Columbia has been famous for their block wargames since the 1970s, but in recent memory none of have loomed quite as large as the series of four games card driven games starting with Hammer of the Scots in 2002, and including Crusader Rex, Julius Caesar, and Richard III. I played my first game from this line a little while ago, and you can read my first impressions here (https://www.stuartellisgorman.com/blog/first-impressions-richard-iii-by-columbia-games). In the intervening period, and with many thanks to the amazing digital implementations of these games on the website Rally the troops (https://rally-the-troops.com/), I have been able to play all four of these games and I have put my thoughts down on each of them below. Hopefully this will be interesting or enlightening, but at the very least you can tell me why I’m wrong and how your favourite is really the best one.
Before we get on to the games themselves, an overview of the features shared across these games is in order. They are all block wargames – meaning that the player’s pieces are wooden blocks with unit information only on the side which faces their controller. This creates a simple but effective fog of war where my opponent can tell how many units I have and where they are on the map but doesn’t know which specific units those are – and crucially doesn’t know their strength. Play is determined by playing action cards – there are generally two kinds of cards, those with action points and those with special events. Action points allow the movement of armies across the board while events usually allow for a limited action that breaks the game rules, such as moving units further than normally allowed or allowing units to recover strength.
Combat occurs when both players’ blocks are in the same location and is resolved in the same way across all games in this series. Units have a combat rating in the form of a letter and a number, e.g. A2 or B3. They also have a strength, which simultaneously functions as their health value. Combat is resolved in alphabetical order, all As then all Bs and so on, with the defender going first. The active player’s units roll dice equal to their current strength, and hit if they roll lower than the number in their combat rating – so if they are combat rating 2 they hit on 1s and 2s. Hits are applied to the enemy block with the highest strength, and are resolved by rotating the block 90 degrees for each hit. It’s simple yet elegant, and one of the defining features of this system.
There is also generally a special Winter round or phase after all the cards have been played in which blocks must either return home or be dismissed if they exceed local supply limits. Blocks then recover some strength before a new hand of cards is dealt and another round begins. These traits are shared across all of the games discussed below, but there are also significant differences which makes each one a unique experience. Read on to hear my thoughts on each of these games after a minimum of two (and in some cases a good bit more!) plays with each.
Hammer of the Scots
Scotland is inconveniently narrow, I would like to request that geology implement a patch to fix that. On a more serious note, the art on Hammer of the Scots cards is excellent.
I’ve heard from quite a few people that Hammer of the Scots is their favourite of this series, and I can see why. Hammer of the Scots is a great game, and I’ve enjoyed my time with it, but there are enough little nagging issues with it that I can’t quite say that it’s my favourite. Before I get all nit-picky about it, let’s start with the good!
Hammer of the Scots does a good job of bridging together the wars of Edward I, most notably his fights with William Wallace, with the later conflict between Edward II and Robert the Bruce into a single game. With one set of mechanics, it reasonably effectively evokes both settings, including an interesting attempt to model the challenges for the Scots with picking a king late in the war. Historically, after declaring himself king Robert Bruce somewhat notoriously stabbed one of his main rivals to death in a church, an act for which he was excommunicated for the rest of his life. He followed this up with a campaign of fairly heinous ravaging and mass murder in the lands of Galloway to punish his enemies. That is to say that the selection of a new Scottish king, particularly when current king John Balliol was alive but in exile, was a decision that was quite contentious at the time. Hammer of the Scots does an interesting job of trying to model this, by making the Scottish king an amazingly powerful piece but selecting any of the three potential candidates for king will cause defections from the Scottish side. My only real fault with this as system is that in my experience with the game it doesn’t really come up very often. This may be the bias in the games I played, but rarely did my games that started with Wallace last long enough to see a new king crowned, while the later scenarios start with a new king already on the throne.
Speaking of factional splintering, I love how Scottish nobles immediately defect if defeated in battle. They show up as one strength on the other player’s side – unlikely to contribute to the fight but still a problem to be managed. Since the goal of the game is to control nobles, whenever you send nobles into battle you are risking VPs and once a battle turns against you things can snowball very quickly. I think this really captures the fickle nature of medieval alliances, and in particular how easily kings and lords would forgive someone for fighting against them in the past as long as they’ll fight alongside them now. Similarly, I love that if during the winter the block returns home to find enemy soldiers waiting for them than they immediately defect again – those fickle Scottish nobles!
