Blitzkrieg touts itself as a game that lets you simulate World War 2 in 20 minutes. In my family’s experiences the latter game is certainly true. In fact, most of our games are often concluded in under 15 minutes.

But let’s not kid ourselves here by thinking that a conflict as epic as World War 2 can be compressed into such a tiny box. If you are looking for something that lets you push a ton of plastics or counters across a world map, then you are better off playing something like Axis & Allies or any one of the hundreds of grittier war simulations out there.

[caption id="attachment_291774" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Almost comic-book in appearance, Blitzkrieg involves drawing counters from a bag and placing them on different spot around the world. In the Pacific Ocean, Allies and Axis powers are locked in a battle for naval supremacy with the latter in the lead.[/caption]

Blitzkrieg doesn’t pretend to be any of those bigger games. Rather, if you are looking for a game that plays like a tabletop trailer of World War 2 in under half an hour, then this game is certainly one to consider.

What’s in the Box

The board is compact and functional. The symbology is easy enough to grasp…

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The Undaunted series, designed by esteemed collaborators David Thompson & Trevor Benjamin and published by Osprey Games, is terrific. Let’s not mince words. With four installments and a substantial expansion, the series has yet to miss. There’s something for everyone, provided everyone is a fan of approachable World War II-themed two-player skirmish games.

Undaunted: North Africa is the second, and driest, installment in the series. The moisture content in this box, when compared to the beaches of Normandy or the snow-covered streets of Stalingrad or the skies above Great Britain, is objectively lower. There are other things to consider when choosing a board game, of course, but it feels worth specifying that you'll want a tub of Pond's and some Neutrogena sunscreen handy.

Why Undaunted?

The Undaunted system marries deck-building to skirmishing. There’s a select audience—myself included—for whom that immediately sells the game, but most of Those People already know about it. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably lived a different life. Maybe gone outside more.

Across the series,…

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Fortitude was the codename for one of the major Allied operations of World War II, with field armies attacking in Norway and Pas de Calais. The Japanese ambassador to Germany believed, before the operation, that forces would then strike across the Strait of Dover. The scale of Operation Fortitude was massive, one of the largest in military history.

You may not have heard about Operation Fortitude in school, and there’s a good reason: it was a dummy operation, made up whole cloth by Allied forces. Operation Fortitude was intended to draw Axis forces away from Normandy in preparation for D-Day. It worked.

Fortitude the game, themed after the operation, bills itself as a solo trick-taker, a fascinating proposition I’ve only encountered in For Northwood!, which I haven’t had a chance to play yet. I was immediately hooked by the idea. How do you translate the muddiness of a trick-taker, the high reactivity of the form, into a solo experience?

Mission Briefing

The goal of the game is to make your way, month by month, through 1943 and into the summer of 1944, the launch of D-Day. You and the German AI opponent take turns playing cards to nine different Tricks, evenly split between fronts in Trondheim and Calais. Each front contains four Tricks, one for each suit in the…

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I wasn’t particularly in the mood for Lanzerath Ridge, to be honest. That’s not to say I wasn’t looking forward to playing the fourth volume in designer David Thompson and publisher Dan Verssen Game’s Valiant Defense series. The second volume, Castle Itter, was at the center of one of my absolute favorite board gaming experiences. It’s just that I have a complicated relationship with solo gaming. The mood strikes occasionally, but the mood has to strike. I don’t casually sit down for a solo game in the same way I would for just about any multiplayer experience.

There are a couple of reasons for this. With smaller solo games, like Warp’s Edge or Under Falling Skies, the experience is apt to become a frantic one. The repetition of the turn cycle gets me keyed up. I rarely leave the table feeling relaxed or fulfilled, even if I won. I still want to play them, because I enjoy exploring the systems, but I’m not positive it’s good for me.

Larger solo games don’t have that problem. They exist in a space that I find incredibly relaxing. I’ve set up a game of Comanchería each of the last two Christmas breaks. I bathe in its relaxed rhythms, the complexity and richness of the choices it offers, and the…

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Pavlov’s House, the first entry in David Thompson’s now-venerable Valiant Defense series of solo tower defense games, is punishing. That’s putting it mildly. The terms of my contract with Meeple Mountain prevent me from using more accurate, more colorful language. I lost my first game handily, and that was with three or four rules errors working in my favor.

