So, I wandered over to the game store—the great Game Parlor of Woodbridge VA—and waited for the gamers who were scheduled to arrive at 6:30. I had with me my brand-new copy of Metropolys, which I had bought at GP the day before. When the gamers came, it was clear that they were going to play Axis and Allies—the new, gargantuan edition—instead of my kind of game, so I left them to it. Ah well.
This meant one thing: Gaming in my motel room. Quieter, anyway. I chose Soviet Dawn for the evening's entertainment.
It's a solo game, where you're the Bolsheviks seeking to establish the new Soviet state. You do this by protecting Moscow against six approaching armies, and by improving your geopolitical image until the world has to accept your legitimacy. If you can hold off the hordes until the end of the game, that's a military victory. If you win international legitimacy, that's a political victory.
Cards drive gameplay. Each card has several parts. It says which of the threatening armies advance, what special events come into play, and how many things you can do on your turn. There are three kinds of action. You can launch an offensive against one of the opposing armies—a mere roll-to-hit. You can roll to improve your international prestige—another die roll; this gets harder as you advance up the track. Finally, you can call Trotsky in and attempt a reorganization of the Red Army, which will provide one or another advantage—temporary or permanent.
Lots of the flavor of the war makes it into the game. You have to eliminate the Tsar before the Eastern armies reach Yekaterinburg. You can fortify Petrograd; you can get armored trains, you can choose whether to accept the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk or keep on fighting...and on and on. There's a lot of flavor bolted onto a simple framework. (The cards also have copious flavor text, which I always appreciate.)
There are as many turns (potentially) as there are cards in the game. Both of my games last night ended early.
The first one, I signed Brest-Litovsk the first card, which shut down the Baltic front for the time being, but activated the Allies, who proceeded to march down from Murmansk. I tried to beat them back, but every card moved them forward and my die rolls were hopeless, and they reached the last square before Moscow. Meanwhile, I attempted to get myself moving up the political track, but with a signal lack of success. I was eventually forced by a card to roll for Political Dissent. This is an interesting feature, whereby you can either lose a space, go nowhere, or turn the dissent around and actually move up the track. I rolled to move down, which in my case meant that my regime had lost all legitimacy inside and outside Russia, and I was put down in a bloody counterrevolution, which was aided by the Allied forces. I lasted six cards, or somewhat less than five minutes.
Let's try that again, shall we?
The next one, I decided, on a whim, to have Trotsky work his magic reorganizing the army. You need a six to do this, and lo! a six was rolled. Appropriately, I got the armored train, which aids in offensives. I would repeat this trick about six more times during the game (sometimes with positive modifiers), and I scored on no fewer than four rolls. It was magical. In an attempt to help balance the scale from the last game, I also got some big winners on the Political track. I kept all the advancing armies at arm's length for most of the game—thank you, Trotsky—and in the end I got a bounce from a Dissent roll and won widespread international recognition. A glorious victory, at the highest level of achievement!
And y'know, that seems about right to me. Why should we assume that the historical outline was the most likely? A few lucky breaks in 19170-1918, and the Bolsheviks go down in history as some overgrown Decembrists. And if Trotsky and other experts had been in charge of the army from Day One...the whole thing might have been wrapped up like a bow in three years or so, like my second game. An effective military could have given the state some vital diplomatic breathing room.
In other words, it all seemed like a logical narrative. And it was a narrative. I prize good storytelling in all wargames, especially solitaire ones, and this delivers in spades. I was cheering on my forces, grieving their defeats, and I have every intention to pull this game out many, many more times. I also look forward to trying their Israeli War of Independence game, even if (or perhaps because) it has less chrome. This is a magnificent solitaire game. It doesn't look like a “real” wargame, with just a few counters, a map that is essentially six marker tracks, and cards with more flavor text than in-game information. And maybe it's not a real wargame, but it is an extremely good Something.
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