The combat in Hammer of the Scots is interesting because it is very attrition focused. You can heal your blocks some during the Winter phase, which happens every 5 turns, and also potentially recruit new blocks but at only one health. This means that you have to be very careful in picking your fights, and most rounds will only see one or two really big fights. There are potentially a lot of rounds in Hammer of the Scots and that makes sense given how cautious you need to be to play effectively. It also adds a lot of tension to the fog of war inherent to this kind of block game – you really want to know if those blocks are at full strength or if they’re still hurting from last season’s campaign, but you can’t quite remember!
That’s the good, let’s move on to the less good. While I think the mechanics of Hammer of the Scots work well in capturing warfare during the Edward I and Edward II phases of the war, I don’t think the transition between them is particularly elegant. There was seven years between the death of Edward I and Edward II’s disastrous invasion of Scotland that resulted in his defeat at Bannockburn. During that seven years there was basically a fully blown civil war between the Bruce faction and their enemies. I think in theory Hammer of the Scots has the potential to replicate this, but in practice I don’t think it does a very good job. Now, this is being kind of nit-picky, Hammer of the Scots is a fairly simple wargame, not an attempt at simulation. However, I think there is more potential there in the systems that Hammer of the Scots has established, and I just wish the game was split into three phases – with a Scottish civil war bridging the two – instead of just the two.
The thing I don’t really like about Hammer of the Scots is the map. There are parts of it I really like –it’s quite pretty – but there’s very little room to manoeuvre and games can get a bit bogged down if one side establishes a large presence around Menteith and the other player has to find a way to leverage them out. That on its own wouldn’t be too bad, but because Hammer of the Scots is so attrition focused, it can result in one player doing a big attack, failing, and then spending the rest of the round playing very conservatively so that they can heal up over the winter before trying again. I think more naval movement options that made it easier to move between the upper and lower halves of the board would have opened it up and made for a more interesting game. As it is there’s one event card that allows naval movement and there’s no guarantee it will even show up in a given round so you can’t really plan around it. It’s not a huge deal, and I’m sure some people like the map, but it was probably the part of the game that I disliked the most.
I have mixed feelings about how Hammer of the Scots models the Scottish rulers. William Wallace and the Scottish King are both A3 blocks in a game without a lot of A blocks. This means that they have the potential of killing an isolated block before they even have a chance of attacking. This is very powerful and means that effective use of Wallace/King is essential to winning the game. This is interesting, especially in the later scenario when losing your King can cause you to lose the game. I enjoy the juxtaposition between having a piece that you want to keep no matter what but also have to risk in battle to win. That said, sometimes it feels like the Scottish strategy can hinge a little too much on these blocks and I would have liked to see more alternative strategies – although maybe that’s just my limited experience with the game.
Overall, I like Hammer of the Scots, it’s a spectacular game that does a lot with a little and if the theme of Anglo-Scottish war really interests you then you absolutely should play it.
Crusader Rex
The layout of Crusader Rex’s map is very interesting and it does a good job of replicating how intertwined the Crusader Stats and their Muslim neighbors were in terms of their position. Attacks could come from anywhere.
My first game of Crusader Rex was probably the worst experience I had with this series of games in my plays so far. I feel a little bad saying that, because my opponent was very friendly and happy to offer my advice since I was new to the game, but he was much more experienced, and my absolute obliteration was not particularly enjoyable. My consolation prize is that my Crusaders did about as well as their historical counterparts – we finished the game with Antioch, Tripoli, and Acre still in Christian hands and that was about it.
I had really expected that Crusader Rex would be my favourite in the series because the Crusades I by far the period in history covered by these games that I am most interested in – and it has siege warfare! I’m always interested in how games model siege warfare. It was such a major component of medieval warfare and one that is often very hard to make entertaining. Unfortunately, my love for this game was not to be. My experience with my second game was much more positive and I can see why for some people this their favourite is, but for me there’s enough that bothers me about Crusader Rex that I can’t say I truly love it.
