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Review of 300: Earth & Water
Blurb from the publisher: 'At the start of the 5th century BCE, the Persian Empire decided to invade Greece by sea and by land. The Greeks, composed of numerous city states, were able to resist their foes in many epic struggles thanks to their better tactics and superior arms, such as hoplites and triremes.
300: Earth & Water is a strategy game for 2 players, lasting 30-40 minutes. Take the side of the Greeks with Athens and Sparta at their head, or play the Persian Empire led by the King of Kings to see who will control the Eastern Mediterranean. Over the course of 5 expeditions each player must try to control more cities than their opponent.
Every decision is crucially important, from the choice of the right card to play to the moves you make with your troops on the map.
Be the master of land and sea!'
What you get: Your EUR 25 or equivalent will buy you 300: Earth & Water, a light, asymmetric two-player area majority game that lasts just over 30 minutes.
In addition to the 14-page small-format rulebook which can be also downloaded from the publisher's website free of charge, the game includes the following: one A3 board, 16 cards, 6 six-sided dice, 35 cubes (9 red, 24 blue, 2 black), 11 discs (5 red, 6 blue), and one brown rod.
Gameplay: The map depicts Greece and Asia Minor, along with eleven cities (2 for the Greeks, 2 for the Persians, and 7 unaffiliated). Cities produce amphorae, i.e. support. Cities are connected to other cities via roads and ports. The setup is standard at the beginning of each game.
300 lasts for five rounds, or five launched Persian campaigns if you prefer. If a player loses both his two initial cities to the opponent, he loses the game instantly. If that doesn't happen, players compare their score at the end of the fifth round.
A round starts with the Persian player initiating the Preparation Phase. He has 12 talents to spent (as in the ancient weight measurement), as opposed to the Greeks' 6. Talents can buy you cards, armies and fleets, not to mention a pontoon bridge for the Persians, in order to secure the dangerous straights of the Hellespont. Armies and fleets are placed in the opponents' major cities or the cities they control. Unspent resources are lost.
The Operations Phase is the heart of the game. The Persian player acts first. He can either play a card, or pass. If he plays a card, he can either implement its effects, or discard the card in order to move his forces. When both players are out of cards, or if both players successively pass one after another, the phase ends. Cards have different effects for the Persians and the Greeks. Some cards can be used only once or twice during a game, while others can be used multiple times. Other cards are mutually exclusive, like Miltiades and the 300 Spartans. As an example, and always in the same card, the Persians can bring forth Mardonius and make a land movement, while the Greeks can exploit the Mines of Laurion and take a new Preparation Phase with three additional talents. Movement of armies and fleets is straightforward. Armies move together (nobody can be left back), they always engage the enemy they meet, there is no limit to the number of armies in a city, the Hellespont pontoon is not a permanent structure, armies cannot fight navies and vice versa, yet fleets can carry a limited amount of armies. Combat is equally straightforward. A player rolls as many dice as his armies, up to a maximum of three. The player that rolls the highest single die wins that round, yet there is a caveat; the highest the Persian can roll is a 4, due to his armies' inferior combat abilities, not however when he fights for his own home cities. His maximum then becomes a 5. Each round of combat eliminates an opposing army. Ties lead to the elimination of an army per side. Combat ends when at least one side is eliminated. Between each round of combat a side may decide to retreat to the city where it came from. Naval combat is practically identical to land combat.
In the Supply Phase the Persians and the Greeks tend to their forces. The Persian discards all the cards he has left (if he had any), or may keep one for the next campaign (something that will reduce his next campaign's starting talents). Conversely, the Greek can keep up to four cards. All Persian armies in the Persian cities are immediately supported, the ones elsewhere however require amphorae from the cities under Persian control (i.e. with a Persian army occupying them). The Greeks on the other hand need to support all their armies from all their cities. In addition to amphorae, armies should be connected to other cities with armies of the same side by either roads or ports. If they are not, they are removed from the map.
The Scoring Phase grants each side two points for each home city with an army, and one point for each non-home city with an army. If the game ends at the end of the fifth round without an automatic victory, the aforementioned score determines the winner.
The rulebook's last three pages are devoted to the theme and game effect of each of the cards, as well as a short summary of the wars between Greece and Persia before the advent of Alexander the Great.
