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Review of Ian Brody's Quartermaster General WW2
Blurb from the publisher: ''An army marches on its stomach.' - Napoleon Bonaparte
Quartermaster General is a fast-paced game that puts you in command of the major powers of the Second World War.
In Quartermaster General, supply is crucial to keep your armies and navies fighting; destroy your enemies' supply lines and their forces will surrender! Each major power has a unique set of strikingly illustrated cards with which to marshal their forces, represented by wooden army and navy pieces.
During a game, you will play one or more countries on either the Axis or Allied team and try to score as many Victory Points for your team as you can. From 2 to 6 people can play.
Quartermaster General is simple to learn and quick to setup — but difficult to master. Each game plays differently, ensuring superior replayability!
This Second Edition of WW2 Quartermaster General improves multiple elements of the original, while keeping all the qualities that made it critically acclaimed. If you have played before, we're certain you'll enjoy the changes. If you are new to the game, you're certain to get an even better game than the award-winning first edition!'
What you get: Your EUR 49,90 or equivalent will buy you Ian Brody's Quartermaster General WW2, an asymmetrical hand management, area majority, team based game for two to six players. Depending on the participating number of players, the game can last from just over an hour to over two.
The game is the second edition of Quartermaster General published in 2014 by PSC Games, a game that had received a couple of nominations for different strategy and wargame awards. That first edition started the Quartermaster General game line, followed by two expansions for that game (Air Marshal, Alternate Histories) and three different independent games based on the same premise (Victory of Death, 1914, The Cold War). Ares Games, the line's new publisher, is currently resetting the line through the publication of the second edition of the original game. Interestingly, in the past we visited together the games that followed it, but not the first edition of the original itself. Thus, in the present review, I cannot compare the two editions against one another.
In addition to the 20-page A5 English rulebook which can be also downloaded from the publisher's website free of charge, the game includes the following: a game board, 220 cards (Germany: 41, Japan: 34, Italy: 30, United Kingdom: 40, Soviet Union: 34, United States: 41), 33 wooden Army pieces (Germany: 7, Japan: 5, Italy: 4, United Kingdom: 5, Soviet Union: 7, United States: 5), 23 wooden Navy pieces (Germany: 3, Japan: 5, Italy: 3, United Kingdom: 5, Soviet Union: 1, United States: 6), 4 Victory Point markers, one Game Round marker and one Player Aid.
For those who own the first edition and don't wish to read the gameplay section, the differences between the two editions are the following: tournament victory is now standard (the game ends if one team is ahead of the other by 30 points or more), occupying two enemy home spaces does not grant victory, many cards have been altered, four new cards have been added to the game, some lines on the map have been moved, disregards and deck depletion rules have been changed (you lose VPs instead of cards), a Reallocate Resources rule has been inserted, while the US firepower has increased to 6 navies.
Gameplay: The game is played on a partially abstract map of the world not unlike that of Risk, even though here sea spaces are important. Eleven locations (those of the war's protagonists plus a handful of others like India and Australia) are marked by gold stars; these are supply spaces where supply can always start from. Countries command an asymmetrical (and finite) number of forces each, as well as different deck sizes (from 34 to 41 cards). All countries participate in the war and all decks and pieces are used irrespective of the number of players. Decks cannot be mixed. In other words, in a two-player game each player plays three different decks separately, while on a six-player game each player receives his own dedicated deck. When playing with 3, 4, or 5 players, some players will manage more decks than others. The game is won or lost within the axis and the allies team; a player does not win on his own (with the obvious exception of the two-player game, where each player commands a whole team).
Quartermaster General WW2 will last a maximum of twenty rounds. If at any point one team has a lead of over 30 points against its opponent, it immediately wins. If no team achieves this, the game is decided at the end of the twentieth round. The team with the most points then wins. Ties are won by the axis. Victory points are won at the Victory Step of each country's turn; more on that later.
Countries always take turns in the same order: Germany, UK, Japan, USSR, Italy, USA. Thus, the two teams play one after another, irrespective of the player (or players) who does the actual playing. There are five steps within a country's turn, and all countries need to play their turn in order to conclude a round.