Let’s start with the good. I really like how Crusader Rex models the arriving of the participants of the Third Crusade. You randomly draw reinforcements from a face down pile and while Crusader lords can be placed directly onto the board, the French, German, and English crusaders must all be placed into boxes for their kingdom along the side of the board. Each kingdom has three boxes, and only when you have filled these boxes can you begin to move the blocks onto the board via the sea ports (or in the case of the Germans via the roads along the top of the board). This is a great little system that builds tension in the game, and also easily represents how Saladin knew that crusading kings were coming but could not predict how long it would take them to arrive. It’s a lovely bit of randomness and I was hugely impressed with it.
The design of the map also has a lot going for it. The Crusader States were spread over a relatively thin line of coast and were potentially easily isolated from each other by the loss of just a few essential fortifications. The map of Crusader Rex does a great job of making you never quite feel safe and allowing for elaborate flanking attacks or bluffs where you make it look like you’re heading one way only to pivot elsewhere. It makes it very hard to predict your opponents strategy which, when combined with the inherent fog of war of block games, makes for a really interesting positioning game with a lot of strategic depth. I think this aspect of Crusader Rex gives it the greatest potential depth of any of the games I’m discussing here.
While I initially struggled with the game, as I got a better hold on the strategy, and I started to have a better time. That, and once the members of the Third Crusade started showing up, I gained access to better troops and was able to actually execute a few semi-competent campaigns. This is probably the game in the series with the most tactical depth, and as a result the one that most severely punishes misplays. If I sat down and played this game four or five times and began to grasp the strategy better I would probably enjoy it a lot more – or maybe if I just played against people on the same skill level as myself – however, there are other games in this series I enjoy more already so I’m not sure about giving Crusader Rex much more of my time in the hopes of liking it more.
My issues with Crusader Rex are not particularly complex. I’m going to (try and) lightning round through a few of them, and then talk about why I don’t like how it models sieges – not because that’s my biggest gripe with the game (it is not) but because I have the most interesting stuff to say about it. So, with that aside, my top 4 things I didn’t particularly like about Crusader Rex:
1. I found it to be a bit too fiddly. Blocks defending in sieges can take half its – rotating 45 degrees – which is something I kept forgetting and also feels like it undermines the elegance of the rotating blocks to track damage a bit. Both sides have special rules, Crusader knights can Charge, and Muslim cavalry can Harry, which is another two combat options to track. The last round of the game is the Winter Round and no battles can happen in this round unless you play the Winter Campaign card. One of the things I love about this series is its simplicity and Crusader Rex feels like it adds a bit more complexity than I want without a clear advantage – in my opinion anyway.
2. The game calls the Muslims ‘Saracens’. Please do not do this in your games. I know medieval authors did it – but when has that ever been a reason to do something? It’s a term with a long and problematic history, and we have strictly better alternatives. Crusader Rex is hardly unique in this offence, but that does not make me less annoyed by it. Particularly since his game is modelling specifically the opposition of Saladin to the Third Crusade, why not just call the Muslim side the Ayyubid player? There are plenty of good options that don’t use a problematic term for a group of people who are often misrepresented in western media.
3. I hate the point-to-point road movement. Having the blocks on the cities made it harder to remember where they were – and I’m already intimately familiar with the Holy Land c.1187, I can’t imagine trying to locate cities if you’ve never looked at a map of this region before. The difference between solid line roads and the hashed line roads caught me out on several occasions, my poor eyesight foiling my strategy. I can appreciate there are some game differences between point to point and area movement, but from the perspective ease of parsing the state of the game I much prefer the area movement with clear coloured borders of Hammer of the Scots and Richard III.
4. Winter is very punishing in Crusader Rex – much more so than in Hammer of the Scots. This feels very weird to me, because winter campaigning was way more common in the Holy Land than in Scotland. In particular, the game doesn’t seem to allow you to maintain a siege over the winter round despite this being very common in Crusader warfare – the Siege of Acre which is directly within the scope of Crusader Rex’s setting lasted two whole years. Before that, the Siege of Antioch during the First Crusade famously lasted over a winter. I also don’t particularly like how it divides territories between Muslims and Crusaders and supply works differently between the two. I get that this probably works better for gameplay, but it paints a picture of two very divided populations when in practice the people living in Crusader lands were very similar to those living in Muslim ruled lands - only the ruling class really differed.
