governors into the gutter, Barbarian tribes stand ready to cross the border into your provinces, and, worst of all, the rest of the Roman elite wants to be emperor, too, and will gleefully take whatever you possess.
Red has declared himself emperor! Yet Yellow runs a compact dominion in the east, ready to move into Italy or break away from the empire. From the implementation on Rally the Troops!
I have been thwarted in my imperial aspirations by my fellow bloggers Alexander and Grant from The Players’ Aid as well as Dave and Michal, and have been loving every minute of it. Time of Crisis has been my most-played game overall this year (with 14 individual plays of it), and rightly takes the crown in this category.
What were your favorite new-to-me games this year? Let me know in the comments!
Before we dive into the content of the playlist, some general observations:
All of the songs in the playlist were popular during the Weimar Republic (1918—1933). Yet as music recording was still in its infancy at that time, many of the songs in the playlist are later recordings (and some rare ones were recorded even before 1918!).
As the playlist is only 2:21 hours long, your Weimar game will probably last longer (if you don’t crash the republic on the first or second round), but there’s no reason not to listen to these songs two or three times – they’re fascinating historical documents.
The playlist is thematically sorted. That helps you find similar songs, but makes for somewhat monotonous listening (until you come to the next group of songs). I therefore recommend you turn shuffle on.
Now, what awaits you in the playlist?
#1: The National Anthem
It seems like a no-brainer to include the German national anthem of the time, yet it’s not so simple: The Lied der Deutschen (Song of the Germans) had been written in 1841, but had since then only been a patriotic song among many – until the first president of the republic, Friedrich Ebert, declared it the national anthem in 1922. The song’s three stanzas were variedly popular: Ebert favored the third stanza with its liberal ideals of unity, justice, and freedom, his right-wing opponents preferred the “Deutschland über alles” (Germany Above Everything) first stanza. I have included an instrumental version. If you feel patriotic, you can sing along.
The Weimar Republic did not come into existence in a vacuum. It inherited German cultural traditions like folk songs (“Wem Gott will rechte Gunst erweisen” (Whom God Wants to Favor), song #2).
And, of course, the Weimar Republic succeeded the German Empire with its national feeling (“Die Wacht am Rhein” (The Guard on the Rhine), song #2), dominant Protestantism (Martin Luther’s classic “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God), song #5), and monarchy (“Heil dir im Siegerkranz” (Hail to Thee In the Victor’s Crown), song #7 – the quasi-anthem of the German Empire).
The republic’s midwife was the First World War – whose experience shaped its veterans and provided the cultural context even for those who had not been adults during the war yet (“Wildgänse rauschen durch die Nacht” (Wild Geese Rush Through the Night), song #8, written in 1916, was immensely popular among the Weimar Republic youth movement). The war also cast its shadow over Weimar Germany as many had lost their husbands, sons, fathers, brothers, and friends in the war (“Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden” (I Had a Comrade), song #9, the traditional German soldiers’ lament).
The liberal republic proved fertile ground for satirical treatments of the new developments: Otto Reutter made fun of the big and small war profiteers with “Seh’n Sie, darum ist es schade, dass der Krieg zu Ende ist” (See, that’s why it’s a pity that the war is over, song #10), and Claire Waldoff called for replacing the men in power with women in “Raus mit den Männern aus dem Reichstag” (Kick the Men Out of Parliament, song #11), playing on masculine anxieties after the introduction of women’s suffrage.
Even in a time and place as politically charged as the Weimar Republic, not everything was politics. The average Hans and Gretel may have cared less about their preferred ideology and more about how to have good time on a Saturday night… and the new cultural scene, especially in the big cities like Berlin, provided ample opportunities.
The more sophisticated artists like the Comedian Harmonists succeeded with witty wordplay and erudite vocal harmonies. Others played on the classics – alcohol (“Wir versaufen unser Oma ihr klein’ Häuschen“ (We Blow Grandma’s Little House on Booze, song #19) and sexual innuendo („Fräulein, Woll’n Sie nicht ein Kind von mir“ (Miss, Don’t You Want a Child By Me, song #22). There was even the equivalent of a (generalized) diss track: “Du bist als Kind zu heiß gebadet worden” (You Have Been Bathed Too Hot As a Child, song #23) indicates that this neglect of bath safety led to lasting brain damage in the interlocutor.
#26-33: Film, Theater, and Opera Music
The Weimar Republic’s vibrant cultural scene led to cross-pollination between diverse forms of artistic expression. The new medium of film was pioneered in Germany, and once it had left its silent infancy behind, movie songs became hits. Marlene Dietrich, starring in The Blue Angel, enticed with “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt (I’m Set to Love From Head to Heel, song #26), but warned “Nimm dich in Acht vor blonden Frau’n“ (Beware of Blonde Women, song #27).
More traditional art forms like the theater also adapted. Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera)’s acerbic critique of capitalism would not have been as successful without its catchy songs, the most famous of which is the “Moritat of Mackie Messer” (Ballad of Mack the Knife, song #31).
Even the most classic and highbrow form of entertainment modernized: “Jonny spielt auf” (Jonny Plays It Big, song #33) introduced jazz into the world of the opera… which brings us to our next category.
#34-41: Jazz and Blues
Traditionally, the United States had received and emulated European fashions, not the other way around. Yet by the early 20th century, America had become the largest economy in the world, its war entry in 1917 tipped the scales of the war further in favor of the Allies, and the increased presence of Americans in Europe meant that the United States turned from an importer to an exporter of culture. Jazz took Europe by storm – both in the form of American (and nascent European) bands and by the new medium of the music record. The Weimar Republic was no exception. Jazz fueled the parties in any larger city of 1920s Germany.
Of course, not everyone loved jazz, and the controversy over its unorthodox dissonances, the more expressive, individualistic, and eroticized dancing style accompanying the music, and, of course, the race of its performers entered the contemporary culture wars – exemplified by Weimar’s double use of Louis Armstrong, illustrating both the SPD’s “The New Rhythm” and the DNVP’s “Nicht Deutsch” (“Not German”) event cards.
The “Tiger Rag” (song #41) is also used in The Tin Drum, German writer Günter Grass’s epic about the rise, fall, and persistence of Nazism: The youthful protagonist Oskar Matzerath who always carries his eponymous tin drum plays the Tiger Rag at a NSDAP rally in his hometown Danzig. The mesmerizing rhythm has the audience sway and dance, exposing the Nazis to ridicule.
#42-47: Workers’ Songs
The aggressive ethno-nationalism of Nazism was one of the two most dynamic political movements of the Weimar Republic (at least once the 1929 crash had plunged vast parts of the German population into a crisis of material and identity). The other was the workers’ movement, both in its reformist Social Democratic and its revolutionary Communist form. As the workers had been traditionally excluded from the public in imperial Germany, dominated by aristocracy and bourgeoisie, they created their own political parties (SPD, later USPD and KPD), economic associations (the trade unions), and social and cultural associations – from workers’ sport clubs to workers’ singing societies. Their milieu was bound together not only by their shared economic experience, but also by this cultural connection, of which the workers’ songs formed an important part.
Classics from imperial times like “Die Internationale” (The Internationale, song #42) remained important, but the movement also adopted new songs written by the numerous socialist poets and composers like Bertolt Brecht, Hanns Eisler, or Ernst Busch. Whereas some of these became new classics (like the “Solidaritätslied” (Solidarity Song, song #46), others aged badly: “Der Marsch ins Dritte Reich” (The March to the Third Reich, song #47) poked fun at the alleged inability of the Nazis to take power after their electoral setback at the Reichstag election of November 1932. First recorded in December 1932, the song was horribly overtaken by events just a month later when Hitler was elected chancellor in January 1933.
Thus, we conclude our playlist. It contains the traditional and the modern, entertainment and politics, left and right – except for the very right, but I don’t want to listen to Nazi songs while playing board games, and I’m sure that neither do you.
Do you like to play music in the background while playing board games? What’s your favorite song from this playlist? Let me know in the comments!
Before we dive into the content of the playlist, some general observations:
All of the songs in the playlist were popular during the Weimar Republic (1918—1933). Yet as music recording was still in its infancy at that time, many of the songs in the playlist are later recordings (and some rare ones were recorded even before 1918!).
As the playlist is only 2:21 hours long, your Weimar game will probably last longer (if you don’t crash the republic on the first or second round), but there’s no reason not to listen to these songs two or three times – they’re fascinating historical documents.
The playlist is thematically sorted. That helps you find similar songs, but makes for somewhat monotonous listening (until you come to the next group of songs). I therefore recommend you turn shuffle on.
Now, what awaits you in the playlist?
#1: The National Anthem
It seems like a no-brainer to include the German national anthem of the time, yet it’s not so simple: The Lied der Deutschen (Song of the Germans) had been written in 1841, but had since then only been a patriotic song among many – until the first president of the republic, Friedrich Ebert, declared it the national anthem in 1922. The song’s three stanzas were variedly popular: Ebert favored the third stanza with its liberal ideals of unity, justice, and freedom, his right-wing opponents preferred the “Deutschland über alles” (Germany Above Everything) first stanza. I have included an instrumental version. If you feel patriotic, you can sing along.
The Weimar Republic did not come into existence in a vacuum. It inherited German cultural traditions like folk songs (“Wem Gott will rechte Gunst erweisen” (Whom God Wants to Favor), song #2).
And, of course, the Weimar Republic succeeded the German Empire with its national feeling (“Die Wacht am Rhein” (The Guard on the Rhine), song #2), dominant Protestantism (Martin Luther’s classic “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God), song #5), and monarchy (“Heil dir im Siegerkranz” (Hail to Thee In the Victor’s Crown), song #7 – the quasi-anthem of the German Empire).
