John R
United States
Saint Paul
Minnesota
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Hammer of the Scots After One Year
I received Hammer of the Scots as a birthday present last June and after about a year of playing, I thought a review was in order. Because of its slightly long playing time, I only got this to the table eight times, about every month and a half.
Components
Hammer of the Scots is typical Columbia Games fare. It comes in a black cardboard box with a sleeve. The sleeve has a colorful (some might say gaudy) depiction of battle. After opening the box, you’ll get a set of blue and red wooden blocks, a set of stickers to turn those blocks into units, some rather unexciting playing cards, a garish map, and a short set of rules.
As for the blocks—these are pretty high quality. I own three Columbia block games and have never seen a block that was poorly coated in paint, chipped, or cracked. These are definitely a step above the blocks found in other games, like GMT’s Commands and Colors: Ancients.
The map is functional, although I’m unsure why anyone needs a topographical map. This often makes it hard to read, especially for first time or older players, or players with poor eyesight. It’s made out of cardboard, so you’ll need a trusty poster frame or Plexi-glass to fit over the map.
The playing cards are perhaps my biggest gripe. The card backs feature Columbia’s bland logo, and the pictures on the card faces are grainy and pixilated. You’ll probably need some card sleeves too, to prevent card bending or nicking.
Rules
One of the beautiful things about most Columbia games is that the rules are almost always under ten pages. This holds true for Hammer. You can read the rules from cover-to-cover in about 30 minutes, and then set up and play a few turns. There are a few ambiguities here that I discovered in my first play or two, but these are usually ironed out pretty quickly by skimming through other sections and applying common sense. Three scenarios are presented for play. You’ll probably spend most of your time with the “Braveheart” scenario, although “The Bruce” is included, or if you want a good afternoon of gaming, try combining the two.
Gameplay
The goal of the game is to control the majority of nobles in Scotland. Each noble is a block, and acts like any other military unit. But here is where the fun comes in—when you “kill” a noble, you remove him from the board and place the exact same piece on the board, but with your color! So there are two “Bruce” nobles—one red for the English, and one blue for the Scots. The “killing” of a noble represents either his change of allegiance after capture, a dubious deal, or the death of the noble and his son’s subsequent betrayal of his father’s political beliefs. This is what makes the game stand out.
Each turn (or year) is divided into a few phases. After dealing five cards to each player, most of the year is spent laying a card, activating that number of groups on the board, and moving. Then your opponent does the same thing, and you play out any battles that result. Most cards in the deck are a 1, 2, or 3, card, but there are a few event cards. These let you do things like move by sea, raid the enemy at no cost to yourself, get free reinforcements, etc. There’s a neat twist here; if at any point you and your opponent lay down an event card at the same time, the year immediately ends. This adds a surprising tension to the card play.
Movement might seem a simple matter at first until you begin examining the board. This is an area-movement game, and each area either has black or red borders. A black border means that six units can traverse that border during your turn, while a red border means that only two units can do so, and they must halt once they reach the far edge of the border. The “highland” areas in the north have lots of red borders, which make it slow going up there. By contrast, the southern lowlands have many black borders, so players can gallop about as they please.
Battles take place in three rounds, with the attacker retreating at the top of the fourth round. All units are rated as either A, B, or C units; this indicates what order they go in during combat. After that designation is a number: 1-4. This indicates the punching power of that unit. A 3, for instance, will get hits on a 1-3 on a six-sided die. Last, each unit has a number of diamonds indicating current unit strength. Many units start at four diamonds, which means you would roll four dice for that unit. In play, we usually call units by their strength, order, and power. So a “3B3” unit has three dice of strength, goes second in combat, and hits on a 1-3.
I won’t go too heavily into detail on the combat, but you basically line up your units by their order in combat. All defending A’s roll, followed by attacking A’s, then B’s, and so on. When it comes to your subsets of units, you have the option to fight or flee. Hits are applied to the strongest enemy unit at the moment, with the owner making the decision. If a noble is killed in combat, he shows up at strength one on the enemyside, which is pretty fun. Nobles also get a bonus when defending their home territory.
After five card plays, players must go through a winter phase. Certain units must retire to the draw pool, while other hole up in castles and wait out the snow. The number of units that can winter in a region is determined mainly by the castle size (1-3). It’s pretty tight quarters in most of Scotland, so about halfway through the turn I’m usually looking around to see how I can make sure all my guys have room and board for the winter! This gives the game some nice tension, as sometimes a player must make a lunging attack so he isn’t forced to disband units. Players also can reinforce units, or set new units on the board if they have enough resources (calculated by castle size).
Another fun twist occurs in this part of the turn. Nobles have to winter in their home territory, and English-owned nobles return first. If enemy blocks are in a noble’s home territory, he switches sides at his current strength. When I play, there are always jokes when this happens, such as: “Lord Mentieth goes home, only to find WILLIAM WALLACE holding a sword to his wife’s throat. His heart now burning with patriotism, Mentieth switches sides…”
There are a few unique units. William Wallace (a.k.a. “Braveheart”) is probably the neatest. He’s an extraordinarily fast and strong unit, well-suited to hit and run attacks. He’s a Scot, of course, and if he gets trapped and killed, the Scottish ability to win is greatly reduced. When he shows up, kills a noble, and takes an area, we like to joke about that scene from Braveheart where he breaks into some guy’s house on a horse and kills him with a ball-and-chain to the face. Ouch! The English King is also powerful, though not as fast. He has the special ability to winter in Scotland, which allows him tobasically keep as many blocks with him over the winter phase in one place. This gives the English the ability to send a very large force north every second or third year. This contributes a lot to the ebb and flow of the game. The Scottish also get a contingent of French knights, some Norse ocean-raiders, and the Scottish King. This is also an incredibly powerful unit, but the Scottish must sacrifice a lot to get him out on the board.