My annoyance with siege warfare is relatively minor compared to those outlined above, but I do think it largely fails as a model of Crusade era siege warfare. Storming castles is commonplace and in general it seems to favour the attacker. Sure, the defenders get the benefit of taking half hits (which, as mentioned, I don’t love) but the attackers barely seem to struggle finding able bodies to persecute the siege and swapping injured attacking units out for fresh bodies is relatively straightforward. Sieges were massive, complicated affairs that were far more likely to go badly than they were to go well. In Crusader Rex the defending blocks all have to roll for siege attrition – but why not the attackers? Dysentery ravaged besieging armies in the Middle Ages while a well-stocked and fortified position could happily hold out for months without a bother.
It also seems to reverse the relative power of larger citadels. Historically, a bigger city was harder to take, whereas in Crusader Rex it seems to be the opposite. Since you can only storm a fortification with a number of units equal to the number that it can hold – so for a small castle 1 block, while for a large city like Acre you could use 3 blocks – what you actually get is a situation where if the defender hasn’t put a full garrison of 3 blocks in their city you can outnumber them as the attacker. In reality, undertaking a major siege of a city like Acre would have been much harder than attacking a small castle. Castle and city walls were force multipliers – a smaller garrison had a significant advantage holding out against a larger army. The decisions in Crusader Rex make sense from a playability perspective, but I do think it inverts the historical reality of the challenges in medieval sieges.
Sieges were slow and tedious, which is why historically Saladin successfully took so many Crusader fortresses by offering generous terms of surrender to anyone inside – basically if Saladin’s huge army showed up outside your castle, you could fight to the death, or you could just pack your things and walk away. Many Crusaders chose the latter. This caused problems down the line, though, as Saladin’s attack on Tyre may have failed in part because the city had been reinforced by all the fleeing Christian soldiers. A mechanic that let you cede the ground and return of a friendly city would better reflect this – instead of forcing you to fight to the death.
I appreciate that siege warfare is hard to model in an engaging way – it was slow, horrible, and often not very eventful. I’m just not particularly impressed with how Crusader Rex handles it. I think it just makes it a slightly fiddly form of field combat instead of something distinctly its own.
That all having been said, I do think Crusader Rex is a fascinating game and my historical nit-picks need not be taken as gospel. Games are not simulations, at best they are models, but they only really succeed if they are fun to play. I think my knowledge of warfare of this specific period undermines my enjoyment of the game – if you took the rules of Crusader Rex but transplanted them to a different period of medieval warfare, I think I would like it more.
I would recommend against playing Crusader Rex as your first game in the series. It brings more complexity and a more punishing style of gameplay to the system. However, if you’ve already had a lot of fun with other games in the series than maybe give Crusader Rex a try – you might find its tactical depths and slight quirks far more endearing than I have! I suspect I haven’t seen the last of Crusader Rex either, I’ve probably got a few more games of it in me because there is a lot there that is interesting, even if it’s not exactly a brilliant representation of crusading warfare.
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar’s map of the Mediterranean. This is probably my least favourite of the maps, but I do think it’s quite pretty. On the cards, the number in the top left is how many moves you get, and the number of circles on the banner is how many levies. It’s a great use of graphic design I think.
I was the least excited about playing Julius Caesar because I’m not particularly interested in classical era warfare, and even within that period I’m really not interested in the campaigns of Julius Casear. That said, for completeness’ sake and because I’m interested in the series as a whole, I decided I should play it at least twice. I’m not sure if you could exactly call my first experience with it a full game – I lost pretty decisively as Caesar in less than two rounds as I was unable to push Pompey back from his starting position and if you don’t get a strong aggressive start as Caesar, you pretty much immediately lose the game. I don’t particularly like this feature, especially as the Roman armies are much more ponderous than in other games in the series with attacks having to come form adjacent locations and many more blocks being C or D rated for combat. That said, familiarity with the game would certainly remove some of these difficulties and I can see why people would like it. My second game I played as Pompey, and I saw what a good Caesar strategy looks like – also losing decisively pretty early on in the game. Let’s start with the great and move on to the less good.