The republic’s midwife was the First World War – whose experience shaped its veterans and provided the cultural context even for those who had not been adults during the war yet (“Wildgänse rauschen durch die Nacht” (Wild Geese Rush Through the Night), song #8, written in 1916, was immensely popular among the Weimar Republic youth movement). The war also cast its shadow over Weimar Germany as many had lost their husbands, sons, fathers, brothers, and friends in the war (“Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden” (I Had a Comrade), song #9, the traditional German soldiers’ lament).
The liberal republic proved fertile ground for satirical treatments of the new developments: Otto Reutter made fun of the big and small war profiteers with “Seh’n Sie, darum ist es schade, dass der Krieg zu Ende ist” (See, that’s why it’s a pity that the war is over, song #10), and Claire Waldoff called for replacing the men in power with women in “Raus mit den Männern aus dem Reichstag” (Kick the Men Out of Parliament, song #11), playing on masculine anxieties after the introduction of women’s suffrage.
Even in a time and place as politically charged as the Weimar Republic, not everything was politics. The average Hans and Gretel may have cared less about their preferred ideology and more about how to have good time on a Saturday night… and the new cultural scene, especially in the big cities like Berlin, provided ample opportunities.
The more sophisticated artists like the Comedian Harmonists succeeded with witty wordplay and erudite vocal harmonies. Others played on the classics – alcohol (“Wir versaufen unser Oma ihr klein’ Häuschen“ (We Blow Grandma’s Little House on Booze, song #19) and sexual innuendo („Fräulein, Woll’n Sie nicht ein Kind von mir“ (Miss, Don’t You Want a Child By Me, song #22). There was even the equivalent of a (generalized) diss track: “Du bist als Kind zu heiß gebadet worden” (You Have Been Bathed Too Hot As a Child, song #23) indicates that this neglect of bath safety led to lasting brain damage in the interlocutor.
#26-33: Film, Theater, and Opera Music
The Weimar Republic’s vibrant cultural scene led to cross-pollination between diverse forms of artistic expression. The new medium of film was pioneered in Germany, and once it had left its silent infancy behind, movie songs became hits. Marlene Dietrich, starring in The Blue Angel, enticed with “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt (I’m Set to Love From Head to Heel, song #26), but warned “Nimm dich in Acht vor blonden Frau’n“ (Beware of Blonde Women, song #27).
More traditional art forms like the theater also adapted. Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera)’s acerbic critique of capitalism would not have been as successful without its catchy songs, the most famous of which is the “Moritat of Mackie Messer” (Ballad of Mack the Knife, song #31).
Even the most classic and highbrow form of entertainment modernized: “Jonny spielt auf” (Jonny Plays It Big, song #33) introduced jazz into the world of the opera… which brings us to our next category.
#34-41: Jazz and Blues
Traditionally, the United States had received and emulated European fashions, not the other way around. Yet by the early 20th century, America had become the largest economy in the world, its war entry in 1917 tipped the scales of the war further in favor of the Allies, and the increased presence of Americans in Europe meant that the United States turned from an importer to an exporter of culture. Jazz took Europe by storm – both in the form of American (and nascent European) bands and by the new medium of the music record. The Weimar Republic was no exception. Jazz fueled the parties in any larger city of 1920s Germany.
Of course, not everyone loved jazz, and the controversy over its unorthodox dissonances, the more expressive, individualistic, and eroticized dancing style accompanying the music, and, of course, the race of its performers entered the contemporary culture wars – exemplified by Weimar’s double use of Louis Armstrong, illustrating both the SPD’s “The New Rhythm” and the DNVP’s “Nicht Deutsch” (“Not German”) event cards.
The “Tiger Rag” (song #41) is also used in The Tin Drum, German writer Günter Grass’s epic about the rise, fall, and persistence of Nazism: The youthful protagonist Oskar Matzerath who always carries his eponymous tin drum plays the Tiger Rag at a NSDAP rally in his hometown Danzig. The mesmerizing rhythm has the audience sway and dance, exposing the Nazis to ridicule.
#42-47: Workers’ Songs
The aggressive ethno-nationalism of Nazism was one of the two most dynamic political movements of the Weimar Republic (at least once the 1929 crash had plunged vast parts of the German population into a crisis of material and identity). The other was the workers’ movement, both in its reformist Social Democratic and its revolutionary Communist form. As the workers had been traditionally excluded from the public in imperial Germany, dominated by aristocracy and bourgeoisie, they created their own political parties (SPD, later USPD and KPD), economic associations (the trade unions), and social and cultural associations – from workers’ sport clubs to workers’ singing societies. Their milieu was bound together not only by their shared economic experience, but also by this cultural connection, of which the workers’ songs formed an important part.
Classics from imperial times like “Die Internationale” (The Internationale, song #42) remained important, but the movement also adopted new songs written by the numerous socialist poets and composers like Bertolt Brecht, Hanns Eisler, or Ernst Busch. Whereas some of these became new classics (like the “Solidaritätslied” (Solidarity Song, song #46), others aged badly: “Der Marsch ins Dritte Reich” (The March to the Third Reich, song #47) poked fun at the alleged inability of the Nazis to take power after their electoral setback at the Reichstag election of November 1932. First recorded in December 1932, the song was horribly overtaken by events just a month later when Hitler was elected chancellor in January 1933.
Thus, we conclude our playlist. It contains the traditional and the modern, entertainment and politics, left and right – except for the very right, but I don’t want to listen to Nazi songs while playing board games, and I’m sure that neither do you.
Do you like to play music in the background while playing board games? What’s your favorite song from this playlist? Let me know in the comments!
Before the fall fair and convention circuit is coming to an end, I had the opportunity to attend Süddeutsche Spielemesse (Southern German Game Fair) in Stuttgart. As when I went last time, it was a pleasant, laid-back experience.
The game fair is part of a conglomerate of hobby and leisure related fairs which are all held over the same long weekend in neighboring fair halls. As the ticket covers all fairs, you are free to explore everything. That’s great if you go as a group or family with differing interests: Your creative-minded daughter can get all inspired at the arts & crafts fair, your animal-loving son will try to make friends with the cats, rabbits, and camels at the animal fair, your gourmet spouse samples their way through the food fair, and then everybody meets at the game fair because you all love board games. Right?
These folks will go to the board game fair later and play Camel Up.
With that setup, Süddeutsche Spielemesse’s target audience is broad, from the hobbyist to the very casual gamer. Consequently, you’ll find a lot of games outside of the hobby board game niche – from classics like chess and go over sports games to role-playing games. The exhibitors are usually either vendors (game test opportunities are rare), clubs looking for new members (like many of the role-playing clubs), or, my favorite, the big gaming island run in the middle where you can just borrow a game and play it free of charge which gives Süddeutsche Spielemesse a certain convention feel.
At this point, it is tradition that the gaming island remains open until 10pm on Friday, allowing for a beautiful evening of gaming. I met with a friend there and we played three different two-player games:
Northern German cities Hamburg and Altona try to outdo each other – yet while the usual victory point collecting occurs, these only matter if the game runs its full seven rounds. And it is much more likely that one of the cities will decisively outdo the other in one of the four areas of competition (alliances, ships, lawsuits, and prestige) and score an instant victory. With such a plethora of instant victory conditions, you will always feel the thrill of chasing one yourself and being threatened with another by your opponent.
Yes, that’s a concrete floor… all tables were taken already. I report that I am still young and springy enough for this kind of gaming (at least for 45 minutes).
In our game, we both started conservatively, getting a little bit of everything. Then my friend made a play for the alliances and was only one of them short of victory… but I could stave off defeat and counter-punch with ship dominance. I guess more experienced players would be at each other’s throat from the get-go which should make for exciting gaming and high replayability (at a very moderate complexity).
Two players chart their path up a mountain built from a shared supply of tiles, each of which has a unique combination of a color (indicating its row) and number (indicating its file). Thus, you always know that a tile you took cannot be accessed by your opponent – and vice versa. This kind of very abstract game with almost-perfect information is usually not up my alley, and Solstis proved no different. We were both unenthused by its mix of logical planning and high randomness in the rare case of placing a nature spirit. However, each play only took 10 minutes, so we didn’t spend much time to gain the valuable knowledge of what’s not our jam.
Table time! That’s a pretty solid path up the mountain, and you can see a lot of nature spirits in the middle – but one of them (the red one) is the evil spirit of vengeance.
Maybe our highlight of the fair: Agent Avenue pits its two players against each other as retired secret agents trying to catch each other. To unveil the other’s identity, they enlist their suburban neighbors, all of which are anthropomorphic animals, from daredevil wolves over codebreaker owls to double agent vixens. The recruitment comes by “I cut, you choose” – but as one of the two cards the active player offers to their opponent is face-up, the other face-down, there is a spy-appropriate amount of bluffing and deduction. Pair this with a varied, but not overwhelming amount of instant victory/defeat conditions and card effects, and you have a light, but tense contest which resolves in no time at all (we played three times in 40 minutes).
My green figurine is being pursued by the blue one. So far, my crew of agents is decidedly sub-par – the double agent on the left is only effective when you have two of them (numbers on the left), the sentinel on the right also kicks in at two and three, whereas the daredevil in the middle will lose you the game once you collect three of them.
Any games of these that sound like your cup of tea? Have you attended any cool local conventions or fairs recently? Let me know in the comments!
Before the fall fair and convention circuit is coming to an end, I had the opportunity to attend Süddeutsche Spielemesse (Southern German Game Fair) in Stuttgart. As when I went last time, it was a pleasant, laid-back experience.
