Kris Hall: Game Review – The Price of Freedom

Although I’ve played a lot more Eurogames over the years than wargames, I was a wargamer long before I was a Eurogamer, and I’ve always kept an eye out for certain types of grand strategic wargames.  Any game about the entire European theater of World War II is likely to grab my attention, and I own at least three games on that subject.  The American Civil War has always been another subject of fascination.

So when I heard that Renaud Verlaque, the designer of Age of Napoleon, was working on a card-driven Civil War game called The Price of Freedom, I was immediately interested.  Mr. Verlaque was kind enough to give me an interview on his game a few months back, and that only increased my anticipation.  Now, Compass Games has published The Price of Freedom, and I’ve had an opportunity to see if Mr. Verlaque has created the kind of fast-playing wargame that he was aiming at. 

The game components are certainly fine.  The full-color board is made of card-stock, and the counters are larger than the standard tiny wargame chits.  The rules are also full-color, but I was most impressed with the cards.  They seem to have a plastic coating, and I think it is possible that I could dunk one in a cup of water without hurting it (not that I’m going to try that experiment).  At a time when the complaints are flying on Boardgame Geek about the quality of the components of a very expensive new Eurogame, it is cheering to find such quality components in a game from a company that it is not the most famous one in the wargame field.

Now, onto the game itself.

The Price of Freedom is only eight turns long, and the card-driven mechanics will be familiar to anyone who has played one of the many wargames of the card-driven genre.  Each turn, the players are dealt a hand of cards which drives the action of the game.  All cards can be played to activate the events on them, or for operations points which can be used to move armies, bring reinforcements onto the board, turn spent corps into refreshed corps, or (in the case of the North) place garrisons on the board.  Some of the events on the cards are large-scale occurrences that can have broad strategic implications (Confederate Inflation or Strategic Transfer of troops).  But other events merely modify the die rolls of individual battles (Surprise attack or the Sunken Lane).

Both sides track their progress on a War Effort track which ranges from 0 to 15.  Capture of resource cities, control of the Mississippi River, the entry of border state Kentucky into the war, the blockade of the Confederate Gulf coast or Atlantic coast ports, and the Emancipation Proclamation are all events that can impact the War Effort ratings of one side or the other.  The North and South’s War Effort ratings determine how many cards each side receives, how many infantry corps can be placed on the board, and (for the North) how many garrisons can be placed on the board.  The Confederates win an automatic victory if their War Effort rating is ever greater than the North’s, and the South can win a political victory if the North hasn’t achieved a certain superiority in the WE ratings by the end of turn 7. 

The point-to-point mapboard is divided into two theaters.  The area around Washington DC and Richmond is the Eastern Theater, and everything else is the Western Theater.  Generals can only be placed on the board in the theater where they appeared historically, and the Eastern Theater commanders of both sides have priority when it comes to placing reinforcements. 

But players are likely to find the leader units to be the heart of the game.  No army corp can exist on the board without a leader.  The game includes 25 generals who are each rated for attack, defense, and movement.  Each rating is either +1, 0, or -1.  Gamers who are used to Civil War games in which the South has a large leadership advantage in the first years of the war may be surprised to learn that most Confederate leaders are just as incompetent as the Union leaders.  The majority of the leaders have at least one negative rating, and a general like Albert Sidney Johnston who has straight zeroes as ratings looks like a strategic genius by comparison. 

The leadership advantage that the South does have is that Robert E. Lee can usually become Eastern Theater Commander early in the game, but Ulysses Grant (and Sherman and Thomas, if Grant is killed) has to meet several requirements before he can first become Western Theater Commander, and finally Eastern Theater Commander.  Union players will have to become adept at managing Grant’s career while using his forces to achieve strategic goals in the west.

Some fans of the Confederate dream team (Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and James Longstreet) may be disappointed to learn that there are no Jackson or Longstreet counters in the game.  Renaud Verlaque explained on Comsimworld that he did this for play balance, and he justified his decision by pointing out that although both Jackson and Longstreet exercised independent commands, they never commanded the large numbers of troops that would qualify them for a leadership counter in the game.  I suspect that some Stonewall fans may question that decision, and I expect to see photos of homemade Jackson counters appearing on Boardgamegeek.

