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Review of Gothic Invasion
Blurb from the publisher: 'Gothic Invasion is a card-driven wargame, recreating the Gothic invasions in the Eastern Roman Empire around 377 AD to 382 AD. Two to five players take over the roles of the two Roman and three Goth leaders, with each faction having their own personal objective. The Goths have to plunder nine predefined empire cities before spring of 382 AD and at the same time the Romans try to prevent them.
‘Si vis pacem para bellum.’ Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus 383 AD'
What you get: Your EUR 34,99 will buy you a copy of Gothic Invasion, a one hour and a half confrontational board game for two to five players that won the Greek annual ‘Epitrapezio 2014’ contest. The box contains the rulebook in English, as well as the following items: one gameboard, 7 small boards, 40 tiles, 7 leader tiles, 7 leader stands, 25 Gothic Action cards, 22 Roman Action cards, 6 Annual Event cards, 5 Gothic Objective cards, and 3 dice.
The game does not use pictographs and all the cards have minimal text. Thus the game cannot be played that easily with non-English speakers.
Gameplay: Gothic Invasion lasts from the summer of 377 to the spring of 382. Within these 15 full rounds and five winters (where not much is happening apart from soldiers dying), the Goth player tries to plunder the nine cities of his secret, randomly drawn Objective card. The Roman wins by not allowing this to happen. The Goth has three leaders at his disposal (Fritigern, Alatheus and Saphrax), while the Roman has two (Valens and Richomers). Goth leaders that die are not substituted, while Romans are (by Theodosius and Gratian). If a faction loses all its leaders it will lose the game. All characteristics of a leader must be reduced to zero in order for him to die.
Each leader has three characteristics: training, morale, and number of troops. These can increase or decrease during the game. He also has a starting position: a city, a particular number of troops, a certain number of cards on his hand and a special ability of sorts, like a modifier to one roll or another. Depending on the number of troops he has at a point in time, he also has a value for fighting in plains, hills and forests. Each leader has his own cards; the cards of one cannot be used to affect the actions of another.
Depending on the year and season the Romans or the Goths will have more cards per leader. At the beginning of each year an Annual Event card is drawn. This creates immediate repercussions, from a dying Byzantine leader to leaders losing troops and so on and so forth.
Apart from the leaders the Romans also have three garrisons at their disposal. The cards Army Movement, Naval Transport, Forced March and Battle can be used on garrisons, these however lack the characteristics of leaders. They are immediately destroyed when attacked. They will be still destroyed when attacking first, but at least they will also cause damage.
In turn, and starting from the Goths in springs and summers and from the Romans in autumns, the players play one card each for one leader of their choice. Each card has either two or three different orders printed on it, and a player can only execute a single one. The cards are not identical per faction. On his 25 cards and during his turn the Goth player can perform Army Movement (8), Forced March (1), Battle (9), Recruitment (2), Reinforcements (10), Training (1), Dysentery (1), Plunder (8), Raid (1), Defection (1), Desertion (1), Misleading (1), Naval Transport (2), Scouts (1), Superior Tactics (1), Siege (1), Regroup (1), Espionage (2), Diplomacy (1), Betrayal/Treachery (1), Cease Fire (1), Withdraw (1), Dense Fog (10), Ambush (1), Maneuver (1) and Patrol (1). The Goth cards also include Cancellation actions, namely Sabotage (1), Rough Sea (1) and Altar of Sacrifice (1). These work like interruptions that can be played out of turn to foil the plans of the Roman player.
The 22 Roman cards on the other hand allow the other player to perform Army Movement (6), Forced March (1), Battle (8), Recruitment (2), Reinforcements (11), Training (2), Bribery (1), Prophecy (1), Oracle (1), Negotiations (1), Desertion (1), Misleading (1), Naval Transport (5), Scouts (1), Superior Tactics (1), Sea Landing (1), Oracle (1), Regroup (2), Espionage (2), Diplomacy (1), Betrayal/Treachery (1), Cease Fire (1), Withdraw (1), Dense Fog (10), Ambush (1), Maneuver (1), Supply (2), Mercenaries (1) and Patrol (1). The Roman Cancellation actions are Sabotage (1), Rough Sea (1), Altar of Sacrifice (1), Fortification (1) and Resistance (1).
