Die Spielhilfe zu Viticulture Essential Edition ist nun online und kann auf der Projektseite heruntergeladen werden.

One of the more interesting topics to play a wargame on is that of a sustained siege. I am not talking about a game that has a siege mechanic that is used over the course of the game but a game that is based wholly around a specific historical siege. A siege requires a lot of different takes to be included in a wargame to make it work including things such as supplies, manpower, defenses such as walls, trenches and other fortifications, siege engines, morale and the ability and will to continue the fight. I really have very much enjoyed the siege based wargames that I have played over the years and I wanted to share 3 of my favorites in this post. So, without further adieu, here are my Best 3 Games with…Sieges!

I want to make one thing clear. I love the States of Siege Series of games and have played dozens of them. But I don’t consider those games in the same vein as these siege focused games that I am sharing.

*The image used as the featured image for this post is called Lifting of the Siege of Malta painted by Charles-Philippe Lariviere.

3. Freedom! from PHALANX

Freedom! is a card driven siege game that pits the Greek freedom fighters and the besieging imperial forces of the Ottomans against each other. The siege is of the Greek Holy City of Messolonghi during the Greek War of Independence in 1825-1826. Freedom! features asymmetrical play with the goal of the invading forces being to manage to get inside the city before the end of the game or to force the citizens to abandon the cause by dropping their morale to zero while the defenders, on the other hand, try to withstand the siege and protect the city long enough for the invaders to abandon their attempt either by deciding to leave on their own or by having their morale dropped to zero. The actions of the players are driven by the cards in their hands, which highlight actual events and personalities of that time, while the combat is dice-driven to allow for quick and exciting game-play.

The rebel player is largely focused on grinding out a victory by surviving over the course of 6 rounds and are simply trying to hang on, unless of course they can somehow reduce the morale of the besieging units enough to where they give up and go home. However, nothing about this is a grind for the defending player and that is a problem that can be endemic with siege games. You as the defender, are as much a part of the action and must try to follow your own plan whenever possible to get a win. In other asymmetric siege games, the defender is often just reacting to the aggressor’s moves. As the insurgents, it never feels like you are simply reactionary and just along for the ride.

The really interesting thing about this one is that that there are actually two maps that are used to play the game. One of the maps shows the actual city and the forces involved in the siege while the other shows the surrounding areas, highlighting the support that each of them provides to both players. The art is gorgeous and this one is a game that we had a really good experience with. There also is a solitaire module that you have to buy separately but it works very well and provides an opportunity to play this game when you can’t find an opponent.

Players will find that they are competing for a number of nearby Greek regions on the board and there will be a tug-of-war played out by using various support actions that are focused on cutting off your opponent’s supplies. This is what I liked most about Freedom! It’s not just a continual back and forth trying to knock out your enemy’s units but there are multiple paths to victory, and all of them seem to be viable. By lowering your opponent’s morale and cutting them off from the supplies they need, you completely change their plans. Of course, there is nothing to stop you from pushing aggressively against the enemy’s walls.

Each side of the conflict really gives a different feel to the game and creates a new experience once you switch sides. As the Ottomans, you are generally going to undertake aggressive maneuver and attacks in an attempt to push forward and put pressure on the defenders and their walls of security. But when you play the Greeks there is a real feeling unpleasant feeling of desperation, which only gets worse with the arrival of Turkish reinforcements.

Here is a look at our unboxing video so you can get a good look at the components: 

Here is our video review used for the Kickstarter campaign so you can understand our thoughts on the game:

If you are interested in Freedom!, you can purchase a copy for €69,00 ($80.00 in US Dollars) from the PHALANX website at the following link: https://phalanx.co.uk/games/freedom-board-game/

2. Storm Over Jerusalem: The Roman Siege from Multi-Man Publishing

The Storm Over Area Impulse Series has been around for a while and includes games such as Storm Over Arnhem (1981) from The Avalon Hill Game Company, Storm Over Stalingrad (2006) from Multi-Man Publishing and Storm Over Dien Bien Phu (2014) from Multi-Man Publishing amongst several others. The hallmark of the series is relatively low complexity for a wargame and a very simple combat system that calculates total attack versus total defense and adds a roll of 2d6. The losses from combat can be absorbed by either retreating from the attacked areas or destroying units. The game system has mostly been used to model more modern wars including the Franco-Prussian War, World War II and the French conflict at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam.

