Valerie Putman:  Yin Yang gamers play Wallenstein

Our friend Chris sent us an email.  “Valerie and Tyler, let’s play Wallenstein.  Tyler, you’ll like.  It’s a war game.  Valerie, you’ll like it.  It’s not a war game.â€?  Hmmmm.  I’ve actually been wanting to try this one.  Non-war gamers seem to like it and I’m always looking for games that fall into that elusive overlap of the Venn diagram that represents games that Tyler loves and games that I love.  I know I’m a lucky girl to have a gaming hubby who will go to game conventions with me and who wanted games instead of china in our wedding registry.  But we typically go to a game event together and then play very few games together.  I love the gamer games:  Age of Steam, Die Macher, and Caylus.  He is a video gamer at heart with a love for good bits.  He collects miniatures and makes terrain and when he plays board games, he prefers Descent, Nexus Ops, and some of the war games.

We set up the game and so far so good.  No dice.  A fun cube tower.  The general overview makes sense to me.  There will be 10 actions that we all do and we secretly choose which of the countries that we control will perform each of those actions.  Only 2 of the 10 actions involve battling and you can choose not to perform those actions in any of your cities.  You can also use those “battleâ€? actions to take over neutral territories.  In each year of the game there are three active seasons to build and conquer and then one season (winter) to make sure that you can feed all of your territories and then score.  The game only lasts two years, so there are really only two scoring rounds.  During scoring you earn 1 point for each territory you control, 1 point for each building in those territories, and then points for having the most of the different kinds of buildings in each region.

I decided to “conquerâ€? several additional neutral territories in my first year and then made sure that I had built as many buildings as possible during the game.  It felt like a nice resource management game because building was expensive.  I didn’t harvest enough grain to feed all of my territories in the first year and ended the first scoring in last place, but just a few points behind 1st and 2nd place.  I scored just as many points as anyone else in the second round, but still ended in third at the end of the game as a result of my first round famine.  I never attacked another player during the game and it didn’t feel like a war game at all.

My husband, on the other hand, built far less buildings and spent his money on additional troops.  His strategy was to take territories that already had buildings in them.  The conflict resolution used the cube tower.  Cubes from both sides are dropped in the top and then you evaluate what falls through.  He had some unlucky battles and some ties that wiped out the buildings in the territory.  Overall, he outscored us the first round, but fell behind in the second round when our accumulated buildings scored for a second time.  He still won in the end, but with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd each one point away from each other.

And the verdict?  I liked it.  I didn’t play it as a war game and if I hadn’t miscalculated the devastation of starving my peasants, I would have scored about 6 more points in the first round.  Tyler liked it too.  He made tactical decisions about when to attack and where to attack and like many war games, could have scored many more points if he had been luckier with the random combat resolution mechanism.  In the end, he played a war game, I played a resource management game, and Chris played a rare game with both of the Putmans at once.  We will likely be buying Wallenstein or Shogun, the new rethemed edition.  For a recent game in this elusive category I have high hopes for Tempus.  We’ve never played it together, but we both liked it when we did play.

I’d rather be gaming,
Valerie Putman

© 2006 Valerie Putman

---

Comments:

You must register with BGN in order to comment. Registration is free, but if you appreciate the news, previews, reviews and other material posted on Boardgame News, please consider becoming a member to keep the info flowing to your screen!

though you can get wallenstein fairly cheap now, it would likely be easier to wait for Shogun for translation purposes.  at least in my not-so-humble-opinion Posted by Dale Yu on Jul 16, 2006 at 09:08 AM | #

I’ve only played Wallenstein online, but enjoyed it significantly.  I feel compelled to mention that it may be the boardgame most condusive to asychronous online play.  (An online board game played by players who simply log in and take their turn at the appropriate time.) Since there is _so much_ planning and setup at the beginning of each of the seasons of the game, players essentially take six “main” turns, with almost everything else set-up to run ahead of time.  PLUS the planning for seasons is done simultaneously, so you don’t have to wait for someone else before you can program in your turn… It manages to pack in the most depth of play to the least number of major decision/stopping points of any boardgame I am aware of… Posted by Matt J. Carlson on Jul 16, 2006 at 02:01 PM | #

Interesting, Steve.  Though truthfully, if Tyler and I only play the game together 10 times, we will still have spent less than we would have going to the movies 10 times and the quality time together is really worth any price. Posted by Valerie Putman on Jul 28, 2006 at 08:21 AM | #

I’m also not sure if I agree with the logic of liking /disliking a game on BSW and equating that to the actual boardgame.  Many games on BSW take on a life of their own due to the setup factors as well as the timing.  For instance, I really don’t like Tichu online as it takes much longer than it should.  However, I much prefer to play Power Grid on BSW because you don’t have to fiddle with all of the bits. Posted by Dale Yu on Jul 28, 2006 at 08:28 AM | #

< Back Home