The game fair is part of a conglomerate of hobby and leisure related fairs which are all held over the same long weekend in neighboring fair halls. As the ticket covers all fairs, you are free to explore everything. That’s great if you go as a group or family with differing interests: Your creative-minded daughter can get all inspired at the arts & crafts fair, your animal-loving son will try to make friends with the cats, rabbits, and camels at the animal fair, your gourmet spouse samples their way through the food fair, and then everybody meets at the game fair because you all love board games. Right?
These folks will go to the board game fair later and play Camel Up.
With that setup, Süddeutsche Spielemesse’s target audience is broad, from the hobbyist to the very casual gamer. Consequently, you’ll find a lot of games outside of the hobby board game niche – from classics like chess and go over sports games to role-playing games. The exhibitors are usually either vendors (game test opportunities are rare), clubs looking for new members (like many of the role-playing clubs), or, my favorite, the big gaming island run in the middle where you can just borrow a game and play it free of charge which gives Süddeutsche Spielemesse a certain convention feel.
At this point, it is tradition that the gaming island remains open until 10pm on Friday, allowing for a beautiful evening of gaming. I met with a friend there and we played three different two-player games:
Northern German cities Hamburg and Altona try to outdo each other – yet while the usual victory point collecting occurs, these only matter if the game runs its full seven rounds. And it is much more likely that one of the cities will decisively outdo the other in one of the four areas of competition (alliances, ships, lawsuits, and prestige) and score an instant victory. With such a plethora of instant victory conditions, you will always feel the thrill of chasing one yourself and being threatened with another by your opponent.
Yes, that’s a concrete floor… all tables were taken already. I report that I am still young and springy enough for this kind of gaming (at least for 45 minutes).
In our game, we both started conservatively, getting a little bit of everything. Then my friend made a play for the alliances and was only one of them short of victory… but I could stave off defeat and counter-punch with ship dominance. I guess more experienced players would be at each other’s throat from the get-go which should make for exciting gaming and high replayability (at a very moderate complexity).
Two players chart their path up a mountain built from a shared supply of tiles, each of which has a unique combination of a color (indicating its row) and number (indicating its file). Thus, you always know that a tile you took cannot be accessed by your opponent – and vice versa. This kind of very abstract game with almost-perfect information is usually not up my alley, and Solstis proved no different. We were both unenthused by its mix of logical planning and high randomness in the rare case of placing a nature spirit. However, each play only took 10 minutes, so we didn’t spend much time to gain the valuable knowledge of what’s not our jam.
Table time! That’s a pretty solid path up the mountain, and you can see a lot of nature spirits in the middle – but one of them (the red one) is the evil spirit of vengeance.
Maybe our highlight of the fair: Agent Avenue pits its two players against each other as retired secret agents trying to catch each other. To unveil the other’s identity, they enlist their suburban neighbors, all of which are anthropomorphic animals, from daredevil wolves over codebreaker owls to double agent vixens. The recruitment comes by “I cut, you choose” – but as one of the two cards the active player offers to their opponent is face-up, the other face-down, there is a spy-appropriate amount of bluffing and deduction. Pair this with a varied, but not overwhelming amount of instant victory/defeat conditions and card effects, and you have a light, but tense contest which resolves in no time at all (we played three times in 40 minutes).
My green figurine is being pursued by the blue one. So far, my crew of agents is decidedly sub-par – the double agent on the left is only effective when you have two of them (numbers on the left), the sentinel on the right also kicks in at two and three, whereas the daredevil in the middle will lose you the game once you collect three of them.
Any games of these that sound like your cup of tea? Have you attended any cool local conventions or fairs recently? Let me know in the comments!
Now this may sound a bit basic. Of course you want advantages! Yet when you’re planning what to do with your investment tile, you might often be tempted by other things – shiny prestige spaces, or simply spaces with a lower cost which help you gain the majority in the region. Advantages, however, are often the better choice: A well-chosen advantage can gain you another space (or deny it to your opponent) not only once, but several times over the course of a game. If your opponent is smart, they will often try to counteract your gaining of an advantage by unflagging the space which gave you the advantage, or at least gaining a similar advantage, which means you are acting and they are reacting.
France and Britain are fighting hard for the two spaces adjacent to the Baltic Trade advantage. You can see on the French player mat in the background that France has gained the Algonquin Raids and Mediterranean Intrigue advantages.
Some of my favorite advantages: The Indian alliances with Mysore, Nizam, or the Marathas which allow you to drown your opponent in a sea of conflict markers, the Asiento advantage whose discount on fleets gains you a cheap military edge – and spaces – which can be flexibly moved around, and, best of all, Baltic Trade whose debt reduction amounts to two free wild points every turn. Get it or at least deny it to your opponent!
Board Position First, VPs Second
Advantages are long-term benefits. In the same spirit, I advise you to prioritize the long-term benefits of a sound board position over the short-term gains of winning this regional or that global demand scoring. If your board position is good – if you have the right alliances, military outposts, and advantages – you will put pressure on your opponent, win wars, gain spoils, and the VPs will come rolling in anyway.
Both players have done their homework and placed a flag on a fort (hexagonal spaces) in North America – Britain in Halifax, France in Louisbourg.
A key investment in that sense is a turn 1 fort in North America. That’s the only theater which is active in all four wars, so the fort will give you a military benefit four times (a strength point and the conquest line) in addition to controlling its surroundings (which makes unflagging harder and removing enemy conflict markers easier), and, of course, it’s a space which counts for regional scoring.
Use Initiative Wisely
If your opponent scores a few more VPs than you early on, that is not only bearable, but might even be to your advantage, as the player behind in VPs has the initiative and decides who goes first in a turn. That’s a weighty decision, as going first gives you a better choice of the investment tiles, but going last allows you to mess with your opponent’s plans and they have no chance to repair the damage before scoring.
If this were the first turn – would you choose to go first or second as the player with initiative?
My rule of thumb is: I go last, unless there’s an odd number of investment tiles with a major action in the dimension that will be crucial (early on, that’s often diplomatic), or an odd-and-low number of investment tiles that allow you to play an event.
Which strategies and tricks do you use to win at Imperial Struggle? Let me know in the comments!
Now this may sound a bit basic. Of course you want advantages! Yet when you’re planning what to do with your investment tile, you might often be tempted by other things – shiny prestige spaces, or simply spaces with a lower cost which help you gain the majority in the region. Advantages, however, are often the better choice: A well-chosen advantage can gain you another space (or deny it to your opponent) not only once, but several times over the course of a game. If your opponent is smart, they will often try to counteract your gaining of an advantage by unflagging the space which gave you the advantage, or at least gaining a similar advantage, which means you are acting and they are reacting.
France and Britain are fighting hard for the two spaces adjacent to the Baltic Trade advantage. You can see on the French player mat in the background that France has gained the Algonquin Raids and Mediterranean Intrigue advantages.
Some of my favorite advantages: The Indian alliances with Mysore, Nizam, or the Marathas which allow you to drown your opponent in a sea of conflict markers, the Asiento advantage whose discount on fleets gains you a cheap military edge – and spaces – which can be flexibly moved around, and, best of all, Baltic Trade whose debt reduction amounts to two free wild points every turn. Get it or at least deny it to your opponent!
Board Position First, VPs Second
Advantages are long-term benefits. In the same spirit, I advise you to prioritize the long-term benefits of a sound board position over the short-term gains of winning this regional or that global demand scoring. If your board position is good – if you have the right alliances, military outposts, and advantages – you will put pressure on your opponent, win wars, gain spoils, and the VPs will come rolling in anyway.
Both players have done their homework and placed a flag on a fort (hexagonal spaces) in North America – Britain in Halifax, France in Louisbourg.
A key investment in that sense is a turn 1 fort in North America. That’s the only theater which is active in all four wars, so the fort will give you a military benefit four times (a strength point and the conquest line) in addition to controlling its surroundings (which makes unflagging harder and removing enemy conflict markers easier), and, of course, it’s a space which counts for regional scoring.
Use Initiative Wisely
If your opponent scores a few more VPs than you early on, that is not only bearable, but might even be to your advantage, as the player behind in VPs has the initiative and decides who goes first in a turn. That’s a weighty decision, as going first gives you a better choice of the investment tiles, but going last allows you to mess with your opponent’s plans and they have no chance to repair the damage before scoring.
If this were the first turn – would you choose to go first or second as the player with initiative?
My rule of thumb is: I go last, unless there’s an odd number of investment tiles with a major action in the dimension that will be crucial (early on, that’s often diplomatic), or an odd-and-low number of investment tiles that allow you to play an event.
Which strategies and tricks do you use to win at Imperial Struggle? Let me know in the comments!
Once more, the SPIEL fair at Essen has come to an end. It’s been a few intense days of looking, meeting, and, of course, playing – for me and 200,000+ other attendees. Even though the fair has expanded to another hall now, tickets for the busiest days (Friday and Saturday) were sold out a week before the event, and I also had the impression that more of the games sold out (at least that was my experience at several booths). Thus, I went home with zero purchases – which is fine! I travelled with a light suitcase on my way back, and I’ll be able to catch up on purchases via the usual local and online vendors.
Something you cannot catch up on, however, is meeting the people who mean something to you. I’ve always enjoyed going to the fair with a friend or two, and over the years, my SPIEL schedule has been enriched by more and more meetings with my fellow friends of board games and history whom I’ve met over the internet. In that regard, this year’s SPIEL has been exceptional: Not only have I gotten to dinner with my Boardgame Historian colleagues (a great way to start off the fair experience with some sparkling conversations on history in board games from a research and museum perspective) and to play a few games with Michal from The Boardgames Chronicle (more on that below) – both are almost traditions by this time – but I (and Michal) also got to meet Grant and Alexander from The Players’ Aid on their very first trip to SPIEL! I think that we all had a blast, and many plans to meet again are already in the making… and maybe play more games together!
