Date: 27th September 2002
Game played: Wallenstein ( Queen ) BGG Id: 3307

Wallenstein has been getting some rave reviews as a meaty German-style wargame and we had the opportunity to play it for the first time this week. The author, Dirk Henn, has a fairly good track record but I think this is the first time one of his games has been published directly by a major publisher rather than first appearing on his own dB Spiele label. The subject is the 30 Years War and the essence of the game is about building up forces in the regions you control and attacking new areas to expand your influence. The game is played over just six turns with a housekeeping and scoring phase taking place after the third and sixth turn. Conflict is resolved in a unique way. Your forces (cubes) and those of your opponent are cast into the top of a tower containing a labyrinth like interior. Some of the cubes inevitably get stuck in the tower and only those that emerge from the bottom count in tallying the result. This makes for some unpredictable outcomes and part of the fun comes from watching a seemingly superior force getting overcome by its opponents. The various actions available to players can only be performed in one region per turn and the order in which the actions are carried out is not entirely certain, so a fair degree of planning is needed to best utilise the actions in the right areas.

In our game, Nige got off to a really good start, part of which we reckoned was down to him having a better starting position than some of the rest of us. We used the pre-determined set-up as it was our first game. He also concentrated on buying buildings in the first year and this gave him some good bonuses at the end of the first scoring round. However, that left him as a target. In the second year, I amassed a huge strike force outside his stronghold, which had the most valuable buildings inside. On the final turn, I attacked with what I thought was a reasonably greater force than the defence. However, the worst possible outcome resulted from the conflict: a tie in the number of cubes emerging. This meant that the region was totally devastated - all forces were wiped out. No one ended up controlling the region andthe valuable buildings were destroyed. That single battle killed the result for both Nige and me. Although I did manage to oust him from another good scoring region, Mark K was concentrating on picking off lots of weak regions. This gave him superiority in the number of regions controlled, the buildings acquired and the bonuses at the end of the second year. This enabled him to move from 3rd place at the end of the first year to claim victory at the end of the game.

This was a really enjoyable game, although there is some downtime in the action-planning phase if you finish your plans before the more deliberating players - Nige. However, that aside, it is a game I look forward to playing again soon.

 
Player
Rating
Score
Position
Winner
Mark K
8
40
1
Garry
8
38
2
Nige
8
36
3
John
7
29
4
Mark K
7
25
5

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