Alan Snider - Jul 19, 2005 11:02 am (#10348 Total: 10504) On the Playtest Table: Adam Starkweather's "The Devil's Cauldron"; and announcing the "Northern Knights Wargaming Group" in Vancouver, Canada with a retail store of it's own at http://www.stalag17wargames.com/ GAMENIGHT, July 17th: We had 2 new guys show up to join the Northern Knights group...Brent Louie and Rick White. So, we decided to break open AP's "Soldier Raj" for a bit of multi-player action. The game essentially pit the British vs. various minor powers, Indian "tribes"(?) and European forces. I took the Brits, Brent took the Indians in the far south, Rick occupied the middle of the country, and Terence Co occupied coastal areas adjacent to the Brits. It did not take long for me to discover that playing Soldier Raj is a lot like 4 grown men having a fist-fight in a closet...There is nowhere to be safe, and everyone will dogpile on the player most set to claim the bulk of VP's. The VP scoring is pretty cool, as one has to exceed ones' VP threshold (each sides' is different) and the side which exceeds their threshold by the MOST wins... This game spanned three years (1759-1761?), and the game has 3-month turns for a total of 12 turns. It only took us 5 hours to completely set the game up, learn it, and have a complete playthrough. The action was fast a furious as one attempts to expand ones' territory without spreading oneself too thin...this simply invites attack and makes it too easy for your opponents. The Brits started with their VP threshold already exceeded. so they were a natural target. I managed to hold off most attacks, but gradually the tag-teaming started and I lost Bombay part way through the 2nd year. I then concentrated on holding the balance of my territories on th eastern coast...This proved difficult as Terence managed to rip into the Brits on a few occasions, and this simply set up favorable attack situations for Rick's forces in central India. The game continued along the path I've describd above for much of the game, but Brent did make a late run with his southern Indian forces to take a bit out Terences armies. It rally did help that Brent got the Portugeuse on his side near the end of year 2. When the dust settled, Terence managed to hang on for the victory, with Rick in 2nd, and the Brits in 3rd. The Brits having such a high VP threshold needed to get on the favorable side of more battles and overall being more aggressive. They did hold their 10 VP's..but that was their xact threshold number. The consensus amongst the group was that thsi is a good lite multiplayer game which stresses possibilities rather than simulation. This is something much easier to take in a multi-player game. For the most part, I like my games to have more history in them.