The Games You Want to Play – Part XV…

This game, developed by Beau Beckett & Jeph Stahl and published by Academy Games, is designed for 2 to 4 players. Although there are four factions – the American Continental Army, Patriots, British Regulars, and Loyalists – when playing with 4 players, you are essentially playing as two teams. Both sides work with the Native Americans. The French and Hessians are available to help their historical side in the conflict.

Players gain control of colonies by controlling all of the areas in the colony, which allows a faction to place its flag on the colony. The side with the most flags in place at the end of the game, wins!

Each faction has its own deck of cards, drawn randomly to form a hand. The factions play cards to determine how many armies (which can be any units moving together from one space to another – including the units of their friendly faction and their allies) can move and how far during a turn. Also, some of the cards offer special actions (i.e. Benedict Arnold might be able to turn a colonial unit to the British side). Factions play in random order each round.

Also, each faction has its own dice that represent its combat ability, making battles simple to conduct. The chance of the different results (flee, hit, command decision) vary based on the faction. For example, British Regulars do not flee, but the militias have a good chance of doing so. You roll dice based on the number of units of each faction involved in the battle up to the faction’s maximum with defenders firing first.

The game does not end at a pre-determined time, but instead it ends on a round after a side plays both of its faction truce cards. This adds an interesting timing decision to the game, since the truce cards are excellent movement cards and players need to time the end of the game to maximize their chance for victory.

Thought highly abstracted, this game does an interesting job of reflecting some of the challenges both sides faced during the revolution. For example, the British might have a handy card that will tempt you to form a large force and drop it somewhere to win a decisive victory. And, sure, the British will win that battle and sweep all before them – in that area of that colony. In the meantime, the colonists are sneaking around the edges grabbing other areas of that colony, preventing the British from placing a flag.

This is another fun, two- to four-player game we would like to make available for Open Gaming. Be sure to vote for this fun game to be included in the Game Library for the cruise!

Publisher: https://www.academygames.com/pages/1775

See you onboard,

Gaming By Sea
www.gamingbysea.com