With this My Favorite Wargame Cards Series, I hope to take a look at a specific card from the various wargames that I have played and share how it is used in the game. I am not a strategist and frankly I am not that good at games but I do understand how things should work and be used in games. With that being said, here is the next entry in this series.

#98: The Balkan Wars from Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 from VUCA Simulations

Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 is a massive card driven game that blends diplomacy, warfare, and statecraft and feels a bit akin to games like Here I Stand and Virgin Queen from GMT Games, which are both grand scale sweeping epics that play multiplayers and take a day to play. Players play as 1 of 6 major powers in the game including Germany/Prussia, the United Kingdom, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The game is quite grand and ambitious as it covers 70 years near the end of the Victorian Era and the Progressive Ear and sees quite a lot of global change and competition between the great powers of the time. The game is a Card Driven Game and uses Action Cards as a type of currency to spend for their Command Points or the printed event to take actions such as recruiting armies and navies, industrialize, moving fleets and armies around the globe, influencing minor powers and establish colonies in Africa, India and the Pacific Ocean. The cards are all tied to the history of the period but the game can be played very much as a sandbox allowing players to explore strategies by trailblazing new horizons or following history.

Before we dive into today’s chosen card The Balkan Wars, I want to first make sure you know about Mandatory Event Cards in the game and how they work as they work slightly differently from normal Action Cards. Mandatory Event Cards are all lime green colored and bear a large block “M” just under the CP Value listed in the upper left hand corner. Mandatory Events, as the name suggests, must be played for their events. However, when playing a Mandatory Event Card, players trigger the event and also receive the CP to spend on various actions. The events on Mandatory Event Cards are always resolved first before the CP are utilized. If a Mandatory Event Card is discarded, the event will immediately trigger. There is no way around these cards and they are included in the game to drive the action historically and interject the various special circumstances that drove the rise and decline of these Victorian Age empires. The player that discarded the card resolves the event as if they were the active player. If two such Mandatory Event Cards are discarded in the same impulse the events are resolved in turn order.

Some of the events that occurred historically prior to 1914 were ultimately precursors to The Great War in many ways. The Balkan Wars were two conflicts fought in 1912 and 1913 that stripped the Ottoman Empire of almost all its remaining European territory and directly set the stage for World War I. The Balkan Wars saw similar levels of carnage as machine guns and artillery equipped with hydraulic recoil mechanisms were used in large numbers. Politically, they highlight the volatile nature of international politics in the Balkan Peninsula and are included as a Mandatory Event to ultimately drive up the World Tension Track on a path toward the outbreak of World War I. When played, the World Tension Track will increase by +1 and if the Ottoman player controls any territory in the Balkans other than Istanbul, or has Diplomatic Influence with countries, they will have a chance to lose their control there as a result of the chaos of the First and Second Balkan Wars. If these checks fail, and they will incur a -1 DRM for each Ottoman Army that is located anywhere in the Balkans, non-player armies will be placed in those locations and will increase the difficulty for the Ottomans to gain a foothold in this area. According to the designer Michael Lorino, mechanically this event causes all kinds of trouble in the Balkans, as intended. Similar to the Mandatory Event Card Empire of the Sun, the original event was a bit more involved and had players fight an actual war. In an effort to keep the game in the playable zone, he decided to abstract these wars through a die roll.

I very much enjoy the concept of a Mandatory Event, although they are never convenient for someone at the table as they typically have negative effects for at least 1 faction. But I very much like the approach taken here with The Balkan Wars with the -1 DRM for control of a territory and its thematic connection with the Ottoman Empire’s presence in the region generating tension and setting off these Balkan Wars.

The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War, the four Balkan states of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria declared war upon the Ottoman Empire and defeated it, in the process stripping the Ottomans of their European provinces, leaving only Eastern Thrace under Ottoman control. In the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria fought against the other four combatants of the first war. It also faced an attack from Romania from the north. As a result of these wars, the Ottoman Empire lost the bulk of its territory in Europe. Although not involved as a combatant, Austria-Hungary became relatively weaker as a much enlarged Serbia pushed for union of the South Slavic peoples. The Balkan Wars set the stage for the July Crisis of 1914 and was a prelude to the First World War.

We have put out several pieces of content covering Imperial Elegy and find it to be a fantastic game. These include written posts and videos. You can visit those by following the links below:

Unboxing Video:

Video Review:

Summary of Solitaire Bots presented by our friend James:

Written First Impressions Post on the blog: https://theplayersaid.com/2026/05/06/first-impressions-imperial-elegy-the-road-to-the-great-war-1850-1920-from-vuca-simulations/

In the next entry in this series, we will take a look at Truman Doctrine from Twilight Struggle: The Cold War, 1945-1989 from GMT Games.

-Grant

With this My Favorite Wargame Cards Series, I hope to take a look at a specific card from the various wargames that I have played and share how it is used in the game. I am not a strategist and frankly I am not that good at games but I do understand how things should work and be used in games. With that being said, here is the next entry in this series.

#93: German Home Card Otto von Bismarck from Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 from VUCA Simulations

Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 is a massive card driven game that blends diplomacy, warfare, and statecraft and feels a bit akin to games like Here I Stand and Virgin Queen from GMT Games, which are both grand scale sweeping epics that play multiplayers and take a day to play. Players play as 1 of 6 major powers in the game including Germany/Prussia, the United Kingdom, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The game is quite grand and ambitious as it covers 70 years near the end of the Victorian Era and the Progressive Ear and sees quite a lot of global change and competition between the great powers of the time. The game is a Card Driven Game and uses Action Cards as a type of currency to spend for their Command Points or the printed event to take actions such as recruiting armies and navies, industrialize, moving fleets and armies around the globe, influencing minor powers and establish colonies in Africa, India and the Pacific Ocean. The cards are all tied to the history of the period but the game can be played very much as a sandbox allowing players to explore strategies by trailblazing new horizons or following history.

In Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920, the Otto von Bismarck Card is a powerful and extremely important German Home Card. Rather than being shuffled into the common Action Card Deck, it belongs exclusively to the Prussian/German player’s unique toolkit to represent the historical trajectory of German state-building. The card is mechanically tied to the first few turns of the grand 7-decade timeline and acts as a get started quickly card for the German player as they begin the long and somewhat difficult task of attempting to unify the Germanic peoples under one banner. The German player can choose to execute it on Turn 1 to abstractly simulate Bismarck’s rapid real-world rise to power and kickstart early diplomatic maneuvers or wars. Playing as Germany, the player should be focused on attempting the Unification of Germany and will most likely choose the Unification National Goal card as a standard at the beginning of games. The Bismarck Home Card is the primary historical vehicle used to achieve this unification and simulates driving the annexations or alliances needed to claim crucial minor regions including Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Denmark and Alsace Lorraine. And like standard Action Cards in Imperial Elegy, the card presents a choice. The German player can either choose between using its high Command Point (CP) Value of 3 for a massive push focusing on industrial development or military actions, or using the card for its printed Event text. One of the really nice parts of the card is the way that it effects Stability in the game. Stability is a core national resource and rating that measures a major power’s internal political health, structural integrity and capacity to wage war or absorb setbacks such as economic downtown and social upheaval. Typically, when you declare war, your Stability will degrade but not in the case of a War of Unification. And with Bismarck, Germany will gain 1 Stability when they declare a War of Unification. This is such a powerful effect for the early game as it will allow the German state to build up their capacity and increase Stability to be able to perform later in the game.

Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, known as Otto von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman who masterminded the unification of Germany in 1871 and served as its first chancellor until 1890, in which capacity he dominated European affairs for two decades. He had previously been Minister President of Prussia from 1862–1890 and Chancellor of the North German Confederation from 1867–1871. He provoked three short, decisive wars, against Denmark, Austria, and France.

Following the victory against Austria, he abolished the supranational German Confederation and instead formed the North German Confederation as the first German national state, aligning the smaller North German states behind Prussia, and excluding Austria. Receiving the support of the independent South German states in the Confederation’s defeat of France, he formed the German Empire – which also excluded Austria – and united Germany.

With Prussian dominance accomplished by 1871, Bismarck skillfully used balance of power diplomacy to maintain Germany’s position in a peaceful Europe. To historian Eric Hobsbawm, Bismarck “remained undisputed world champion at the game of multilateral diplomatic chess for almost twenty years after 1871, and devoted himself exclusively, and successfully, to maintaining peace between the powers”. However, his annexation of Alsace-Lorraine (Elsaß-Lothringen) gave new fuel to French nationalism and Germanophobia. Bismarck’s diplomacy of Realpolitik and powerful rule at home gained him the nickname the “Iron Chancellor”. German unification and its rapid economic growth was the foundation to his foreign policy. He disliked colonialism but reluctantly built an overseas empire when it was demanded by both elite and mass opinion. Juggling a very complex interlocking series of conferences, negotiations and alliances, he used his diplomatic skills to maintain Germany’s position.

A master of complex politics at home, Bismarck created the first welfare state in the modern world, with the goal of gaining working-class support that might otherwise go to his Socialist opponents. In the 1870s, he allied himself with the low-tariff, anti-Catholic Liberals and fought the Catholic Church in what was called the Kulturkampf (“culture struggle”). He lost that battle as the Catholics responded by forming the powerful German Centre Party and using universal male suffrage to gain a bloc of seats. Bismarck then reversed himself, ended the Kulturkampf, broke with the Liberals, imposed protective tariffs, and formed a political alliance with the Centre Party to fight the Socialists. A devout Lutheran, he was loyal to his king, Wilhelm I, who argued with Bismarck but in the end supported him against the advice of his wife Queen Augusta and his heir Crown Prince Frederick William. While Germany’s parliament was elected by universal male suffrage, it did not have much control of government policy. Bismarck distrusted democracy and ruled through a strong, well-trained bureaucracy with power in the hands of a traditional Junker elite that consisted of the landed nobility in eastern Prussia. He largely controlled domestic and foreign affairs, until he was removed by the young new headstrong Kaiser Wilhelm II. He retired to write his memoirs.

We have put out several pieces of content covering Imperial Elegy and find it to be a fantastic game. These include written posts and videos. You can visit those by following the links below:

Unboxing Video:

Video Review:

Summary of Solitaire Bots presented by our friend James:

Written First Impressions Post on the blog: https://theplayersaid.com/2026/05/06/first-impressions-imperial-elegy-the-road-to-the-great-war-1850-1920-from-vuca-simulations/

In the next entry in this series, we will take a look at Hamet’s Army Created from The Shores of Tripoli from Fort Circle Games.

-Grant

I am going to start this new feature on the blog called Discussion Thread where I pose a question or a situation and seek your input and comments on the issue to gain greater understanding and to encourage thoughtful feedback. I think this will only be successful if we get lots of opinions and queries so please speak up and let me know your thoughts. Big or little. Nothing is out of bounds. I also feel that this series will be a bit therapeutic for me and my mental health. I am not sure how often I will post these type of things but wanted to see how it goes and also to share something that happened to me recently in a game that got my gears a grinding.

*All names have been changed or omitted to protect the privacy and identity of those involved.

