Brian Youse - 12:21pm Aug 10, 2003 PST (#17700 of 17800) Check out the MMP Preorder Page at http://www.multimanpublishing.com/preorder/preorder.php OotW is Liberty, by Columbia Games. My good friend Jeff Evich and I had been looking forward to this one for quite some time. We both preordered it and talked several friends into buying the game as well! Based on the HotS rules, which had received nothing but glowing reviews from everyone I have talked to, we figured this would be a great game. We were wrong, but just slightly. This was our first and second game, we could EASILY have made some mistakes. This report will reflect those mistakes if they exist. MAP: A long, skinny map (about 12x36 or so) represents the 13 Colonies, important Canada bits, the Atlantic, and the West Indies. Pleasing to the eye, on thin foamboard so it's not paper and it's not really the traditional mounted, it had some bow to it which was easily removed by a slight back-bending. Mountain chains are labeled but are not on the map. Trees represent wilderness, with hexsides covered by trees being very important to the game, units (not indians) must stop when crossing them. I can abstract out quite a bit in my mind, so I don't really mind the missing mountains. "Wilderness" is tough enough to represent it all. UNITS: The units are, of course, on wood blocks. 25 per side, IIRC. The British get a mix of Tories, Jaegers, British regulars (Line). They have ratings of B's (very few) to C's (most). The worst units are C1 (this means they fire last, must roll a "1" on a d6 to score a hit. The best British ground units are B2s, which means they fire before all the Cs and score a hit on a "1" or "2" on a d6. There is one odd Brit unit, a C4. Try to keep this guy alive as his 66% hits come in very handy. They get three Leader units, which are generally C3s. The British also get three Indian units, which only work in the wilderness (making them essentially useless). They are B1s which is elevated to a B2 if they are fighting for their "home" hex, attacking or defending. The Americans get militia, and a lot of it. Generally C1s sometimes C2s. They get some good dragoon-types in the south, B2s and a B3IIRC. They only get two Leader units, which are both either B3s or C3s, I can't recall, but they are pretty good. They get a goodly many french units, which enter randomly when >= 8 is rolled on two dice. Happened in 1777, earliest time, both games. Both sides get fleets, which are A2s. The fleet rules are either totally hosed or we totally hosed them. I'll be asking more specific ?s in the specific folder to see which was which. Combat is, simply, A's fire first, B's fire second, C's fire third. Ties go to the defender. Rolling numbers to "hit" and cause step losses. Easy enough, abstract but livable, DEFINITELY favors the defender, by a lot. RULES: two 11x17 sheets of paper folded in half. 8 pages. Would have been nice if stapled, I guess that might have raised the unit price. 8^) Jeff summed things up nicely - with only 8 pages of rules it seems very hard to find things. We were guessing at intent with some rules, and in one instance we found the rule in an example but could not find it in the rules text. Outside of the naval "stuff" we thought they were OK and eventually figured out most of our questions. But for only 8 pages they seemed mighty confusing. GAMEPLAY: Overall, not bad. Each turn you're dealt 5 cards. These are either supply cards, or "1", "2", or "3" cards. The number represents how many hexes you can activate and/or how many reinforcement blocks you can have enter the game (1775 turn you only get 3 cards; British can not take reinforcements). We spent the majority of our time worrying about winter quarters and attrition as opposed to doing stuff, which seems OK. Big "campaigns" are going to happen early in the turn as attrition rules are BRUTAL (see below). Some weirdnesses. I went 28 straight cards without drawing a supply card, so I could not build any units strenght up. I began just "dispersing" them and making them replacements, only to enter the very next turn, full strength, as new naval assaults. In fact, I began to not care about supplying my guys, as this was much easier and a lot more flexible. WAY too flexible. Jeff began 1775 as the Americans drawing three "1" cards. Tough to react to my seizing New York and Baltimore. 8^) OUR THOUGHTS, AT LEAST MY THOUGHTS: 1) The French should enter on some kind of sliding scale. Maybe on a DR >= 10 for 1777-1778, >=9 for 1779-1780, >=8 rest of game. 2) Attrition rules are too harsh. They happen on whole map, and if your unit is not in a supply town then it's eliminated. This seems very harsh and seems to stifle the gameplay a bit. Why have attrition in the south??? Why not reduce these effects in non-wilderness areas? Maybe a step loss in non-wilderness spaces? 3) "hex control" seems to only occur while a british unit is in the hex. Once you leave to attack, it seems that hex may become pro-US and not valid to retreat so you can really get hosed unless you "coat" the map with blocks (reducing your ability to do anything else as the british). 4) VPs The British win if they score 30 VP. There is a magic row, from Baltimore to Boston, which the US will win if they hold. They can ignore everything else. Maybe not a "fatal flaw" as holding just these are tough, but abandon everything else and pack 'em up with units! 5) VPs. The British have to "man" those 30 VPs (we think) for them to count, so those last few are very tough to get because you've wasted a dozen units in garrison. 