My youngest son is over for a week of the summer holidays at the moment so, as is usual with us when we get together, we got to talking about all things gaming related. After showing him the newly painted Celts that he subsequently declared that he wanted to defeat in a Midgard game, I mentioned to him that I had a couple of things that he hadn't played before, one of them quite new, that he might want to try first.
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| The Cousins' War mini boardgame |
A few months back I attended a games show in Gillingham, Kent and bought the first game in a series by Surprised Stare Games Ltd that looked interesting. The range consists of a few small games in a series titled Pocket Campaigns that can be played in half an hour or so on a small table pretty much anywhere. I bought one of their games based on The Cousins' War, or the Wars of the Roses, along with the solo gaming supplement.
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| The solo expansion pack |
In the main game box you get a small gaming board, a rule book, a couple of small decks of cards and a number of dice and counters made of wood. It takes seconds to set up.
The solo expansion contains a few extra cards for creating the solo gaming experience.
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| The Cousins' War and solo supplement |
This afternoon, we laid out the board and worked our way through the rulebook. I had to take on the Yorkist (White) faction as my son prefers the Lancastrians (Red). We gave the rules a quick once through and decided to play and see how we got on. The rules, when initially read, are quite involved but if they are read as you play along they very quickly fall into place - learn by doing.
We only had a limited amount of time so we only got three turns in whilst we played and learned the rules. My son started off strongly, almost wiping me off the board in the first turn! The turning point in this turn was that I hired the French mercenaries expecting a quick win but he played a card that turned them to his cause. I lost the battle and a lot of ground - he controlled two regions and the third was tied.
The second turn went almost exactly the same way but I managed to bolster my southern region despite losing the next battle again.
The third turn saw my son gamble everything on controlling the regions, so he didn't have enough troops to fight in the third battle. I therefore won it by a mile and was able to support my factions on the board so that we both controlled one region (he the north, me the south) with the central region in deadlock. I had more troops in my Reserves but he had more on the board. We decided to call it a draw.
It was a fun game; it took us about an hour and a half to set up, learn and play three complete turns. We could have played the last two turns in about 5-10 minutes each but we ran out of time. We will hopefully play a few more games throughout the week, adding in the third small set of cards for advanced play as we go.
This is a game that we will probably take with us when we go away on holidays, and I will most likely add to this first one of the series with one or two of the others. There are currently about three more games in the series (extra rules are added in each subsequent game to make them more of a challenge), with one or two new ones being added next year - one of which is based on The Anarchy, one of my favourite periods of British history, called The Castle War. As an aside, I had a good chat with the company owner at the show, and found out he also wrote the rules for Siege - a hex based boardgame supplement based on the Cry Havoc rules back in the 80s, which I also own. I will need to dig that out soon too, but if I cannot find it, the rumour mill suggests that Cry Havoc has been re-released recently via a Kickstarter with a bit of modernisation and more Gary Chalk artwork.