Speaking of games: I’ve gotten around to play a grand total of 13 during the two days of the fair (ranging from very short demos to full games). Here are my highlights:
Bohemians had attracted my attention with its beautiful artwork and its intriguing fin de siècle Paris art scene setting. After giving it a test drive at SPIEL (with Michal, my friend A., and another fairgoer), I can also attest that it has sound mechanics (a mix of long-term deckbuilding and short-term pattern building from the cards in your hand):
You arrange your day as an aspiring artist with activities like “Wander the streets aimlessly” or “Practice a new technique.” The activity cards have symbols on the left and right, which, if matching, give you inspiration. You can imagine that there are some power combos – for example “Get in the mood for composing” and “Compose without stopping” have four matching symbols!
It gets even better if you acquire more inspirational activities (by spending inspiration) or if you don’t do activities alone, but have a muse with you (also to be gotten into your hand by spending inspiration).
In the end, your goal is to make artistic achievements which range from “A mildly positive review in the local newspaper” over “Your family’s quiet acceptance of your new life” to “Establishment dismayed by your work” which – you guessed it – are also acquired by spending inspiration.
A good day as an artist: I got six inspiration from matching symbols on the card edges, two because the color of the card for morning and night matches that on the player board (orange and blue), and another three from the bonus of the “Go from café to café” activity. That’s 11 inspiration, enough for an artistic achievement (above the player board). Unfortunately, not working also meant I gained another hardship – like the previously-acquired drinking habit above the player board whose negative effect (drawing another hardship!) I staved off by playing enough expression icons.
As you need quite a lot of inspiration for the achievements (and they get ever more “expensive” as the game progresses), you’ll probably have to arrange for artistic activities in all four slots of the day… which means you cannot work, another (much less exciting) way to spend your time. Every player has a disreputable profession (street musician, beggar, journalist…) which they can use instead of an activity – and, if they do not, they will gain a hardship card into their deck. You know, all the bad things in life that only orderly labor keeps at bay. Abject poverty. Shame. Syphilis.
Ideally, activities, muses, achievements, and hardships come together narratively. For example, I had a great day in which my activities linked up and I could meet with not one, but two muses right after another! That gave so much inspiration that I gained an achievement… but as I hadn’t worked, I gained a hardship – hypersexuality! Apparently, I had frolicked a bit too much with the muses.
Bohemians is a nice light deck-builder which should work especially nicely for casual audiences. I had a very good start at the fair with it and have acquired it since.
And now for something completely different! Neither King Nor God takes players to the European power struggle in the Age of Reformation. Four of them will fill the shoes of England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Papacy in their quest to spread their trade, conquer new territories, and convert cities to their religion. For this task, they send out courtiers to the great cities of Europe. As the courtiers are placed face down, you know where your rivals sent one to, but not what kind of courtier it is – a merchant to plop down trade barrels, a general to move armies, an assassin to murder or a traitor to take over another courtier?
As the courtier stacks in cities will be resolved only when all courtiers have been placed (top to bottom – so the courtier placed last goes first), there’s a lot of tactical finesse in placement: Do you go where everyone seems to go to partake in the bonanza or do you try to carve out your own little domain in less popular cities? Will you place your merchant first so that he’s on the bottom of a stack and will resolve after any general who could raid his trade barrel placement or do you place him last so he can go before anyone tries to murder him?
Strasbourg, the place to be: No fewer than eight courtiers have assembled there. Nearby Colonia is only visited by a single Papal courtier.
That makes for very little downtime and great mirth both in assembling and resolving those courtier stacks. Given that everyone’s victory conditions are secret (to be drawn randomly at the start of the game), there is a lot of guessing and bluffing. However, if no one has fulfilled their victory condition by the time the plague hits Europe, different victory conditions will apply.
The game at setup: Soon, the empty regions of Europe will be filled by the all-important trade barrels on which the income of the great powers depends.
Despite its length (three to four hours for a full game), the game plays briskly from the first turn on. And while it is involved, it’s not a complicated game – in fact, as the friendly Sound of Drums guy who had explained the game to the group before us had to demo a game at another table, we successfully self-taught the game from the rulebook!
Neither King Nor God is a pilot for a bigger five-player version that is to be published next year.
I’d been eyeing Verdun for some time now, but never got around to play it. Good thing I could remedy that at SPIEL! As Michal and I randomly bumped into each other at the DDP booth, we could try the game together (each accompanied by a team mate).
Verdun is one of the many “trick-takers with a twist” that are released these days – and definitely one of the better ones! Two or four players (in teams of two) fight the World War I battle of Verdun. Whoever has the initiative selects an objective to attack. If their side – Germany or France – wins the trick by at least the (hidden) strength of the objective, they’ll gain the objective and its victory points. As all players draw from a shared deck of cards, that means that anyone will have both German and French cards in their hand.
That leads to all sides of interesting decisions: If you’re defending as France, are you going to play a French card to try and win the trick? Or are you playing a German one to get rid of it, either hoping that you’ll win anyway, or that the Germans win by so much that another German card doesn’t do them any good?
It gets even trickier when you consider that all cards have skull icons on them, indicating how many negative points they’ll confer on their respective side if they end up in the casualty pile. After every trick, one card per side (sometimes more) ends up as a casualty. If you can sneak in a skull-heavy card of the opponent side, that might undo all the points they’ll gain from winning the objective.
I, as one of the German players, have just played a strong French card in the hopes of poisoning their victory with high casualties (skulls on the left of the card).
Consequently, scores will likely be negative in the end. Maybe you’ll win a few objectives, maybe not. But certainly, you will have suffered appalling losses. The question is not if you’ll win big, but if your enemy is losing even more painfully than you. The grim logic of the war of attrition on the Western Front.
Our short test game also showed the importance of keeping initiative, so you can attack and at least have the chance to win objectives and offset some of the losses: In the end, France had gained two objectives (Germany none), which, as losses were pretty evenly spread, was enough for victory (-7 to -13).
Verdun is testament to what relatively simple games can do, and how games which stray far from wargame standards (hexes, counters, combat resolution tables…) can capture the essence of a conflict just as well.
Self-balancing dragonflies (in Vietnamese: Chuồn Chuồn), often made out of bamboo, are popular toys in Vietnam. They have now made their way to the board gaming world in this charming, gorgeous game.
Players will attempt to attract dragonflies of varying sizes and colors to their bamboo trees to match the patterns on their objective cards – for example, to have a small yellow dragonfly on the highest bamboo, a large purple one on the middle, and a small blue one on the lowest. As everyone takes dragonflies from the same pool and there’s only one in each size/color combination, you will soon run out of dragonflies and will have to use the magic cards at your disposal to re-arrange the flies, shake them off someone’s tree, etc.
Look at those dragonflies!
I found the game enjoyable and its production values outstanding. The finely crafted dragonflies are guaranteed to catch the eyes of observers, which makes the game also great for introducing new players to board gaming (everyone likes pretty things, and everyone likes to place self-balancing dragonflies!).
As I started the fair with a game about aspiring artists, it was most fitting to end it with another about this subject. The single-minded pursuit of artistic achievements which was abuzz in fin de siècle Paris has by 1977 given way to the much wider notion of… victory points! These you may get for a variety of pursuits and objectives, from perfecting your musical skills over becoming addicted to drugs candy to going to bed early.
Rock Hard: 1977 is a worker placement game, just that you only have one worker – yourself, the aspiring rockstar. You’ll divide your activities between day (say, practicing your craft or giving a radio interview), evening (playing gigs), and night (hanging out with the cool kids at the club). Every once in a while, you’ll also have to work your square job as a veterinary assistant, truck driver or what have you. Unlike in Bohemians, that is not a moral corrective on your life, but fulfils the simple economic need of making some money with which you rent those rehearsal studios, pay for your demo tape recording, or buy drugs candy.
Benji “Bam Bam” Bernstein dreams of being a rockstar. So far, he knows two songs.
Ideally, your skills will improve, you’ll play at ever greater venues, and your royalties will cover the cost of your rockstar needs. We didn’t get quite that far at the fair – I had to catch a train and another of my fellow players a pre-scheduled game. Until then, we had only dipped our feet in the waters of musical glory, but it was a very thematic affair!
Rock Hard: 1977 has been released in English last year already (by Devir), but the fair showed off the new German edition.
What do you think of these games? Anything up your alley? And if you’ve been to SPIEL or would have liked to go – what are your highlights?
You say „board game fair“, I say “SPIEL” at Essen. It’s the Mecca for the tabletop gaming faithful. Four days of playing, trying, and buying. 200,000+ visitors. I’ve been therea few timesover the last yearsfor two days each and found it an intensive board game experience. I’m looking forward to going again this year!
As always, this is not meant as a „must buy“ list or whatever other consumptionist term some people use. It is likely that I will buy only one or two of these games. Why? Because I have quite some good games already, and I like to make them count before I plunge into new adventures. Generally, there are no musts in buying. And there are no musts in attending board game fairs or conventions – obviously those can come as pretty big expenses for travel and accommodation. Bottom line: No musts. You do you.
One note beforehand: Board gaming is getting ever more international, and this list shows it: The six designers come from six different countries, and, for the first time in the nine years I’ve been making this list, none of them is from Germany or the United States.
Without further ado, on to the games! They are sorted by location on the fairgrounds.
1-6 players, 60-150 minutes, for sale, MSRP: 50.00 €
Many games have great nations compete on the global stage. Yet Limit is different. Few games of this kind have a robust section of domestic affairs beyond the usual political-economic-military competition. Fewer dare to zoom out so much that the game spans not years, but generations over two centuries. And barely any are based on a model that neither promises eternal improvement for everyone nor zero-sum competition between the powers, but rather the limits of industrial development. If you think you have heard of the latter before: Yes, this game is based on the World3 model of the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth. All of these uncommon features combine into a game which I expect to feel unique.