But first, I am going to have to set the scene for you. As you know, we really enjoy attending conventions and playing large multi-player wargames such as Here I Stand, Virgin Queen, War Room, Alliance and many other titles. Over the years, we have absolutely had a blast at these conventions and they are the best places to play these large 5+ player wargames. Recently, while attending the World Boardgaming Championships in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania. This year I attended alone, as Alexander was on vacation in the south of France with family, and I was able to coordinate a full 6-player game of the amazing Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 from VUCA Simulations. This game was released in late 2025 and we have since played it 3 times, including this play at WBC. Imperial Elegy is a is a card driven game that blends diplomacy, warfare and statecraft and feels a bit akin to games like Here I Stand and Virgin Queen from GMT Games. Like those games, IE is a grand scale sweeping epic that play multiplayers and take a day to play (literally 12-14 hours to see the game through to the bitter end). The game covers the dying throes of the colonial and imperial powers of the 17th and 18th century as they deal with local colonial uprisings, attempts to unify fractured countries, build alliances for protection and to aid in their own expansion and economic concerns of population growth and industrialization. Players will take on the roles of 1 of 6 unique major powers in the game including Germany/Prussia, the United Kingdom, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. This is a really deep and involved game and frankly after 3 plays I am finally grasping what it is that I should be focused on, how to go about building alliances and the benefits that I must get from those to have a chance at survival. But I am still learning and have only played as the German/Prussian Empire and France, so there is a lot yet to learn and explore.

While playing a 6-player game at WBC recently, I was the French. Previously I had played as the German/Prussian Empire and this was going to be a new experience where I could see what another faction was about and begin to understand their motivations, goals and objectives. A fellow player, who was playing as the UK, which is a natural ally of the French, saw my taking of some actions that didn’t sit well with him and he was actively trying to find ways to punish me for doing what he didn’t agree with. Keep in mind he never said anything about his reasoning at the time of taking the action, because it made zero sense at the time in the state of the game, nor did it make any sense in the game for the UK’s long term strategy. It was simply odd and I was searching for understanding as to why he would choose to do what he did.

In the game, I had just agreed with Germany to voluntarily give up Alsace Lorraine because I had no way to prevent him from coming in and destroying my 1 army there. He had 2 full armies, one of which had an Elite Corps. as well as an adjacent army supporting it on the board. So I decided I would sue for peace and try to avoid a prolonged battle that would waste my resources and that would ultimately, at least in my opinion, lead to me losing the location. The German/Prussian Empire is trying to unify their country and must control a certain number of countries on the board marked with a German flag, of which Alsace Lorraine is one. As a concession with the German player, I was able to convince him to give me 2 cards from the deal, which were randomly drawn as you cannot simply give over a specific card, and they were both 1’s. Bummer. But, I now had 2 extra cards to perform a few more actions that turn and that was a good trade off for me.

I was planning to go hard into colonies in Africa, Asia and even into North America to get to 6 Colonial Keys to accomplish one of my National Goals and to gain an extra +1 Card and +1 Manpower. I had already made good progress by taking Algeria and gaining traction in Morocco in North Africa and controlled 1 of the spaces on the Africa sub map.

That’s when he played a 3 Ops Card called Folie de Grandeur for the event which allowed him to place a revolt in a French controlled colony in Africa, Asia or North America and he went behind me to take out Algeria which meant I would have to go back and move an Expeditionary Force there and spend 3-4 impulses to Pacify it and get it back under my control. It sucked. The event also forced me to lose a Stability and take a -1 Card marker. This was a devastating and mean card to play at that time.

I asked him why he would play this card, as we were moving toward becoming allies and had discussions about how things should and could go, and I had done nothing to him but had been simply trying to do what France should do by going into City of Light points, intervening in Italy and their unification and building colonies. I was admittedly a bit upset and kept pestering him about his reasoning through the whole game. He said at the time he played that card, he had a good hand with several large Ops cards and didn’t need the extra 3 from this card (I call BS as you can always use more Ops). Plus I actually watched his final card plays that round and he didn’t have good cards but had a middling hand with several 2 OPs cards. I was taking notes.

So we played out the game and he actually screwed me over later with another stupid event (man there are a ton of those Mandatory little events that make taking colonies very dicey) and he was absolutely not in the game at all. He had only scored 2 VP from his National Goals and had only a few colonies with just 2 in South Africa. Later that evening over dinner, I asked him again why and told him his reasons used at the table were BS. He said to me straight faced that I had pissed him off with my move with Germany and he was punishing me. Punishing me? In a game that I am still exploring to learn and understand the buttons to push and levers to pull. As mentioned, I have only played 3 times with Germany/Prussia and France. He was PUNISHING me! Are you kidding me?!? Geeze. This has still bothered me to this day and I wanted to share to have you either talk me down off the ledge or give me some reasoning to make it all make sense.

I want to clarify that this person is a good friend. We have played games together for years and we are always mixing it up. I plan to continue playing games with him and I am sure will have many other experiences to share over the years.

So what are your thoughts? Was I misguided in my angst? Did I take it too personally? Was he justified in his actions? What do you do when you have a situation like this in a game? Thanks for reading and for sharing your thoughts. I will come up with a few more of these posts over the next few months to share and I hope to see lots of comments and reaction.

In the meantime, we have put out several pieces of content, including written posts and videos. You can visit those by following the links below:

Unboxing Video:

Video Review:

Summary on Solitaire Bots presented by our friend James:

Written First Impressions Post on the blog: https://theplayersaid.com/2026/05/06/first-impressions-imperial-elegy-the-road-to-the-great-war-1850-1920-from-vuca-simulations/

My Favorite Wargame Cards – A Look at Individual Cards from My Favorite Games – Card #85: Hydraulic Recoil: https://theplayersaid.com/2026/07/07/my-favorite-wargame-cards-a-look-at-individual-cards-from-my-favorite-games-card-85-hydraulic-recoil-from-imperial-elegy-the-road-to-the-great-war-1850-1920-from-vuca/

-Grant

With this My Favorite Wargame Cards Series, I hope to take a look at a specific card from the various wargames that I have played and share how it is used in the game. I am not a strategist and frankly I am not that good at games but I do understand how things should work and be used in games. With that being said, here is the next entry in this series.

