Liberty
When a fine game system and questionable
play-balance collide
I got a chance to play Liberty
again.
At the end of the day, I like
all of the games in Columbia's line, with the possible exception of Victory.
There are two, however - Pacific Victory and Liberty - that will always be
plagued in my mind with serious questions about how balanced they
are.
In the case of Pacific Victory,
somehow it doesn't bother me. Pacific Victory is such a fascinating little game
system, that I'm happy to play it a couple times a year even though the Japanese
are in an extraordinarily difficult position. There are a couple suggested fixes
to the problem, but somehow I've never tried them. I think it's just a matter of
re-jigging the number of VPs required for victory, but I've never gotten enough
experience to know what those values should be. But I've still always enjoyed
Pacific Victory quite a bit, because the game is engrossing and the Japanese
always
feel
like they might win until you look up the scores at the
end.
Liberty, though, I just have no
sense of how the British are ever even supposed to feel like they might
win.
In the past, I've played a
"southern" strategy as the British. The Americans are concentrated in the North
early, so you use your sea movement advantage to rapidly switch forces south,
clean up Charleston and vicinity, and head towards Delaware. The problem with
this strategy is that there are simply so many small towns to garrison, you end
up very short of troops and it's almost impossible to take the last few cities
you need with just a handful of guys. That, plus the long coastline and
dispersed garrisons are very vulnerable to French landings once they show up.
I've never had any success with this
approach.
So this time, I went for the
heartland of the rebellion - New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, places
where a lot of victory points can be gained with a few cities. This turned out
to be no easier. On turn three I lost 4 good units (including both B2s) in an
assault on Ticonderoga to some hot American dice (8 hits in 9 shots in the
opening round). Since I then proceeded to draw no supply cards for the next 4
years (we were playing with the optional that you could force a prisoner
exchange with a Supply card), I couldn't get those units back, and was playing
short-handed. I could never get an offensive off the ground, and a victory in
the game never even appeared a remote
possibility.
Now, part of this was that
I felt I played a bit sub-optimally. I had drawn some mistaken lessons from
previous games - I think the British should probably build out their force pool
to the max right away before embarking on major offensive operations since they
have a big unit advantage early, something I did not do. And my best unit (the
Guards, a C4) was mis-allocated and idle for the first couple years. And I had
some bad luck, both with the dice and with the
cards.
But still ... I've played about
5 times now and I've never seen the British even close, which is unfortunate,
because if I had any sense that the balance were reasonable I think I'd like
this better even than Hammer of the Scots. It's a great game system, one filled
with tough and interesting choices, both strategic and tactical, but of very low
complexity (for a wargame). But even my friends who are much smarter than I am
haven't been able to come close to winning with the
Brits.
It's quite possible that there
are simply some techniques that we're missing, and BoardGameGeek does seem to
have quite a few high ratings from people who seem to know what they're talking
about. So I think I'll maybe cruise around Consimworld and Columbia's discussion
forums and see what people have to say about this. Until I find some answers,
though, it's likely Liberty will continue to have a reputation for balance
problems around here and be infrequently-played.
Posted: Monday - March 28, 2005 at 09:24 PM