Battlecards Review

About 30 years ago I received what I consider to be my first real 
boardgame as a Christmas present from my Dad. The game was Blitzkrieg 
from Avalon Hill. Of course, I had played all the other standard 
childhood games but this game opened my eyes to a whole new world. I 
remember the big map, all the cardboard counters and the rulebook, 
all I could think was WOW! I don't think either one of us thought 
Blitzkrieg was a great game but it was still a lot of fun to play and 
play we did! Over the years we played many Avalon Hill games, some 
were war games and some were not. The wargames always had a special 
place in my heart but they all had something in common for both my 
Dad and I, they were all complex, fiddly and long. We almost always 
argued over different interpretations of the rules (poorly written as 
they were) and we would frequently not have the time to finish the 
games we started. Still, we had lots of fun and I have a lot of good 
memories from those games.

Over the last several years I have gotten back into board gaming with 
the same passion I had in my younger years. Now the games that we all 
know and love are relatively short and easy compared to what Avalon 
Hill had to offer years ago. Playing an entertaining strategy game in 
an hour or two (that's including reading the rules!) was unheard of 
when I was a kid but now that occurs on a weekly basis (if I'm 
lucky!). I thank my lucky stars for finding Settlers and all the 
other great German style strategy games I have played in the last 
several years. I occasionally get in a few games with my Dad every 
now and then. We still have lots of fun but nothing really brings 
back our old rivalry like a good ol' wargame.

One day I was searching the web for some game related material and 
was clicking through the links that my search engine had thrown at 
me. Not knowing exactly what I was looking for, I clicked on a link 
to DGA Games. The site immediately caught my eye! Splashed across the 
page in big letters was the name BATTLECARDS. Pictures of cards with 
images of Hitler, Churchill, Rommel and Montgomery as well as a 
Spitfire and a Tiger tank jumped off the page. My mind raced back to 
the days of game after game of Squad Leader, Panzer Leader, Midway 
and Victory in the Pacific. What was this!

Battlecards is an expandable, card-based, WWII strategy game. Players 
control land, sea and air units of the Axis and Allied forces. The 
currently available set covers the Western European campaign with 
forces from Great Britain and Germany. A soon to be released set will 
cover the Pacific theater with American and Japanese forces. Two more 
sets, the Russian Front and North African campaigns, are in the 
works. Each set consists of a base starter pack which has three decks 
of cards; an Allied deck, an Axis deck and a common deck that drives 
the game called the Conflict deck. There are also expansion packs 
that contain a carefully balanced set of cards that can be added to a 
starter pack. I should emphasize that this is not a collectable card 
game but the expansions do allow for a little more diversity in each 
of the decks and include some interesting units. The Western European 
Campaign has five expansion packs currently available.

The rules to Battlecards cover the front and a portion of the back of 
a single sheet of paper and they are fairly straight forward. A nice 
diagram of how the cards are to be laid out on the table is also 
included to speed setup. A beginner can go from opening the box to 
beginning play in maybe 20 minutes or so. As mentioned above, there 
are three decks of cards in the game. The decks the players use are 
called the Arsenal decks and consist of the land, sea and air units 
at your disposal as well as a leader card and a general card. The 
third deck is called the Conflict deck and is placed in the center of 
the table. This deck contains an assortment of cards that drive the 
game and indicate what happens on each turn. A series of Battle cards 
that represent key battles in the theater are part of the cards in 
the Conflict deck and indicate the potential for a battle between the 
Axis and Allied players.

At the start of the game, each player draws six cards from his 
Arsenal deck and deploys three of these cards, face down, into three 
possible stacks, land units, air units and sea units, in that order 
from left to right. These are your deployed forces and are the units 
that will participate in battles. Therefore, a player will always 
know what general type of units their opponent has available and 
their number but not the strength of those units. Units can be 
deployed in any combination of stacks as the player sees fit, so you 
could initially deploy all land units or only air and sea units, or 
maybe one unit of each type depending on your strategy. The remaining 
three cards are kept in your hand and are called your Reserve hand. 
The German player begins play. A turn consists of a player drawing a 
card from the Conflict deck and following its instructions.