Card #88: National American Woman Suffrage Association from Votes for Women from Fort Circle Games

Votes for Women is a very interesting card-driven game that covers the American Women’s Suffrage Movement from 1848-1920, culminating in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment which granted women the right to vote. The game is a 2-player game, that has a fully developed solitaire mode with an “Oppobot” and offers a cooperative mode for those who don’t wish to play as they Opposition. The Suffragist player will have to push Congress to propose the Nineteenth Amendment, and then focus on campaigning to have a minimum of 36 states to ratify the Amendment. The Opposition side will try to prevent Congress from proposing the amendment and failing that to have 13 states reject the amendment.

The game uses cards in a fairly traditional CDG way as there are events that can be be taken or the cards can be played to do things like Campaign, Organize or Lobby Congress. Each card has a specific Card Era that is used to create of the each players’ Draw Decks. Late cards will be on the bottom of the deck, Middle cards will be in the middle of the deck and Early cards will be on the top of the deck. The Suffragist and Opposition decks each have one Start card that will be placed in the player’s hand at the start of the game. Some Event Cards have a prerequisite and some of the cards require a player to roll a 6-sided die and only take the the action on a roll of 3-6. Otherwise, the Event Card is discarded with no effect. The cards in this game are also steeped in historical details, from the name of the events that tie back to specific individuals or happenings, to major moments in the struggle. This game is about the history of the struggle for the right to vote and it is very good!

One of the more interesting aspects about the mechanics of the game is the use of Campaigners to go about trying to influence the attitude of the people and legislators regarding the Nineteenth Amendment through the Campaign Action. When a card is played for a Campaign Action, the player rolls a die, either a 6-sided or 8-sided die depending on what cards have been activated, for each Campaigner they have in play. The player then gets to take the dice and their results, which range from 1-8, and assign a specific die to each of their Campaigners. Each Campaigner may then place the corresponding number of cubes, matching the Campaigner’s color, in the States within the region that the Campaigner is located in. The player may spend a Button to move the Campaigner to a different region, but all of the corresponding cubes must be put into the same region. This is a great way to get a lot of influence out on the board to begin taking control of various States for the final vote in the game. This also is a very efficient way of doing this as you will be rolling 2-3 dice for your Campaigners and then spamming the States. With that in mind, today’s card is the National American Woman Suffrage Association and it provides the Suffragist player with a new Campaigner (purple) to place out specifically into the Atlantic & Appalachia Region that includes the States of Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and Delaware. The card also grants the Suffragist player with 3 Buttons that can be used as described above to relocate a Campaigner from one state to another. This card is very helpful and should be played for the Event 9 times out of 10 and will make a huge difference in the outcome of the game. Once a 2nd or 3rd Campaigner is deployed, I tend to take Campaign Actions rather than some of the less intensive placement options or Events.

The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was an organization formed on February 18, 1890, to advocate in favor of women’s suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Its membership, which was about 7,000 at the time it was formed, eventually increased to 2 million, making it the largest voluntary organization in the nation. It played a pivotal role in the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which in 1920 guaranteed women’s right to vote.

Susan B. Anthony, a long-time leader in the suffrage movement, was the dominant figure in the newly formed NAWSA. Carrie Chapman Catt, who became president after Anthony retired in 1900, implemented a strategy of recruiting wealthy members of the rapidly growing women’s club movement, whose time, money and experience could help build the suffrage movement. Anna Howard Shaw’s term in office, which began in 1904, saw strong growth in the organization’s membership and public approval.

After the Senate decisively rejected the proposed women’s suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1887, the suffrage movement had concentrated most of its efforts on state suffrage campaigns. In 1910 Alice Paul joined the NAWSA and played a major role in reviving interest in the national amendment. After continuing conflicts with the NAWSA leadership over tactics, Paul created a rival organization, the National Woman’s Party.

Here is a link to our full video review of the game:

We also published an interview on the blog with the designer Tory Brown and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2020/09/07/interview-with-tory-brown-designer-of-votes-for-women-from-fort-circle-games-currently-on-kickstarter/

In the next entry in this series, we will take a look at Frederick Douglas from For the People 25th Anniversary Edition from GMT Games.

-Grant

I am nearing the end of my time here at WBC and I’m starting to get a bit sad. I have tomorrow but I will be leaving 1 day early on Saturday and just am not ready for it to be over. I have had a great time, played a lot of games, 13 by my count, and also seen old friends and made new ones. I have also done 6 videos but have had some technical difficulties with the camera as the batteries keep prematurely dying even though they have been fully charged. Bit I have made great memories and I am happy with that.

Today, we got in a full 6-player game of the excellent Imperial Elegy from VUCA Simulations. Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 is a card driven game that blends diplomacy, warfare, and statecraft and feels a bit akin to games like Here I Stand and Virgin Queen from GMT Games. Grand scale sweeping epics that play multiplayers and take a day to play. Players play as 1 of 6 unique major powers in the game including Germany/Prussia, the United Kingdom, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

The game is somewhat of a sandbox style game as you have so many options and choices about what to do during the course of the game. Obviously, your faction has some direction about what you should be doing but really it is up the player to spend their resources how they will to accomplish their ultimate goals and score Victory Points. I truly love that aspect about this game and as we played we saw that sandbox and the asymmetry between the various factions. Particularly at the start, each country has some specific goals that they have drawn from the National Goals Deck that are a source of Victory Points, in fact a major source of Victory Points, and players will need to prioritize these cards and decide which ones to attempt to go after from the start. With only 7 turns, they will have to make progress on these National Goals if they have any hope of actually achieving them.