The thing I love most about Julius Caesar is that the cards are dual purpose – they have a number of movement points and a number of Levy points on them. I kind of wish more games in the series had done this or something similar. This allows cards to be much more variable – for example you can have a card that only lets you move one army but lets you levy 4 times, while another might let you move lots of armies but gets you relatively few new units. This makes for more interesting choices when picking which card to play. In Hammer of the Scots especially I would find myself dealt a hand of just numbered cards and while there is still a lot of choice there, it could feel a little underwhelming if 4 of my 5 cards were 2’s. Every card in my hand in Julius Caesar was interesting and each round I thought about which one to play.
I also really liked how you are dealt one extra card at the start of the round and discard down to your hand size, giving you just a little bit more control over your actions that round. I can appreciate that how troops were levied varied across time so the Roman recruitment represented by the levy actions on the cards may not transport well to medieval Scotland, but I’m tempted to play all my games in this series with the deal one extra card and discard down rule. The combination of the extra capacity of the cards and the small role I had in selecting my cards also sometimes had me kicking myself late in a round because I kept an event when I really wanted that extra movement instead.
Now for what I didn’t like. Julius Caesar has the same movement along roads between cities that Crusader Rex had, and I like it even less here because controlling cities is how you get Victory Points. When your blocks are directly covering the victory point markers you need to track to win, that’s not great graphic design. I appreciate that Rally the Troops tracks the VP for me, but I frequently had to click the interface button to remove the blocks from the board to see which locations even gave VPs in the first place. So much of this game relies on the positioning around these cities and tracking control of them, which makes not knowing which cities are worth what a major problem. I appreciate that if you’ve played this game a dozen times this won’t matter at all since, you’ll know the board by heart, but for a new player it was very difficult. At least Rally the Troops lets me switch the block interface off – playing in person if I asked my opponent to move their blocks so I could see the city it would kind of telegraph my plans a bit.
I feel like Julius Caesar has something of a mismatch in terms of how sudden its win conditions are versus how ponderous the gameplay is. Victory can come quickly for one side as they sweep in and secure several key cities, but at the same time it feels like armies are slow and that the mechanics encourage a slow building of armies before engaging in crushing battles. It felt to me like the levy system and fact that you can only attack from one spot away encouraged a form of gameplay more like Hammer of the Scots - careful and brutal attrition until one side emerges victorious. However, the actual win condition is holding territory, more like Crusader Rex, and effective strategies seem to make effective use of naval movement and event cards to sweep in and grab unprotected territory before your opponent can build up their forces and stop you. Neither of my games lasted very long and in both cases I felt like I’d been out-positioned and we did very little actual fighting. This may not be a problem for some, and it could just be a mismatch between what I thought the game was versus what it actually is, but I think I’d prefer this game if it took the more attrition-heavy focus. I wanted to watch Roman legions punch each other up and instead I just found myself floundering in a game that was more about movement than battle.
That all having been said, Julius Caesar is definitely an interesting game, and I can understand why some people love it – especially if you prefer ancient Rome to the Middle Ages. My lack of interest in the wars of the Julius Caesar means that I’m not particularly interested in playing this game more. If I’m going to dig deep into a game in this series that I’ve struggled with, it’s going to be Crusader Rex and not Julius Caesar.
Richard III
I am in love with this map, but I have to admit I find the card art a little uninspired.
I’ve kept Richard III for last because it’s my favourite of the series – and that fact kind of shocks me because besides Julius Caesar the War of the Roses is the subject covered by these games that interests me the least. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the War of the Roses alright, but I find the general obsession with Richard III (the king not the game) to be weird. Few monarchs bore me more than Richard III and that initially put me off the idea of this game. That changed when I realised that you start at the beginning of the War of the Roses and Richard may never show up. A game where I can play Edward IV? Now I’m interested. I feel like by now we’ve really dug through the specifics of how these games work so let’s just cut to what I like about Richard III and to what I don’t think totally works!