The strong points: To simulate hundreds of years of warfare one would need an enormous box with hundreds of components of all types and sizes, and a corresponding price tag... or not. 300: Earth & Water accomplishes all this with a handful of cards and wooden tokens. It is partially abstract and thematically covers more ground than the better known Persian campaigns (e.g. elements of the expedition of the 10.000), but not as abstract as one would expect it to be. The half-hour experience is tight, even though the asymmetry is rather obvious: the Persians have the money advantage, while the Greeks are better in battle. The cards are rife with theme and create quite the structure, since they can alter the course of history. I am talking literally, here; there are cards which simply end a campaign no questions asked, or others which radically change the conditions on the board. The question is when to play them for the highest effect, safe in the knowledge that they will not be countered by your opponent's play. What should you insinuate to hold, and what not? How should you use a card, for its effect, or for movement? Easy questions, yet the answers are not obvious.
The gameplay is thoughtful and chaotic at the same time. Dice-rolling is straight out of Risk. The Persians have a 50% chance of rolling at least a 4 when they are playing outside their home field, that's however it. The Greeks have a 33% chance of rolling a higher number than a 4 with every roll they make. Rolling however is just the final step in a process mostly driven by cards, or the lack of. It takes an experienced player to understand whether he should draft more cards or more armies, how to combine his armies and his navies, and how to plan so that his stranglehold on the map increases turn after turn. Don't expect to win during the first turn; you are not playing alone. The idea is to create something that can be improved upon campaign after campaign. Each side has strong and weak spots, like for example the Hellespont bridge which, if intact, can give the Persians an enormous advantage towards advancing in the mainland. The game is both tactical and strategic in that you'd love to crush your opponent and claim an automatic victory. Yet, to do that you must attack en masse, meaning that you will not have a big presence on many cities on the board, meaning that you will not net as many points during the Scoring Phase. Don't get me started on how that phase follows the Supply Phase, thus any mistakes in logistics can diminish your presence, no matter how gloriously you performed in combat. There is a balance to be found there. One cannot prepare for any eventuality, in fact you might not even know whether a particular play is due to your opponent bluffing you to pieces or due to a very misinformed choice. Without some good rolls here and there one cannot win, on the other hand however that is expected from a light wargame like this one.
I am extremely happy with the game's production values. The small book-like box boasts of a magnetic lock. The smallish, rounded map is a breath of fresh air while the art on it keeps the game honest.
The weak points: This is nowhere near a detailed simulation. The cards help establish the theme and create the feeling of a Greco-Persian struggle (as opposed to a struggle with a Greco-Persian veneer), yet the randomness (be it through the draws, the dice rolling, or the sometimes overbearing power of the cards) might disappoint those who search for a more controllable experience. Games can be lost or won due to a single roll, due to a card played right or wrong, due to a silly logistics miscalculation. I like these aspects, and the game thrives. If you don't and you prefer clear-cut rewards for what you consider a flawless play, you might be left wanting.
The game is not fully streamlined. The most obvious example is the worth of a Persian die roll (4 outside Asia Minor, 5 in Asia Minor), this is however the tip of the iceberg. There are a handful of circumstantial rules to remember, and you'd better know them in advance.
Setting the game's light nature aside, it requires quite the investment in order to understand what to do and not to do with the cards. Thus, and as much as this is a short and relatively light game, it is still harder when compared to other light games out there. Experienced players have higher chances of defeating a new player, even though the dice-rolling aspect evens the field.
Due to its duration and concept, 300 is unlikely to be a full evening's game. It is a great filler and a nice true gaming distraction when you don't have much time. It is not however likely to be played more than a couple of times in the same sitting.
The fonts on the cards could have been bigger for better visibility. I can live with that, yet the texts on the cards should have also been clearer. For a game with only 16 cards and relatively short texts, there is quite the ambiguity on how some of them work. In that sense, it is a pity that the rulebook devotes quite the space to history and fluff than to practical explanations about how the cards work in the game.
Conclusion: 300: Earth & Water punches way above it weight. It is as easy and light as it is engaging and demanding, combining elements of many different schools of design. For the bluffing and the adrenaline alone, this is a good game to have in your two-player arsenal.
To find out more about 300: Earth & Water, 'Nuts! Publishing' and Ares Games take a look at https://www.nutspublishing.com and https://www.aresgames.eu.
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