In the Play step, the active power plays a card from its hand or discards one with no effect. The game has eight types of cards. Build Army and Build Navy are self-explanatory. The new items are built either on the country's home space, or adjacent to a supplied piece. Yet, while a location can be occupied by pieces belonging to different countries in an alliance, a country can never have more than one piece there, nor can an opponent. Land Battles and Sea Battles destroy an enemy piece that is adjacent to one of your supply lines. You read that right: destroy. No dice are rolled, no tables are consulted, no prerequisites are checked. Event cards can do anything from acting as building joker cards to winning VPs because preconditions are met, to building and fighting in the same turn. Responses are played face down without your opponents seeing them. They are only revealed when their prerequisites are met. Examples include battling twice in a round, cancelling the destruction of one of your pieces, destroying enemy pieces as soon as they are built etc. Economic Warfare cards usually force your opponents to discard cards, gain you VPs etc. Status Cards stay on the table from the moment they are played until the end of the game. Each has a prerequisite which, when fulfilled, will always activate when the country's turn comes. Examples include the recycling of cards (instead of throwing them to the discard pile), earning additional VPs, discarding enemy cards from their hands etc. In short, they look like Events or Economic Warfare cards, yet they are always in play.
In the Supply Step, existing armies and navies must be able to trace a line of the same country's (not alliance's; country's!) armies and/or navies to a supply space occupied by the same country's army. Navies must also have an additional army, belonging to the same alliance this time, to a space next to them. Pieces which cannot follow these rules are removed from the board.
The Victory Step is about collecting victory points. Starred locations grant a player two points if he has an army alone there, while if another of his allies is present, he only receives one. This is also the time to score points through cards, yet attention: if a country does not occupy its home location, it does not earn points. Points are tallied per team, not per country.
During the Discard Step a player can discard as many cards as he wishes from his hand. The game's particularity is that a country's deck does not get reshuffled once exhausted.
In the Draw Step a player draws the required number of cards in order to bring his hand back to seven cards.
The strong points: The Quartermaster General line strikes back! The basics are all there, and so are most of the details.
First comes the minimalism and the finite resources, along with the asymmetry and the tough choices. There are only eight types of cards, yet the decks are different to one another and each country has a unique feeling. Germany runs on speed; they didn't call it blitzkrieg for nothing. Japan's card play is duplicitous, with 11 Response cards to counter its enemies. The US is the country that can field the most units and the second-most Status cards (see: permanent effects) if it plays its game right, what it does however is more straightforward. Don't expect one country to become an unstoppable superpower that will win the war before it starts; allies need to cooperate. You can't stack units upon units in the same location and bleed your opponents' eyes out. You will have to contend with what you are given and win on logistics through a systematic and concentrated effort.
The card-based game is elegant and light to the touch. Along with the positioning of your armies and those of your allies, it is the only thing that matters. There are no dice, no attack and defence tables, there aren't even contested battles to talk about. Whatever you target, you will destroy, provided your opponent's card play does not distort your move. Luck influences the game only so much, since everybody knows in advance that if you run out of cards your team will start to suffer. You can't start discarding left and right to come upon better cards. Small adjustments here and there are the exception that confirms the rule. You need to be tactical about things, since you cannot win the game alone, or more precisely, one country cannot win the game alone. There's this dance where a country in a team sets up some good moves for the country that follows it, hoping the opponent will not bring the whole thing crumbling down. Some countries like Germany or the US thrive on Status cards and their permanent effects, the truth however is that there is not enough time to plan and set up everything before attacking here or there. Combos are important, but risk-taking and projection of what cards your opponent might hold and whether he has already set Responses down are also factors to consider. The game works in ebbs and flows, with waves upon waves of attacks and counterattacks, of potential combos between already set effects and played cards, of surprises between card play and Responses, of pregnant pauses where a discard can mean the difference between a successful and a failed offensive. Indeed, you play (or discard) a single card, that's not however the only thing that happens during your turn.
I like the way Victory Points accumulate. Gathering points turn after turn and country after country rewards aggressiveness and negates the need for turtling. Your positions might be unsustainable in the long run, the game however is wise enough to set the Supply Step before the Victory Step so that you don't act suicidally. I also like the flexibility players have to immediately disband forces in order to help their allies progress into a space. That aspect can be gamed, it has however gamist and thematic merit.
