The 30 years war is a complex period to understand. You have to go through the politics of the Holy Roman Empire, the religious turmoil in Europe, the crumbling Spanish empire, the Habsburg family tree… Designing a game that presents the whole of the period is quite ambitious to say the least.
Cuius regio presents us with a lot of different scenarios and a beast of campaign. Let’s be honest, at time of review, the campaign seems like a distant thing I may tackle in the future.
The mechanics :
But let’s start with the beginning. The base mechanics of the game are quite straightforward… like a game of Ludo : select a pawn, roll a die to see how far it moves, next player. The only difference is that the map is hex based, the pawn can bring an army with it and that together they can attack and take cities.
In a more serious note, and appart from that, it is far from a light game, there is a lot to keep in mind. For example your armies have a zoc of 2 hexes if they have cavalry, unless opponent army has 2 times the amount then it ignores it. The first actions were a grind, with a lot of interruption and rule checking. Some instinctive stuff learned from other games doesn’t apply here, for example you can continue to move after a battle. It makes sense in the game but it is the kind of rules that you want to double check because it feels “weird” at first. After a few activations, 3 battles and 2 times through the reinforcement/politic phase it becomes surprisingly smooth.
And then it shows its real face : it is one of the most technical games I played in a long time. You are free to decide the order of activations of your armies. Once they activate, they have a huge potential of action. But because a unit cannot stay without a leader, you cannot let units behind to hold ground, every move you do makes you weaker somewhere else.
Your activations are limited by a fatigue mechanic that works really great. Units start the turn with 0, end of their activation they get +1, battle they get 1 or 2 more depending of result, and unit with 5 cannot activate until next turn. Fatigue is also a negative for move and battle. That means you could activate your best army on your first 2 activations to push through a disorganized opponent. But that comes with the risk of having your best army stranded with a -5 in combat, stuck out of supply in the middle of nowhere. Done that, not recommended.
How it feels :
Even on the smaller first scenario, you would think with 3 armies and a quarter of the map available, decision making would be obvious, it is not. In my first game, Tully, only competent leader on Empire side, decided to die in leader check (double 1) in his first combat in Bohemia. The consequences for this alternative history are probably huge, in short term empire troops looked in disarray Protestant armies rampaging through Austria.
But even there when I thought scenario is dead on second activation, an heroic run through Bohemia to take Prague with the somehow reinforced army running through cities and burning them… to rout in a battle they had advantage and lose their precious artillery train and with it all hope for the Imperial side.
It was eventful, it was tense, it was interesting, and finished with desire of a rematch, with the painful situations becoming precious experience. What I thought would be only the rules learning small scenario is a board game in itself I want to play again. It felt so hard to play correctly I am sure there is quite a bit of replayability before the scenario is played optimally by both side.
The game is quite thematic, armies pillaging everything just to maintain themselves, the map coloring itself with flames token in their path. Leaders coming and leaving, but the war still raging on.
I am a chess club player and an avid wargamer… and mechanically speaking, the feelings and calculations I did during the game were closer to chess game than classic gmt. Is it bad ? Depends who you ask, but I think players should be warned. There is also a high risk of analysis paralysis, when you feel every move you do has huge drawbacks.
What is not like chess is the randomness. Combats are swingy, one die roll for result, one for bonus fatigue, one for leader death, deal with it. It is well done, it is quick, and you have to be ready to lose any battle. You can never go confident and push through. The fatigue die roll is completely arbitrary. You have always to prepare for the worst.
Components :
The map art is impressive, my only and petty complaint there is that we have to hide all the beautiful cities on the map with functional control markers.
In the small complaints I also hate the amount of manipulation to go from 5 to 4 units and the loss of readability. When a 10 infantry 5 cavalry unit lost 10% with stragglers, the army going from 2 counter to 9 was annoying. I recommend using a dice for the 1-5 value or finding any other way… or not being lazy and sort your units tokens, but that’s asking too much of me ! (Yes it’s maybe a me problem)
And last one, I feel I have to go through 2000 player aids every time I search something, but at least everything is there and everything is clear. I don’t feel there is a lot more than Simonitch 4X series, and I don’t understand how it was not possible to get away with the same folded player aid. Some info from it could be also on the sides of the map. It makes the first step into an already hard to onboard game bigger than it should.
Conclusion :
One of my favorite game of the last years.
Tells a story, asks the player to think, has a huge amount of replayability. Each scenario is a full boardgame in itself and there are 6 of them, plus a campaign covering the 30 years.
The learning curve is huge. I think the only way to play the campaign or longer scenarios is to have a dedicated opponent who did the smaller scenarios with you . I also think the hidden armies make the game even more interesting, but there again you really need an experienced opponent.
It is already quite a task to find people to play wargames live, asking them to be dedicated to such a demanding game may be a bigger challenge than the learning curve of the game itself.
If this one stays on my shelf in the future, it will be only because of this last point. If I hype one of my players enough, then it has potential to have a lot of table time.
But again, you have to know what it is, I recommend it, but I think players have to know where they are going and what this game really is.