From: Doug Murphy Subject: S&T 173, The 30 Years War: a pocket review (long) As I live and breath, Strategy and Tactics #173 arrived yesterday! This issue features the game: Thirty Years War by Joe Miranda (coincidently the last game developed by Kirk Schlesinger for S&T) Also a 13 page article on the war by Joe; a 7 page article: Battle in the Ia Drang by Tim Kutta; 3 page article: Warfare in Motion: Evolution of the Airmobile Concept covering the evolution of the US Air Cav. div. The game itself can be considered Son of Advanced Successors. It can literally be set up and played within 20 minutes of picking up the magazine if you are the least bit familiar with wargames in general. In fact, I set up and played through a few turns solitaire last evening. Here are the component details: 13 pages of rules, 2 pages of Major Power Displays, a nice 1 page summary of play & important game info, 1 page Events Table, 2 pages of scenario setup charts and a unit manifest. 1 map, 280 counters. (After manipulating 1,200 counters in the latest Command, this game seems like a GameFix design.... What! Only 1 counter sheet! Take it back!) You need 2 d6 and a pencil. You have to photocopy the Major Power displays (but not really as I will get to later) The map contains all the charts necessary to play the game (not something you ordinarily see in S&T games). Map consists of Areas (no hexes) and covers all of Europe including Russia and the Ottoman Empire as far as Anatolia and Crete (both RU and OT cannot be entered unless called for in a scenario) The game covers the 30 Years War of 1618-1648. While it may be played by 2 and 3 players (and IMO solitaire), it is really made for 4. Each player represents the crown/POL.leader of one or more of the time's Major Powers: France, Protestant League, Haburgs, Sweden (and maybe depending on the scenario, the Ottoman Empire). There are three scenarios: The Bohemian War: 1618-25; The Swedish War 1630-34 and the Campaign game of the whole war. Each game turn is one year. Each Area is a historical region. There are some basic breakdowns in land areas: Free Cities / Provinces (wealthy ones have a gold bar indicator) / the Holy Roman Empire is deliniated with a border as are its Electorates. Fortresses, Major and minor capitals are indicated as are ports. Terrain is limited to borders: some are sprinkled with mountains, or swamp. Basically you seek to dominate Europe using your military forces and diplomacy. Victory points are amassed from occupying capitals, electorates, and treasury points. VPs are counted and divided by a player's resource value (the number of treasury pts collected from territories at the game beginning) Units are nicely drawn in that ever-popular computer fashion: little running men, horses, guns or ships indicating either militia (rabble); professional infantry, professional calvary, artillery trains, leaders and fleets. Each unit is backprinted and has a certain number of strength points. Leaders have 2 factors: military and political skills. Units on a side are interchangeable (ie you can trade 2 "1s" for 1 "2.") The game is one of those open-ended political/military simulations which Joe is pretty good at devising. Players receive Treasury Points from occupied areas. These points are used to maintain units, Sequence of play is very simple: Each turn contains diplomacy period duriing which players can negotiate and write up treaties and conduct a single diplomatic attack. Sequence of Play: Diplomatic conflict can allow a player to examine opposing units through espionage, gain control of nominally independent minor power units or force those same into neutrality. Then either in random order or order dictated by the scenario, each major power conducts its turn: 1) rolls for random events on the Events table ; 2) uses Treasury points to create, maintain or disband units (the counter mix is an absolute limit on types & availability of units); 3) conduct operations. Then the next major power goes and so on. Operations are conducted as follows. A player organizes his units into forces. Rolls a die and adds the result to the military skill value of any one leader in a force with the result the number of Op pts that particular force can expend to move, beseige fortresses, perform recon, fight battles and sieges, and pillage. If a force doesn't have a leader, the die result is the number of Op pts for that force. The Op pt expense for actions are all nicely summarized on a map chart. Each force's operations are consummated before another force begins. There are no movement factors: a force moves a number of borders depending on the "type" of border, and number of Op pts expended... Combat is conducted in rounds and Op pts must be expended to attack. Tactical superiority is determined by die roll & military skill of one leader to a side added with highest going first, and since combat is not simultaneous, this order is important. If anything, combat reminds me of the way it is conducted for Columbia wood block games with a few neat twists. Naval and Siege combat are resolved somewhat similarly. A status track is used to track the level of strength point loss (1/3 of the force) which will cause defeat for the attacker and defender. Rounds consist of Bombard, Charge, Engagement with Pursuit after victory & retreat. Units can "fire" a number of times equalling its strength points during certain rounds with a die result of 5 or 6 "hitting" and a target unit losing 1 strength point. Military skill of one leader can be added to the die result. All units must be fired on before any unit can be fired on for a second time. Players lose or gain Diplomacy points as a result of combat. Pursuing units can fire at retreating units. A retreating force can even be chased and battled again. There are a few minor annoying errors. Income Collection is left off the sequence of play chart. It seems to occur first before the Diplomacy period. Also, S&T seems to change its method of rules organization with every game: in this one, which I will call non-SPI-like, it is sometimes difficult to find a rules reference. And of course, a Dave Woods comment, the text font is smaller for some of the Optional Rules. Some interesting points: as I mentioned victory is not absolute but relative. The level of victory is determined by dividing the number of VPs by its Resource value with the ratio determining level of victory (higher the ratio, greater the victory) so a winner might not necessarily be the one with the most VPs. With the use of Op pts, forces sweep across the map. If units are not maintained (or stuck in a besieged fort), they can mutiny with horrifying results: your opponent might pay them off and take 'em over or your provinces might be pillaged by angry unpaid mercenaries. Some of the Optional rules are nice. The turn order of major powers can be determined by the number of Treasury and Dipl. pts. A player can purchase "advanced tactics" in infantry, cavalry, fleet, artillery which allows units for a turn to fire an extra time. Joe's beloved Forced March appears (I've never seen a pre-mech game of Joe's without FM) allowing a force to increase its Op pts. A Banker player can be added who can loan Treasury points and debase the currency (causing everyone's resource values to be halved for a year). Players can happily default on loans. The Banker can even "win" by amassing certain number of Treasury points. Overall, a nice, simple multiplayer game in the Miranda style with a deceptive amount of depth and strategic play in it. Kind of like a beer and pretezels version of A Mighty Fortress... Doug (dmurphy@wppost.depaul.edu)