by Dirk Henn for Queen Games This game is perhaps the closest to the mystery Euro-meet-wargame border. Its subject is still rather thematic in that although the (up to) five players play five great generals of the Thirty Years War (Tilly, the Pappenheimer, the Friedlander, Gustavus Adolphus, and Mansfeld) there is no direct historical linkage to any event or particular time. Germany is divided into five regions (important for victory points): Brandenbourg, Sachsen, Kurpfalz, Bayern and Österreich. These are the conjoining of a number of Imperial Kreis. Each Region is then divided into areas (nine in the case of my own freedom-loving Bavaria). Each area has its own gold or corn ratings and a varying number of cities. Cities are used in any buildings you construct (you need one per building). All players start the game by selecting their provinces which usually results in a couple of power bases (which has a very German feel to it). There is also a selected set-up for those of you who dislike picking things when you are inexperienced. The units are very small cubes in five colours plus the green cubes of the local peasants – the bauers. The latter operate rather like Clubmen in the ECW. Wallenstein has a number of excellent ideas in it, but the one I like the most is the action board. Each player has a board with ten actions marked on it. Each has a very clever piece of artwork so that it ‘tells’ you what each means without skipping to the rules. The ten are: Building a Palace Building a Church Building a Firm (commercial business) Harvesting Wheat Mining Gold Recruiting five armies for three gold Recruiting three armies for two gold Recruiting one army for one gold and moving three armies into a friendly adjacent area Campaign A (moving and fighting) Campaign B (moving and fighting) You place a (face down) Area card from your controlled areas on each action. If you do not plan to do the action then you put a blank Area card on the space. As you will swiftly notice you can only do one thing per Area. If you are attacking then you will not be able to recruit in the same area, you will need to do so in a later turn, but of course your opponents may intervene by then. The advantage of planning all the turns’ actions simultaneously is a huge saving of time. Spookily the fastest players in our game were the winners – thinking, who needs it? As if the fog of war were not enough with simultaneous hidden plans each of the ten actions is performed in a different order each turn and you can only see the order of the first five actions (the others cards are face down). You can however tell at least something with the first five, if campaigns come first you may want to reconsider your harvest area (if a province is captured then the action on which you had the card is voided). As each action is played the next hidden action is turned face up. Although you do need to think before each action the down-time is massively reduced and the result is rather more like a real campaign across such a wide area. Victory in very Euro-ish fashion depends on areas closed and the order of numbers of buildings in each region. Coming last in a region is a waste of building assets so you need to concentrate your building, knowing that this may tempt your opponents on capturing these areas. I never built a single church (as the NDSP Brownshirts) but captured quite a number. Each year (or which there are two) consists of four seasonal turns. The fourth season – Winter – consists of grain loss (where our harvests are eaten and any revolts). The other four seasons follow the same pattern. You lay the ten action cards (five face up then five face down). You all do your action planning. The player turn order is decided. An event card is played (cleverly all four for the year are drawn face up but the one for each season is selected randomly).Each action is then resolved for each player as in the Action Cards order. For example if the first card is Harvest then all players in order harvest wheat from the named areas and add it to their wheat score. Harvesting gives you grain. If your grain is not equal to or greater than the number of areas you hold then the excess revolt (randomly). I practised a policy of large armies and lots of conquests which meant I often exceeded my grain scores causing revolts which had to be crushed by my large armies. Others were more prudent. Collecting gold provides the wherewithal to construct buildings and to buy armies. However if you always use the same area for mining you will need to move friendly armies in from other areas to guard the mines unless it can be periodically rested and used for recruitment. Collecting gold and harvesting grain both cause resentment amongst the ungrateful peasant bastards that inhabit Germany. A revolt marker is placed in each such area. If an area with a revolt marker receives a second revolt marker then the local bauers will fight the ducal garrisons. They scored some notable victories in our game. As in any good wargame there is a lot of resource managing here as you attempt to maintain your Electorships in a viable form. That there is only two campaign actions in no way makes for a quiet map as this amounts to a maximum of eight campaigns per season. When battle comes (units of two sides – or bauers – in one area), and yes Wallenstein does have real battles no pansy Euro-stuff here, one uses the famous tower. This is a cardboard tower with a number of baffles in it to catch and retain the little wooden cubes that constitute the armies of the various sides. You may throw ten units into the tower but have only seven emerge. The remainder stay in there and come out in later battles (usually at the most inopportune time). The smaller number of emerging units is eliminated as is an equal number of the larger side. The victors go back on to the map. At one stage you can have a tower full of enemy units and will feel very unhappy about attacking. At other stages you will have a lot of ‘votes’ hidden away in the tower. We found this simple method had much the same effect as dice or a CRT but without any of their hassles. Once again time was saved that is spent in other games and the effects were most impressive. With revolts the number of bauers entered can be quite scary and it is frequently the case that the bauers will repel invasions or free themselves. A successful player must therefore build prudently, tax wisely, repress tax and grain rebellions and keep his ‘state’ supplied with grain. Or, like me (and I came second) behave like a complete arse capturing states, causing revolts and living by the most violent means possible. The clever thing about Wallenstein is that it is perfectly prepared for any kind of strategy. Some of our lot played very pacific policies (one had all the palaces in Austria) others were more mid-range. But all were do-able and the limits to combat (only two campaigns a turn meant even I had to reasonably sensible). Is Wallenstein a wargame? Yes, I think it is. Is it a Euro-game? Yes, it is also a Euro. But it is also tremendously innovative. The tower and the action cards/boards are simply brilliant ideas that may well have applications in many other games. Wallenstein is not always easy to find (mine came from The Games Shop in Lincoln) but well worth it. I hope we may see borrowings from this excellent game soon. Back to Perfidious Albion #104 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. 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