Pavlov’s House puts you in charge of the Soviet soldiers who held off a German siege of the titular apartment building during the battle for Stalingrad. Each round consists of three phases, working from right to left across the trifurcated board. You start in the area surrounding the Volga, which runs through the city. Here you will attempt to set up communications networks, ready anti-aircraft and artillery, and send both troops and supplies to the house.

This is all managed by a simple but tense card system. You draw four Soviet cards, each of which features a random two out of eight possible actions, then choose three. You get to perform one action per card you play. You quickly reach a point where…

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I would probably get a good amount of mileage out of talking to a therapist about why I don’t like hidden movement games.

“Hidden movement games?”, Dr. Weschler asks through an unintended sigh.

“We don’t have to talk about this,” I say.

She looks over her glasses. “Clearly we do.”

“One player moves around the board in secret, unseen, while everyone else is trying to find them.”

“Unseen? Do the other players have their eyes closed, or…”

“Usually you have a miniature version of the board and a dry erase marker, maybe a chart. Some sort of log of your movement. Everyone else is out on the board like normal.”

There’s an uncomfortable pause. Dr. Weschler waits. I center my glass of orange juice on the coaster before continuing.

“The hidden player has some sort of goal to accomplish. In Sniper Elite, for example–”

“Oh! I think my daughter has played that,” she interjects. The briefest of shadows crosses her face. “It’s terribly violent, isn’t it?”

“The video game is pretty violent, yeah. Fortunately, it’s hard to carry that sort of thing over to a board game. Fewer cut scenes. I suppose there could be a deck of cards you…

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Released in 2022 by Multi-Man Publishing (MMP), A Victory Awaits: Operation Barbarossa 1941 (or AVA for short) is a simulation of the first three months of the titanic clash between Germany and the Soviet Union.  Designed by Tetsuya Nakamura, AVA is a relatively low complexity hex and counter wargame.  Originally released in Japan as three separate games covering the operations of German Army Groups North, Center, and South, MMP combined them into a single box.  Players can choose to play each of the individual Army Group games or combine them into one linked campaign.

Victory Conditions

To win the Campaign Game, the German player must accumulate at least 191 victory points (VPs) by the end of Turn 9.  VPs are awarded for the capture of each major city hex; 10 VPs if there is a line of communication (LOC) back to Germany or 5 VPs if there is not.  Some major cities start with Stand Fast markers on them which the Soviet player can start removing on Turn 6.  If a hex containing a Stand Fast Marker is captured, it is worth an additional 5 VPs if there’s a LOC back to Germany and 2 if there is not.  In addition, 1 VP is awarded for each Soviet mechanized unit eliminated, and 1 VP for each full-strength German mechanized…

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The Dark Summer is the latest title in designer Ted Racier’s “Dark” World War II series of wargames. The Dark Valley (2013) was the first in the series and covered the war on the Eastern Front. This was followed by The Dark Sands (2018) and The Deadly Woods (2021) on the war in North Africa and the Battle of the Bulge, respectively. This latest installment published in 2021 recreates the D-Day landings and campaign in Normandy, France. So how does it compare with other Normandy games, and should you own a copy?

[caption id="attachment_263144" align="alignnone" width="227"] Box cover[/caption]

The “Dark” Chit Pull System

What all games in the series share is Ted’s innovative chit-pull system that simulates the fog of war and the differences in the operational tempo of the combatants. Using random chit pulls – blindly selecting a counter out of a cup – is certainly not new. Typically, it is used to activate specific formations (regiments, brigades, divisions, corps, etc.) on the board. The activation chits for both combatants are put in a single cup at the start of a turn. Chits are pulled from the cup, so rather than one side activating (i.e., moving and attacking) with all their units, followed by the other side doing the same, units…

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Our team at Meeple Mountain loved Air, Land & Sea (2019, Arcane Wonders) so much that we actually reviewed it twice: my colleagues David McMillan and Mark Iradian have each shared a review.

