Here I Stand
GMT's new game on the Reformation, from Great
Campaigns of the American Civil War co-designer Ed Beach
Before I start into Here I Stand, let me note a
caveat: these games are hard to judge early. The card-driven games feature such
a fundamentally fun system, with flavorful and interesting historical events and
tough choices almost by default, that it's apparently hard to design a game of
this type that isn't fun for at least one play. As a result, with Sword of Rome
and Triumph of Chaos I've had to almost immediately back off of initially rather
positive appraisals, and The Napoleonic Wars (which pre-dates this blog) had a
rather steep, downwards vector. I'd like to think I've learned something from
all this ... but bear it in mind.
I
liked Here I Stand a lot. A lot more than I
expected.
The core system for Here I
Stand borrows heavily from The Napoleonic Wars, and anyone familiar with that
game should have a big head start on Here I Stand (which, quite honestly, will
be very helpful given the game's complexity. More on this later). But while The
Napoleonic Wars always had troubling elements, elements that ultimately sunk it
for me, Here I Stand seems a lot more
promising.
Some of Here I Stand's
obvious improvements: it's not a zero-sum game. In The Napoleonic Wars, if you
wanted to get ahead, this was almost always done by taking someone else down. In
Here I Stand, players can build up their positions by exploring the New World,
building Saint Peter's, or (if you're playing Henry VIII), rolling on the
Pregnancy Chart, so the players always have stuff to do and ways to get ahead
without outright conflict – which helps a lot in keeping players
focussed and encouraged to do things. If the Protestants don't know what else to
do, they can always translate the Bible, which will not only generate VPs but
have a cascading effect that will force a reaction from the Pope. The
better-balanced and more-diverse player positions of Here I Stand, combined with
the more interesting and flavorful deck of action cards, leads to more
opportunities for real deal-making instead of the "I don't like you" / "I
attacked you because I was bored/wanted to see what would happen" diplomacy of
The Napoleonic Wars. The abstraction of the activation values on the event cards
makes a lot more sense in this game where the players generally play the role of
absolute monarchs with limited reach and attention spans (especially Henry
VIII), where in The Napoleonic Wars it was always unclear to me why generals in
Spain were glued to their chairs while operations were taking place in Russia;
so for me, the historical flavor of Here I Stand is much stronger. And the
"buckets of dice" combat system seems to work better for me with the more modest
numbers of dice being rolled here (6-12 generally, although the conflicts
between the Ottomans and Hapsburgs can get large) rather than with the 15 or 20+
that is more typical in The Napoleonic
Wars.
The other big win is the
wonderful historical flavor on a facinating period. Both The Napoleonic Wars and
Sword of Rome made a good attempt at giving us an asymmetrical game, but Here I
Stand seems to take it to the next level and succeed. All the powers have
different ways of getting victory points. They also have very different
capabilities: the Ottomans have primarily military goals, while the Protestants
and the Papacy fight a religious conflict that has its own dimension that
intersects with the military only somewhat, at least for a while. The Hapsburgs
have to manage a far-flung empire, and balance holding off the Ottomans with
exploring and colonizing the New World. The English have some interest in
everything – they play some role on the Protestant side the religious
conflict (at least until Bloody Mary comes on the scene), have some exploration
assets, and have a decent military – but mostly Henry VIII wants a male
heir. The French have a strong military and some exploration options but no
interest in the religious war. This diversity of goals and approaches
– as opposed to just beating each other with sticks over dirt
– seems to make for a much more textured, interesting game. This is
balanced by the two fairly intractable conflicts – Protestants vs.
the Papacy and Hapsburgs vs. Ottomans – which serve to reasonably
constrain things and drive the game in a productive
way.
The big question for me going in
to Here I Stand was whether the complexity was going to be manageable; after
all, all these good things I've enumerated come at a cost in complexity. The
game has a 40 page rulebook. And the truth is, it's a complicated game, but it's
not as out of hand as the page count would indicate. In our game, I was the only
one who had read the rules (although several players had played The Napoleonic
Wars), but we were up and running pretty comfortably in a couple turns. We did
screw stuff up, but it wasn't critical stuff, and that is a minor
accomplishment, all things considered. While this rulebook is a major
improvement in clarity and precision over some recent GMT efforts, it's still
probably overly verbose, erring in favor of over-specification and
over-explanation in too many places. The naval interception/retreat rules are
one area of opacity, but once you figure out what he's trying to say they become
clearer. The reformation/counter-reformation rules say too many things too many
times; but at least everything is there. Need I mention that had an index been
supplied, that would have helped a lot? Especially since the hard part is some
of the nation-specific special rules, in particular Henry VIII's chrome-laden
wife progression. Here I Stands is definitely complex, but it appears my fears
of overbearing complexity were unfounded. Even though I did find the game
objectively slightly more complicated than The Napoleonic Wars, Here I Stand's
better rulebook, more streamlined and consistent processes, more segmented
complexity (most positions don't use large chunks of the rules), and
high-quality player aids may in fact make it more playable. I find that now that
I've played once, I feel pretty comfortable with the game. Ultimately, I
consider that a good sign, even though I would never call Here I Stand anything
other than a fairly complex game.
There
are still questions surrounding Here I Stand: is the complexity really under
control? As I play more, will rules problems surface, or will the play become
natural? Can the game be explained to new players in 30 minutes or less and can
they then play comfortably? And can a satisfying version of the game that can be
played in 5 hours be found? While I was very pleased with how well the game
played once we got going, that is an experience that will need to be replicated
before I'll really be convinced that things are reasonable. The "full" game is
unworkably long (at a guess, all 9 turns will take 10 hours for experienced
players, 12-15 hours for new players), so outside of cons a more managable but
still satisfying version will be required. Fortunately, I think trying to play
all 9 turns would just make the game long, and the rules offers some good advice
on playing balanced, shorter games. Having attempted the full game the first
time out, I strongly recommend taking the advice provided in the playbook for
your first game – play 4 turns to the highest VPs. I think this is a very
sensible plan.
Bottom line: I think
there is a lot to like in Here I Stand. There are certainly questions about
complexity and play time that remain to be fully answered for me, but they
appear tractable, the fundamentals seem very solid, and I am anxious to play the
game again. I've been thinking about it constantly since I played, bouncing
around thoughts and ideas, and that doesn't happen to me very often for
individual games.
Posted: Tuesday - March 21, 2006 at 06:07 PM