This week the stars were perfectly aligned as we were hoping to try out Quartermaster General and there turned out to be exactly six of us. This is a team game where the Axis forces of Germany, Italy and Japan face off against the Allies, United Kingdom, Soviet Union and the United States in a re-creation of World War 2. Each player has a deck of cards and a limited supply of army and navy forces tied to their nation. In each of the 20 rounds, you play one card from a hand of seven in order to build army and navy units, battle on land or sea, trigger events or build status and response cards for ongoing or retaliatory use for later in the game. Occupying certain supply points around the globe gives you victory points while maintaining rations for your forces. If forces get cut off from the supply centres, they get removed from play. The game is won if one side has 30+ more VPs than their opponents at the end of a round or by occupying two of the three opposing powers' home territory or, if you get to round 20, whoever has the most points at that stage.

This is very much a card deck management game, as your discarded cards normally never come back into play and if you run out of cards, you get to do nothing. And some nations have very few cards to start with (Italy has only 30 cards in its deck) and you can bet that the opposing side will try to run down your deck if they get the chance. In our game, Mark K, Mark G and Steve were the Axis powers while Nige, Felix and I were the Allies. And the Axis players shot off to a very quick start expanding quickly and not helped by the fact that I, as the USA, couldn't get into the Pacific due to a lack of cards to build an army into the Western US. By turn 9, the Axis forces were on the verge of winning by virtue of being 30 points ahead but they didn't quite manage it and the US was then able to push into Western Europe, eliminating Italy completely and by round 11 was also able to occupy Germany's home territory for the win. This was a really fun game that was tense and everyone really enjoyed it.