Colonial Campaigns Club (CCC)

A few months back I picked up Soldier Kings by Avalanche Press. Intrigued by the Seven Years War I found that the game covered on map the entire planet. I thought I would write a game review here as this club is more akin to the Seven Years War as the others.

The game comes in a standard game box adorned with a soldier on horseback (Frederick II?). The back of the box gives a brief peek at the contents.

Contents: there are two map sections - one is for Europe/N.Africa and the other is the rest of the world. Naval sea zones connect the continents. Coastal zones are marked with anchors. Land spaces connect via regular paths, mountains and so on. The land portion of the map is area based as well. Each land areas has certain values: coins(money), men(manpower) and fortress size (each tower is worth one extra die in combat - Holland has six or seven forts while Warsaw has two forts). They are the key to the game. Victory is given to the side that either attained their instant victory (hard to do) or was able to gain more than what they lost in land.

There is one full campaign (up to seven players) scenario and a scenario for each year of the war (trivia time: how many one year scenarios would that be?). Turns are seasonal with Spring, Summer and Fall being Campaign turns and Winter being a Maintenance type turn. Here is the Campaign turn order of play:

Build Phase
Initiative Phase
Action Phase: Naval Move, Naval Combat, Land Move, Land Combat, Siege.

A Winter turn is thus:
Attrition Phase
Maintenance Phase
Victory Phase
Event Card Phase
Diplomacy Phase

There are Event Cards which can to some degree control the game which can be played at ANY time unless noted on the card. Some affect all players but alot of them are exclusive to just one or two nationalities.

There are pirate units as well as a ton of Minor Country units as well.

One good and bad note on this game: I had to call Avalanche for the European game map. They sent me two maps of the same type - the rest of the world - thus I had to wait a few days to get the European map before I could look it over. They were really good about so when I saw a second copy on Ebay where the owner was lamenting the two maps he had I picked it up for just 12 bucks and save myself almost 18 dollars. Gave it to a good friend here and thus we have a four player game going at present.

The game pieces are armies - each has an Attack or Defense rating. Some of the armies are Provincials which either England or Spain can raise. Provincials for England can be put in Virginia (Washington's VA militia) while others can be put in India I believe.

The other pieces are leaders. These influence the game to a great deal. Without leaders your armies crawl about the board. A leader will add an area to the movement rate of a unit. More on this later.

There are Navies in the game of course. England has the upper hand here. They have Hawke as a Sea Dog and I believe one other. You can transport one army with one navy. You dont have to remember difficult transport ratings this way.

The Rules are 12 pages long but they are rather intricate. Lots of Minor Country rules and so on.

Combat is based on the amount of total Attack factors that you have. Each side rolls an amount of dice equal to the total Attack factors thus if you have 3 units worth 8 Attack factors total you will roll 8 dice. Add in the leaders rating (Frederick is worth a 3, others are 2 and some are 1s). The defender gets to add in the Fortress rating. Combat is voluntary between units in the SAME area. Navies can be intercepted by other navies, blockaded and so on.

The basic MP for armies is 1. Friendly areas are 1/2 MP. Enemy/neutral are 1 MP. If you move into an area that is occupied by a enemy unit you stop all movement.

Leaders can enhance this MP value. The leader's value + 1 is equal to the number or armies that he can influence for movement - thus if Frederick is leading a stack of armies (he is worth 3) then he can move 4 armies 3 hexes.

Once in an area you can fight with all of the armies present thus Frederick could move in to add his armies to a future combat.

Combats on land are preannounced, then you pay for them with resources (1 round is called a Probe and is 1 Resource; 2 rounds is 2 Resources and what they call an invasion is 4 Resources - unlimited rounds).

The units in an area thus can fight if the phasing player spends the cost (per stack not army). Dice (d6) are rolled by each player based on the total Attack factors. Sixes (6) mean a hit while anything else is a miss.

Losses are compared against the Defense factors of your units. Thus if you enemy rolled 3 6s you would take 3 hits. The Armies are backprinted (steps). Thus if you had four units - with Defense ratings of 3, 3, 2, 1 you could satisfy the losses by flipping one of the 3s, or flipping a 2 and the 1 Defense unit. Just like the GMT system for 30 Years War.

Naval units can add in their values if they are in a Coastal area with an army that is either attacking or defending. Armies can be moved by sea and then landed and then move in the same turn (remember they are seasons).

Sieges allow you to take areas. You can freely move through Minor Countries in the game but if you want their resources you will have to perform a siege and take their areas.

The game is alot of fun. There are alot of possiblities for this game.

My group and I played through one turn last night to get the feel of the game before we tackle the Campaign game. It looks like alot of fun. I will put up some more info on the game after we have played it alot more.

The game can be found at Avalanche Press. Their website is:

http://www.avalanchepress.com/index.php

If any of you have the game let me know. I also own Soldier Emperor as well (Napoleonic Wars).