Just like the other games in the line, Quartermaster General WW2 is infinitely replayable. Different numbers of players will lead to strikingly different experiences, be it because you are in total sync with your teammates or because you facepalm yourself more often than not when they play. You can only strategize that much aloud, seeing how your opponents are just in front of you. It is extremely rewarding, not to mention entertaining, to play a six-player game and change not the alliances but the internal country distribution within each team. One can then get a very good idea of what each country is capable of, and what its limitations are.
I can't easily choose a favourite between the line's different iterations, or more precisely, my favourite would depend on the number of players. The present game thrives both with two as well as six players, something that no other game in the line can do up to now. Admittedly though, I might be looking elsewhere for a more precise three- and four-player experience.
The components are what the game needed. The mounted board is old-school in its design and will bring a smile to hardened wargamers. The wooden pieces are nice and abstract. I am not a big fan of the colour scheme, but that's my subjective opinion, not an objective one.
The rulebook leaves a lot to be desired (keep on reading about this), yet it is marvellous in one aspect: the breakdown of each country when it comes to pieces, cards, as well as playing tips. This information should have found its way in six cardboard player aids in order to facilitate your understanding of the game.
Quartermaster General WW2 is well supported. Total War, its first expansion, came out in 2021, while Prelude, its second expansion, is expected at the beginning of 2022. Quartermaster General 1914, i.e. the second edition of another game in the series, has also been announced. Nice!
The weak points: Those acquainted with the line know that none of the Quartermaster General games are full-on wargames. This is hand management with strong elements of team play and a thematic emphasis on logistics, not the bangs and the pows.
Asymmetrical special cards by definition require many plays in order for one to get acquainted to how each faction behaves. That's pretty much the definition of 'easy to learn, hard to master'. I would recommend starting from plays with high player counts, if possible, so that you only have to understand your deck, while watching other people try to optimally use theirs. The chances of a new player defeating an experienced one, and even more so, in a two-player game where knowledge of all six decks can be a deciding factor, is infinitely small. I personally don't consider all this a negative per se, it is however obvious that to become good at this game you need to commit.
In previous reviews for games of this line I commented upon how more players make the game roll faster. It was true, and it still is. If you play this in small player counts, and even more so, against a single opponent, I very strongly recommend that you invest in as many card holders as the warring factions. The e-Raptor Basic L could be a starting point, even though it is smallish for what this game requires. The Chessex 14'' Curved Card Holder is more expensive, yet it delivers perfectly here. Without card holders for a permanent visual access to the hands that you will play after your present turn, the game becomes very hard to understand. You will forget things, you will miscalculate things, you will be lost. Such games are fun for the mental exercise they pose, yet the administrative noise needs to be eliminated for you to receive the expected dividends.
The rulebook is very disappointing. It is unfortunately sloppy, with numerous pointlessly ambiguous points. The extended card play examples are all over the place, lacking crucial detail about when things happen (namely on the same turn or the following ones). I don't get it. The rulebooks had issues in the line's first editions already, and this is the second edition by a different publisher who could have seen them with a fresh pair of eyes. Surely they should have been further elaborated than this? The good news is that at the end of the game is playable, even though there will be more questions and disruptions than there need to.
The box's insert is useless. It holds the cards unsleeved and that's it. Once you sleeve them, you need to throw it out. What a waste.
Conclusion: Ian Brody's Quartermaster General WW2 is a hell of a semi-cooperative, packing two different experiences in a single box. Cerebral and godlike in a two-player mode, while remaining proactive, reactive, and outright entertaining in a six-player mode, it can easily pique the interest of both the wargaming as well as the non-wargaming crowd and keep them unconditionally entertained. My heart doesn't let me dock an additional point for the mediocre rulebook and the irrelevant insert, even though none of them should have passed muster.
To find out more about Ian Brody's Quartermaster General WW2, Griggling Games and Ares Games take a look at http://www.grigglinggames.com and https://www.aresgames.eu respectively.
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