Designer Alexandre Poyé will be at the booth to teach the game (not all around the clock, but you have a reasonable chance to meet him there).
Archaeology is a popular setting for board games, and I’m here for it. While I love the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean as much as the next person, I’m happy to see games shedding light on less-known cultures – like the Marajoara from the Amazonian island of Marajó (in modern-day Brazil), famous for their distinctive style of pottery. You will excavate, restore, and display vases while maintaining the finances of your museum. Mechanically, the game combines inspiration from (peg) solitaire with dice movement. I would have loved the game to lean a bit harder on the unique visual style of the Marajoara pottery (mostly limited to the cover art and the large vases), but I’ll take what I can get!
3-6 players, 45-60 minutes, for sale, MSRP: 35.00 €
If your main takeaway from watching Conclave was how exciting it would be to elect a pope, Pako Gradaille has you covered. Habemus Papam puts you in the Roman curia at the time of a papal election which you aim to influence according to your public (an old pope! An innovator! Someone from the New World!) and private (finish the election early! Have a pope who is exactly like yourself!) goals. You will expend your curial influence to advance the cause of candidates whom you like (or hamper those you don’t), but conserving influence is also valuable in its own right. Whoever balances their competing interests best takes the victory. Sacramental wine and vapes are not included in the box.
1-4 players, 45-60 minutes, for sale, MSRP: 35.00 €
We turn from the wealth and austerity of the Catholic Church to the poverty and indulgence of fin de siècle Parisian artists! You chase the inspiration for artistic achievements by living life to the fullest, crafting exquisite days by skillfully combining activities as varied as wandering aimlessly through the city, discussing philosophy, meeting a muse, or losing yourself in your work. Speaking of work: You’ll have to do some of that, too – mean labor to support yourself lest you avoid the hardships which come with the life of a free spirit (which range from poor hygiene over abject poverty to syphilis). Bohemians is a mechanically light, but thematically rich deck-builder, and, as befits a game about artists, is strictly gorgeous.
2 players, 90-150 minutes, for sale, MSRP: 69.00 €
In 1920, the old world of European empires had been shattered. What the new world would look like was still up for contention, as in this struggle of two nascent states: On the one hand, new nation-states came into being – like the (Second) Polish Republic, the first independent and united Polish state in over a century. On the other hand, ideology transcended nations, and the Soviet Republics (of which the Soviet Union would spring soon after) were emboldened by their success in the Russian Civil War against the old monarchist forces. As Poland reached for the east, the World Revolution got ready to spring to the industrial centers of western Europe. The two sides were to clash in one of the most mobile conflicts in history.
1920: Nest of Eagles is a re-implementation of Rok 1920 (published in 1995 by Encore) which has received the typical Phalanx treatment of pairing wargame mechanics with euro production quality.
I’m a sucker for a Faustian bargain… literarily speaking, I mean. My soul is still mine. Why would you even ask me that? – Anyway, Faust vs Mephisto takes the man and his devil and puts them on even ground (maybe like in the Study II scene of Goethe’s Faust): Mephisto tries to dominate by winning all tricks in a given round – or tempt Faust by winning none of them. Anything in between is a success for Faust. If Mephisto manages to pull it off twice in four rounds, he wins, otherwise Faust has proven that “A good man, through obscurest aspirations // Has still an instinct of the one true way.” Faust vs Mephisto seems like a snappy little card game to play before or after a more involved game – or whenever you have a little bit of spare time with a fellow gamer.
What are the games you are anticipating most eagerly? Let me know in the comments!
Amsterdam is an amphibious city. Water flows around it (the Ijsselmeer, over which most people used to come into the city), water flows through it (the Amstel river, after which it is named, and the canals dug later), and even the land on which the buildings stand was won from the watery marshes in a feat of human ingenuity. The need to work together in this communal enterprise did not only strengthen the peasants and craftspeople who had won this land themselves (instead of receiving it from a noble), but also their willingness to put up with each other regardless of differences – the first instance of the famous Amsterdam tolerance.
Amsterdam’s rise was also closely connected to the water: On the one hand, Dutch herring fishers found out about how to cure fish on the ship, enabling them to sail further and catch more instead of having to head home after the first big catch. And in the 14th century, the count of Holland decreed that all Dutch beer imports from Hamburg, then northern Europe’s brewery, must go through Amsterdam. The city thus became a trade hub, first for these staples of fish and beer, but the local merchants soon branched out to luxury goods, too, especially as the great voyages of discovery brought Europe in direct touch with south and southeast Asia as well as the newly-discovered Americas.
When the Reformation swept Europe in the 16th century, Amsterdam, unlike many other Dutch cities, did not adopt the new Protestant faith. Yet the city kept its unusual approach to differences of faith and tolerated the local Protestants. Neither Protestantism nor tolerance were acceptable to the ruling Habsburg monarch, Philip II of Spain, who had inherited the suzerainty over the Low Countries from his father, emperor Charles V. Yet while both Philip and Charles were ardent Catholics, they had a very different relationship with the Low Countries. Charles had been born and brought up there, living his happiest years not far from Amsterdam. Philip was a Spaniard in everything, regarding the Dutch with suspicion. And as they started rebelling against him – for the Protestant faith, for municipal independence from the monarch, and for the exemption of taxes funding Habsburg wars in faraway lands – he was resolved to bring them back into the fold by force.
The various factions of the Dutch struggle for independence are the player roles in Revolution: The Dutch Revolt, 1568—1648 (Francis Tresham, Phalanx Games) – Catholics, Habsburgs, Nobility, Burghers and Reformers. Amsterdam remained initially Catholic (and thus loyal to Philip), yet other concerns would be more pressing to the city than religion: When the Dutch rebels blockaded the city from the sea, thus causing the collapse of any trade profits and the food supply to the city, Amsterdam’s anti-Habsburg faction was ascendant. The city threw its lot in with the rebels in 1578. Its Catholic minority, however, would be treated as the Protestants had been before. Tolerance went both ways in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam had escaped its ruin from the naval blockade. Further south, Antwerp, the most important Dutch port, was not so fortunate. While the blockade strangled Antwerp’s trade, tens of thousands of Antwerp merchants and artisans left the city to find greener pastures elsewhere – most of them in Amsterdam. Thus, while the Dutch provinces were engulfed in warfare with the Habsburgs (which would only end with Dutch independence in 1648), the convergence of capital and know-how in Amsterdam turned the city into the commercial capital of the world.
The Center of the World
Amsterdam in the early 17th century was buzzing with commercial activity. The merchants did not only find new trade routes, they also invented new ways of doing business altogether: The Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (United East India Company), or VOC for short, founded in 1602, was the first chartered company in the world. Anyone could buy a share in the company and thus partake in its profits – or sell the shares to others in what would become the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (also the first of its kind in the world). Amsterdam ships carried goods all over the worlds, Amsterdam shipwrights built them, Amsterdam craftspeople produced many of the finest objects for sale, and Amsterdam painters and writers catered to the pursuits of the minds. In the mid-17th century, a staggering 30% of all the new books in the world were published in Amsterdam, taking advantage of the liberal approach to the exchange of ideas in the metropolis.
Construction boomed in Golden Age Amsterdam – the city had much outgrown its medieval limits. In an ambitious scheme to not only expand, but also re-order the city’s flow of people and goods, Amsterdam took on its characteristic form, the city center surrounded by three belts of interconnected canals (grachten).
Amsterdam’s canals and the narrow houses built along them (for taxes were paid according to the width of the building’s front) have their own board game dedicated to them: Grachtenpand (Zach Hoekstra, Wulfhorn Games).
To my knowledge, no board game portrays the construction of the grachten. That’s a shame, because the scheme that led to their creation is worthy of the most cunning table strategist: Mayor Frans Oetgens knew of the plan to expand Amsterdam and dig the canals before it was public, so he and his associates bought up vast stretches of land at bargain prices and sold them back to the city at astronomical profits.
This act of self-interested entrepreneurship embodies Amsterdam’s preoccupation towards individual gain. It speaks to Amsterdam’s character as an individualist, bourgeois city that its most recognizable sights are not palaces and cathedrals, but these canals and the private houses along them.
Another very Amsterdam trait which has stood the test of time is the love of flowers, especially tulips. Yet never was this passion greater than in the 17th century, when it intermingled with the other great passion of Amsterdammers – commerce. Unlike the controlled trade of goods and shares in Amsterdam’s port and stock exchange, the Amsterdam Tulip Bubble developed unregulatedly in taverns where buyers and sellers met over a glass of wine. The price of tulips skyrocketed in one of the first documented speculation crazes – until the bubble burst, as is the inevitable outcome of Tulip Bubble (Kouyou, Moaideas Game Design): Players want to partake in the profitable trade, yet must try to sell before the end of the mania, for all their tulips in hand will be worth nothing at game end.
The allure of 17th century Amsterdam, this great laboratory of capitalism, is so great that it has become a widespread board game setting – just behind Vikings, zombies, and trading in the Mediterranean. Even the behemoth board game franchise Ticket to Ride has an instalment set in Amsterdam. Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam (Alan R. Moon, Days of Wonder) deviates from the tried-and-true setting of trains in favor of route-building in Golden Age Amsterdam 200 years before the first rail was laid. I especially appreciate that the game sticks with the original names for places in Amsterdam, so that players who don’t speak Dutch can attempt to pronounce Korenmetershuisje (Little House of the Grain Measuring Officials) and Oost-Indisch Huis (East India House).
