Over the course of several months, I led a group of six players through the Grand Campaign scenario from Europa Universalis: The Price of Power. For 4-6 hours a day, every other Sunday, we would convene around the gaming table, remind ourselves of where we left off, and get to the business of running the great nations of Europe in the 16th century.

All six players were acquainted with Europa Universalis IV (EUIV), the massive computer game that served as source material for this massive board game. Several of them had put thousands of hours into exploring its nooks and crannies. This isn't, I am told, unusual. EUIV is the type of game that consumes lives. It is one of PC gaming's largest sandboxes. “I mean, it's a Paradox game,” people would say over and over, the developer's name considered enough of an explanation.

The first EU computer game, released back in 2000, was itself adapted from a 1993 board game of the same name. Given that, a modern board game adaptation feels inevitable. It also feels ludicrous. The Price of Power…

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Sewage Treatment Games – gotta love that name – provided Meeple Mountain with a prototype copy of Articles of War:  Privateer, or AoWP for short.  The game is planned for release later this year, and according to the publisher, is going to be the first in the Articles of War series.  In AoWP, each player commands 2 or 3 ships and attempts to win the most loot by sinking other players’ ships.  They can also try to board and capture other ships and add them to their fleet.

What is, or was, a privateer?  A privateer was a privately owned vessel given a commission, commonly known as a Letter of Marque, by their government to raid merchant vessels of enemy combatants.  Although the practice of authorizing privately owned ships to prey on enemy ships dates to at least the 13th century, the term privateer – which applies equally to the ship and its crew – did not come into use until the mid-17th century.  Sir Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh are perhaps the most well-known privateers in history, if not the most successful.  The 1856 Declaration of Paris effectively abolished privateering by European powers, although Prussia did flirt with it briefly during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War.

[caption id="attachment_272889" align="alignright" width="300"] Box…

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I was interested in Fire & Stone: Siege of Vienna 1683 from the moment I saw it. I wasn’t interested because of the game’s beauty, though publisher Capstone Games has come up with a gorgeous and inviting product centered around bold red and yellow wooden pieces. Nor was it because of the opportunity to explore an entry-level war game for two. I was excited by the opportunity to burn Vienna to the ground.

I’ve Seen Fire and I’ve Seen Stone

Fire & Stone is set during the Ottoman Empire’s attempted 1683 siege of the proud Austrian city, then the center of the Habsburg Empire. This was the second attempted siege of the city by Turkish forces in 150 years. One cannot help but feel that the world would be better off had they succeeded. While in reality the siege lasted for months and culminated in the Battle of Vienna, when swarms of Polish and Imperial troops joined the Viennese to rout the invaders, the game compresses things down a bit. There is no culminating battle, regardless of the outcome.

The Viennese troops start in…

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I knew the moment I saw This War Without an Enemy that I wanted to play it. Artist Nicolas Roblin’s cover, a fog-laden field with an overlain crimson cross, is a fantastic bit of work. The setting, the First English Civil War that spanned 1642–1646, didn’t exactly set my world on fire, but it seemed like the perfect theme for a heavier game to try with my roommate, who has an anglophilic streak the breadth and width of the English Channel. I’d had good experiences with the publisher, Nuts!, in the past. All signs pointed to go, and I happily went.

[caption id="attachment_251888" align="alignnone" width="768"] It's a good box! Imagine if GMT games looked this good?[/caption]

Occasionally,…

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