The Conflict deck cards can be grouped into four different types of 
cards. The first type are cards that allow the player to immediately 
perform an action, generally against the opposing player. The 
Espionage card, which lets you examine one or several of your 
opponents deployed stacks of units, is an example of this type of 
card. These cards are discarded onto the Conflict deck discard pile 
after the action is taken. The second type of Conflict card is the 
Military Buildup card and is also acted on immediately, then 
discarded. These cards instruct the player to draw from one to five 
cards from the players Arsenal deck into their hand and then play a 
certain number of cards out into the deployed unit stacks, followed 
by discarding a number of cards from your hand into the Arsenal deck 
discard pile. These cards are the major way that players get cards 
out of their Arsenal decks and into their deployed unit stacks. The 
third type of card are called Kept cards. These Conflict cards 
instruct the player to keep the card and the card is placed into a 
players pile called the Kept card pile. These cards may then be 
played on subsequent turns to help the player or hinder his opponent 
in a variety of ways. The final type of card is the Battlecard which 
may signal the start of a battle. Almost a third of the Conflict deck 
are Battlecards while a little more than a third are Military Buildup 
cards. The last two types of cards make up equal portions of the 
final third of the Conflict deck.

Each Battlecard consist of a description of which units may 
participate in the battle (land, sea and/or air) as well as any 
unusual victory conditions which would signal the end of the battle. 
Also on the card may be a list of prerequisites which must be met 
before the battle can take place as well as the number of victory 
points the winner of the battle gains. The prerequisites are 
typically one or more other battles won by one or the other side. 
Occasionally certain unit types (land, sea or air) must be present 
for the prerequisites to be met. The aggressor in the battle may also 
be indicated on the card which determines which side fires first. If 
a player has none of the deployed unit types listed on the 
Battlecard, the other player wins the battle. If neither player has 
any of the listed unit types or the designated aggressor decides not 
to fight the battle, the battle doesn't take place and the Battlecard 
is discarded. Otherwise, each player turns the unit stacks indicated 
on the Battlecard face up. Battles consist of turns made up of four 
rounds of combat during which each player fires particular units 
designated as being able to fire in that round. Artillery and sea 
units are able to fire in the first round, air units in the second 
round and ground units in the third or fourth rounds. A final round 
is the withdraw phase where players may remove some or all of their 
units from combat. The turns are repeated until the units of one 
player have been eliminated or withdrawn, or until the specific 
victory conditions for the battle have been met. The winner of the 
battle gets the victory points indicated and possession of the card.

Battles are resolved one unit at a time starting with the aggressor 
units able to fire in the first round. Each unit has an attack value 
against each of the three unit types as well as a defense value vs 
each of the unit types. The attacking player chooses a unit and 
compares that units attack value against land, air or sea units 
(whichever is applicable) to the defenders defense value. Certain 
unit cards (a General, for example) and some Kept cards can add 
bonuses to these values. A card is then drawn from the Conflict deck 
to resolve the encounter. All Conflict cards have a number associated 
with them ranging from 1 to 25 and this number is compared against 
the total attack and defense values. If the value on the card is less 
than or equal to the attack value and greater than the defense value, 
the attack succeeds and the defending unit is discarded to the 
Arsenal deck discard pile of the defending player. This occurs for 
all of the aggressor units able to fire in the first round. Then the 
defender fires any units able to fire in the first round. This 
continues through the remaining rounds of a turn and the turns 
continue until a player has won the battle. Winning a battle is not 
the end of the game however. To win the game, a player must win a 
majority of the points available from the battles in the Conflict 
deck (38 points in this basic set with the average battle being worth 
about 5 points) or you can alternatively win the battle for your 
opponents homeland.