Finally, the great master of eurogames has also designed a Golden Age Amsterdam game: Merchants of Amsterdam (Reiner Knizia, Rio Grande Games). And despite Knizia’s reputation of producing mathematically sound, but often themeless games, it might be the one which captures Amsterdam in 17th century best: Not only is the central mechanism that of a Dutch auction (that is, an auction which starts at a very high price which continues falling until someone buys the asset in question at the price asked), but its map depicts the Amsterdam surrounded by four world regions with which the players can trade – Amsterdam, the commercial center of the world.
Amsterdam’s preeminence could not last forever. Despite its naval and commercial advantages, the Dutch Republic was a small country compared to England or France, and eventually fell to these rivals. The rampjaar (catastrophe year) of 1672, in which England challenged the Republic on the seas and France invaded the Netherlands, ended the Dutch Golden Age. Amsterdam was only saved from French occupation when the Dutch pierced the dikes and flooded a large area of their own country to prevent the French onslaught.
As the Dutch Republic shrunk in importance, so did Amsterdam. London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin eclipsed it as centers of modernity in Europe. Even within the Netherlands, the city fell behind: Its disadvantageous geography meant that Rotterdam, situated directly on the North Sea instead of the Ijsselmeer, became the country’s premier port. Amsterdam, however, remained a center of the arts, and an iconic city of individualism and tolerance.
In the 20th century, these values brought Amsterdammers to adopt a liberal attitude toward prostitution (openly practiced around the Old Church) and drugs (marijuana is not legal, but its consumption in specialized establishments (coffeeshops) is tolerated). That openness has made Amsterdam a dream destination for those wishing to uproot traditional lifestyles (at least for a moment) – from Yoko Ono and John Lennon staging their “Bed-In” for world peace in Amsterdam to the ubiquitous bachelor party trips there. Surprisingly, not a single board game seems to be dedicated to this side of Amsterdam.
When board games are set in modern Amsterdam, they often allude to traditional Dutch themes: Gift of Tulips (Sara Perry, Weird Giraffe Games) has its players once more compete for the finest flower bouquets at the city’s annual tulip festival. Amsterdam’s rich artistic history also often features: In Masters of Crime: Shadows (Lukas Setzke/Martin Student/Verena Wiechens, KOSMOS), the players aim to conduct a painting heist, whereas in EXIT: The Game – The Hunt Through Amsterdam (Inka Brand/Markus Brand, KOSMOS), they want to recover a lost Vincent van Gogh painting. My detective instincts say that these are the same painting! Finally, Amsterdam’s slide to modern metropolis sans its erstwhile very specific features is exemplified by the game set in Amsterdam with the single highest number of ratings on BoardGameGeek: Mechanically, the crime/mystery game Shadows: Amsterdam (Mathieu Aubert, Libellud) could be set in any big city. There’s nothing Amsterdam-specific about private detectives looking for evidence and avoiding the police’s official investigation. Yet the artwork on the tiles sometimes gives a little glimpse – for example, houses along the gracht.
A good introduction on Amsterdam’s history is Shorto, Russell: Amsterdam. A History of the World’s Most Liberal City, Doubleday, New York City, NY 2013.
Frederick the Great. A Military Life was published in 1985 by Routledge. It is a biography of Prussian king Frederick II (the Great, 1712—1786) dedicated to the military dimension of his life – not only his wars (on a tactical, operational, and strategic level), but also his activities as a military administrator and organizer.
Friedrich was published in 2004. Richard Sivél’s first published board game is a highly abstracted operational treatment of the Seven Years’ War in central Europe, focusing on Prussia’s desperate struggle for survival against the overwhelming odds of the Austrian-Russian-French alliance, personified by the eponymous king (Friedrich is the German form of Frederick). Five years later, a prequel on the War of the Austrian succession was published which uses the same basic system: Maria (Richard Sivél, Histogame).
Connections & Conclusions
My first contact with Duffy’s book was via Friedrich – it is one of the books referenced in the bibliography contained in the rulebook. A good choice, as it is the first treatment of the military dimension of Frederick’s life since imperial German times (and remains the definitive work on the subject until today).
Obviously, the book is more encompassing – after all, it treats not only the Seven Years’ War, but the entire 74-year life of Frederick. Yet the chapter on the Seven Years’ War makes up almost half of the book – testament to the importance of the war for Frederick (whom it turned from an energetic man in his prime into a hollowed out, aged king who had lost most of his pleasures along with many personal friends). The toll the war took on Frederick is showcased in many anecdotes both in the book and in the “small events” in the game.
Glum times for Frederick! Other event cards show him as energetic and decisive, but this one embodies his worst impulses.
Frederick represents a watershed in history. On the one hand, he expanded and modernized the Prussian bureaucracy which is so symbolic for the modern, often impersonal state. On the other, he was a roi-connétable, a king-warlord, one of the last monarchs to personally lead his troops into battle – those after him who did so had usually used their military success to also take political power which was then based on their continued martial prowess (like Napoleon). Yet in an age when the kings of Britain, France, or Russia remained at court and sent their generals to fight whichever war needed fighting, Frederick rode at the head of his main army, entrusting detachments to his generals only because he could not be everywhere at once.
And Frederick did his best to be everywhere. One of the most striking characteristics of Frederick’s campaigns is his masterful use of the interior lines, on which he performed sweeping forced marches from one theater of the war to another. The most impressive example is found late in the campaign of 1757: After Frederick’s offensive in Bohemia had failed, and France’s victory over the Hanoverian army in northwestern Germany opened the way for a French invasion of Prussia. Frederick marched his army to western Saxony, where he beat a combined French/Imperial army at Roßbach on November 5. The Austrians had used the opportunity to invade Silesia which had only been held by secondary Prussian detachments and were in the possession of almost the entire province… until Frederick’s army showed up, having marched 400 kilometers in a month, and expelled the Austrians from Silesia at Leuthen, the site of his greatest tactical victory.
Frederick’s forced march from Roßbach (battle on November 5, 1757) to Leuthen (December 5, 1757) on the Friedrich map.
These sweeping operational and tactical maneuvers are detailed by around 50 maps in Duffy’s book. Whoever is interested in the wars of Frederick will pore over them for a long time during the read and probably flick back and forth between the map section and the text to follow a battle description. While Friedrich prizes maneuver, it has to scale down the distances covered – the march from Roßbach to Leuthen would take five turns on the map (an entire game typically takes around 20 turns).
Operational map of the forced march from Roßbach to Leuthen (top) and tactical map of the battle of Roßbach (bottom right) in Frederick the Great. A Military Life. I’d love to say the book is in this slightly banged up condition because I read it so often, but the unromantic fact is that I bought it used at a library sale (at the bargain price of four bucks).
Thus, there is a certain disconnect between general Friedrich [the pieces are all named in the German fashion] moving on the map and the player role of Frederick: The general Friedrich is much less important than the historical Frederick-the-general. His piece starts in Saxony, which makes it likely that he will only ever do battle with Austria and their minor ally, the Imperial Army, but never venture far enough to fight against France or even Russia and its ally Sweden. If he remains in Saxony and Prussia elects to focus its defense against Austria in Silesia, Frederick might command only a small detachment, avoiding battle while pinning down Austrian forces and taking unglamorous retreats if he is engaged.
Friedrich (Frederick) is keeping Karl von Lothringen (Charles Alexander of Lorraine) busy in Saxony while the main forces of Prussia and Austria, stacked to impressive height, face off in Silesia.
The player role of Frederick, however, oversees the entirety of the Prussian war effort (as well as that of Prussia’s minor ally Hanover, ruled in personal union by the king of Britain). The player has control over the maneuver of their generals of which Frederick could only have dreamt: News of a victory or defeat in East Prussia would have reached his army camp in Bohemia only weeks after the event, whereas in Friedrich the player can position the general in charge of defending East Prussia exactly where they want and have him surrender, retreat, or fight for his life according to the overall strategic plan.
Maximilian Ulysses von Browne has moved boldly in the first turn… and might face Friedrich/Frederick’s wrath (and superior power) in the second.
Nonetheless, the game is very effective at conveying Friedrich’s psychological state: In the early game, the player might be elated by their power and success. As Frederick moves and draws cards first in the round, an aggressive player can attack their foes with overwhelming force – for example, a second-round attack on Austria means that Prussia has drawn its seven cards per round twice already (so, fourteen in total), whereas Austria has only drawn its five cards per turn once. This corresponds with the quality advantage of the Prussian troops early in the war which Duffy notes frequently. Yet Duffy also argues that this advantage was lost by the heavy casualties the Prussian army endured in 1757 and would never be regained. (Duffy contends that Frederick inherited the finest military force in Europe upon his accession to the throne, but left his own successor a mediocre army – this long-term criticism of Frederick is, of course, beyond the scope of the game.)
Correspondingly, the Frederick player will soon find that the time to play defense has come (if it hasn’t been from the beginning of the game). And as their once-impressive card hand dwindles under the repeated attacks from all foes, elation will give way to gloom. Whenever an anecdote is read as the end-of-round event, showing the historical Frederick at turns defiant, melancholy, or self-pitying, the Frederick player will be able to relate – as they will as Austria’s allies, one after another, falter and peace is made. Frederick might have won the game, but it will surely have taken a toll.
Prussia barely holds on to the last Austrian and Russian objectives… let’s hope for Frederick that the Tsarina dies soon!
In that sense, Frederick the Great. A Military Life and Friedrich are a perfect match – the analytic and the immersive, the intellectual and the emotional. Give both a try!
Frederick the Great. A Military Life was published in 1985 by Routledge. It is a biography of Prussian king Frederick II (the Great, 1712—1786) dedicated to the military dimension of his life – not only his wars (on a tactical, operational, and strategic level), but also his activities as a military administrator and organizer.