In my first game of The Price of Freedom, I played the Northern commander and I badly botched Lincoln’s job.  I learned that it is crucial for the North to drive down the Southern War Effort rating because each side gets favorable die roll modifiers when fighting on their home turf.  If the Confederates can field an army almost as large as the North for most of the game, the North mostly likely will fight to a stalemate.  But if the North can drive down the Confederate WE rating, the South will get fewer cards, and will not be able to field as large an army, and then the Northern advantages may snowball.

In my game, the Confederates played the Kentucky card early in the game which brought the border state into the war on the Southern side, and gave them a WE boost.  Although I managed to blockade the Gulf coast for much of the game, and controlled the Mississippi for a turn or two, I never made any drastic reductions in the Southern WE rating.  Both players mostly ignored the Eastern theater and concentrated on the West where the early commitment of Kentucky to the Southern cause made both players rush troops into the state. 

One of my mistakes was to keep Grant stacked with William Rosecrans, the Western Theater Commander (whose picture on the counter looks remarkably like the late Roy Scheider in All That Jazz).  Although this made the western Union army as strong as possible, Grant never achieved the solo battlefield victories that he needed to rise in command.

I also see that being aggressive in the east will be necessary for the North.  Not only will a war of attrition ultimately benefit the North (they have greater manpower reserves), but a Northern victory in the east allows Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation which lowers the Confederate WE rating.

My first game took about three hours, and games between players familiar with the system could easily come in under three hours, and maybe under two-and-a-half.  This is one of the few wargames that I’ve played recently that plays as quickly as advertised.

I do have some quibbles with the game.  The numbers on the War Effort track are so faded that I can’t read them from across the table.  I hope that in future editions of the game, the numbers are brightened and made larger.

And not every aspect of the rules is entirely clear to me.  Following the discussion of the game on Comsimworld has been helpful in clarifying some of the leadership and movement rules. I hope Compass Games eventually will have an FAQ on their website or on BGG to answer all questions.

All things considered, I think that The Price of Freedom is about as good any grand-strategic Civil War game that plays in three hours is likely to be.  I can think of a host of aspects of the war that a similar game system could explore in more detail, but only at a cost in greater complexity and a longer playing time.  Gamers looking for a beer-and pretzels game of Civil War strategy need look no further.  This one’s a keeper.

And keep an eye on Compass Games.  I’m hoping that Spartacus, John B. Firer’s card-driven wargame of Roman-era conflict will get the same high-quality production as The Price of Freedom before too many more months have gone by.

© 2008 Kris Hall

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Comments:

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Thank you so much for the review. I’m really wiating for this one. Posted by Olivier Reix on Feb 22, 2008 at 03:14 AM | #

Ok now I’ve played once and was disapointed. I was playing the confederate and it seemed that most of my time was spent doing nothing ... at all. I mean, I did hold my 2 cities in the East and defended Nashville as much as I could, that’s all. The game was just a struggle on Nashville back and forth and around turn 6, USA was able to blockade both coasts and reduce CSA WE at 7 and after that it was an easy game for him as I could never reduild the armies I lost and my WE went to 4 and then lower. Note that once Kentucky is on USA side, it’s almost impossible to have USA WE lessen by more than 1 (by occupying mostly Pittsburg or µSt Louis). Kentucky passed on USA side on turn 2 and after that CSA is stuck to 10 corps maximum which is 4 or 5 armies maximum and you have to have : 1 in Memphis, 1 in Nashville (more or less), 1 in Richmond and probably 1 in Shenandoah. Considering 2 units / army (reasonable) you have MAXIMUM 2 units to use elsewhere and their best used probably (which I did not do) is to combine them with Nashville Army and have Lee as Western theater commander (I don’t think it’s forbidden). But still the your option are really too limited. Or maybe I missed something. Posted by Olivier Reix on Mar 7, 2008 at 04:00 AM | #

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