Most sieges make bad games. The "siege" games that are good - and there are several - are more quasi-invasion, siege assaults than anything else. The two most ambitious, pure siege products in memory - SPI's Siege of Constantinople and The Art of Siege giganto-quad - were graduate lessons in Rock Throwing 301a. I include among that tedious group the game I designed for the latter entry on one of ancient history's most important - and most impressive - sieges, that undertaken by Alexander the Great at Tyre to ensure his naval lines of communication. The city sat some distance off the coast, rendering it seemingly impregnable … especially given the diminutive size of Alexander's galley fleet. So, for those of you who abjured playing that old SPI Tyre it's time for a change, and a most welcome one.
Siege of Tyre is a graphically pleasing game, with much use of primary colors and an unusual map with Naval Area Hexagons and a Land network grid to regulate movement. The transition points between naval and land operations are the Siege Stars that are interior points within a Naval Hexagon that connect into the land grid. The famous mole is drawn on the map, and its progress is noted by placing Mole Completion markers on its various sections. In practice the graphics work well with the design, although range calculations for catapults can be a little confusing at first.
The counters are large, 5/8" versions of what you get with SPQR, and they depict the various leaders, land combat units, siege equipment and naval units. Despite their size, because of the large Naval Zone Hexes, the playing surface remains relatively uncluttered.
The SPQR feel really takes hold with the Rules book, whose style and formatting is so similar to SPQR that you'd almost think you were playing a GMT game. Unfortunately, reading the rules is something akin to placing you in the role of Alexander, since they are as hard to get into as was the ancient city of Tyre, itself. I believe the problem lies in the fact that the rules are bot only written in a bottom-up, programmed format, but they are extremely procedure oriented. Everything involves a series of steps, and almost every step requires a dieroll somewhere. It's like a Demented Flow Chart, a format that only keeps you from figuring out the big picture - what you are supposed to do at any given time - until the end of the rules. This makes the game difficult to assimilate at first, but I encourage you to forge ahead and breach the basic concepts.
The good news about the rules is that they are complete, and the procedure-laden obfuscations are saved by the frequent examples of play, complete with diagrams (grateful thanks, oh Mighty Melkart). Without these, you would find yourself floundering about like a holed Trireme. And once you have fought your way into the games mechanics what remains is quite intriguing, certainly far more so than one would expect with this type of siege.
The heart of the game (and the historical siege), as well as the reason for its success, is the naval system. The naval game, which can be played independently, is involved but rather interesting. It focuses on multi-Squadron operations using formation superiority, grappling and ramming. It has a nice feel to it, with a high degree of uncertainty. The formation rules are especially interesting, as they can lead to a Mexican standoff situation wherein a player in movement range regroups into a new formation instead of moving, to either neutralize or gain superiority over his opponent. His opponent, in his move, then regroups to compensate, and so forth. The obvious way around this is to break your fleet into separate wings in different formations to catch your opponent in a disadvantageous position. Rather interesting in theory, but in practice its all ramming speed and boarding parties.
Having spatial superiority (flank attack or immobilized opponent) and on-board onagers increase your chances for causing damage, while marines, ship class, and naval leaders increase your chances of imposing your tactical doctrine (grapple or ram) on your opponent. The cumulative effect of all of this is to make naval combat a very uncertain business, rather reflective of naval engagements of the period. Superior knowledge of the rules and your unit capabilities can have a profound impact on the outcomes, since the basic CRT used for all combat interactions is fairly linear … unless you have column shifts or dice roll modifiers in your favor. This is a value for Skill over and above the historical situation, something I like in a game.
Land and Siege combat is a simplified version of naval combat whereby hits are assessed using the same CRT, with far fewer modifiers or segments. When a unit's hits (land or wall) reach its strength level it is eliminated (or breached).
The object for the Macedonian player is to overcome the Tyrian navy, breach a wall, and get his hypaspists into the city so the slaughter can begin. The basic character of the game is thus determined by three key dimensions: how fast the fourth section (out of six) of the mole can be completed; how quickly can the Macedonians attain naval superiority; and how quickly can the Macedonians get land units into the city? Effectively these objectives must be accomplished in sequential order . They have 16 turns to accomplish their victory condition of occupying the Agenorium, but decisive victory requires that they do it in ten. It is hard to play a game enough times to say how well it is balanced, so I did a little mathematical analysis to accompany my play.