Friedrich was published in 2004. Richard Sivél’s first published board game is a highly abstracted operational treatment of the Seven Years’ War in central Europe, focusing on Prussia’s desperate struggle for survival against the overwhelming odds of the Austrian-Russian-French alliance, personified by the eponymous king (Friedrich is the German form of Frederick). Five years later, a prequel on the War of the Austrian succession was published which uses the same basic system: Maria (Richard Sivél, Histogame).
Connections & Conclusions
My first contact with Duffy’s book was via Friedrich – it is one of the books referenced in the bibliography contained in the rulebook. A good choice, as it is the first treatment of the military dimension of Frederick’s life since imperial German times (and remains the definitive work on the subject until today).
Obviously, the book is more encompassing – after all, it treats not only the Seven Years’ War, but the entire 74-year life of Frederick. Yet the chapter on the Seven Years’ War makes up almost half of the book – testament to the importance of the war for Frederick (whom it turned from an energetic man in his prime into a hollowed out, aged king who had lost most of his pleasures along with many personal friends). The toll the war took on Frederick is showcased in many anecdotes both in the book and in the “small events” in the game.
Glum times for Frederick! Other event cards show him as energetic and decisive, but this one embodies his worst impulses.
Frederick represents a watershed in history. On the one hand, he expanded and modernized the Prussian bureaucracy which is so symbolic for the modern, often impersonal state. On the other, he was a roi-connétable, a king-warlord, one of the last monarchs to personally lead his troops into battle – those after him who did so had usually used their military success to also take political power which was then based on their continued martial prowess (like Napoleon). Yet in an age when the kings of Britain, France, or Russia remained at court and sent their generals to fight whichever war needed fighting, Frederick rode at the head of his main army, entrusting detachments to his generals only because he could not be everywhere at once.
And Frederick did his best to be everywhere. One of the most striking characteristics of Frederick’s campaigns is his masterful use of the interior lines, on which he performed sweeping forced marches from one theater of the war to another. The most impressive example is found late in the campaign of 1757: After Frederick’s offensive in Bohemia had failed, and France’s victory over the Hanoverian army in northwestern Germany opened the way for a French invasion of Prussia. Frederick marched his army to western Saxony, where he beat a combined French/Imperial army at Roßbach on November 5. The Austrians had used the opportunity to invade Silesia which had only been held by secondary Prussian detachments and were in the possession of almost the entire province… until Frederick’s army showed up, having marched 400 kilometers in a month, and expelled the Austrians from Silesia at Leuthen, the site of his greatest tactical victory.
Frederick’s forced march from Roßbach (battle on November 5, 1757) to Leuthen (December 5, 1757) on the Friedrich map.
These sweeping operational and tactical maneuvers are detailed by around 50 maps in Duffy’s book. Whoever is interested in the wars of Frederick will pore over them for a long time during the read and probably flick back and forth between the map section and the text to follow a battle description. While Friedrich prizes maneuver, it has to scale down the distances covered – the march from Roßbach to Leuthen would take five turns on the map (an entire game typically takes around 20 turns).
Operational map of the forced march from Roßbach to Leuthen (top) and tactical map of the battle of Roßbach (bottom right) in Frederick the Great. A Military Life. I’d love to say the book is in this slightly banged up condition because I read it so often, but the unromantic fact is that I bought it used at a library sale (at the bargain price of four bucks).
Thus, there is a certain disconnect between general Friedrich [the pieces are all named in the German fashion] moving on the map and the player role of Frederick: The general Friedrich is much less important than the historical Frederick-the-general. His piece starts in Saxony, which makes it likely that he will only ever do battle with Austria and their minor ally, the Imperial Army, but never venture far enough to fight against France or even Russia and its ally Sweden. If he remains in Saxony and Prussia elects to focus its defense against Austria in Silesia, Frederick might command only a small detachment, avoiding battle while pinning down Austrian forces and taking unglamorous retreats if he is engaged.
Friedrich (Frederick) is keeping Karl von Lothringen (Charles Alexander of Lorraine) busy in Saxony while the main forces of Prussia and Austria, stacked to impressive height, face off in Silesia.
The player role of Frederick, however, oversees the entirety of the Prussian war effort (as well as that of Prussia’s minor ally Hanover, ruled in personal union by the king of Britain). The player has control over the maneuver of their generals of which Frederick could only have dreamt: News of a victory or defeat in East Prussia would have reached his army camp in Bohemia only weeks after the event, whereas in Friedrich the player can position the general in charge of defending East Prussia exactly where they want and have him surrender, retreat, or fight for his life according to the overall strategic plan.
Maximilian Ulysses von Browne has moved boldly in the first turn… and might face Friedrich/Frederick’s wrath (and superior power) in the second.
Nonetheless, the game is very effective at conveying Friedrich’s psychological state: In the early game, the player might be elated by their power and success. As Frederick moves and draws cards first in the round, an aggressive player can attack their foes with overwhelming force – for example, a second-round attack on Austria means that Prussia has drawn its seven cards per round twice already (so, fourteen in total), whereas Austria has only drawn its five cards per turn once. This corresponds with the quality advantage of the Prussian troops early in the war which Duffy notes frequently. Yet Duffy also argues that this advantage was lost by the heavy casualties the Prussian army endured in 1757 and would never be regained. (Duffy contends that Frederick inherited the finest military force in Europe upon his accession to the throne, but left his own successor a mediocre army – this long-term criticism of Frederick is, of course, beyond the scope of the game.)
Correspondingly, the Frederick player will soon find that the time to play defense has come (if it hasn’t been from the beginning of the game). And as their once-impressive card hand dwindles under the repeated attacks from all foes, elation will give way to gloom. Whenever an anecdote is read as the end-of-round event, showing the historical Frederick at turns defiant, melancholy, or self-pitying, the Frederick player will be able to relate – as they will as Austria’s allies, one after another, falter and peace is made. Frederick might have won the game, but it will surely have taken a toll.
Prussia barely holds on to the last Austrian and Russian objectives… let’s hope for Frederick that the Tsarina dies soon!
In that sense, Frederick the Great. A Military Life and Friedrich are a perfect match – the analytic and the immersive, the intellectual and the emotional. Give both a try!
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.
Admiral d’Estaing’s event card in Liberty or Death (Harold Buchanan, GMT Games) emphasizes the difficulties and opportunities of coordinating far-reaching naval operations. From the Vassal module.
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 board of Imperial Struggle depicts a world full of opportunities for conquest, alliance, and trade in North America, Europe, the Caribbean, and India. In this particular game, the British have been expelled from North America, but done well in India.
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.
The Benedict Arnold event in Washington’s War (Mark Herman, GMT Games) does not only give a die roll modifier in a battle to Britain, but also removes the (American) leader Arnold from the board. Experienced American players know this, of course, and will not entrust Arnold with important missions… thus, his invasion of Canada is unlikely to happen in the game. An interesting meditation on how much historical hindsight influences gameplay.
The Southern Strategy
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.
Lincoln never stood a chance. From the Rally the Troops! implementation of Washington’s War.
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’s next victim. From the Rally the Troops! implementation of Washington’s War.
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.
Yorktown
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).
Between a rock and a hard place: Cornwallis was trapped by the American-French army and the French navy. From the Rally the Troops! implementation of Washington’s War.
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.
Peace
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.
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.
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.
Wallenstein in his winter quarters at Pilsen (the German spelling of Plzeň) with the three executors of the imperial will dancing around him. Cheb, to the northwest of Plzeň/Pilsen would have given Wallenstein an easy exit west in direction of the Swedish-German forces under Bernard of Weimar or north to the Elector of Saxony. From the Vassal module of Thirty Years War: Europe in Agony, 1618-1648 (David A. Fox/Michael Welker, GMT Games).
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 leader counter in Cuius Regio.
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.
Twilight of the Thirty Years’ War
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.
Afterlife
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.
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.
Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, had taken Germany by storm in 1631. He was allied with the heretofore neutral Protestant electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, had shattered the imperial army under Count Tilly at Breitenfeld, and was taking his winter quarters in Mainz, deep in the southwest of Germany. For 1632, he looked ready to advance along the Danube, first into Bavaria, the home of elector Maximilian, the most powerful Catholic prince in the empire (and Wallenstein’s chief rival), and then into the Habsburg core lands.
I recommend you blow up this image by clicking on it – not only to see the strategic situation in early 1632 with the main Swedish army in the electorate of Mainz in the northwest and an advance column in Franconia (northeast) and the Catholic League forces on both sides on the Danube which will flow further east into the Habsburg core lands, but also to enjoy the sheer beauty of this map! Taken from the Vassal module of Won by the Sword (Ben Hull, GMT Games).
Wallenstein had been the emperor’s man to solve his military problems for five years. It was thus an obvious choice to recall him as commander. Even Maximilian was in favor (hoping for Wallenstein to defend his electorate, which had heretofore been blissfully ignorant of war as a first-hand experience). Emperor Ferdinand II was practically begging. Wallenstein agreed – but only to reorganize the army, only for three months. The emperor went along, having no other choice. And, of course, when the three months were over, Wallenstein stayed on, having his supreme authority confirmed and expanded.
We have discussed the Wallenstein rule in Thirty Years War: Europe in Agony, 1618—1648 (David A. Fox/Michael Welker, GMT Games) as far as his dismissal was concerned – when Wallenstein’s influence becomes too high, the Catholic player can avoid losing by dismissing Wallenstein which will halve his influence. Having dismissed Wallenstein, the Catholic player can recall him again for a second bout in command – this time probably shorter, as Wallenstein will have some leftover influence and will thus be closer to the influence threshold that would mean Protestant victory!
