Pat Hirtle - 12:27am Mar 3, 2003 PST (#3772 of 3820) 
Tokyo

On the table this week is Michael Gilbert's The Dutch Revolt, a DTP
effort published by Microgame Design Group. The game simulates the
conflict between the Dutch and Spanish from 1566 to 1605, and is played
in 40 one-year turns. The components include a small but nicely-done
area map of the Dutch provinces, a sheet of unmounted iconic counters,
two Religious Alignment sheets to record the status (from strongly
Catholic to strongly Protestant) of each area on the map, and the rules
and charts. 

The game is quite simple. Each turn consists of an Event Draw, a
Treasury Phase, a Religious Conversion Phase, a Movement Phase, a Siege
Combat Phase (all combat in the game is siege combat) and a Political
Phase. 

Units include garrisons (immobile, one-strength units that denote area
control), infantry, cavalry, flotillas and missionaries. These units are
purchased during the Treasury Phase and placed in friendly-controlled
areas. Once that's done, you roll for any area containing a missionary
to attempt to change the area's religious alignment one space in your
favour. Then the Spanish player, followed by the Rebel player, moves his
military units - one space for infantry, two for cavalry, unlimited
coastal movement for flotillas. After movement, siege combat is resolved
in areas containing units of both sides. Finally, the Rebel player
counts how many territories he controls, and marks this on the Political
Track. 

There are 22 event chits which provide most of the historical flavour in
the game. Each player draws three chits per turn, and plays them in
whatever phase the events affect. 

There are a few minor holes in the rules, but on the whole they are well
written and clear. 

I don't want to pass judgement on the game before actually playing it,
but I do have a few quibbles. One is that the missionary counters seem
superfluous. They're only on the board to mark the areas you want to
convert, and once the rolls are made the counters are removed. It would
have been simpler to just record the number of missionaries you've
purchased for that turn, then designate the areas. This would have freed
up ten counters, which could have been used to depict leaders. In a
conflict that included Alva, Parma and William of Orange, the lack of
leaders seems unfortunate. 

A more serious issue is the complete lack of continuity from turn to
turn. There is no mechanism for maintaining your troops; at the end of
the turn they simply disappear, except for the garrisons, and have to be
bought anew. Both players can thus completely alter the arrangement of
their forces each turn. That doesn't feel right to me, and doesn't give
much sense of continuing operations. Movement and combat have a strong
Risk-like aspect to them, and I don't know if that can remain
interesting over a 40-turn game. 

That said, it's nice to see a game on a topic that to my knowledge
hasn't been previously covered. And it's simple enough to be taught to a
non-gamer in a few minutes. So, with a few caveats, a nice effort on an
obscure topic.