From: Roberto Chiavini <mumaye@libero.it>
Subject: One review

Dutch Revolt (Microgame Coop)

Interesting but boring in the end this peculiar game on the Dutch revolt
against Spanish domination in the second part of the XVI century, with
typical flaws of a DTP design (flat graphics for the counters, but
decent enough for the map part), but also the aces that such a design
has for each historical curiosity buff out there (a simple, but
effective system, recreating the long, tedious struggle among the dying
superpower and the bold birthing republic). 

The heart of the system are the random events chits that adds greatly to
the enjoyment of the game (but detracts from the solitaire playability
of this design, not barring it, anyway – I've played it solitaire
without subtracting much of the fun from it). 

Sequence of play is made by a treasury phase (both players sum up the
value of each province they control to get the total points they may
spend to buy combat units (pikemen, cavalry and flottillas) and
missionaries), a religious phase (where missionaries are used to
influence the religious credo of each province in a scale moving from
strongly protestant to strongly catholic), a movement phase (pikemen
move one area, cavalry two areas and may move through enemy controlled
areas), siege phase (the only combat phase in the game, that normally
results in no effect in the control of the area, if you are not able to
convert it to your side) and a political phase (for the Dutch player
only, that each turn gets 1 point for each rural area, 2 point for each
developed area and 3 points for each urban area he controls). 

As the Spanish player is the first to get all this phase, he is forced
to act very cautiously, risking otherwise to be invaded by the Dutch
player that may move his units after the other player has finished is
movement. He has also the great advantage to be able to use offensively
each strenght point he has, as they are buyed again each turn (so there
is no advantage to mantain a unit from one turn to another). So, most of
the Spanish offensive are easily contrasted by the Dutch player, that
normally has also more treasure points to spend than his adversary. As
several of the random events are also favorable to the rebels, it stands
clear enough that the funnier side to play is the Dutch one. On the
other hand, he is forced to get 400 points to win the game. In my test,
the Dutch player had 39 points at the end of the third turn, so he was
going to get a compleat victory into 30/33 of the 40 turns (and I drew 3
times the Atrocities event that subtracts 5 points to the Dutch player,
playing it for the Spaniards), but I didn't have the strength to
continue with the game. 

This is not a really bad design, but the situation is a boring one,
especially to play solitaire, but I think that it is not much of a
confrontation even in a head to head contest. Certainly, it is a very
long one. Definitely too long for my tastes. 

I rate this game 5 in a 1-10 scale (even if the design in itself it's
more interesting and probably worth at least a 6 ½)