Storm Over Jerusalem: The Roman Siege is a 2-player wargame that simulates the Roman siege of Jerusalem during 70 AD. One player controls the mighty Roman forces, who are truly master of siege warfare with their siege towers, ballista, battering rams and onagers, and the other player controls the Judean forces, which are divided into 2 separate factions with different leaders. The game is 8 turns long, but can be shortened by the play of a few event cards, at the end of which time the winner is determined by calculating victory points that come from overall losses, holding of certain VP areas and keeping the Romans out of the city.

We were very impressed by the game and its overall clarity of rules, quality components and interesting tactical choices and really had a good time learning and playing it. The Judeans are obviously outclassed by the powerful and skilled Roman Legions but they have several of their own tricks to use to hold out long enough to win the day. There is a lot to like here and I am really glad that we decided to give the system a try. There were some changes specially made to introduce the style of Ancient sieges to the Storm Over Series and this is where the game really shines. The Siege Towers were an evolution of the trenches found in Storm Over Dien Bien Phu game and are very important to the Roman efforts. The walls historically were such a physical presence in the city, and were a major impediment to the Roman efforts, that they had to come up with rules to cover them. The walls provide a defensive modifier against Roman Attacks and Assaults. This Defense Value starts at +4 and can be reduced over time by successful Roman Assaults. Since Judean units have a defense of 7 or 8 the bonus provided by the walls of +4 really helps hold onto areas. Once a wall is damaged from a successful attack though, the defensive modifier can be rebuilt by the Judean player but can never be increased to its full value of +4.

The Roman player also has specific cards (Catapult, Onager, and Battering Rams) that can be used to damage or breach the walls. Once breached, the walls don’t provide any defensive bonus and allow Roman troops to flood into the city. We found that the Romans tried to focus on a specific area of the walls and made their attacks there first in order to bring the maximum attacks possible each round to force the Judean player to have to spend their time and actions on fixing the walls and bringing up reinforcement to replace those lost in retreats. To repair a wall section, the Judean player can discard a card and use the Repair Value of that card to repair walls in an area. This action though requires a fresh unit in that area to be flipped to spent to complete the repair. Walls can only be repaired back up to +3, not the original +4. You can’t rebuild them completely.

I really enjoyed our play of Storm Over Jerusalem. The game was beautifully put together, with fantastic components, but also had some really amazing details and depth to the gameplay. This one is a winner and really has me interested in the other games in the series. I know that this game had a siege focus, which is not necessarily in each of the other games, but I really liked the simple combat system, great card play and very interesting tactical choices that were there for players to have to make.

Here is a link to our full unboxing showing off the beautiful components:

Here also is a link to our full video review:

If you are interested in Storm Over Jerusalem: The Roman Siege, you can order a copy for $86.00 from the Multi-Man Publishing website at the following link: https://mmpgamers.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=355

1. Dien Bien Phu: The Final Gamble from Legion Wargames

Dien Bien Phu: The Final Gamble from Legion Wargames is a 2-player wargame about the decisive battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 that not only ended the French Indochina War but also had political repercussions far outside the region itself. One player represents France and her colonial troops. The other player represents the armed force of Viet Minh, the communist/nationalist independence movement of Vietnam. This game is not a traditional wargame and has different victory conditions than normal and also some unique and interesting supply rules. The Viet Minh win by forcing the French troops to surrender and France wins by not surrendering.

The board covers the former village of Dien Bien Phu and surrounding areas. There is a small submap of the French strongpoint Isabelle further south in the valley. There are several groups of French strongpoints scattered around the map, each one with a female name, which are all named after the commander de Castries’ mistresses, according to lore. The map is divided into three divisional sectors. Each sector has several zones that represent Viet Minh trenches winding from the map edge towards the center of the map. Each hex represents 150 meters and each game turn covers three days. There are 21 turns in the game, but historically, it ended after 19 game turns with a Viet Minh victory. The scale allows stacking of three French units in a hex, but there are no stacking limits for Viet Minh battalions, which creates a chess like feel.

French supply is a bit of a mini-game within the game. As this battle took place far out in the wilderness of Vietnam and both sides had to adjust to the limited flow of supplies that could be brought forward, through the air to the French, and through vast forests to the Viet Minh. Supplies tend to be a lot less than wished for. There are several supply tracks on the map showing how much ammo, food & bullets, fuel & spares, medicine as well as the amount of truck transport available for the French. The process for doing this supply phase is really pretty interesting and fun. Each game turn air transports will bring in a mix of supplies together with replacements and reinforcements. This is done on a chart with a grid where a mix of supply markers are placed together with eventual reinforcements and replacements. Weather will then decide what will arrive and what will abort back to Hanoi. The French player will never know for sure what type of supplies and how much will arrive and has to take that into account as they plan out their turns. And this is one of the best parts of the game and kept me thinking about the struggle with keeping my efforts going with the French. This one is not an easy game for either side and I think that it keeps the game very balanced and interesting to play.