Arcane Wonders loved the game so much they reskinned it and released the game as Air, Land, & Sea: Critters at War, shifting from a dry view of planes, ships and tanks to a comic vision of animals on the front lines.

Now comes Air, Land & Sea: Spies, Lies & Supplies (2022, Arcane Wonders), a standalone set of 18 cards that can be played separately from, or alongside parts of, the original game.

That means you could play Land, Lies, and Spies, using one “theater” of cards from the base game and two from the new game. You could instead play Supplies, Sea, and Air! You could even play with 5 of the 6 total theaters in a “mega” Air, Land & Sea format with more cards in hand and a lower score limit.

I look at all of a game’s expansion content the same way: if you own the base game, do you need the expansion?

Supplies

If you have not played the base game, both of our previous reviews highlight the…

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On May 5, 1945, in the waning days of World War II, U.S. Soldiers from the 142nd Infantry Division joined forces with French prisoners of war, Major Josef Gangl, the remains of his Wehrmacht unit, and an Austrian freedom fighter to defend Castle Itter from the advancing 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division. Castle Itter, the second solo Valiant Defense title from designer David Thompson and publisher DVG, has the player lead efforts to defend that castle until the arrival of American reinforcements.

So early in the review, and I can already hear fidgeting in the seats. “I’m here to have fun, not to learn history!” “This sounds an awful lot like a war game.” “A solo game? Poppycock!” My fellow citizens, I understand your concerns. If you are into contemporary warfare as a theme and/or you are an avid solo gamer, you’re already excited. If you aren’t, let me tell you upfront that I actively dislike contemporary warfare as a theme, and while I’m often happy to play a solo game, it’s seldom my first choice. Hear me when I tell you that Castle Itter transcends both of those caveats.

[caption id="attachment_251899" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The setup for the game.[/caption]

Gameplay

The…

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Alone. Outnumbered. No money. No safety. No future. No hope.

During the course of World War II, many people found themselves trying desperately just to survive the existential threat of the Third Reich. In France, which spent much of the war under the Nazi-friendly Vichy government, rebels formed a loose coalition of partisan groups known as Maquis. These independent cells had many different ideologies and strategies, but what they shared was a resistance to the Vichy government and more broadly to the fascist regimes throughout Europe. Bolstered in many areas by official Allied support, these guerilla fighters did their best to both sabotage their oppressors and draw attention to their cause. Though it’s debatable whether their efforts were effective, their place in history is secured by their attempts to do the right thing under impossible circumstances.

Maquis, from Side Room Games, places you in charge of one such group to see whether you can survive the fascist menace or even expel it entirely.

I Rebel, Therefore We Exist

A game of Maquis takes place over 15 rounds, each one representing a day. The goal of the game is to complete two mission cards (randomly or intentionally chosen at setup) before running out of time. Along the way you’ll have to protect your…

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A mechanical sequel to 2018’s Lincoln, Struggle For Europe takes a simple mechanical idea, the use of a changing deck of action cards, unique to each side, and applies it to an area control wargame. The promise of a concise grand strategic game of WWII’s European theatre for two players using such innovative mechanics seemed too good to be true. I had to check it out. I’m glad I did, because I think I’ve found one of my new favorite wargames. And I like a lot of wargames.

How to Conquer Europe in Two Hours

Players take control of…

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Last year I wrote a long detailed review on an overlooked fantasy skirmish called Stonebound Saga. While it pretends it can handle more than two players, its structure concentrates on the head-to-head experience. It is a well-crafted game with dozens of characters and hundreds of abilities, meaning that you need a dedicated gaming partner willing to learn the ins and outs of this vast system with you. Sadly, I never found that individual and had to divorce the game from my collection.

Air, Land, and Sea is the complete opposite of Stonebound Saga. Instead of hundreds of cards, you only have 18. The game doesn’t last over an hour; it’s about 20 minutes. Is that enough to keep it in my collection?

Storming The Cliche

One easy way to convince me is lightweight rules and this is one of the easiest games out there. It is a race to collect 12 victory points that you will gain through a series of battles. Each battle consists of three theatres of war: Air, Land, and Sea. Get it?

Since this is a World War Two game, you will try to win your theatres…

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