Kris Hall: Renaud Verlaque and The Price of Freedom

This week I am starting a series of interviews with designers of forthcoming card-driven wargames.  First at bat is Renaud Verlaque, the designer of the well-regarded Age of Napoleon.  I asked him about The Price of Freedom, his upcoming game of the American Civil War that will be published by Compass Games.

First, a word about card-driven wargames (CDWs) for the non-wargamers.  CDWs are a popular group of wargames that use cards to drive the action of the game.  Designer Mark Herman is usually considered to have fathered the CDW genre with We the People, a low-complexity game of the American Revolution.  Because CDWs are often moderate complexity games, many of them can often be enjoyed by people other than wargame fanatics.  Twilight Struggle, the popular game of Cold War conflict, uses CDW mechanics.  It is often considered a bridge between the Euro-gaming and wargaming worlds.

But enough introduction.  Here’s what Renaud Verlaque had to say:

Kris: The Price of Freedom appears to be another card-driven wargame, a popular genre that includes Hannibal, Paths of Glory, and For the People.  What changes, improvements, or refinements did you make to the basic system to make it more suitable for your subject matter?

Renaud: My focus, as in Age of Napoleon, has been first and foremost on scale.  By choosing the appropriate unit, time and space scale, I can create a game that covers the entire war in just a few hours.  The card system also helps by exporting most of the special rules that give flavor to a game onto cards that are held in your hand.  I would not say that the card system employed in PoF is anything revolutionary, but it is more involved than in Age of Napoleon, in part to reflect the total war nature of the ACW vs. the Napoleonic Wars, but also to offer more choices to the players. Thus, in lieu of being played for their events, cards can also be played for their operational value (which ranges from 1 to 3) which is used to move armies, reorganize armies (from spent status), and deploy reinforcements or garrisons throughout the year.  The events themselves are representative or evocative of the ACW without seeking to be all-inclusive. To an extent, one could say that I was more interested in having the cards (and other game mechanisms) help provide a headlines view of the war than a PhD’s. A large number of the cards (about 20%) give more flavor to the fairly streamlined combat system and another large number (20% again) are an essential part of the command and control system. The other cards help cover political, economic, diplomatic and operational situations. I tried hard to avoid any killer card or card combo, and each and every card in the single deck is usable by both sides for ops and/or events, thus limiting the risk of one side having a useless hand.

Kris: There have been relatively few highly-regarded medium-complexity strategic Civil War games.  The only well-regarded one I can think of is A House Divided, which concentrated on showing how the quality of the armies changed over time while minimizing the leadership, supply, naval, and political aspects of the war.  What aspects of the war does The Price of Freedom explore in detail?

Renaud: I guess I have owned four games in that range: A House Divided, Grand Army of the Republic, Blue vs. Gray, and Battle Cry of Freedom.  At a slightly more complex level, I have also owned The Civil War (Victory Games) and For the People 1st edition.  They all present interesting aspects, but ultimately none were entirely satisfactory to me. Going back to A House Divided, the only thing it has in common with PoF is the subject matter and to some extent the grand-strategic scale.  I say to some extent because the unit, time and even space scale for A House Divided is much more granular than that of PoF.  As a result, AHD takes much longer to play (although there surely is much worse) and that is a big no-no in my book—I can handle 3-4 hours, that’s it.  As the putative commander-in-chief, I should be concerned only with large engagements (at least 20,000 a side).  I don’t want to have to deal with army composition; I’m thinking in terms of army leaders—25 historical commanders are represented in PoF—and the number of men they have. As the putative chief of state I am also concerned with the political, economic, diplomatic and social aspects of the war—the card system allows me to handle them in a fairly efficient and streamlined way while adding a fun, gaming component (i.e., the “Take that!” effect of playing cards to trigger events in a God-like way).  None of these aspects are explored any great amount of detail (although the leadership rules are fairly involved for a “simple” game) because the result would not be necessarily more realistic and would certainly take a lot longer to play. Yet there should be no doubt that players are playing a game on the American Civil War, not playing Risk.

Kris: One of the most important elements of any strategic Civil War game are the generals.  How do you handle leadership in the game?  Is there anything to prevent a Union player from putting Grant in charge of the Army of the Potomac the moment he shows up on the board?

