Another week, another team effort at a solo game. This time one of the many sieges of Acre, this particular one in 1291.
"Crusaders". This is by a company I've not heard of before.
The map is exquisite though, and printed on canvas! Tim had mounted it temporarily in a clip frame. Acre is on the left with SP (coloured blocks) allocated to the various Crusader contingents. Hospitallers in white, Teutonic Knights in Black and the Templars in red. There are also blocks to show the state of of the inner and outer walls and 'the accursed tower' (an amalgam of various towers and defensive works).
The Mameluks track their catapults, miners (bottom right) and infantry (the huge block top right on the track).
The rules are a few pages long, but all the important stuff is summarised on this one page QRS. It is a pretty simple dice driven narrative game, the main player decisions are about making raids and how to play their (one off' 'Deus Vault') cards which do various things.
Vast hordes of Crusaders turned up for this.
After six turns you can see how things stand. The Knights Templar are undamaged, but the poor old Hospitallers and Teutons are seriously battered. The defences are mainly intact but the miners have made some progress. After a very successful raid on turn four, we've also hammered the Mameluk infantry who are over halfway through their first block of hits.
We have played a lot of our cards though, on things like fixing the walls, counter mining and sallying to disable the catapults.
Turn 9 and Acre is hanging on. The Accursed Tower is down and the miners are approaching the walls. Both the inner and outer walls only have a couple of hits left after being battered. The Mameluk infantry is close to its first demoralisation level.
To win we have to suffer less than eighteen Crusader casualties by the end of the game AND have one contingent of knights with 4 SP or more. No-one told us that at the time...
The Mameluk infantry are finally demoralised, reducing their attacks. All the walls are down now but our Knights hang on....
At game end we've pushed the Mameluk infantry to breaking point and we have 'only' suffered seventeen casualties. Sadly we don't have any contingent with four SP, so it is a draw!
That took 37 minutes, so we ran it again.
Here we are on turn 12. Hilariously the mines have not advanced at all, but all the defences are down and we've not made significant inroads into the enemy strength, while our own Knights are badly battered.
As we go into the last turn, it is game over. We've only got 2SP left and the Mameluks morale is still holding up. Their miners haven't moved an inch though.
That was really good fun. There isn't a lot of decision making tbh, but there is some and the vagaries of fortune produce lots of 'ooooh, aaaah' moments, rather like the Dominion games do. Glad we played that, and another one for a week when we are short of things to do.
A game that held interest right through to its last turn … so it did its job for the group :-) I have noticed a growth in small specialised games coming from Europe, giving us the footing for our own boardgame industry on this side of the pond.
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