I have now played 3 times and very much like the grand scale of the game. It is a tad long, todays game took us about 11 hours to play, and I am starting to have concerns with the ability of France and Germany to team up and dominate the game and the Great War. I played as France today and did fairly well scoring 9 VP’s from my National Goals and doing really well in Africa and Asia with colonies as well as breaking into Mexico. I was getting 8 cards near the end of the game because I had done well in my colonial keys and my stability. This gave me lots of options with my cards and I also built up a sizeable army with 5 full Armies on the board and 5 reserve armies with 5 squadrons on the high seas and several naval bases in the east, Africa and the Mediterranean.

I think the game is a tad bit long. This is because players have at least 5-7 cards each and the Battles are very long and are their own little sideshow with a war budget and multiple movements and attacks allowed. I like the game. Love it in fact but am beginning to think it is just going to be hard to get to the table often. Here I Stand is similar in scope and scale and uses the same system but can be played in 6-9 hours versus 10-14 hours for IE.

In the end, France, Germany and the Ottomans were teamed in the Triple Entente while UK and Russia formed the Triple Alliance even though Austria and Italy were left out in the cold. The TE won the game as they just had too much muscle. I look forward to the next time I can play but it might be a while.

I was then able to watch a few minutes of play of the new upcoming Here I Stand Series game called The Night Watch: European Global Conflicts 1618-1648 from GMT Games, which focuses on the Thirty Years War. Just a prototype of the game but it looks epic and those playing seemed to enjoy it!

I was able to then go down to the vendor hall and bought quite a few games including The Alamo from Art of Wargames (solitaire), Sails at War from B2M Games, Year of the Rat Vietnam 1972 Deluxe Edition from Decision Games, Fortress of Oblivion from White Dog Games (solitaire), Le Conqueste from White Dog Games (solitaire), Model’s Counterattack from Dissimula Edizioni, On To Berlin from Multi-Man Publishing and Strike Counter Strike from Multi-Man Publishing. I was gifted a new copy of Assault Red Horizon ‘41 Revised Edition from Assault Games. Lots of great stuff to explore over the next several months.

I then met up with Bob Tkach designer of the upcoming Above the Trenches: The Fokker Scourge 1915-1917 from Flying Pig Games coming to Kickstarter this fall. This is a 2-player aerial dogfighting wargame that combines tactical, operational, and strategic elements of World War I air combat on the Western Front into a fast playing and fun game. The game focuses on the early years of WWI aerial warfare and the German-versus-British air battles.

The players will have to deal with the strategic board that has sector based objectives that will provide Victory Points and then place out their air units on the operational board where they will focus on height and positioning of observation balloons and fighters to protect them and finally will duel using cards on the innovative and very interesting combat wheel system for tactical positioning.

The players will draw a hand of technology cards, maneuver cards, speed cards and ace cards that all have numbers and some written events and will then play them to move the plane counter around the wheel and its various areas to take shots with front or rear based guns, avoid contact by maneuvering out of harms way and then starting over until one side or the other wins.

This game is not just about the dogfighting but players will be faced with the management of their squadrons, taking out of service planes to upgrade and repair them, give training to pilots to learn new skills and also to build new and upgraded planes.

A very fun and exciting game. As I was playing, I could really fell the excitement and tension building and very much loved what this one was trying to do. After playing, I was able to shoot a 30 minute video with the designer Bob and his developer Rich and I could feel their passion for the subject and the game.

After finishing up, I then met up with Uwe Wallentin from Sound of Drums to get a look at their upcoming lineup of games which includes many great looking titles such as Neither King Nor God Expanded Edition, No Retreat! The Russian Front Designer’s Edition, Battles of Napoleon Volume II: QUATRE BRAS 1815 / WARTENBURG 1813, Iron Cross Army Group North and Iron Cross Kharkov.

Uwe is a great guy and Sound of Drums is doing a great job of designing playable games with fantastic graphic design and artwork. I very much enjoyed our chat and we did a 30 minute video that’ll be up later on the channel.

That was it and I landed in bed around 10:30pm and need to get some rest for our final day tomorrow where we are playing Here I Stand from GMT Games.

Hope to see you back tomorrow night!

-Grant

It’s Women’s Day! A great opportunity to look pair a book and a game on the American women’s suffrage struggle: The Woman’s Hour (Elaine Weiss) and Votes for Women (Tory Brown, Fort Circle).

Check out my previous Book & Game posts here:

Eastern Front: Russia’s War and No Retreat! The Russian Front

Reformation Era: Four Princes and Here I Stand

The Second Hundred Years’ War: The Rise of the Great Powers 1648—1815 and Imperial Struggle

Prussia in the Seven Years’ War: Frederick the Great. A Military Life and Friedrich

The Book & Game

The Woman’s Hour was published in 2018 by Viking Press. It focuses on the campaigns for and against Tennessee to ratify the 19^th Amendment which enshrined women’s suffrage in the US constitution – as the 36^th, and decisive, state to do so.

Votes for Women was published in 2022. It is Tory Brown’s first published board game. The card-driven game can be played in a solo or cooperative mode with the player(s) representing the American suffrage movement from 1848 to 1920 against an automated opposition, or with two to four players facing off against each other (half of them for, the other against women’s suffrage). In either case, the suffrage players must win 36 states (either by shoring them up decisively during the game, or in the final vote on ratification of the federal amendment) to win.

Connections & Conclusions

At first look, book and game seem to have very different scopes. After all, Votes for Women sets in with the Seneca Falls Convention (at which women’s suffrage was first voiced as a political demand in the United States) in 1848 and covers the following 72 years, whereas The Woman’s Hour begins with the arrival of activists Carrie Chapman Catt, Sue White, and Josephine Pearson at the Nashville station in the sweltering summer of 1920. Yet as the narrative progresses, background stories are woven into the tapestry – on the context of the 1920 presidential election, suffragists’ previous efforts to gain voting rights for women in the states and to lobby for a federal amendment, the women’s suffrage movement’s relationship with abolitionism, and all the way back to Seneca Falls (and a little bit of Abigail Adams’s “Remember the Ladies”). If you have played Votes for Women, you will recognize many of the people and events on the cards from the early and middle periods of the game when reading The Woman’s Hour.

