Two 16" x 22" mounted maps; three sheets of assorted die-cut counters; 64 cards; Rule Book; 12 plastic stands. Boxed. TAHGC. $50 Asked who would succeed him, Alexander the Great gave a classic death bed answer: the strongest. "All my foremost friends," he said, "will hold a great funeral contest over me." These "Funeral Games" were played for high stakes, and eventually destroyed the prize everyone was fighting for. Alexander was succeeded by a clutch of Hellenistic dynasties strewn across the map from the Adriatic to India. Strongmen rose and fell, but "the strongest" turned out to be a no-show, and Alexander's Successors ("Diadochoi" in Greek) are always referred to in a collective plural meaning "those who failed to succeed." Richard Berg's initial design had absolutely nothing to do with We the People or Hannibal when it was sent up the ol' Avalon Hill. But nothing succeeds like success, and by the time the development team was done turning Berg's Funeral Games into Avalon Hill's Successors, enough of the tried and true had been grafted on to make it, while not a Hannibal clone, at least a blood relative. The game you get will look familiar, but be prepared for major differences. From a superficial point of view, though, the Hannibalian props are all here: point-to-point map, control markers (called "garrisons" in this incarnation), cards, combat units, and those great little standup generals… all looking better than ever, from the clean colorful map that wouldn't look out of place in a classical atlas, to the lively action-oriented pictures of combat units and leaders. As good as the components are, you don't quite get everything you want. One of the major generals, Cassander (Antipater's son and replacement), doesn't have his own standup piece (no room on the sheet for another according to the Hill). Instead, the player who owns Antipater places a Cassander marker on the old warhorse's card when he dies and the son takes over. Not ideal, but no disaster. And while there are enough stands for the general counters, there aren't enough of different colors to hold the two wild card generals when they show up. Fortunately you have a card for each major general. Unfortunately there's no card for Demetrius, who does have his own stand-up figure. If the component people can't include all the necessary toys, then the development people need to adjust to the number of toys that can be included. Otherwise it starts to look silly, or (even worse for a game with a $50 price tag) cheap. It's a very minor issue in terms of play, but a real one, spin control to the contrary notwithstanding, in terms of value and image. Back on the gamer-friendly side of this coin, the development and production team did the memory-impaired among us a great service by including a chit and a Holding Box for every possible award in the game. Want to know how to get that Asia Minor Fleet? Simple. The Fleet Marker sits in a little box on the mapboard with its picture and a note underneath: "To the player who controls both Cilicia and Caria." Have trouble remembering your VP and Legitimacy awards? If you control Macedonia, you get to hang on to the "Strategos of Europe" Marker with "+2 L(egitimacy)" right on it. Worried about those Independent Armies that might come wandering down out of the foothills to tear up the latest addition to your own private Idaho? Each of the five Independent Armies has its own little box with a note underneath cueing you to the card that activates it. This is the boardgame equivalent of plug 'n' play, darn near idiot-proof, and you know immediately that this layout was designed by people who actually played the thing. Combat units are another improvement over the old make-change model. They now come in a variety of flavors, each slightly different. Mercenaries are your basic grunts, each worth one combat point per unit. Macedonians are super-grunts at two combat points per unit. "Royal Army" Macedonians are an upwardly mobile subset of the latter. Though no better in combat, they will refuse to fight an army whose leader sits higher on the Social Registry than their own general. Elephant power is determined by a die roll as you line them up for battle, and, with a -2 modifier, can run the gamut from peanut-eater to pachydermic panzer. Finally, the mighty Silver Shields are wandering around out there somewhere, waiting for their card to show up. This powerful phalanx weighs in at three points per step (only a well-oiled elephant hits harder) but is definitely open to a better offer. When their card shows up a second time, half the boys disappear to take noncom positions elsewhere, and the rest join the player who plays the card. Third time up, they're off the board and into the history books. Use 'em while you can. Cavalry is not explicitly represented, but with a little imagination you'll figure it into your leader ratings. Much of the early buzz about Successors questioned the 5 hour playtime given on the box. Early contenders for Alex's throne were finding that it took them 3 hours to get through the first of five turns, and questioned out loud how the game could be finished in an evening. The clamor died down quickly once players discovered that, with the first turn under their belts, play accelerated smartly and the game began to move right along. There's nothing at all complicated about Successors; like its systemic predecessors, it falls on the light side of medium complexity. (Playing effectively is another story.) We found that the initial "slow play" was merely a matter of having to look up details. An example. Treasure Cities are