Ah, summer. A time for sunshine, for green grass, for long, beautiful days spent enacting your masterful encirclement, crushing your foe beneath a mountain of counters. That’s right – when school’s out and the porch beckons, it’s time to break out some big new war games and spend the season engaged in battle.
Below, we touch on a few great new titles that’ll help you devour weeks immersed in stellar campaigns, but if you’d prefer a classic monster, we have those too. And even if you prefer to play in the fall, is there a better way to enjoy a summer day than clipping counters and listening to the birds and the breeze?
Mr. Lincoln’s War
Compass Games starts us off with a superb refresh of a classic. Mr. Lincoln’s War combines its 40-year-old (!) elders into a single title, refreshing these Civil War hex-and-counter affairs. Like in our recent refreshed war games piece, Compass delivers here, mounting both east and west front maps, redoing the aged counter design into a larger, modern template, and harmonizing the rules between the two original games. That harmonization brings about a great new campaign covering the entire war, and introducing neat mechanics like calling for the draft to build up manpower or sending smugglers on runs for much-needed supplies.
You’ll learn how to use those myriad options—all neat flavor that doesn’t burden you with rules overload—through the four scenarios covering the big battles are included for each side. The play is standard for games of this size, with players taking their whole turns (interception possibilities exist to keep the other player engaged). There’s more than simply shifting counters over hexes here – building railroads, attempting naval blockades, getting leaders, which are required to move most infantry into place – all add dimensions to your decisions. The full campaign adds unit production and a political dimension to the mix too. It’s the full Civil War experience, but smooth enough to keep you out of the rulebook.
When Greys and Blues get to clashing, Mr. Lincoln’s War sports a traditional CRT for resolution, enhanced with morale and leadership. Morale effectively acts as a ticking clock on the battle, with every round sapping units’ desire to keep fighting. Let it drop too low, and they’ll break and run, inviting nasty pursuit attacks. Leadership can help buttress that loss, as can timely reinforcements, and both elements get a physical manifestation in combat through a boost to the combat roll. With little more than a paragraph of simple rules, battles get some real color, and the choice of where to commit your greatest leaders, or craft a battlefield to your advantage, becomes a more intricate dance than just shoving counters with bigger numbers at one another.
On the whole, Mr. Lincoln’s War offers a strategic view of the entire Civil War played with medium-weight rules. If you have either of the earlier titles but found them hard to play, this version will revitalize your classics. It’s a tad easier to grok than GMT’s U.S. Civil War as well, making this one an ideal for war gamers wanting a rewarding campaign without the faff.
Infernal Machine
Feels like submarines have been making a comeback in the tabletop space of late – we’ve had Wolfpack, the 4th printing of The Hunters, the solo venture Silent Victory, and I’m sure many more. Those are all set during WWII, but subs had their start in the US Civil War, which is where GMT’s new Infernal Machine takes us.
A solo game, Infernal Machine is much more than just the action-packed piloting of a rickety underwater craft. GMT’s done a marvelous job with the lead-in scenarios here, each illustrating different parts of the game, so by the time you’ve worked through them, diving into the campaign will be an easy next step. In the meaty campaign mode, where I’d imagine most players will spend the bulk of their time, you’ll be overseeing your submarine efforts from construction, maintenance, crewing, and, yes, missions. In less capable hands, minutiae like finding investors to fund your next sub and hiring mechanics to build it might become tedious. Infernal, leveraging tried and true dice checks and clever narrative snippets, makes these simulation elements engaging. You’re not just checking boxes, you’re assembling a team of drunks, goofballs, and patriotic crew.
That crew gets its real chance to shine during the missions, which swap out to separate boards. Depending on whether you’re playing for the Confederacy or the Union, the missions will vary. Some might just be for money or cache, others for real damage (most a combination). Throughout each, your rickety sub will make its attempt as the crew frantically tries to keep things together while not losing their lives or their minds. You’ll need to make the call on what risks to take, and when you pull it off, the sense of satisfaction that all your planning has delivered a successful sinking or blockade run is awesome.
