Broadsides and Boarding Parties

MB

Review by Matt Costello

Design: Not Credited,
Milton Bradley Company
443 Shaker, E Longmeadow, MA 01028
Released: Oct 1984
Complexity: Beginner
Solitaire Suitability LOW

Broadsides & Boarding Parties, one of Milton Bradley's Gamemaster Series, attempts to portray the swashbuckling action of pirate raids in the open seas. Rarely has a game looked as inviting as this one. There are two large ships, one for each player, with detachable masts, cannons, and crew. The center of the board contains a map where two smaller models of the ships maneuver into firing position for a deadly broadside or a boarding attempt. Navigation cards are provided for players to secretly plot their ship's movement.

The ships are marvelous, and the plastic captain and crew are nicely detailed. But, alas, the game is a major failure. You'll have the most fun putting together the Spanish galleon and the pirate ship, placing crew and cannons, and setting it all up on the board. After one play, though, its unlikely that the game will call you back.

The rules, as in other Gamemaster games, are well organized and nicely presented. First there's "Looking at Your Ship" which tells you what's the mizzenmast, bowsprit, and, for total landlubbers like myself, bow and stern. The first game, Broadsides, is played with two small ships, the Caribbean map, and the maneuver cards. Each player places three cards upside down, choosing among "Remain in Place," "Move Forward," "Turn Starboard," and "Turn Port." The order in which the three cards are placed determines the sequence of the ship's moves. The two ships then maneuver closer, each trying to get its cannons in position to sink the other vessel.

Cannons can be fired whenever ships are adjacent, and the gameboard grid indicates whether forward, midships, or aft cannons fire. The firing player selects a target deck for each cannon, rolls a six-sided die, and checks a table for the results. This can result in one of the masts being destroyed, or a deck hit, or hull damage, or a miss. If a ship suffers enough hull damage, or loses a mast, the player loses one of his three maneuver turns. Lose all three masts and the ship is dead in the water, and the game lost.

And that's about all there is to Broadsides. Admittedly its fun removing blownaway masts and picking off pirates, but there's little strategy in the actual targetting of the ships' cannons. It's obvious that you should go for the deck areas with masts. Likewise, the maneuver section offers little challenge as both players seek to close for combat, and its really anyone's guess how the other ship turns. Not much to master, then, in this part of the Gamemaster game.

Unfortunately, matters turn worse. The Boarding Parties section of the game strikes me as silly, almost an afterthought. if the two ships "collide" (i.e., enter the same dot on the gameboard grid) there's a last cannon volley and the boarding begins. What should have conjured up images of Errol Flynn is, instead, a tour de force of unimagination.

Each player gets three movement points, and can move three crewmembers one deck square, one crewmember three squares, or in any combination as the crew moves from their own ship to the opponent's ship. When they end up in the same square, conflict occurs. This involves simply rolling a die, and low man overboard. An extra crewmember in combat gives a +1 advantage, as does the captain, and all fights are to the finish. The goal is to eliminate the captain, at which point this thrilling game ends. Moving the swaggering crewmembers is a bit tricky on the small deck spaces, and the tilted deck makes movement a slippery affair.

The rules do a thorough job of explaining the whole game, although the tone seems to indicate more's going on here than really is. Don't get me wrong. I see no need for a complicated game with a myriad of tables and calculations. Yet I expected more from this Gamemaster game than this childish effort. And the game does not pretend to be for the kiddies as one look at the ads will tell you. With such great components, the disappointment the game creates is great.

Perhaps all is not lost. The components are here. All what's needed is for Milton Bradley to design a challenging game aroundthem. There could be wind and current rules for maneuvering, ammunition rules for cannon fire, different ability levels for crewmembers, or perhaps action cards for hand-to-hand combat as some crewmembers swing from the yardarm while other leap across with dagger clenched between teeth.

I, for one, would like to see it happen.

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© Copyright 1999 by Dana Lombardy.
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