Here's a high-level overview of Free at Last from the publisher:
Free at Last is a card-driven game where each card has a number (used to activate special individuals) and an event, but uniquely, the color of the number also matters and affects the type of project (voting rights, accommodations, school desegregation) that can be attempted.
Multiple-length versions can be played: 3 turns (ending with the Freedom Rides), 6 turns (ending with the March on Washington), or a 9 turn game covering this entire period in American history.
It's also worth noting that as part of efforts to make people aware of the history of the fight for Civil Rights, Torgerson is contributing his royalties from the game to the Reverend John H Scott Memorial Fund.
• Ion Game Design is crowdfunding Besime Uyanik's new co-operative game, Sammu-ramat, on Gamefound, along with Bruss Brussco's DerrocAr.
In Sammu-ramat, 1-5 players rule the Assyrian Empire as Queen Sammu-ramat in the 9th century BCE. With an estimated playtime of 60 minutes, here's a bit more detail on Sammu-ramat from the publisher:
In this 1-5 player co-op board game, you will be one of the advisors surrounding the Assyrian royal court. Each Advisor has its own abilities and strengths. Players spend actions to play action cards and move from region to region along the paths printed on the board, trying to balance the needs of the regions (Military, Supplies, Health, and Religion). In battle with the enemy units are removed 1:1, i.e. combat is deterministic.
On each Empire card, there is a Scenario, with one or more win conditions. The specific setup of the Scenario is on the back of the Empire card. Multiple victory scenarios increase the game's replayability.
Are you ready to take a role in some of the most peculiar weeks in political history? Be one of the provincial governors trying to reach the presidency of Argentina in the middle of the political and economic crisis of 2001.
In this 1-5 player board game you play as the Senators and Governors of the provinces, all seeking to outmaneuver the others and become the next President of the República Argentina. In a country tired of politicians, you need to prove that you are the least bad option, by making sure that the provinces of the other governors are full of conflicts. By making it look like your opponents cannot even manage their own provinces, they will be even less able to manage the country. The game
ends when a player is declared President
The rounds are divided into two phases:
First, you have to choose one of the options on the board (propose a Laws, Decrees, Debt Payment, Embezzlement Fund, etc) and then buy cards from the Market. At the next phase, you play a set of cards from your hand (Make Operations, Lobby, create conflict with the Establishment, create bad campaigns with the press, etc). Meanwhile, you handle your economy, the events (Lootings, Floods, a Bush's call, more) and negotiate short alliances.
To win, you must be the player with the most Support when the game ends because other players are full of conflicts.
The game comes with a modular system that allows the players to choose the complexity level that best suits their tastes.
• Two new and interesting P500 additions were mentioned in the November monthly update newsletter from GMT Games. The first, I, Napoleon, is a solitaire role-playing card game from Paths of Glory designer Ted Raicer, where you can change the course of history playing as Napoleon Buonoparte. Here's a high-level overview from the publisher:
As an ambitious but unknown young artillery officer, who speaks French with a Corsican accent, you would seem to be an unlikely agent of destiny. Can you harness a brilliant mind, titanic energies, and a sometimes terrifying charisma to leave your mark on history? Or will you die a minor footnote in the story of France?
GAMEPLAY
In I, Napoleon, your fate lies in 220 beautifully illustrated cards, divided into three decks: Commander, First Consul, and Emperor. Overlaying a map of early 19th Century Europe are a series of Card Boxes, where you play out the events of your life and career, along with various tracks and tables to record the yearly passage of time and the events affecting yourself and France. The choices you make with the cards you are dealt will determine success or failure. You will have to manage politics, military campaigns, diplomacy, and the domestic well-being of the French while pursuing the Glory that lures you on. You will also have to manage your family, your wives, your mistresses, and your children, legitimate and otherwise.
Your path may lead you from the Americas to the Near East, from Spain to Russia, from a throne to exile. You will be the target of assassins, coups, and coalitions. You will deal with bad harvests and plague, face Wellington and Nelson, Kutuzov and Blucher. You will rely on—and perhaps be betrayed by—the slippery Talleyrand and unleash the secret policemen Fouche on your opponents. As you progress, your options will increase, along with the stakes.
Lead your men into battle and risk an early end to your life? Sail to Egypt or Ireland? Sell Louisiana or send an army to hold it? Marry a Habsburg or a Romanov? Create the Duchy of Warsaw or revive the Kingdom of Poland? Invade Russia or try to pacify the Tsar? Every choice will affect your legacy.
But there is not one version of a life here, but many. Every game will provide a different narrative, based on both luck of the draw and the decisions you make. In addition, you can start the game as a Commander, as First Consul, or as Emperor, each with its own starting situation and challenges. The story is yours to discover, and the decisions you make may just change the course of history.
In Plantagenet, 1-2 players create and maintain a network of allied lords and nobles obtaining money and resources needed to supply and pay their armies in 15th-century England as described below by the publisher:
Mounting tension over the Crown leads to armed clashes, under the excuse of freeing the king from his evil counsellors, and finally ignites the Wars of the Roses that William Shakespeare would immortalize in his plays:
---• A Yorkist rebellion that succeeds in placing Edward IV on the throne and exiling the Lancastrians to Scotland and France.
---• A civil war pitting Warwick the Kingmaker and King Edward’s brother Clarence against the King and his other brother Richard Gloucester.
---• The reinstatement for a few months of Henry VI and the invasion from France by his son and wife leading to a final contest between Richard III and Henry Tudor (later known as Henry VII) and the Battle of Bosworth that ends the Plantagenet dynasty.
Treason, bravery, political maneuver, and a cast of memorable characters mark one of the most intense and divided periods of English history.
In Plantagenet—the newest volume in Volko Ruhnke's Levy & Campaign Series—players lead one of the two factions across the three main periods of war, as individual scenarios or the entire Wars of the Roses.
Designer Francisco Gradaille adds overall and local political influence to Volko’s medieval operation system to reflect the ever-changing loyalties of the time while keeping play familiar to fans of the Series. Players will create and maintain a network of allied lords and nobles in order to obtain the provender and coin needed to supply and pay their armies. As ravaging and looting will damage each side’s reputation, each faction will strive to convince cites to join its side. Great battles will seek to kill or capture enemy lords—perhaps even a king. Two kinds of operational moves will be in play: the military and the political.
In the end, when the dust settles and all arrows have flown, one rose will sit on the throne. White or Red, York or Lancaster, gather your troops and banners and join the fight.
Congratulations to all of the winners, including the new Clausewitz Hall of Fame recipient Walter Vejdovsky! Vejdovsky's 2-player, card-driven WWI game Verdun 1916: Steel Inferno, from French publisher Fellowship of Simulations, won Wargame of the Year and WWI Board Wargame categories, as well as the Dunnigan Award for Design Excellence.
Verdun 1916: Steel Inferno has been on my "shelf of opportunity" for a couple months now, and I'm really looking forward to playing it soon!