What unites book and game is their focus on procedural politics. Historical change does not simply happen, nor is momentarily decided upon. Instead, it is brought into effect by the “strong, slow drilling into hardwood boards with passion as well as sound judgment” (Max Weber). The drills used come in both cases from the toolbox of political activism:

The Woman’s Hour details how suffragists (suffs) and anti-suffragists (antis) lobbied the Tennessee lawmakers, how they organized in associations and clubs to channel their activists’ time, funds, and energy, and, of course, how they campaigned for public opinion to win the hearts and minds of the American people with newspaper articles, public speeches, great processions, and all kinds of civil disobedience.

Votes for Women makes these the three actions from which the players choose on a given turn: Lobbying (for and against the 19^th Amendment in Congress), organizing (to gain the crucial buttons which are the currency for some powerful in-game effects and die re-rolls), and campaigning (which spreads influence cubes and thus eventually decides if enough states come out in favor of ratification of the 19^th Amendment or not).

As we’ve mentioned civil disobedience already: The women’s suffrage movement was no monolithic bloc. One of the great dividing lines was that of styles: The more conventional part of the movement, organized in the late 19^th and early 20^th century in the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) led by Carrie Chapman Catt, paid close attention to appear as respectable as possible (knowing full well that their demand for equal suffrage was enough of a provocation to the male public opinion of the time). Others adopted a more radical style, inspired by the British suffragettes: The Women’s Party, led by Alice Paul (and represented in Tennessee by Sue White) referred to the president as “Kaiser Wilson” in reference to the German war enemy, burned him in effigy, and (successfully) provoked the police into arresting activists over minor infractions. The dainty young women and respectable matrons who served some prison time then embodied the injustice of depriving women of their vote.

The Woman’s Hour details these fractions within the movement, as NAWSA and the Women’s Party led entirely separate campaigns for Tennessee’s ratification of the 19^th Amendment. While infighting was avoided, the reader is left to wonder if the movement could have been more effective if not for these parallel structures – or if the split between a more moderate and a more radical wing was able to compel a broader spectrum of audiences by working in parallel.

Votes for Women depicts the multifaceted character of the women’s suffrage movement by splitting the suffragist player into campaigner figures and influence of cubes of two colors (yellow/gold, the traditional color of the American women’s suffrage movement, and purple, a color which Alice Paul had coopted from the British suffrage movement). As several Opposition event cards target the highest concentration of one or the other color, the Suffragist player is well-advised to aim for an even spread of colors in the individual states.

Votes for Women also tackles another split in the women’s suffrage movement which is outside the scope of The Woman’s Hour – that on strategy. After the initial push for women’s suffrage as a part of a great campaign for equal suffrage regardless of sex and race had failed in the aftermath of the Civil War, the suffragists disagreed on how to proceed: Some pushed for a federal amendment to the Constitution (like the 15^th Amendment had codified the voting rights of black men), others wanted to win voting rights in the individual states first. While the struggle for women’s voting rights was eventually won with the ratification of the 19^th Amendment in Tennessee, the voting rights advances in the individual states had laid the groundwork: Wyoming had established women’s suffrage as early as 1869, Montana sent Jeannette Rankin as the first woman to Capitol Hill, and by 1917, women in 19 states – mostly in the West and Midwest – had won the right to vote (sometimes only in a limited fashion, like voting in local elections).

Votes for Women’s stance is that it needs both – after all, the game is lost for the suffragist player if their lobbying fails to get the federal amendment through Congress, but to win, they need the strength amassed in dozens of local campaigns to have the amendment ratified in enough states. The game, however, makes a statement about timing: While it is possible for the suffragist to have Congress pass the 19^th Amendment in the mid-game already, that is a decidedly risky strategy which gives the Opposition a lot of opportunity to snatch individual states and rack up the necessary 13 rejections which mean the failure of the amendment. The ideal move for the suffragist is to build up the strength in the states as much as possible before pushing Congress into action as late as possible. While that is not without its risks (Opposition can still try to throw wrenches in the wheels of congressional action), it spreads them more evenly between federal and local action.

As mentioned above, equal suffrage spread from the American West and Midwest. It had a much harder time in the Northeast and in southern states – like Tennessee. The southern states were not only more conservative in general, suffragists also faced specific obstacles there: Many southern whites remained committed to the cause of white supremacy after the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Enfranchising women would give the right to vote to black as well as white women, and in the mind of the white supremacists, white women would be much less likely to actually exercise it (be it because they, as “proper” women, would rely on their men to represent them, or because they would not go to a polling station where they might meet with Black Americans). Others, while generally in favor of women’s suffrage, resented the method: After the Civil War, the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments had enshrined certain rights (including male voting) for Black Americans in the Constitution. Federal amendments were thus unpopular with many southern whites.

As The Woman’s Hour details, this provided for a lot of traction for the anti movement in Tennessee. Activists like Nina Pinckard and Josephine Pearson railed against carpet-bagging outsiders swooping down from the North to meddle with Tennessee’s affairs, warned of impending “negro domination”, and appealed to the chivalry of southern men to rescue their women from being thrown into the dirty cesspit of politics. That they themselves were knee-deep in that cesspit – after all, they were political activists! – bothered them as much as modern-day “tradwives” are bothered by the fact that their plea for women to be submissive to and dependent on their men is at odds with their often successful social media enterprises.