Most of the cards are self-explanatory with a couple of lines of text on the actual card. It is through the Plunder or Raid cards that the Goth player will achieve his objective and win the game. The Raid does not need a die roll while Plunder does: a 3-6 for a minor city and a 4-6 for a major leads to a successful plunder. The other cards do all sorts of things like increasing a leader’s morale (Prophecy), putting all Roman Garrisons on stand-by (Siege), increasing a leader’s army by 1.000 men (Recruitment), increasing a leader’s training (Training), drawing an additional card (Oracle) etc.
The most important cards however are the Battle cards. When the enemy is in an adjacent city and a battle card is available, you might as well enter battle. A choreography then begins in which the defender may play Withdraw (lose 1.000 men) or Misleading (cancels a battle) to avoid the battle, the smaller army will choose the battlefield (plains, hills and forests), the attacker and defender play Reinforcements along with all relevant Cancellations: the attacker may Ambush (lose all reinforcements) or Desert (lose one reinforcement), while the Defender may Scout (cancel the Ambush), Ambush or Desert, the attacker may perform Scout, Dense Fog (only dice rolls will matter, not the leaders’ characteristics), Superior Tactics (battle resolution without rolling dice, only through the leaders’ characteristics) and Maneuver (choose the battlefield) while the defender may rely with Superior Tactics, Dense Fog or Maneuver. Only then will the dice be finally rolled.
The numbers that matter for each side are the Army Size, the Training, the Morale, the Battlefield modifier plus the die roll. The two sums are compared, with the highest winning the battle. The winner gains one morale and moves the loser two spaces away as he sees fit. A leader might be eliminated if there is no space to retreat. Both winner and loser also lose an amount of men depending on the difference that their total sums had. For example, a difference of two will lead to the loser’s leader losing 2.000 men, while a difference of seven or more will see the loser losing 7.000 men and the winner 3.000 men.
The rules also include a faster scenario that takes around an hour to complete instead of the usual 90 - 120 minutes. A page is devoted to the history of the Gothic invasions of the era with text taken from wikipedia. The game includes a mini expansion with Farnobius, an additional Goth leader that the Goth player can use instead of Saphrax if he so wishes. Eight special ability tokens are also provided. These can be committed to a leader, hidden from the opponent, providing an additional one-off power for the game. As an example the Tactician allows one Goth leader to play either Army Movement or Battle once without having the card. Via Egnatia on the other hand allows a Roman leader to move once up to 3 spaces while playing Army Movement instead of the usual one space.
The strong points: What a pleasant surprise! Gothic Invasion fills nicely the space of confrontational gaming yet it is not that hard core and will not put people off. Daunting as it might initially appear with all its different cards, it is very easy to teach and understand. After a couple of rounds one immediately realizes what he should be doing and how to make the best out of his cards. The orders are indeed many and varied, however they are quite obvious with one line of explanation each; in most cases one will not even need to consult the rulebook.
There is a fair amount of luck involved relating to both the card draw as well as the dice rolls. This however does not mean that the game is not for thinkers or that it does not have a character. The leaders’ characteristics are open information. Only a fool would decide to pick battles with his decimated leaders against hardened opponents. The dice will rarely save you there, and even more so, the repercussions might be catastrophic: it is not only victory and defeat that matter, it is also how easily the result came about. Pyrrhic victories can and will occur, as will weird faints from seemingly hurt leaders who however hold very strong cards. Bottom line: solid design with a well-found balance.
A few years back we saw Autokrator together, another game by Lefteris Iroglidis, one of the two designers of Gothic Invasion. There all kinds of nods to that game, what I liked the most however is how terrain is handled, and how different army sizes lead to a different treatment of terrain. As an example, Valens has a strength of Plains 1, Hills 2 and Forest 1 if he leads a contingent between 7.000 and 9.000 troops, but a strength of 2, 1 and 0 respectively if he leads a larger army. To simulationist wargamers this trick, along with the fact that the smaller and thus more agile army chooses the terrain, might look oversimplistic. I however found it great; it makes the game approachable, adds an element of clever complexity and enhances its theme.