Renaud: There is no doubt that commanders had a material impact in the ACW, though I always feel that conventional wisdom and popular imagination make it look even more material than it truly was.  The first challenge is, how should commanders impact operations and battles?  In PoF, commanders can modify their armies’ movement allowance by -1, 0 or +1 (from a base MA of 3) and modify their armies’ attack or defense die roll by -1, 0 or +1 (essentially representing a 1/6 shift in the probability to inflict one loss).  The range of modifiers is therefore fairly constrained, but given the scale of the game it is sufficient and material.  The second challenge is, how do you prevent potential “tide turners” like Grant from having too much of an impact too early compared to history.  For starters, there are two levels of seniority in PoF: theater commander who can command up to six corps, and field commander who can command only up to two corps.  While every commander in PoF can be used as one or the other, there can be only one theater commander per theater (duh) and the USA’s big three (Grant, Sherman and Thomas) must meet a number of requirements before being promotable to theater command, such as having cycled through a number of specific (Halleck in the west, McClellan in the east) and unspecified other TCs (simulating the political precedence of others) and winning battles.  Cycling through commanders is not easy as they can be sacked only after being defeated (but for the play of the Clash of Egos card).  And don’t think you can just take a bad theater commander and shunt him to a secondary theater with minimal strength; theater commanders benefit from reinforcement priority, so you can’t ignore them.  Another twist is that it can be difficult to hold on to your good commanders as your opponent can force you to sack them via card play if and when they are defeated.  And when all else fails you can try and get rid of a bad friendly commander or a good enemy commander with a Shot from the Saddle card. All in all, I believe this system offers enough flexibility to deviate from the historical course, but remain realistic.  That said, if I had to err, it would be in favor of less flexibility.  It’s a historical game after all.

Kris: How do you handle production in the game?

Renaud:  Through each side’s War Effort level which aggregates economic, political and diplomatic factors.  The USA starts at 8 and the CSA at 6.  Each side’s WE level is automatically increased in each of Turns 2 & 3, representing the ramp-up of resources devoted to the war.  Various events may affect either side’s War Effort, in particular the loss of regions.  Each side’s War Effort level impacts the number of corps it can have on the map as well as the number of cards it can draw (but with a cap of 10 and a minimum of 6 to avoid a spiral death effect), with the operational value of the cards impacting how much a side can do in terms of bringing reinforcements (in excess of a base amount), moving armies, reorganizing armies, etc… It’s all quite simple—no need for a CPA!

Kris: How do you handle cavalry in the game?  Naval units?  River warfare?

Renaud:  At this scale, it would make little sense to have cavalry, naval or riverine units, but I could not ignore these aspects entirely.  Cavalry was mostly relevant in the ACW as a raiding force, hence the Cavalry Raid card that allows a player to interrupt an enemy Strategic Transfer or to negatively affect one of the other player’s campaign attrition die rolls.  A Gunboats card provide a +1 DRM when fighting in a river region; in addition, the CSA always suffers a -1 DRM when attacking via a river connection.  The naval conflict is abstracted in the blockade sub-system; the USA must play Blockade cards to place blockade markers in both Gulf Coast blockade boxes (corresponding to New Orleans and Mobile) and/or all four Atlantic Coast blockade boxes (Norfolk/Yorktown, Wilmington, Charleston and Savannah).  Meanwhile the CSA can play the same Blockade cards to remove blockade markers, representing the action of the blockade runners as well as privateers and other combat ships. Only the USA can move by sea, but it is expensive and amphibious attacks are penalized, although the Damn the Torpedoes card can help.

Kris: Will The Price of Freedom feature multiple scenarios, or is the basic game short enough that no scenarios are necessary?  How long will the game take to play?

Renaud: To be honest, since the game takes 2-3 hours to play I never even considered offering shorter scenarios, although it probably would not be very hard to create 1862, 1863 and 1864 set-ups.

Kris: When do you think The Price of Freedom will be published?

Renaud: Before the summer is over, I would think.  Ken at Compass, and Tim the art director, have been working very hard at it.

Kris: What future projects would you like to work on?

Renaud: Well, for one thing, I will support PoF the same way I have supported Age of Napoleon.  You can pretty much ask any question on Consimworld or BoardGameGeek and I will quickly answer it to the best of my ability.  Design-wise, I have a Euro-ish design on Japan in the 16th century that is ready for more play-testing and I have put some thoughts, but not much efforts, in designing a simple ETO game. Other ideas floating through my mind include the Grail-like Republic of Rome-lite or Civilization-lite.

Thanks, Renaud, for the interview.  In two weeks, John Firer talks about four of his upcoming games: Age of Bismarck, Ides of March, Spartacus, and Successors III.

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