Rule Britannia: English Strategy
The general English strategy throughout the game is pretty simple. Draw infantry units from your draw pool and get them into some nice comfy Scottish barracks. Then, when you get the English King on the board, gather a large force, head north, grab some territories, and winter. Next year, make a lunge for some fat territories, and then do it all over again the next year. Hunting and killing Wallace is also a priority, because without him it’s a lot harder for the Scots to win.
What’s nice about playing the English is that you don’t have to be too concerned with getting a lot of your infantry units killed. They just return to the draw pool anyway, so you can use them to soak up hits while your more powerful units dish out the damage.
Early on, it’s good to crush the southern Scottish rebellion and then turn your attention north. If you can keep the Scots penned up in the highlands, the game is yours.
Because they have a pretty straightforward strategy, I consider it best to give new players the English.
Scotland the Brave: Scottish Strategy
First, let me just say that I love playing the Scots. You start with two separate strongholds, one in the south and one in the north. Chances are you’ll lose the southern rebellion pretty quick, which leaves you with the highlands. Locking those up is important, but even more important is capturing and holding onto some fat territories so you can get your armies out of the draw pool and onto the board. Geographically, the highlands are great for defense, but you need to come out of them to win the game! Your sense of timing must be impeccable. Sweep into the rich lowlands too early in a given year and the English will just crush you. Go to late and you might not be able to mop up before winter comes.
Use Wallace the way he’s meant to be used—as a fast, hit-and-run unit. Because he’s an A3 and all nobles are B’s, it’s not uncommon to have him kill off a noble without taking a scratch. Commit him carefully to larger battles, and if you feel a battle is lost, have Wallace withdraw to fight another day.
Perhaps my favorite raiding combo is Wallace and the Norse together. Essentially, you’ll get to roll seven dice before a lone English noble gets to fire a single shot.
Knowing when to get the Scottish King into place is also key. When you do so, some of your nobles will automatically defect, so be ready to crush that rebellion immediately. It’s worth it to have him on the board, but some careful planning is needed first.
What’s Good
You can read the rules in 30 minutes, put stickers on blocks in about 15, and be playing 45 minutes after you open the box. There’s not many deep wargames that can deliver the same.
And while this game is definitely asymmetrical in terms of how the two sides play, it is not unbalanced. Each year feels pretty tense as you sally forth from winter quarters, attempt to “persuade” a few nobles to your side, and then dash back to your barracks before the snow sets in.
Several unique mechanics also make this game a winner. The whole nobles-flipping mechanic is pretty cool, and the area border limits mean that certain areas of the map quickly become hotly contested. The English King wintering rule also gives this game a nice ebb-and-flow for both sides. There will be big years when a huge English army comes roaring north and the Scots are hanging by their fingernails, and more quiet years when Wallace is raiding and the English are trying to pen him in.
What’s Bad
My only complaint is some of the graphics (mentioned above in Components) are pretty shoddy and the board is hard to look at. There are a few ambiguities that will come up when several parts of the game interact, but they are easily answered by common sense or by checking out the ConSimWorld or BoardGameGeek forums.
I’ve heard some other complaints from people I’ve played with: (Keep in mind that I tend to be the wargaming “hub” among my family and friends. I’m the only person that owns this game.)
Some don’t like the Zen-like quality of this game. It’s rather abstract, as are a lot of Columbia block games, and while the rules are pretty simple, it’s hard to master. Often new players are saying “Oh…Oh NOW I get it” in the middle of a turn, and that annoys some of them.
There are some fiddly exceptions and special rules. I don’t really consider this a true “card-driven” game, as the cards don’t contain those rules exceptions; it’s up to you to memorize them.
The reasoning behind the rules of the game can be confusing to some people. This is my brother’s complaint with most Columbia games. I have a pretty easy time reading a rulebook and understanding the “why” behind a particular rule; he’s one of those people that just feels cheated, even if the rule has been clearly explained. Some people won’t like that nobles flip sides, or that two event cards played at the same time ends a year.
Some also complain that this game feels too random because of dice, draw pools, etc. It’s my belief that this complaint is unfounded. This is not a “buckets of dice” game, though the fortunes of war sometimes go against you. My experience is that the better player will always win. As for the draw pools, I think they simulate perfectly what’s going on outside of Scotland. Sometimes the lords of England ignored the king’s call for a levy, and sometimes the Scottish people were too afraid to rebel. And there were times where the English king was sick, or fighting somewhere else, and couldn’t make it to Scotland.
A good way to circumvent these complaints is to play this with an experienced player, or have a teaching game played with hands and units visible to each player. That way, the more experienced player can walk the new player through the game and show him or her some of the common moves, interactions, etc.
Final Judgment
This is an excellent abstract intermediate-level block wargame. It has a pretty good replay factor, and it’s a game where your choices are infinitely more important than a single unit draw or die roll.
I wouldn’t consider it a good entry-level game, but a great intermediate game to purchase after playing a simple battle game like Manoeuvre, Memoir ’44, or something similar.
And it’s a game…that has a movie to go along with it! You can’t always say that, can you?
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Posted Thu Jun 11, 2009 4:29 pm