And, when it doesn’t and everyone blows up, well, it’s a fun story.
Infernal Machine is the sort of all-summer game you can set up and tinker with in the evenings, or over morning coffee, reveling in how you, yourself, are not stuck in one of these blasted boats.
Stalin’s Lost Chance
Who doesn’t love a good Winter War game in summer? Stalin’s Lost Chance, by Three Crown Games, a publisher that’s been growing into their own over the last couple of decades, is a chit-pull, operational level conflict between the Soviets and Finnish forces in the early years of WW2. That scale coupled with the chit-pull activation, which here activates HQs that can move their units within 6-8 hexes, melds both quick turns and mass motion. You’re not advancing one counter at a time, but neither are you watching paint dry while your opponents tweezers fifty counters about the board, only to realize they broke a rule and reset it all anyway.
What was I talking about?
Oh, right. Stalin. See, the Soviets start strong. Big tanks and numerous actions thanks to those pulled chits taking it to the Finns, who have to survive before building up. The varied scenario-specific rules in the box add some color, as do the clever supply options afforded ski troops, who can maneuver behind clunky armor to cut-off regiments advancing too far, too fast. But then, for the Soviets, playing slow gives the Finns time to establish a strong defensive line. Fast and risky, slow and stodgy. Twas ever thus.
Three Crown Games uses their WWII Battle Series rules here, the 9th game in that series, and their slim playability continues to impress. Particularly at this scale, have a rulebook only 16 pages long is both appreciated and effective – there’s so much dynamism at play with these vastly different sides, terrain combinations, and the chit-pull mechanic, that you’ll rarely see dull battle lines chucking dice at one another waiting to see who’s luckier.
A slim rulebook doesn’t mean a short game, however. Playing through full scenarios will likely take you and a partner (solo is easy enough with chit-pull – there’s no hidden information to deal with) a full day or more, and you’ll likely want to run them back as the sides differ so widely. The chunky, high-quality counters and components (a gorgeous paper map) make the time easy to give.
Under an Iron Sky 4th Edition
Saving the biggest for last, we once again turn to that mighty publisher of monsters, Thin Red Line Games. Their classic, Under an Iron Sky, received its 4th edition
last year, a rework far more than a simple reprint. The list of updates runs from refreshed components to Order of Battle reworks. It’s impressive to see a single game receive so much love, but there’s a reason for it.
If you’ve been looking for a Cold War-era hex-and-counter with all the fixings, that you could probably play for the rest of your life without exhausting its options, Under an Iron Sky fits that bill.
Taking place in Warsaw and Central Europe in 1985, this modeling of a Soviet vs. NATO powers venture treats ‘abstract’ like a challenge, modeling almost everything possible in its deep ruleset. Absorbing all the nuts and bolts for chemical and electronic warfare, helicopters, SAM systems, and all sorts of battalion combinations is a feat, one made viable thanks to an extensive scenario booklet that limits counter density and conflict area to manageable levels while learning the game. As you venture into this lush experience, you’ll start to see just how much time was spent nailing down these rules, and then the gameplay begins to flow… and now you’re hooked.
Under an Iron Sky features two distinct campaigns, both dozens of hours long from start to finish. Actual play involves following a phase list, which various elements like Air attacks, special forces, and so on split into their own buckets. This keeps play tight and moving, preventing the blinkered stare at a few hundred counters wondering which to activate first. It also allows for cinematic actions, like your air strike softening the target for an armored advance. Sides swap throughout the phases, giving opportunities to react. Again, it’s a lot to wrangle, but laid out in tight, elegant fashion.
Buying into the Thin Red Line Games experience is a commitment to something greater – Under an Iron Sky itself can be combined with Deadly Northern Lights and Sacred Oil to create a game big enough to devour your entire deck, and possibly your neighborhood. Thick matte maps, somewhere between paper and mounted, are a joy to play on. Full color counters, player aids, charts, etc. This isn’t a cheap production, but the love is evident in every aspect. These are grand games, built on a system that’ll reward you with nigh endless adventure, for this summer and many, many more.