Comparison With Other Popular Card-Based Games
That's about it for the rules, it's all pretty straight forward. But 
how does the game really play you ask? One of the big things that I 
noticed when I first played Battlecards was how different it was from 
other card-based games. For comparison, consider Magic: the 
Gathering, the Flagship series from GMT and the Down in Flames series 
from GMT. Both Magic and Flagship are tactical card based battle 
games. Both are fairly quick and easy and suffer from the same card 
based luck-of-the-draw issue that any card game has. Each has a "take 
that" feel to it where each player tries to attack his opponent, turn 
after turn, until one player finally succumbs. GMTs Down in Flames 
series also has this "take that" feel when playing dogfights but has 
much more involved decisions when playing the campaign games, at the 
expense of a lot more rules. So how does Battlecards differ from 
these games? Battlecards does have tactical card play that is similar 
to what you see in Magic and Flagship. But as mentioned above, 
winning a battle is not the end of the game. You must win multiple 
battles to claim victory and this allows for some great strategic 
decisions. Also, the fact that the game takes multiple battles to win 
means that the luck-of-the-draw issue does not play as large of a 
role since the games tend to last longer. As an example, I recall one 
game where I was unable to get any of my Arsenal cards out into my 
deployed stacks for the first half hour of the game. However, with 
some luck and skillful card play, I was able to avoid any major 
confrontations and eventually came back to win the game. Overall, 
Battlecards is easier to learn (and teach) than Magic while offering 
greater strategic depth with the same easy, tactical card play.

Look and Feel
The quality of the components is something that gamers look for in a 
good game and Battlecards does not disappoint in this regard. The 
cards are standard poker size with plastic coating. No card 
protectors needed here! They stand up very nicely to repeated riffle 
shuffling, which is more than I can say for most card games now days. 
Another aspect of the game which I really enjoy are the pictures on 
the cards. Anyone who has played Magic or any of it's many spinoffs 
(including Flagship) is aware of the concept of a picture used to 
represent the unit or action in question. The pictures on the Arsenal 
decks in Battlecards are actual WWII photographs of the units 
represented on the cards, a very nice touch indeed! The cards in the 
Conflict deck also contain actual WWII photographs aswell. For me, 
these pictures on the cards really enhance the wargame feel of 
Battlecards. I get into this game in a way that I can't in standard 
wargames with the hex-based maps and cardboard counters.

The Third Deck
The Conflict deck is what makes this game different from most 
card-based games. It brings a strategic element to the game that is 
both elegant and intuitive while maintaining the flow needed in a 
card game of this type. In addition, the use of these cards as the 
combat resolution mechanism rather than dice or some other mechanism 
is a great idea that keeps the simplicity of a card game but still 
allows for a luck element that should be present in any tactical 
combat game. The variety of cards in this deck keeps the game 
interesting and prevents the game from becoming the tit-for-tat, last 
man standing card game that many games in this area have become. 
Looking at the number of battles in this deck (about a third of the 
cards) you would think that a battle would happen about every third 
turn. But the need to meet certain prerequisites for most battles as 
well as the ability for the aggressor to not fight a battle decreases 
the frequency of combat and allows the players time to develop 
strategies and plan for the coming battles rather than constantly 
reacting to the last card your opponent played. The addition of 
several kept Conflict cards that allow some control over when a 
battle will occur also adds to the strategy of the game, if you play 
your cards right!

Where's the Beef!
The real heart of any good game, in my opinion, is the depth and 
variety of the decisions that are needed to play the game well. 
Battlecards certainly have its share of decisions! On the tactical 
side, should you gang up on one key enemy unit hoping to improve your 
odds of eliminating it or should you spread out your attacks, hoping 
to eliminate more units and gain a numerical advantage? Tough 
choices. Given that units can only fight in specified rounds of a 
turn, which unit you choose to attack can spell the difference 
between victory and defeat. Over on the strategic front, do you 
withdraw your forces from a small battle worth a couple of points and 
hope to build up your units for that next big battle that you know is 
coming up in the deck? Should you deploy a lot of sea units hoping to 
dominate the next sea battle given that most of the sea battles have 
yet to show up? I could go on and on but you get the idea. The 
decisions that each player makes over the course of the game are what 
decides the outcome, not that one player happened to get a few lucky 
card draws in a row.