Inherent contradictions aside, the antis’ arguments needed to be countered by the suffs. Many of the white suffragists were willing to make rhetorical or substantial compromises: One of NAWSA’s most-cited statistics in the Tennessee campaign was that the number of white women in the south exceeded that of black men and women combined. Enfranchising women, so the more-or-less subtle subtext, would thus not threaten white supremacy – it might even strengthen it. In the end, the tacit agreement was like that found after the Reconstruction amendments designed to protect Black Americans’ rights in the South: The women’s suffrage amendment made its way into the constitution. Yet voting rights were overseen by the individual states, and federal institutions looked the other way about the blatant disenfranchisement of black voters in the South until the Voting Rights Act almost half a century later.

Neither The Woman’s Hour nor Votes for Women shies away from this uncomfortable part of the women’s suffrage movement: The protagonists of the movement are not portrayed as infallible saints in the book. While they held wildly progressive views for their time on women’s suffrage, their stances on issues of race and class were often more in keeping with those of their contemporaries. They also made tactical mistakes, like Carrie Chapman Catt railing against outsiders trying to influence Tennessee – a charge that was immediately turned against her, a Northerner herself, and restricted her visibility for the remainder of the campaign. And most of them were willing to make compromises for the cause of women’s suffrage – sometimes with themselves (Carrie Chapman Catt supported the US effort in World War I against her pacifist convictions lest the women’s suffrage movement be branded unpatriotic), and sometimes at the expense of others. In short, they were human.

Would the 19^th Amendment have passed in Tennessee if the suffragists had been less willing to assuage the fears of southern whites about “black domination”? – Probably not – maybe another state could have become the decisive 36^th then, but all likely options had been exhausted before.  Did the Black Americans in the South, men and women, suffer from the continued disenfranchisement after 1920? – Undoubtedly.

Suffragist players in Votes for Women face the same strategic and ethical question (of course, with infinitely lower stakes): One of the most powerful cards in the game is The Southern Strategy which places an immense amount of suffragist influence in the South (representing the union between suffragists and white supremacists). It does open the suffragist for some counter-plays from the opposition, though. Savvy suffragist players might hold the card from turn to turn to play it as late as possible, as an uncounterable stratagem in the final struggle for women’s suffrage. Victories won that way have an odd aftertaste, I assure you.

Since Votes for Women has been released, it’s been in the top 5 of games I have played most often. And while I rarely re-read books, especially non-fiction (because there are always intriguing new books to read), I have come back to The Woman’s Hour and have now both read the physical book and listened to the (excellent) audiobook production. Besides all their worthy exploration and analysis of history, that speaks to both the game and the book being excellently crafted, incredibly engaging pinnacles of their respective medium.

„Ich weiß, dass du es warst, Fredo, und es bricht mir das Herz! Hörst du? Es bricht mir das Herz.“ – Der Pate.

Wenn Scarface 1920 ja bereits ein geliebtes Konzert von mir war, so hat Bloody Business es geschafft die Harmonie der Komposition zu veredeln! Die Erweiterung bietet viele sich in die eigentlich bereits gute Spielmechanik sauber einbettende Module an. Manche verändern dabei Nachhaltig das Spiel in eine kleine aber spürbar wirkende Richtung, andere bieten hier und da neue, bislang ungeahnte Klänge.

Der gesamte Tonfall wird dabei allerdings etwas härter und aggressiver in den Nebenklängen. Allerdings bietet es auch insgesamt höhere Endpunkte. Hoffentlich haben sich nach der Partie noch alle lieb am Tisch. In unserem Anspiel der Erweiterung vor ein paar Tagen glückte dieses Unterfangen, auch wenn einige Momente im Spiel nicht nur mir, sondern sicher auch anderen in seiner Take-That-Manier das Lächeln teilweise geradezu aus dem Gesicht gefegt haben!

---

Eindruck von der Bühne

„Bonasera, Bonasera, was habe ich dir getan, dass du mich so respektlos behandelst? Du kommst in mein Haus, am Hochzeitstag meiner Tochter und bittest mich einen Mord zu begehen?“ – der Pate

Wenn man Scarface 1920 bereits so wie ich kannte, ist die Einstiegshürde der neuen Regeln recht überschaubar. Wenn man das komplette Spiel allerdings neu erlernen muss, sind das natürlich weitere Hürden einer komplexeren Mechanik. Erschwerend kommt hinzu, dass manche Regeln durch neue Wegfallen oder angepasst werden – Also meine Empfehlung: erstmal das Original 1-2 mal Spielen, bevor man sich an die Erweiterung heranwagt!

Bloody Business bietet dabei einige neue Module. Um sie kurz aufzuzählen: Krankenhaus, Ladenwertleiste, Heimatbezirke, wütende Bosse oder auch wütender Eliot Ness, Wahlkandidaten, Straßengangs, Erpressungen, Komplizenboni und den G-Man (ein FBI-Agent). Die Modi können einzeln eingefügt werden, oder alle zusammen. Aber nach meinem Empfinden haben sie sich alle so gut eingebunden und das Spiel in meinen Augen gemeinsam verbessert (die einen Modi mehr und die anderen weniger), dass ich keines davon weglassen würde.

Man kann nun gar nicht alle einzelnen Modi genauer beleuchten um nicht den Rahmen hier zu sprengen. Besonderes Augenmerk möchte ich daher nur auf die folgenden beiden Modi richten:

Heimatbezirke: Das ist eigentlich ein Minimodus der das Spiel in meinen Augen aber deutlich interessanter werden lässt. Je weiter entfernt das Viertel sich von meinem bei Spielstart festgelegten Heimatbezirk befindet, desto mehr zusätzliche Dollar bringt der Verkauf dort ein. Dieser kleine Kniff motiviert die Spielenden auf sehr einfache Art und Weise für eine höhere Verteilung der eigenen Gang auf der Karte.

Ladenwertleiste: Läden bringen nach wie vor bei den Reorganisationszügen Geld ein, dieses ist nun aber nicht mehr statisch sondern von der Anzahl gebauter Läden eines Typs abhängig. Wenn z.B. die Flüsterkneipe bereits sehr oft im Spiel ist, bringt jede einzelne davon nicht mehr so viel Geld, als würde es nur wenige davon geben. Das bringt einige taktische Finessen. Zumal man mit dem Modus der Erpressung unter anderem Läden im Spiel schließen kann um diese Mechanik auch in die andere Richtung beeinflussen zu können.