clearly marked on the map, and we had the little "looted" markers right there in front of us. We knew we had read something about them, but damned if we could remember where, and they didn't make the index. Took us what seemed like forever to re-discover that "Playing Tyche Cards" was where we had read about them the first time. The key to this little dilemma is that we didn't really need to know about Treasure Cities at all, because the card that allows you to loot them tells you exactly that, and exactly how to do it too. Cards are a nice design feature because you can use them as an extension of the rule book. The drawback (and it's minor, but accounts for some of the slow starting) is that, until you're familiar with the deck, you're never quite sure what you don't know. Eventually you stop flipping through the book and start to let the cards fall where they may, and suddenly you're home free. Once you get the sequence down and assimilate a few details, each player's turn takes a few minutes at most. Surprise Cards (you play these during other players' turns) and diplomacy keep you involved while you wait to go again. Once you've got the play down, you can start to explore the game, and it's a fascinating trip into the land of Everything's Possible And Nothing Lasts. A Legitimacy Point scheme weaves in and out of the standard territorial Victory Point land grab, and helps keep you from doing nothing but the obvious. It also adds a heaping helping of historical flavor, and gives purpose to the supporting that hovers around the periphery of strategic vision. Match-making, bloodlines, and minor powers were all involved in the succession saga, and you'll find them here. Generals held meetings in the presence of Alexander's empty throne, as if Alex were still in charge and they nothing but loyal subordinates all. An elaborate funeral cart was prepared to take Alexander's body back to Macedonia, to bury him in the tombs of the Temenid Dynasty, and that's here too. Basically, Legitimacy Points are awarded for Royal Family members (Al's kids, sisters, and mom), and for burying Alexander's body (a whopping 10 points if you can get him back to the family plot before the cart turns into a pumpkin at the end of turn three). The dual victory possibilities (you can win by either Victory Points or Legitimacy Points, and if you control the right heir at the right time you can combine the two) keep the game from turning too obviously into an exercise in Get the Leader, since you usually have to keep an eye on two potential winners. On the other hand, there's a rule for making a virtue out of that necessity—the current leader in Victory Points is called the Usurper, and all players are free to attack this faction without surrendering any Legitimacy. Another nice touch allows the player with the fewest Victory Points to determine the first player each turn. Beginning At the beginning of play, each player gets two of the eight Successor hopefuls, drawn at random but each set up roughly corresponding to his position at the historical start of the festivities. Scattered around the newly won empire, Ptolemy, for example, is already satrap of Egypt; Antipater holds down the fort back home in Macedonia. Meleager, a coulda-been contender as spokesman for the royal infantry phalanx and advocate for Alexander's half-brother Phillip III, is already dead as a doornail (killed by Perdiccas in the very earliest round of "negotiations") and doesn't appear in the game at all, while Craterus is halfway back to Macedonia with the troops he was leading home when the bad news about Alexander arrived. Historically, Alexander's death turned this retinue of successful conquerors into as ambitious, grasping, and paranoid a bunch of bastards as ever walked the earth. The game makes one major concession to playability here: the two ambitious, grasping, paranoid bastards you start with turn into Damon and Pythias as far as you're concerned, loyal unto death. It works here, as there are plenty of other players and lots of prizes scattered around the map. Once you get your generals, troops, and territories squared away, everyone looks around to see if any of the obvious "Deadly Duo" factions have been dealt out. If Perdiccas and Antipater belong to the same player, for example, it's important to know that this duo needs only a wife and mother-in-law to score an automatic victory (18 Legitimacy Points scores a Legit Quick-Vic). Ptolemy and Antipater start with a hefty bunch of Victory Points for Egypt, Macedonia, and the Big Fleet, and they're poised to score lots more for Greece and Rhodes if left to their own devices for very long. No other opening pairs look quite as threatening as either of these, and diplomatic spin doctors will have a blast playing "pass the target" as players maneuver to control territory and Royal Family members on a board that quickly fills up with markers. Later on, Seleucus and Eumenes randomly join the party (via card play), old Antipater is replaced by his son Cassander, and Antigonus is joined by his son, the uncarded but siege crazy, Demetrius. You have no way of knowing what you're going to start with, and you get one turn of relative quiet (five rounds of card play) in which to scope out the scene and get yourself some open space while the gettin's good. By the end of that first turn, everyone's hunched over the map like a pack of realtors who've just heard that a local firm's about to hire 500 more engineers. Suddenly the green independent markers that looked kind of tough while there was open space to be had look very inviting, and you start