From: Steven Wesley Bucey Subject: Greyhawk Adventures: Wars Friday night at our game club meeting I talked four guys into playing Greyhawk Adventures: Wars, and it was agreed that this was a good wargame. WARGAME, I said. I know some of you out there are thinking: "Greyhawk == D&D/RPG. No way man!". Forget that. This is a wargame. There are no RPG elements in this one. In fact, I'd even say it was more a conflict simulation than Blocks of War, for instance. Sure, it is not historically based. But, change the look of the map, change the names, and the *system* would due credit to any game about general ancient warfare. Anyway, here is the scoop. Wars is a 2-6 player game of warfare between various nations set in a world called Flannaess. The map is a large two piece area movement map with lots of color and different terrain, such as mountains, swamps, forest deserts, rivers lakes and oceans. The background for the campaign game is a general war between three players representing the "evil" forces and two or three players representing the "good" forces. Counters represent light, medium, and heavy infantry, navies, and various non-human troop types (hey, this was a non-history game. Think "Battle of the Five Armies" from Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings"). Each country is represented by cards which list the troop types that could be raised in that country, it's general alignment, and potential for alliance if not part of a warring faction (diplomacy allows attempts to ally with an inactive country). Each country is broken into several provinces. Not all areas are part of a country. Basically, players start with a couple of contries under control. They build armies and attempt to gain control of as many other countries as possible, either through conquest or diplomacy. Other cards are used, there being three other types. A player may hold up to five such cards of any combination for use. Event cards are random events. Each player draws a card at the start of the turn. Such events might be required to be played immediately, or kept as stratagems for later use. The can be good or bad, from creating new armies to canceling alliances, and even effecting terrain (such as making rivers to swollen by rain to cross). Mercenary cards can be gained by Heroes (see below), which can be played during battles to increase the number of troops you can use (to temporarily exceed stacking limits). Treasure cards can also be gained by heroes to gain magic artifacts which can be used to influence many game activities -- more stratagems. Heroes are leader counters. You can use them to lead armies (making them much more effective in combat), carry out the mechanism of diplomacy (by traveling to non-allied countries and begging for help), hiring mercenaries or searching for treasure cards. Combat is simple. Each unit is rated for a combat strength (2-8); most have two steps, though some have only one. Since you are limited to five units per area, and you are limited to the number of armies you can control, you normally attack with stacks of five units. Each player places his units in battle lines and attacks enemy units (the order of which units attack which is not fixed, though no unit can be attacked twice until all have been attacked once, etc.). You roll a ten sided die, and if the result is less than or equal to the unit's combat strength, you score a hit. Usually, combat is simultaneous, fought in three rounds, though heroes, unit types, cards, and terrain may modify this. Each side may attempt to retreat after each battle round, though enemy cavalry may pursue (screened by friendly cavalry if any), and stratagems cards may prevent this. There is a lot to do in a five player game. I was able to explain the game in under 30 minutes, but it took over five hours to play 4 turns because of the number of things each player was doing. Since there is some player interaction, nobody felt it was slow, though for a multiplayer game it could be better. There is no game turn limit since the victory conditions are based solely on control of provinces. We had a lot of fun. The rules have a few problems. Although there are no contradictions or game stoppers, the rules don't specify a lot in terms of what restrictions are placed on certain activities. For instance, armies can enter non-allied countries without attacking them and conquer them simply by occupying all their provinces. The trouble is they never fight back. It is far to easy to raise hordes of armies very quickly, though again this is limited in some ways. Each player gets five army markers (troop types do not belong to any given player) to mark army control, and you can have only one army of up to five units in an area. The five hero markers each player gets can also be used to mark army control, though that means they are not doing diplomacy (the best way to gain more countries), or gathering stratagem cards. The problem is that the first couple of players in the turn order can monopolize the counter mix by recruiting. If somebody else has all the Heavy Infantry, tough luck. Steve, taking a break from the Russian Front.