Zu unserem Testspiel der Erweiterung haben wir auch die beiden neuen Gangs hinzugezogen. Diese sind nicht Teil der Erweiterung sondern müssen einzeln dazu gekauft werden. Das sind zum einen die chinesischen Opiumhändler mit dem Namen Red Dragon Tong, die Ihre Opiumhöhlen in der gesamten Stadt verteilen möchten. Dazu kommen die Kanadier – the golden Oaks Gang – die kanadischen Whiskey einführen und zwei Bosse gleichzeitig haben. Beide Gangs haben zum Teil stark von den anderen abweichende Sonderregeln.

Eine ganz gravierende Spieländerung hat das Night Deck gebracht. Dieses war ein zusätzliches Ad-On der Gamefound-Kampagne und damit nicht Teil von Bloody Business. Die Karten sind schwarz eingerahmt und besonders hübsch gestaltet. Sie ersetzen die Komplizen des normalen Spiels. Dabei kann man gemäß der beiliegenden Minierweiterung entscheiden ob man diese komplett anstelle der normalen Karten nimmt, Teile austauscht oder beide Decks zusammenmischt. Wir hatten uns zum Test für die erste Option entschieden und – Holla die Waldfee – ist das Spiel mit diesen Karten grob geworden! Die damit neuen Fertigkeiten der Handkarten werden echt fies und das Take-That Element ist nicht mehr nur spürbar sondern glotzt einen mit süffisantem Lächeln direkt in die Augen!

Es liegt den neuen Gangs übrigens eine 5-6 Spieler Anleitung bei. Da stelle ich mir in diesem Spiel die Frage nach dem Sinn, denn das Spiel dauert zu viert bereits mehr als 4 Stunden! Wo soll das hinführen? Ich schaue mir das Anleitungsblättchen nochmal genau an. Erwarten oder herbeisehnen tue ich aber keine so großen Runden!

---

Groupie auf Tour

„Du darfst nie einen Menschen, der nicht zur Familie gehört, merken lassen, was du denkst.“ – der Pate

War Scarface 1920 bereits ein Area-Control-Spiel mit Engine- und Deckbuilder inkl. einem überraschend harten Ärgermechanismus im Petto, wird die Kneifzange in Bloody Business noch ein ganzen Stück härter angesetzt. Das muss und sollte man abkönnen, und zwar alle am Tisch! Wenn das dann kein Problem ist und man mit einem gut verzahnten Mechanismus-Misch und Take-That-Allüren Spaß haben kann und das Thema von Mafiagangs zur Zeit der amerikanischen Prohibition bereits ein diabolischen Grinsen auf die Lippen zaubert, ist man in diesem Spiel sicherlich zuhause.

Kurzfazit: Es macht einen riesigen Spaß die eigenen Pläne zu schmieden, anderen gegenüber auszuteilen und sich möglichst stabil auf das damit verursachte Echo einzustellen. Waffen durchgeladen und den Whiskey in der Hand! Weiter geht’s! Das kommt immer wieder gerne auf den Tisch!

---

Björn’s Konzerterlebnisse

Schon meine erste Partie Scarface 1920 hat mir richtig Spaß gemacht, aber mit der Erweiterung Bloody Business und den neuen Fraktionen kommt für mich erst so richtig Freude auf. Wie Bill schon geschrieben hat, müssen die Mitspieler diesen aggressiven Spielstil abkönnen. Hier fährt man nicht höflich vor, bittet freundlich um Schutzgeld und zieht wieder ab – nein, hier gibt’s erst eins auf die Nase, dann wird das Schutzgeld einkassiert und zum Abschied noch mal nachgetreten. Business as usual eben.

Ein echtes „Take that“-Spiel, aber ehrlich gesagt auch genau das, was man bei Bandenkriegen erwarten würde. Die setzen sich ja eher selten diplomatisch an einen Tisch, um bei einem Teller Rigatoni al forno über Einflusszonen zu verhandeln. Und selbst wenn, liegt am nächsten Morgen wahrscheinlich jemand im Fluss.

Ich kannte vorher noch Der Pate, was bereits ein guter Titel war, aber Scarface 1920 setzt dem Ganzen noch mal richtig die Haube auf. Mit breiterer Schulterpartie und härterem Händedruck. Die Züge lassen sich grundsätzlich gut vorplanen, aber da sich auf dem Spielplan ständig irgendwer einmischt, kann es jederzeit passieren, dass du deinen schönen Plan direkt wieder über den Haufen wirfst. Das trägt sicher zur längeren Spieldauer bei, fühlt sich aber thematisch absolut richtig an.

Und im Gegensatz zu Bill hätte ich richtig Lust auf eine Sechserpartie. Ich glaube, das würde dem Spiel noch einmal eine ganz neue Dynamik verleihen, gerade bei den Gebietskämpfen, die selbst zu viert (zumindest in den ersten Runden) noch vergleichsweise zahm ablaufen. Mit sechs Spielern dürfte da deutlich mehr Bewegung, Chaos und „Missverständnisse“ aufkommen. Auch bei den Komplizen würde dann sicher mehr Durchlauf herrschen, statt dass sie gemütlich in der Auslage hängen bleiben.

Unterm Strich: ein tolles Spiel. Und ich fand es so gut, dass ich es mir sogar selbst noch einmal gekauft habe, obwohl Bill es bereits besitzt. Man weiß ja nie, wann man plötzlich sein eigenes Imperium braucht.

---

Konzertmitschnitte

(Galerie mit Fotos)

Titelbild von Sammy-Sander auf Pixabay