Gustavus Adolphus had not been idle while Wallenstein re-organized the army. He had split his army in several parts, taking a good deal of Catholic Germany (and distributing ecclesiastical lands to his supporters), while his main force advanced towards Bavaria. The army of the Catholic League under Maximilian and Tilly attempted to make up for their numerical inferiority with a strong defensive position behind the river Lech. Gustavus Adolphus forced the Lech in April 1632 with the double measure of a crossing south of the Catholic army and the massed use of artillery. The League army was routed. Tilly died of the wounds he had suffered in the battle. One month later, Gustavus Adolphus lodged in the Bavarian capital Munich.
The Duel with Gustavus
Maximilian beseeched Wallenstein to march for Bavaria and meet the Swedes in open battle. Yet Wallenstein’s mission concerned the entire empire, not just a single electorate. And his caution – half natural, half learned in the campaign of 1626 – led him to pursue a different course. He marched for Franconia. From there, he threatened Gustavus’s supply lines which stretched all the way to the Baltic coast, and he could quickly march to Bavaria, strike at the Swedish king’s new Saxon allies, or retreat to Bohemia, as the situation required it. When he took camp near the city of Nuremberg, one of the greatest cities of the empire, he also evoked the Protestants’ fear of another Magdeburg – more atrocities visited on a large Protestant city. Gustavus Adolphus had to turn and face Wallenstein.
The Swedish king had a battle-hardened army with him, but the difficult supply situation and the vast area which he had conquered had forced him to detach large parts of his army. Even though reinforcements arrived for him in Nuremberg, his combined force was not bigger than Wallenstein’s (strengthened by some of the Bavarian troops) who had built a fortified camp at the Alte Veste outside of Nuremberg. Gustavus, eager to fight a decisive battle and resume his attack on the Habsburg core lands, attempted to breach the defenses for several days, but was bloodily repelled by Wallenstein’s forces. The king had to withdraw. He left a garrison behind to hold Nuremberg against Wallenstein’s siege. The Swedes were not defeated, but the myth of Gustavus’s invincibility was broken.
As the Protestant army had withdrawn southwest, Maximilian feared a new invasion of Bavaria. Once more, he demanded that Wallenstein follow Gustavus to protect Bavaria. And once more, Wallenstein refused. Protect Bavaria he would, though… not by marching south, but north.
Wallenstein’s march for Saxony followed his tried-and-tested strategy of combining pressure on the supply lines with political pressure: When Wallenstein’s army showed up in Saxony, the Saxons would understand how foolish they had been to declare against the emperor. Maybe their elector John George, an imperial loyalist by inclination, could be brought back into the imperial fold. Until then, Wallenstein’s army would winter in Saxony, consuming the food and fodder which Saxon peasants had grown and harvested.
As Wallenstein had foreseen, Gustavus Adolphus followed him to protect his supply lines and his Saxon allies, arriving in November 1632 in Saxony. In Wallenstein’s mind, the campaigning season was over, and he split his army into several winter quarters – a common necessity in Cuius Regio (Francisco Gradaille, GMT Games, forthcoming) as well, as smaller towns are often unable to supply large armies in winter. Yet Gustavus was not done campaigning, kept his force concentrated, and marched on the force under Wallenstein’s command stationed around the village of Lützen.
Wallenstein & Piccolomini! Best friends forever! From the Vassal module of Cuius Regio.
Wallenstein, caught unprepared, scrambled to get reinforcements for the battle that was now upon him. He hoped that at least the cavalry of his lieutenant Gottfried Heinrich, Count of Pappenheim would arrive in time, maybe even the infantry. Until then, he took defensive positions at Lützen, obscured by the morning mist and the smoke from having set the village on fire.
The ensuing Battle of Lützen, fought on November 16, 1632, was Wallenstein’s fiercest tactical challenge. The Protestant army had a slight numerical superiority, its core formed by veterans of many battles (usually on the winning side), and it was commanded by the greatest tactical commander of the time. The initial Swedish assault shattered Wallenstein’s left. The Swedes also gained Wallenstein’s artillery battery on the left wing. Yet when the battle seemed already lost, Pappenheim arrived with his cavalry regiments and turned the tide. Pappenheim, however, was severely wounded, and most of his cavalrymen fled. Colonel Ottavio Piccolomini took some regiments from the center, and, helped by the onset of more fog, could stabilize the front.
In the meantime, Wallenstein’s right had repelled the Protestant assault on their side and were now battering the Swedish-German troops under Prince Bernard of Saxony-Weimar. Bernard called for support, and the king himself answered with a group of select cavalrymen. Gustavus Adolphus was wounded, lost touch with his forces in the fog, and thus fell into the hands of imperial soldiers who killed him and plundered his corpse. News of the death of the king spread among the Protestant ranks. They responded quite differently to Pappenheim’s forces when faced with the loss of their commander: Gustavus Adolphus had been beloved, a hero, the savior of Protestantism. The Swedish-German troops battered Wallenstein’s right wing and took his second battery. Their strength, however, was insufficient to expel the imperial forces from their defensive positions. The fighting ended when night fell. Wallenstein withdrew his army in good order.
Lützen had been no victory for Wallenstein. He had given up the battlefield and his losses were heavier than those of the Protestants. Yet Wallenstein could retake the positions lost, and he could recruit new soldiers to take the places of the fallen. Gustavus Adolphus, on the other hand, could barely be replaced. The imperial side could be content with the campaigns of 1632.
The Search for Peace
After Wallenstein’s last great operational success, the campaign against Denmark in 1627 and 1628, he had made peace with his enemy from a position of strength. His inclination now was to do the same – only peace would confirm his large acquisitions in Bohemia, Silesia, and Mecklenburg, and as he grew older and sicker, frequently bed-ridden, he meant to enjoy them. As the Swedes were nowhere near as thoroughly beaten as Denmark had been, Wallenstein started smaller with attempts to prise their Saxon allies away from them with a mix of persuasion and force: While he treated with his former marshal Hans Georg von Arnim, who, as a devout Protestant, had left imperial service for reasons of conscience after the Edict of Restitution, and now served the Elector of Saxony, Wallenstein’s new lieutenant Heinrich von Holk (another Protestant, and the former commander of the forces resisting Wallenstein at the siege of Stralsund) marauded in Saxony.
Wallenstein’s goal: To return Saxony to the imperial camp. Alas, it was not so easy… as you can see, the conditions for the “Saxony Switches Sides” event are not met, and Saxony will continue to fight alongside the Swedes in this game of Thirty Years War: Europe in Agony, 1618-1648.
The emperor had good hopes that his Saxon vassal would return into the imperial fold and commended Wallenstein for his diplomatic efforts. In the meantime, Wallenstein (and his new second-in-command Matthias Gallas, promoted after Holk had died of the plague in September 1633) also treated with the Swedes (in the person of Gustavus Adolphus’s chancellor Axel of Oxenstierna who now directed Swedish politics), yet nothing would come of that: Both sides seem to have tried to stall the other’s war efforts with diplomacy and undermine the confidence of the allies of the other. For example, the Swedes offered Wallenstein to become King of Bohemia if he allied with them and fought against the emperor – an absurd notion, as Wallenstein’s confirmation by the Protestant estates of Bohemia would have been at odds with their expropriation in 1621 from which he had acquired his Bohemian holdings.
The Swedish advances were not acknowledged by Wallenstein himself. As his health deteriorated, however, others started speaking with his voice, chiefly his brother-in-law Adam Erdmann, Count Trčka, his marshal Christian von Ilow, and the Bohemian diplomat Vilém Kinský. They hoped to bring about an alliance between Wallenstein, the Bohemian emigrants, and the foreign powers supporting them against the Habsburgs – Sweden, and possibly even France.
Both sides used their tentative diplomatic efforts and the resulting operational lull in 1633 to consolidate their forces after the exertions of the previous year. By fall, though, they were ready to strike again. Wallenstein marched to Silesia to retake the last Habsburg dominion held by the Protestants. Their commander, the Bohemian Heinrich Matthias von Thurn, surrendered in exchange for his release after the capture. Emperor Ferdinand resented that this arch-rebel who had been in the Bohemian uprising from its beginning in 1618 went unpunished.
The Swedish main army, commanded by Bernard of Weimar, struck at Regensburg and invaded Bavaria again in November. Wallenstein sent some regiments under Johann von Aldringen to support the Catholic League army, but his own army remained in Bohemia on the principle that any threat to the Habsburg core lands could be blocked as long as imperial forces held the city of Passau on the Danube. Maximilian complained bitterly to the emperor about Wallenstein’s passivity.
Emperor Ferdinand II had always been the source of Wallenstein’s power, often against the advice of his allies. Maximilian had always been suspicious of Wallenstein. The Spanish Habsburgs had had a more ambivalent stance. They had respected Wallenstein as an effective commander who spread Habsburg influence in Germany, but had resented his refusal to support their wars in the Netherlands, and, in the late 1620s, against the French in Upper Italy. In December 1633, they found themselves in a pickle: The Habsburg governess of the Netherlands, Isabella Clara Eugenia, aunt to the King of Spain, had died. With Dutch naval supremacy, they could only bring a new governor in by land, along the Spanish Road linking Upper Italy and the Netherlands – whose middle part in Germany was now in the hands of the Swedes. The Spanish representatives in Vienna lobbied for Wallenstein to give the new governor, Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, an armed escort of several regiments. Wallenstein refused. An army of a few thousand men with the Cardinal-Infante could not possibly withstand any Swedish attack on its way, he argued, while he could not spare thousands of men when the Habsburg core lands were under direct threat. Spain was snubbed. If the Spanish had ever supported Wallenstein, henceforth, they wouldn’t.
It doesn’t look so good anymore for our hero! In the next post, we will wrap up the story of Wallenstein. Watch this space!
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.
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