Here is a link to our full video review:

If you are interested in Dien Bien Phu: The Final Gamble, you can order a copy for $54.00 from the Legion Wargames website at the following link: https://www.legionwargames.com/legion_DBP.html

A few other games that I have played on the subject of sieges, and that I very much liked, were games such as Halls of Hegra from Tompet Games, 1565 Siege of Malta from Worthington Publishing, 414 BC Siege of Syracuse from Worthington Publishing, Keep Up the Fire! Deluxe Edition from Worthington Publishing, Castle Itter: The Strangest Battle of WWII from Dan Verssen Games, Siege Works: A Napoleonic Siege Roll & Write from Solo Wargame, Crusaders: The Siege of Acre 1291 from Blue Panther/Art of Wargames, Castelnuovo 1539 from Draco Ideas and The Alamo Remembered from Victory Point Games.

What are your favorite siege based wargames?

-Grant

Another early morning and we met John Sy to have some breakfast before heading to our scheduled game of World Order from Hegemonic Project Games. We met friends Tom and Tim and they had played the game and prepared to teach Mike and I.

World Order is a strategic level 2-4 player Euro-style board game that focuses on geopolitical influence in 7 different regions. Players are the United States, China, Russia, or the European Union in the year 2010 and compete for global hegemony by earning victory points through economic power, diplomacy, and regional control.

This game is played over 6 turns and players have a hand of 6 cards with various actions such as trading goods, influencing countries to become your ally, building military bases and placing influence. Each of the regions will score at the end of turn 3 and 6 and players will have to scramble to gain influence to get the most Victory Points in each region with lesser VP awarded for 2nd through 5th place. But each turn you only play 4 cards fur the actions and then use your remaining 2 cards to earn money and gain research points to purchase new upgraded and more efficient actions.

The game features asymmetric factions representing each superpower’s unique strengths and starting resources. Players will have to choose 1 of 3 Focus each round included my domestic, diplomatic or military, which grants specialized bonuses for that turn.

I loved this one. What a game! My Chinese won with 114 points as I was able to control 3 regions but also weasel my way into 3 others to gain lesser points. This one has a lot of moving parts but plays fairly quickly once people know what they are doing. I very much want to play again.

I next got into a 4-player game of Coalitions: Realpolitik from PHALANX designed by Valdemar Gumienny and Andrew Rourke.

Realpolitik is an area-control board game that features action selection cards where players have to play a card for 1 action that turn including taxing controlled areas, mobilizing new forces and battle cards, moving into battles, scoring victory points or then picking up your already played cards. It’s a very smart and slick little game that sees players competing for control of mid-19th-century German and Italian unification wars.

Combat is lite and fun and uses battle cards that add values of 1-5 to your combat totals but each played unit also has unique abilities that can change the battlefield such as destroying a played unit, adding +1 if the Barrie occurs in an area you control. The goal is to get to 25 victory points first and the game is very quick playing 60+ minutes with lots of strategy, creating alliances and working toward your goal of dominating key areas. Just a very fun and interesting game. I was able to guide my Prussians to victory scoring 25 VP first and it came down to the very end as Italy was also close on my heals. I liked it so much that I’m going to get a copy and hope to play the game with our local gaming group. Thanks to Ric Mann fur teaching and for the members of the Hoosier Herd gaming group for playing.

I then met up with Mark Miklos to chat about his newest upcoming volume in the Battles of the American Revolution Series called The Battle of Green Spring. We did a fairly lengthy video interview covering the game and its history as well as discussing his upcoming book called Liberty.

The Battle of Green Spring was the largest field battle fought in Virginia during the American Revolution with over 10,000 combatants. In addition to being noteworthy for its scope, this battle was Lord Cornwallis’s final victory in North America and served as the immediate precursor to the Siege of Yorktown.

I ended Day 3 playing The Adventures of Conan from Gale Force Nine, which is an asymmetric, semi-coop dice game of exploration, sorcery and combat set in the Hyborian age of Conan. We bounced off this one hard. Poor rules, lack of structure and little clarity, which is a shame. The art is fantastic, great components with custom dice but I felt like we had no idea what we were doing or how we were supposed to reliably get things done. We will try to watch a video out there to get an idea about what we are supposed to do and then maybe give it another try.