to think about leaving the big city and lighting out for Indian Territory. It starts to crowd up, a couple of players take a couple of cheap card shots at each other, someone starts to edge towards a window of opportunity…you gotta go to war. Battle Battle is the one less than satisfying event in the game. The rushed feeling of this combat subsystem no doubt derives from the fact that this is exactly what it is intended to do—rush you along through combat to cut down on sittin' around time for the other multi-players waiting their turns. Mission accomplished, but at a cost. After a quick look around to see if anyone's adjusting his necktie, you check to see if anyone's Royal Army gents plan to sit this one out, roll to see if your elephants are feeling their oats today, and count up your troop points. Then cast the bones and consult the Combat Results Oracle. Your leader's Battle Rating may adjust any low rolls upwards. The whole thing takes less time than it takes to fall off the chair.. Nothing wrong with keeping things rolling along here, but no one on the team could think of a way to plant a bit of visceral "ka-pow!" in there somewhere? It works, it's quick and efficient, it takes leadership and troop quality into account, and it's easy to understand. It's a clever CRT, but it hasn't got much sound and fury in it. Bringing up the Battle Cards used in the aforementioned We the People and Hannibal games is a surefire way of getting the grognards going. Mark Herman's Battle Cards were an interesting experiment in accessibility that worked to resolve battles without resort to dice-casting divination on an arcane Battle Omen Table. All evidence indicates that the audience is split exactly down the middle on the issue of whether these cards are a stroke of genius or a genius with a stroke. Though arguably flawed (the novelty wears off after the first six battles or so), the Battle Cards at least laid out a story line and made you follow along. They provided a built-in narrative - but truly non-historical (Ed. Romans never, never flanked, until Scipio showed them why it was a good thing) - hook that you couldn't escape, and there's nothing like that in the pedestrian numeric readout of Successors' CRT. I only bring it up at all because there's blood on the sword of the Leonnatus "action figure," and combat resolution looks anemic by contrast. It's the crossover ambition of the counter art that makes you notice. In any case, battle is not the route you want to go if you can help it (at least not in our group). Battle will be necessary to stop a winner, and to go over the top yourself. But battle is nasty, brutish, and short. For the loser, it's a quick trip from speaking part back to the chorus line. Loser hands in all his mercenaries and elephants, rolls to see how many Macedonians he lost, and then his generals and surviving Macedonians head for the penalty box to cool off (units and leaders in this "Dispersed Box" sit out the remainder of the current game turn before returning as reinforcements). To add insult to injury, any Royal Army types join the winner if he has more legitimacy than the loser. If you're low on Legitimacy, these guys only stick around if you manage to win without their help. There's always something to do, and nothing ever turns out the way you intended it to. You are always moving, it seems, through a downpour of colorful characters and random events, and it's sometimes hard to feel solid ground beneath your feet. Berg's at his best here, working the card deck for the Strange But True, and finding room for marginal but interesting characters. [Ed. You ought to see what was left on the cutting room floor!] It can get a little bewildering trying to make your way through this "don't panic—adjust" world, but then you're playing for the empire with a group who couldn't say "let's do lunch" without touching off a fresh round of Diadochoi Downsizing. Someone slapped a feeble and unnecessary second subtitle on the side of the Successors box: "a game of conflict among former allies." Nuts to them. It should read "live fast, fight hard, die young." CAPSULE COMMENTS Graphic Presentation: Eureka! Stunning map and counters. Playability: Slow first turn more a result of details rather than Learning Curve.. Once you shift into high gear you'll be off like a prom dress. Two and three player versions work very well, and there's not much downtime lag between your turns even with the full house of four. Solitaire only for the hermitic. Replayability: Four players draw at random from 28 possible starting factions. There are 56 Tyche Cards and several different ways to win. Don't like the weather? Stick around—it'll change. Creativity: Smart choices as opposed to divine intervention. Extra points here for the Legitimacy subplot. Kudos to developer Mark Simonitch for a very fully realized game. Wristage: Not much. Historicity: Like going to see the movie instead of reading the book. Full of color and action. The sources show through, but the game's the thing. Comparisons: Surprising how often this has been done in the last five or six years. Xeno's Alexander's Generals was generic and bland; S&T's Successors fun but colorless; the "Diadochoi" variant for Command's Alexandros not bad at all. You can bury them all in the Temenid Tombs now. Overall: Hannibal meets Kingmaker, through a Dark Glass Bergly. Dynamic, dangerous, and fun; probably too chaotic for brick-by-brick empire builders, but so were the times portrayed here. Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. 2 #27 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com