The Bad
There really isn't much I can criticize Battlecards about. I guess if 
you don't like luck-of-the-draw issues in card games or any luck at 
all, in your games then you will probably not like Battlecards. But 
then again, I can't think of any war or battle that didn't involve an 
element of luck to dictate it's outcome. One thing that did come up 
that we easily resolved was bringing some type of turn marker into 
the game. Turns can go back and forth fairly quickly when there isn't 
a battle but once a battle does come up it might take a while until 
it is the next players turn to draw a Conflict card. Given that 
battles can be relatively long and that the aggressor in a battle is 
not necessarily the person drawing the battlecard, we were 
continually forgetting who's turn it was after a long battle. We 
ended up using a Matchbox Sherman tank as a turn marker that we 
passed back and forth when we had finished our turn. Another minor 
issue that came up was keeping track of the special bonuses that 
carriers can apply to other units. Usually when a unit is capable of 
applying a bonus to another unit (either attack or defense) it is a 
simple matter to keep track of since the unit must forfeit it's own 
action to assist another unit. Simply placing the supporting units 
card with the supported units card eliminates any confusion. Navel 
carriers are a special case since they get two or three bonuses that 
can be applied to other units in addition to their own action. Thisis 
not a problem in a small battle but in a large battle with multiple 
carriers, where these bonuses are getting applied can become 
confusing. This was easy enough to fix by making some cardboard 
counters representing each of the bonuses and placing them on the 
cards receiving the bonus.

Expansions
Each expansion pack adds 20 cards to the cards in the starter set. 
These cards are a mix of Arsenal cards for both sides in addition to 
Conflict deck cards, including the occasional new battle. A nice 
feature of the expansions is that a list of the cards in each pack is 
printed right on the package, no surprises here! You can buy the ones 
that look interesting and skip those that don't (although, they all 
add interesting elements to the game, in my opinion). Some of the 
cards in the expansions are not found in the starter pack while 
others are repeats. It also appears that an effort was made to try to 
maintain a relatively historical mix of units in both quantity and 
variety (for example, the Germans only get one Bismark!). The 
addition of a few "what if" type cards (German jet fighters and the 
atomic bomb to name a couple) adds a nice touch as well.

Optional Rules and More
The DGA Games website (www.dgagames.com) has a page with optional 
rules that can be used with any basic set or even to combine 
different basic sets (when they become available) so that players can 
fight out the different theaters of WWII in one big game. There are 
rules for team play with up to eight players and lots more. There are 
even rules for custom deck construction for those of you who like 
deck building. As more sets become available, the possibilities get 
very interesting. There is also a FAQ page that may clear up certain 
aspects of the game for some players.

Who should buy this game
If you enjoy wargames with a WWII theme and would like a good game 
with easy rules and no involved set-up then grab this game and its 
expansions ASAP! You will not be disappointed. If you enjoy card 
games like Magic and Flagship and don't mind a WWII theme then you 
will probably like Battlecards. The addition of the Conflict deck 
driving the strategic aspect of the game is a wonderful mechanism. If 
you are serious boardgamer who enjoys plenty of opportunity for 
decisions in both tactical and strategic play and don't mind 
luck-of-the-draw issues then you will probably enjoy this game as 
well. If you are a casual/family game player and you don't mind the 
WWII theme, Battlecards is an easy to learn, fun, noncollectable game 
that is accessible to almost everyone.

Overall Opinion
This game really hit the mark with me. The combination of an easy to 
learn game that has lots of tactical and strategic decisions, 
different ways of winning and with a great theme is something I look 
for in a good game. Playing time comes in at about 60 to 90 minutes 
on average (some have gone two hours while others have been around 30 
minutes). The expandable nature of the game (and the fact that it is 
not collectable!) as well as the ability to combine this game with 
future releases is another plus that can't be overlooked. All this in 
a couple of nice decks of cards! It is clear that the designer has 
put a lot of thought and effort into the design of this game. What's 
not to like. Highly recommended!