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Yup, you heard me. With birds.
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| by PSC Games |
Quoth the Battle Raven....
I am relatively new to the wargame genre. I typically gravitate towards games that are more cooperative in nature, as my friends typically don't have the patience for a 2 hour long game that ends with me wiping the floor with them. Most of my wargame experience surrounded an out of date and overpriced collection of Heroclix that would see regular usage in college with my buddy, Garth.
However, since I've gotten married, my father in-law has reinvigorated that competitive urge within. You should have seen the look on his face when he beat me while I was TEACHING HIM how to play A Song of Ice & Fire! I was surprised he didn't stand up and start doing a victory dance (which my wife informs me was a regular occurance when he won at board games when they were children).
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| "Are you sure you want to move your Stark Outriders there?" |
He won't even let me get my victory back! He says he doesn't have the time! Well, you know what? PSC Games has recently given me the opportunity review a new wargame which they claim only takes between 30-45 minutes! Battle Ravens! Game on, Father-in-Law!
That's SO Battle Ravens!
Battle Ravens is a 2 player press your luck style skirmish wargame where players arrange their forces to form an impenetrable shield wall, facing off against their opponent's impenetrable shield wall, attempting to be the first player to break through three of their opponent's blockades.
How does one do this?
With birds.
Yup, you heard me. With birds.
You see, in a typical round, each player takes turns placing up to nine of these Battle Raven Tokens in any of their Shieldwall spaces. These tokens can then be spent on your turn to perform an action, such as Moving, or Attacking. You have to be careful, however, because these Tokens are also what you spend if you want to Defend when your opponent is Attacking.
Attack Strength is determined by the number of Ravens you spend. Spend five Ravens, roll five dice. Each die roll could result in zero, one, or two successes. The Defender now spends Ravens (if they have any left) to roll dice in order to block the hits in the same way. Spend three Ravens, roll three dice. Any hits that aren't blocked, and that's how many guys the defender removes from their space. Simple enough.
As a mechanic, this is kind of cool. You have to assess each situation and decide whether or not to go all out offense, and spend all of your Ravens to Attack, leaving you helpless, or to turtle up, and just keep your Ravens to maintain your Shieldwall as best possible.
But...
Thematically, this makes ZERO SENSE.
I have never been inspired to violence by any kind of Raven, save for one...
The rulebook is VERY specific to reiterate that the number of men you have in each space has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with your relative Attack or Defense Strength! They're more or less glorified Hit Points. And that's fine, but it makes for some very wacky situations, where one last guy in your space is looking like freaking He-Man because you stacked nine Ravens on him this turn!
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| "Don't worry, Guys. I have 6 birds on my side..." |
It's not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it can be a little counter-intuitive as you play the game.
There are some cool things as well, such as your ability to spend your Archers like a currency, in order to reroll your Attack Dice, but once you're out of Archers, that's it! No more! Again, this works as a gameplay mechanic, but it's not really that thematic. It's like if Hawkeye just stopped fighting in the Avengers because he shot a single arrow!
Insert Raven Pun Here...
So, while I do think that it is a little odd that a game company whose name is short for "Plastic Soldier Company" did not include ANY plastic soldiers in their box, the components of Battle Ravens seem very nice. The punch board is nice and thick, and the soldier standees stand up very well, and give the whole game a slightly retro feel, which is nice in the current miniature saturated board game market.
However, I do have an issue with the art of said soldier standees.
The art between the two factions is not THAT different. There's not a stark enough contrast between the Anglos and the Norse to make it easy to identify which is which at a glance. This isn't THAT big of a deal during the gameplay as they'll usually be regulated to one side or the other, but it is a PAIN in the neck during setup.
I know this is probably more historically accurate than giving the Norsemen HUGE AXES or the Anglos SKULL HELMETS or something ridiculous like that, but I think I'd like stronger distinction over historical accuracy.
Buy It!, Try It!, or Fly It!
So, I think Battle Ravens succeeds at what it tries to do, for the most part. It is a quick, fun wargame that delivers that experience in a relatively contained footprint. However, there are times when it falls flat. When the dice don't go your way, or you get situations where both players focus all of their efforts on a single space, building up your forces, moving your guys to defend one space, and then one guy runs in and takes them all out like Conan because he had nine birds on his side.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can definitely take you out of the game, and result in some VERY frustrating situations. However, at end of the day, if you're into light strategy games, and you don't care too much about theme tying into gameplay, you should give Battle Ravens a try.
The Verdict...?
TRY IT!
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