Early in the game the Macedonians concentrate on the mole, and the Tyrians concentrate on slowing them down. The reason this is important is that upon completion of the fourth section The Mac Man can begin to attempt to bring in naval reinforcements required to get naval superiority. Prior to game turn one the Macedonian gets three dice rolls, giving him a 60% chance of having two sections completed and a 35% of having three. If you don't get at least one, Melkart is in the ascendancy, and you might as well give up. What this all means is that you should have completed the fourth section by around game turn 3. This, however, is without any Tyrian counter-moves. The Tyrian accomplished this by Mole raiding with marines and fire ships. (It was my interpretation that four completed mole sections meant that they couldn't suffer any further damage.) A passive Tyrian is going to get killed, an aggressive one has excellent chances of winning … at least on historical points (like winning with the Japanese in the Pacific War).
The initial naval force balance has the Tyrians with about a 3-1 advantage. Early and aggressive use of the Tyrian navy can reduce or eliminate the initial Macedonian naval force. There are three waves of Macedonian naval reinforcements (Phoenicians, Allies, and Cypriots). If the Tyrians cannot damage the initial Macedonian force the impact of these reinforcements is that the Phoenicians give Alexander Naval Parity, the Allies bring Naval Superiority, and the Cypriots provide Naval Supremacy. Once the mole construction conditions are met, there is a 27% chance that Alex will get a fleet reinforcement, so on average it takes three turns to get a new fleet into the game. This means that, mathematically, it isn't until game turn 9 that things start to swing the Macedonian way
This initial phase of the game is quite challenging, since the Tyrian has many options, such as defeating the Macedonian naval forces in detail. The main goal of the Tyrian activities should be to delay the moment of Macedonian naval superiority. Once this occurs, the battering of the walls begins … and the Tyrian Tyrant, Azemilk - brother of Skimilk, a real Phoenician lightweight - starts to look for a disguise and a quick boat north.
There are two ways into the city: either forced entry through one of the two harbors, or creating a wall breach. The latter can be accomplished from a completed mole against the strongest part of the city, or by siege engines mounted on ships. There are three types of wall sections: the main walls that face the mole, which have an average strength of 13; the weak southern walls ,with an average strength of 6 (historically where the breach occurred); and the remainder of the walls, with an average strength of 8. A nice touch in the game is that the strength of the walls varies by using hidden tower markers, so that each game has a different strength configuration for the walls.
Two ships with rams will produce, on average, 3 to 4 hits per military operation action, so the weak southern walls take around 2 to 3 turns to breach (but remember those rock mines!), whereas the main walls can take 5 or 6. [Ed. I assume that goat-armed ships have a less satisfactory result.] Added to our previous time estimates. it's around game turn 13 or 14 until the Macedonians pour through the breach and head for Melkart's home base. Once in. it takes around 3 more game turns to reach the Agenorium and hack-and-slash the inhabitants to ribbons, depending on where you enter the city … as the Tyrian army is rather less adept at defense than its navy. Based on all these factors, Siege of Tyre has a fairly tense outcome … assuming the Tyrian hasn't been passive and the Macedonian hasn't been unusually unlucky.
My major criticism is that good tactical play can be overcome by the dice. Bad Macedonian fleet arrival and mole completion dice rolls leave the Macedonian player with little to do in the early part of the game. But hang in there; the middle and end game are very challenging and worth the wait. Another consumer advantage is that the game plays solitaire very well, since you can play from a Tyrian perspective early on and the basic strategies and hidden wall strengths make playing worth the effort.
If you like "ancients", sieges, or just a challenging, competitive game, buy this one. However, if procedure-heavy mechanics and outcomes heavily dependent on dicerolls give you tertiary heartburn, skip it. You'll have to excuse me; I just got a fax from from Melkart saying my Phoenician fleet has just arrived.
CAPSULE COMMENTS
Graphic Presentation: Good, with a standout map.
Playability: Slow, the procedure oriented system is hard to remember even after playing awhile.
Replayability: High, in terms of possible outcome, but heavily dependent on one's toleration for dicing and procedures.
Creativity: A lot of interesting ideas and concepts in this game.
Historicity: Very good; Chapel used an extensive range of sources, most of which show up in the design.
Comparison: Only SPI's Siege of Tyre. This one is a better simulation and a tenser struggle.
Overall: A good, if somewhat cumbersome, game on a tough subject; a must for Ancients and siege fans.
from THUNDERHAVEN GAMES
One game-map; counters; Rules Book; Charts & Tables Sheets. Zip-lock bagged. Thunderhaven, $22.
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© Copyright 1993 by Richard Berg
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