That was a long day and I’m very tired. I don’t have a lot on the schedule tomorrow but will find something to get into. I do get a chance to meet with Wes Crawford tomorrow night to play his new design coming to Kickstarter soon called The Emperor’s Voice from Worthington Publishing and might get in another play of China’s War from GMT Games or maybe Bretwalda from PHALANX. We shall see.

Tomorrow night then.

-Grant

Die Kalenderwoche 29 (7. bis 13. Juli) ist eine Woche der Endspurts. Auf Gamefound laufen gleich drei bereits durchfinanzierte Kampagnen in den nächsten Tagen aus, während eine vierte als Schwergewicht noch weiterklettert. Auf Kickstarter und der Spieleschmiede sind in diesem Zeitraum keine neuen, für den DACH-Raum relevanten Brettspiel-Kampagnen gestartet, die einen eigenen Beitrag rechtfertigen. Wir konzentrieren uns deshalb auf die vier stärksten laufenden Projekte, die alle auf Gamefound zu finden sind.

Believe in me! (please)

„Believe in me! (please)" vom deutschen Verlag Wyrmgold läuft nur noch bis Dienstag, den 14. Juli, und steht damit im letzten Tag. Aktuell haben 833 Unterstützende rund 61.000 Euro zusammengetragen, gut das Dreifache des Ziels von 20.000 Euro.

In dem Karten- und Worker-Placement-Spiel für 2 bis 4 Personen übernehmen die Spielenden die Rolle selbsternannter Götter. Mit Naturereignissen wie Stürmen und Fluten überzeugen sie die Bevölkerung von ihrer Macht und sammeln möglichst viele Gläubige, während sie die konkurrierenden Möchtegern-Götter am Tisch ausstechen. Eine Partie dauert etwa 60 Minuten, empfohlen ab 14 Jahren. Wyrmgold hat zuvor unter anderem „Pagan: Fate of Roanoke" und „Hydra" veröffentlicht.

Sovereign: Shōgun

„Sovereign: Shōgun" des Londoner Studios PHALANX läuft noch bis Donnerstag, den 16. Juli. Die Kampagne ist mit rund 280.000 Euro von 1.271 Unterstützenden das mit Abstand größte hier vorgestellte Projekt und steht bei über dem Neunfachen des 30.000-Euro-Ziels.

Das Strategiespiel für 2 bis 5 Personen führt in die Sengoku-Zeit Japans, in der fünf Fürsten um den Thron ringen. Gespielt wird asymmetrisch um Gebietskontrolle: Die Spielenden bauen ihren Klan aus, schließen Allianzen, treiben Handel und versuchen, den minderjährigen Regenten auf ihre Seite zu ziehen, statt allein auf Waffengewalt zu setzen. Eine Partie ist mit rund 90 Minuten angesetzt, ab 14 Jahren.

Siege Perilous

„Siege Perilous" von Play to Z läuft noch bis Freitag, den 17. Juli, und hat mit 652 Unterstützenden rund 94.800 US-Dollar erreicht, gut das Sechsfache des Ziels von 15.000 US-Dollar.

Das Spiel für 1 bis 4 Personen siedelt im Britannien der Artus-Sage: Als Ritter gehen die Spielenden auf Abenteuer aus, um Ruhm und Ansehen zu gewinnen. Mechanisch mischt es Worker Placement mit Euro-Aufbau und Würfelaktionen, und es lässt sich sowohl solo als auch kompetitiv spielen. Für eine Partie sind rund 120 Minuten einzuplanen, ab 14 Jahren.

Kemet: The Gates of Thonis

Etwas mehr Zeit bleibt bei „Kemet: The Gates of Thonis" von Kolossal Games, das noch bis Dienstag, den 21. Juli, läuft. Mit rund 276.000 US-Dollar von 3.169 Unterstützenden steht die Kampagne bei über dem Achtzehnfachen des niedrig angesetzten 15.000-US-Dollar-Ziels.

Wichtig zur Einordnung: „The Gates of Thonis" ist keine eigenständige Neuheit, sondern eine große Erweiterung für das Area-Control-Spiel „Kemet: Blood and Sand". Unsere Crowdfunding-Wochenschau KW 28 ordnet das Projekt und seinen Kampagnenstart zusätzlich ein. Sie bringt neue Karten, neue Spielplan-Seiten und eine zusätzliche zentrale Mechanik ins Spiel und richtet sich damit an alle, die das Grundspiel bereits besitzen oder es sich parallel zulegen. Gespielt wird zu 2 bis 6 Personen, rund 90 Minuten, ab 14 Jahren.

Alle Zahlen entsprechen dem Stand vom 13. Juli 2026.