The good stuff first, of course! I love Richard III’s map – it’s a full map of England and Wales and it leaves open tons of room for manoeuvring your armies and engaging in elaborate positioning wars with your opponent. You don’t feel funnelled into a few points like in Hammer of the Scots and the amphibious movements are a lot simpler than Julius Caesar which leaves open tons of options for sudden and exciting repositions.
I love how Richard III handles recruitment. You can spend an action point to muster a full-strength lord in their holdings across the board – assuming its not enemy controlled. This makes it really easy to place strong armies all over the board – but then you need to spend action points dragging all of them together into a coherent army. Then, in between Campaigns everyone goes home, and you have to do it again! I love this push and pull of trying to get your army together and also trying to pounce on isolated enemy lords to kill them off – since having more lords in England is the win condition between Campaigns any enemy lord you can kill is a plus. This also gives you more of a choice of how to spend your action points – in general in the other games they just let you move, but in Richard III you have to decide between consolidating/moving your armies or adding more blocks to the board.
I also really enjoy how much resets between Campaigns in Richard III. I appreciate this won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I feel more comfortable engaging in risky plays – especially late in a round – since so much will go back to normal once it’s all done. I also think this neatly captures history since there were generally many years between phases in the War of the Roses, so while lords were killed at an astonishing rate by the next time things started the deceased’s son would be grown up and fighting (in most cases anyway).
Now for the less good. After a few more plays I’m still not wildly impressed by the Treachery mechanic. I have used it successfully a few times now and it is powerful when it happens, but I much prefer the simplicity of Hammer of the Scots system where defeated lords betray you. I think if Richard III adapted that system to the handful of treacherous nobles it would be a more interesting game.
I also wish the game offered a few more systems for making it harder for the Yorkists to retain the throne if they take it – it feels a little too hard as Lancaster to retake the throne should you lose it in the First or Second Campaign. I think a few more elements like the Rebel that switch sides to the Pretender regardless of faction would have been interesting, and possibly make the game better able to replicate the reality of the house of Lancaster losing the throne but eventually winning it back in dramatic fashion. For example, Henry Tudor’s block feels a bit weak, making him more powerful would give Lancaster a strong late game push potential. I also think there should be a mechanism whereby the Kingmaker could potentially defect to Lancaster if the Yorkists take the throne, after all that is what he did, and it was the Yorkists who killed him in battle not the Lancastrians.
Conclusion
To a certain extent all of the above is basically nit picking. This is a great series of games and, with the possible exception of Julius Caesar, if you had any of these games set up and asked me for a game I’d almost certainly say yes. I also think it’s a real testament to the series that they manage to achieve a remarkable differences in how each game plays while still ensuring that if you know how to play one of them you can basically play any of them. It’s a very impressive feat hardly seen in wargaming, and my hat is off to the designers, Tom Dalgliesh, Jerry Taylor, Grant Dalgliesh, and Justin Thompson. Making a series of very similar games where people can still argue about which one is their favourite/the best is a stunning achievement and they all deserve immense kudos for it.
The legacy of these designs extends well beyond just these games, and even beyond just Columbia Games. I have two games currently sitting on my shelf that took direct inspiration from these titles. One of these is Worthington Publishing’s Robin Hood, a game that adapts the core idea of the Columbia block wargames to medieval highway robbery. The other is This War Without an Enemy, a game about the English Civil War which adds new layers of complexity to the Columbia system while still keeping its core elements recognisable. I have yet to play either of these games, but I am very much looking forward to trying out both of them!
Currently sitting at the top of my pile for when I can next get some games in with a real life opponent.
I’ve been sucked down something of a block wargame rabbit hole and I’m now fairly obsessed with this system, and very excited to try other variations on games that use the same block-based fog of war in new and exciting ways. The only real problem I’ve had with these games is that block wargames are not particularly suitable for solo play – since so much of the game is in that fog of war and the manoeuvring of armies you lose a lot when playing both sides. Some people don’t mind this, so your mileage may vary, but for me I have not been particularly tempted to try it out. Because of this Rally the Troops has been an excellent resource for playing games that otherwise I’d be lucky to get to the table a few times a year. I’d still prefer to be playing them in person, pushing blocks across the table myself, but this excellent digital implementation is far superior to not playing the games at all!