Cards on the table, I have played Nevsky twice as of writing this piece. Normally my First Impressions are literally that, reactions to having played the game once. I played the first scenario in Nevsky and afterward wasn’t sure what exactly to say about the experience, so after a few days I set up the second scenario and started playing. It’s not that Nevsky isn’t a fascinating game – it is, and we’ll get to that – it was just that it has taken me longer to digest it. Part of this delay is probably due to Nevsky particular design decisions, but part of it is definitely down to me and my own obsessions.
The end state of my first game of Nevsky. At the end of the summer campaigning season the Rus managed to just eke out a victory as both sides rampaged each others territory largely unopposed.
As should be apparent to anyone who has been following my posts up to now – I’m completely obsessed with the Middle Ages, and I’m also pretty obsessed with wargames. Unfortunately for me, medieval history is not the most popular topic in wargaming. While I’ve been enjoying my time with the Men of Iron series, hex and counter recreations of medieval battles isn’t really my main area of interest. I’m not really a ‘battles guy’. I’m interested in medieval battles because I’m interested in almost everything medieval, but I’m far more interested in how the battle came to be than I am in which flank did what first. Basically, I’m more interested in strategic and operational level tactics. That’s where Nevsky comes in – it helps to fill the really quite large void in operational medieval wargames. Nevsky, and the Levy and Campaign system generally, is exactly the kind of game I’ve been waiting for, and I think that’s part of what has made it so challenging to get my thoughts in order after having played it for the first time.
Game 2: The end of the first Levy phase. The Teutonic Knights begin with control of Pskov and the Rus must fight to reclaim their lost territory.
A lucky event draw for the Rus - chaos in Denmark causes Knud & Abel to leave the board, leaving Danish Estonia unguarded.
Before I go on to talk about the experience of playing Nevsky, I want to give due credit to Jean Michel Grosjeu, who’s excellent YouTube videos taught me how to play. If you’re at all interested, you should definitely watch them, they’re excellent. You can view the first one by clicking here. I read the rulebook after watching the videos. Nevsky’s rulebook is well put together and easy to reference but having the experience of watching two full rounds played with Jean Michel Grosjeu explaining everything to me as it happened made it all click much faster than it normally would have.
Nevsky is the first title in designer Volko Ruhnke’s new Levy and Campaign series and, as the name suggests, each round of Nevsky is split into two phases: Levy and Campaign. In the Levy phase you summon new lords to fight, and equip previously recruited lords with new troops, transport, and/or special abilities. Once the Levy phase is complete it’s time to campaign and discover how badly you messed up your Levy phase. You see, Nevsky is a game primarily about logistics. If your army moves or fights you have to feed them, if you can’t feed them, they lose their motivation to stay on the board and may just leave. Even if you can feed them, your commanders have only agreed to be on campaign for a certain number of turns before they just pick up all their stuff and go home. You can pay them to stick around longer – but did you remember to collect taxes before invading the other sides territory? If you didn’t you could always take an enemy city, or maybe acquire some loot by raiding, except that taking enemy cities can be a long and arduous process, and loot makes it harder to move across the board which means you’ll need more food to get where you want to go.
At the end of Winter and Gavrilo is besieged by the the Teuton Andreas while Valdemar makes an incursion into Danish Estonia. Meanwhile the traitor Yaroslav is making progress south of Novgorod.
A revolt in Prussia sends Andreas back to Riga, bringing a premature end to his siege!
Don’t get me wrong, there is fighting in Nevsky, but there’s a lot of hurdles to jump through before you can even get your armies in a position to be fighting each other. If you lose a fight your army might just pack up and go home, but even if you win a fight if can’t feed your victorious troops, they might do the same. Sometimes it may even be worth losing a battle because your opponent has no food, and thus is in no position to fight. If you just show up and run away in the first round that could be enough! The calculations surrounding combat in Nevsky are really unlike anything I’ve played before.
With Andreas out of the way Gavrilo moves on Pskov. After Gavrilo begins his siege, the Rudolf van Kessel intercepts and a battle takes place outside the city’s gates. (I later realised that one of these siege markers was illegal and had to backpedal on it, but it had no effect on the game’s eventual result). Meanwhile Valdemar continues to make progress in Estonia - successfully taking his first city.
Because of all of these logistical challenges, I would recommend learning the game with the second scenario in the book rather than the first. You see, the types of transport you need vary by season in Nevsky – in summer you have ships, boats, and carts, while in the winter you only have sleds, and in the muddy spring ‘rasputista’ you can only transport food by water. The default starting point is in the summer, which immediately drops you into a game where you have to balance three different modes of transport. However, the second scenario starts with a winter campaign, where rivers and roads are interchangeable, ships are unusable, and all you need are sleds. It’s a little bit less to juggle as you try and grasp the game’s basics. The campaign then carries on into the spring so you can learn about ships and boats once you’ve played a few rounds already.
Despite the superior quality of Rudolf’s troops Gavrilo manages to emerge from the battle victorious thanks to a great string of luck. Unfortunately his forces were significantly diminished in victory, making it impossible for him to storm Pskov.
There are also fewer activations in winter. In the campaign round you get a number of activations based on the season – who you activate when is determined by a deck of cards you assemble before the campaign begins, locking you in to a certain order of play. In winter it’s only 4 cards, so again you have less to do and a little less to worry about. It’s also a shorter amount of time, so once you realise how badly you’ve messed everything up you won’t have to live with those mistakes for quite as long!
I think Nevsky does an admirable job of capturing the nightmarish logistics of medieval campaigning while also embracing the unique elements of Baltic warfare – particularly in its use of winter campaigns and the rasputista. I really look forward to playing it competently someday. So far, I’m doing well if I successfully finish a campaign turn with all my armies fed and located approximately where I intended to put them. There is clearly plenty of depth to this game, and I look forward to exploring it!
The titular Alexander Nevsky enters the game and rushes to Pskov to help, but Gavrilo leaves after the first storm attempt and Alexander is no more successful despite his superior forces. Meanwhile, Valdemar's service is almost over stalling his invasion. Heinrich sails along the north coast taking ports as he goes and Yaroslav has seized another Rus city. In the end Aelxander’s arrival is too little too late and the Rus are defeated.
Recommended Reading:
The Northern Crusades by Eric Christiansen
The Teutonic Knights by William Urban
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