The asymmetry of Gothic Invasion offers quite the replayability. The roles of the Goth and the Roman Leader are very different, seeing how the latter is overall defending with two leaders against the Goth's three, without however knowing his enemy's precise targets. The Roman leaders on the other hand can be substituted; the Goth leader cannot afford to lose leaders early in the game. That would seriously hinder his war effort and his chance of winning.
The art is of a high quality, the box cover however deserves a special mention. The art there is reproduced as is on the back of the mounted map. I don't know where or how that could be exhibited, I was however extremely excited to see it in its fully glory. On a more practical consideration, bar pre-laminated cards like the ones of D&D Spellbook Cards: Arcane, D&D Spellbook Cards: Paladin and D&D Spellbook Cards: Ranger, the cards of Gothic Invasion are probably the thickest and the most durable I have seen for a long time.
The weak points: It bears repeating that Gothic Invasion is not a pure wargame; if approached that way it will definitely disappoint. This however is not its problem – it's the buyer's problem and the expectations one might have.
Gothic Invasion might face issues if people try to totally trick it out by playing to the level of M:tG pro-players. Fifteen turns are not an enormous amount of time, and the cards will not show up in the best possible order. The Goth player must concentrate on pillaging the target cities and not random ones to simply mislead his opponent. If the Roman player is intimately familiar with the Gothic Objective cards however, he will know very early in the game where to try to defend and where not. That is because few cities actually overlap, with most overlaps happening on the southernmost part of the board. ON the northernmost part only two cities overlap within three cards. I do not consider this poor design; on the contrary, had there been overlap in the north near the Goth's starting positions, the Roman would have a couple of standard plays to resort to. That would have definitely made the game more boring. This just shows how hard it is to find a good balance for both sides without creating mandatory openings and entrenched positions. In that, the design succeeds.
The balance between cards and actions is well implemented. Still, one will find himself desperate at times, either because he does not have the right cards at hand or because the right cards have been drawn by the wrong leader. Adaptability is key. One year a particular leader might be the spear of your attack, and on the other he might be just a blocking brick, moving from here to there. I am not sure what could have been done to refine the mechanic. The more I was thinking of it, the more I see it as a sort of reverse engineering of card play in Commands & Colours. There cards are kept in one hand but can be mostly used on particular fronts (with some exceptions). In Gothic Invasion cards are attributed to leaders with different hand sizes, but a card can only be played with the leader it is drawn. Clearly, this is more unforgiving and makes luck more prominent. It also makes the game slightly more unwieldy for the Goth player. At the beginning of each turn he will hold a high number of cards in his hand which under no circumstances should be mixed. Hmmm.
As much as the game advertises itself as a multi-player, in reality it is a true 2-player game. Extra players will not be an asset; they complicate things and slow down the game with no particular added value. The problem of drawing bad cards is exacerbated. Players might feel that they are not that long under the spotlight and might feel useless, not to mention the downtime while others play. I am not certain why such a design choice was made, it is not however a very wise one.
I wish the rulebook was better written. There are a few typos and some rather funny translations, what is more likely to cause a problem however is how the rules are structured. The format does not let the text breathe, while there are numerous discrepancies between the rules and the cards. The Goths do not have the Sea Landing order, yet its write-up under the Goth faction is included; another order is called Treachery in the rulebook and Betrayal on the actual card; the order in which the write-ups in the rulebook appear does not make much sense (alphabetical, number of appearances, etc). Some good editorial work and a new version of the rulebook online could easily solve the issue.
Conclusion: Another diamond in the rough and a game that cannot be easily found unless actively looked for, Gothic Invasion deserves its place in your bookshelf despite its minor flaws. Thematic and wargamey, yet neither heavy nor hard to teach by any stretch, it immediately became one of my go-to confrontational two-player games.
To find out more about Gothic Invasion and Storyception Games take a look at http://storyceptiongames.com/.
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