Long before 30YW appeared in S&T 173 I toyed with the idea of writing a short article for your Designer's Guild. Time went by, and when 30YW was announced, I decided to wait and see the finished product. I have great respect for Miranda's designs and it was heartening to see that he would do this game himself, but on the other hand, it was announced as a multi-player game, and I believe this to be a fallacy. It was with much trepidation that I awaited S&T 173. Finally it arrived. We always have a large backlog of games to play, and we never play a game until the errata have appeared, so it took half a year before we found the time to play it. In the meantime I read the article and was put off by the superficial research job behind it. Just see how Archduke Ferdinand (the later emperor Ferdinand III) has been merged with his cousin, the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand into a single character! So how does the game measure up? To say it nicely, there are possibilities in the game. We both wanted to play it again, even though we had to add a lot of our own rules to make the game work like we want it. The main problem with the game is that Miranda wants to depict a chaotic situation with fluctuating alliances and so on. I believe this is wrong. Probably people believe the war was chaotic because they think it was a religious war. Certainly the participants in the war believed it to be a religious war, but what was a religious war in Bohemia or northern Germany was a normal war to the people in France or Alsace. I believe with C.V. Wedgwood that it was a war about power (on different levels) fought by people who mobilised the religious feelings (including their own) to further their own influence. First Strategic Game The first strategic game of the 30 years war was 3W's Holy Roman Empire by Mark G. McLaughlin which was a multi-player game that failed completely because it became so chaotic that lands, generals and allegiance would change from turn to turn in a wild free-for-all. Probably people think the war was chaotic because France, a catholic power, supported the Protestants against the emperor. Generals and soldiers certainly switched sides, but I fail to see a single instance where national allegiances changed during the war (apart from Saxony, which was tempted to support the emperor during the Bohemian War, and later was intimidated to join the Swedes). The point is that at the time there was always only two sides, and people knew who was on which side (if they were not trying to stay neutral). Miranda's game is also a multi-player game, but fortunately it can be played by two players, and indeed I believe it should never be played by more than two players. These players should be the Habsburgs and the Protestant League. The game is very ambitious as can be seen from the map that stretches from Norway to Algiers and from Portugal to Anatolia! Granted that the object is to show the power structure of all Europe this is still a bit much. Besides the four Major Powers in the game (Habsburgs, Protestant League, Sweden, and France), Miranda probably always wanted to introduce Russia and the Ottomans as extra Major Powers (published in a later S&T) which I think only detracts from the game. What is the purpose of Algiers and Tunis? Some Major Power may win them over diplomatically and transport their troops to Europe, but I think it is too far-fetched. Of course the map and game has the usual inaccuracies that is to be expected from an American game, but the misspellings are almost absent (Stavanger is spelled Stavenger). I wonder why Köln is not spelled Cologne, when Nürnberg is Nuremberg? As usual Scandinavia has been harshly treated by the map designers. The island of Zealand is called Copenhagen and Sweden is called Gothland! One little quibble about the map: I believe there should have been a mountain between Istria and Austria. The units are colour coded for each Major Power and for Independent units (units from all areas not initially belonging to a Major Power). Miranda cut down on the counters by not marking from which country Independent units are coming from. Once a Major Power has gained control of an Independent unit, there is no way to tell from which country these units came. While this would be fine for mercenaries, it can seem strange for national units (like the navies or the English units), like if the English civil war breaks out, the navy is not part of it. The diplomacy rules are rather insensitive as to who tries to win over who. Catholic powers have no more difficulty winning over Protestant areas than catholic areas. Some modifier for 'natural affinity' would be appropriate here. Most nations other than the great powers (and Denmark) tried to stay out of the war. Military intimidation is only possible by occupying all fortresses of a state, in which case you would in reality have that state at your mercy anyway. Interestingly, you can still fail such a diplomatic attack, causing a diplomatic incident. I believe that stands for bad publicity (a massacre like at Magdeburg, although that one was not caused by a diplomatic attack!). There are rules for truces, but there is no advantage in making them. A losing player may want to make a truce, but a winning player would have no advantage of that. The same thing goes for peace. If peace is concluded, everybody gets 10 points. If these 10 points would make a winner, the other players would get nothing out of a peace. I think some rule to simulate 'war weariness' would be in order, something like after a certain turn, any power who does not offer peace loses some victory points. Reichstag Rule The Reichstag rule is one of the worst rules in the game. It seems that Miranda wanted to give the electorates some significance in the game, but couldn't find out what. He chose to make a Reichstag table where the player who has a majority of the electors in his power can roll. The player rolling has a good chance of earning a lot of free diplomatic points and some chance of a bad event, the worst being to lose a leader (through defenestration) - which is a very bad thing in this game. I know of no leaders who were killed because of a bad Reichstag decision, and in any case, the emperor only called the Reichstag when he was sure of the result. In my mind, the electorates should have victory point value and no more. The finest part of the game is the handling of logistics. There is an intimate relationship between the areas a Power holds and the army it can field. Units that are not paid (maintained) have a good chance of remaining loyal, but are most likely to pillage the area where they are stationed, They can also defect, meaning they auctioned off to the highest bidder (very often the same player that they belonged to before). Pillaged areas give no income and make it even more expensive to maintain troops. In this way, hunger gradually spreads over the map, and once there, it does not go away easily. A die is rolled for each force to determine its Operation Points, which is the equivalent of movement points in other games. Very often, players will find, that a force does not get enough OPs to accomplish its tasks, giving the game a healthy chaos flavour. At first when I saw that there were no special rules for France, I thought that if a Major Power like France is activated early in the game when the fighting is brisk in Germany, France could roll over the rear of the Catholic League. It was not so, because Miranda had shrewdly given France an economy barely enough to maintain its forces. Now France had to bide its time and build up a reserve before it could enter the fray. Actually, in our game, the fray came to France first, because the Catholics could see no point in letting France alone, and invaded the country. After a few years France was out of the game, and the Catholic League had its western border secure plus the French economy to back it up. In reality, France was very weak during the first part of the war because it was fighting its own religious war against its Protestants, but in the game France's economy is no better when activated during the later years. I have a feeling that France must be activated early if it is going to play a role at all. Normally, the Protestants will not be so weak that the Catholics can overrun France, so I think the game is on solid ground here. Combat System The combat system is a very clever idea. With a minimum of rules, there is sufficient difference between artillery, cavalry, infantry, and militia that all looks very historical. I have, however, not compared the results to actual historical battles. All in all, I feel that there are too many rough spots in the game that needs to be patched up by home grown rules. I hesitate to say that this is typical for a magazine game, but evidently the fixed deadline and probably tight budget caused this sloppiness. For those interested, I have added the rulings that we decided on during the game (many more could, or should, be added): When the Protestant League draws the leader counter Christian (the Danish king Christian IV) then Denmark joins the league. If the Habsburgs gain control of England, an immediate civil war in England should occur. See events 63-66. In order to limit the activities of the players, a maximum should be set for the number of operations a Major Power can perform each turn: 3 for the Habsburgs and 2 for all others. Independents and militias cannot use advanced tactics. Outside home areas only independent units can be recruited. When a minor country is affected by civil war, each fleet that can be determined to belong to that minor country is rolled for. On a roll of 4-6 the fleet joins the rebellion. On the Siege CRT engage should be performed before charge in order to diminish the value of cavalry in sieges. Owner chooses which units to lose in battle (otherwise militias survive longer than professionals, and siege artillery are the first to go during sieges). On the diplomatic conflict table add a +1 modifier for intimidation: This modifier applies if the attacking player has more troops than the defending player in an area without country code. Back to Perfidious Albion #94 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 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