6) French. There's too many french fleets IMO. And they can easily act as mobile strike force to move in, hammer, run to atlantic. There is NO WAY the British can hold the west indies from a determined french force. OVERALL: We wanted this game to work in the biggest way. It is fast to play (second game we played in about 90 mins, British win in 1781 IIRC). It just didn't quite click. We both agreed that we could play We The People in the same amount of time and it was a better game. We sat down wondering if there was a need for a "strategic AmRev game" since this didn't quite work, and both agreed in about 30 seconds that WTP (outside of it's absurd combat system) was as near a perfect game for this scale/time as was possible. COMPONENTS: For your $50 you get: 25 blocks in red, blue 1 sticker sheet (to build your own units) 4 dice (we often needed more) 1 map on foamboard non-bound rules sheets cardstock "cards" The blocks are nice. The stickers are very nice glossy. The board is nice looking and functional. The rules seem unorganized and you can't help but think "cost" since they were not bound. The cards are a joke - they won't hold up if the game gets repeated play. In the era of GMT card-driven games components, these cards are VERY far behind. I got mine at the preorder price of $37.50 and am happy with it. I would be disappointed had I payed $50 for this game based on components alone. Liberty comes up just short, IMO. We The People felt like a better game at roughly the same scale, playability, and time-of-play. I'd recommend Liberty if you are a block-o-phile or loved the subject matter, but otherwise you might want to try and find a WTP via ebay. Certainly, some elements of Liberty (the fog of war blocks give) are second to none. Hope this was somewhat helpful if you're sitting on the fence. Brian Jonathan Arnold - 08:22am Aug 20, 2003 PST (#4851 of 4867) Medford, MA - OTT: Ignorant Armies (S&T #215), Granicus (S&T#214). XBox: Morrowind & Baldur's Gate David and I played Columbia Game's new one, Liberty, and we both enjoyed it quite a bit. Based on the award-winning Hammer of the Scots system, and, less directly, all of the Columbia block games, it is a great 2-3 hour game. It is one of those block games - 25 red pieces for the British tyrants and 25 blue pieces for the American freedom seekers (can you tell which side I played:-), an long thin board with big hexes made of a heavy cardboard, and 4 die (dark mottled gray with green pips in this case). The labels you stick on the blocks look really nice, and have plenty of flavor, "Swamp Fox", "Morgan", various leaders, etc. There is also a deck of pretty simple cards - most are number 1-3, with the rest being supply cards. After a pretty quick setup, each side is dealt 3 cards for the first year, 5 cards for every year after that. Each picks and plays, face down, a single card, and then simultaneously flip it over. Supply cards play first, and after that the highest numbered card. For ties, the British oppressor goes first. Supply cards mean you can rotate either 2 or 3 units one "step" in the typical block fashion. David mentioned he didn't notice that there were different numbers on the supply cards during his simple solitaire play through, so it is something to keep in mind your first time playing too. The number cards means you can either activate that many hexes for movement, or bring in that many blocks (blindly) from your reinforcement pool, or any combination, with activation happening first. Again, in typical block fashion, a hex is activated and the units there can move anywhere they want, within certain hex side limitations, like a woods hexside can only have 2 units go through, while a normal hexside can have 4. Most units can only move 1 space, but some can move two. All units can move two when moving on a river. There are also rules for naval movement, which is very important for the British. Their reinforcements come in the Atlantic "hex", from which they can threaten the entire eastern seaboard, from Portland ME to Savannah, GA. The board also includes the British and French West Indies, which only come into play once the French join up with the Americans (on a die roll of 8+ using 2D6). You don't normally need ships to land from the Atlantic hex, unless you want to be able to retreat. They also allow the British to move units along the seaboard. So the first player uses his card, then the second player does. After all movement, if there are any hexes that contain units of both sides, there is a battle. Units are revealed and combat happens. If units came in from multiple hexsides, a "primary" hex side is picked and those units are in at the start. The ones that came in the other hexside(s) are in the reserve and can only join in after the first of 3 battle rounds. Taking its cue from Hammer, each unit is rated A-C and 1-3. The letter rating says when a unit fires, while the number is what you need to roll in order to "hit". Combat is not simultaneous - first the A rated units (ships) fire, with defender firing first, then B (often cavalry or dragoons) then C. After each side fires, damage is taken, then the other side fires. The number of dice you roll is based upon your strength - ie., the number at the "top" of your unit, which is really the number of steps left in your unit. Most units have at least 3, sometimes 4, but some smaller ones just have 2. If you take some hits, you spread out the losses, with the unit(s) having the most steps taking the losses first. The object of the game is to take over supply cities, which are rated from 1-4 (New York and Philadelphia). These supply cities are also important after all the cards have been played and it is the Winter Phase. You can disband units before the Winter Attrition, which means you just pick them up and put them into your reinforcement pile where they come back at full strength - often a nice way to get units that are too far off the main battle lines back into play. There are some restrictions on who can disband, with the Americans being much more flexible. You can supply up to the number in the supply city units, with leaders adding their current strength to that number. All unsupplied units are elminated - ie., they go away, not just into your reinforcement pile. There are up to 9 turns. At then end of each turn, you count how many supply points you own. If you have a unit on the supply city, you own it. Supply cities without units on them are owned by the player whose color matches the dot - overwhelmingly for the Americans. So the British need to garrison plenty of supply cities to win. If the total is 30 or more, the British win. If the total is 12 or less, the Americans win. If the game goes the distance, the Americans win. I played the Americans in our game and lost to the despotic British after 7 turns. I was too aggressive, and launched one too many attacks on Philadelphia, with the last one costing me too much. As the British player begins with 13 points, I think, they have a long way to go and so the Americans can rely on defending rather than attacking. I also made a feeble attempt at Canada, which merely got my units too far away to help in the Northeast battles. Get all your units in, and up to strength, and try to defend the big cities. The British need to concentrate on getting the big cities and then just filling out the smaller ones for the win. I really enjoyed this and am looking forward to playing again.