Game Overview: Red Flag Over Paris, or Card and Cube Tension Galore

Card-driven games (CDGs), such as Twilight Struggle or Watergate, have always hit a sweet spot in my gaming brain. They made me realize, and constantly remind me, how many tough decisions can stem from a deceptively simple hand of cards. Plus, well-designed CDGs crush it when it comes to nail-biting tension in board games. Enter Red Flag Over Paris.

Red Flag Over Paris is a 1-2-player, strategy card-driven game from designer Fred Serval and GMT Games, which portrays the intense confrontation between the Paris Commune and the French government in Versailles in 1871. As a spiritual successor to Mark Herman's Fort Sumter, Red Flag Over Paris offers a quick-playing, tense, and challenging gaming experience where players use cards to place cubes representing political influence/military presence to take control of key spaces needed to achieve their respective victory conditions.

The Versailles player (blue components) represents the government in Versailles trying to find a diplomatic end to the 1870 war against Prussia and take back control of Paris. To win the game, they need to have more military points than the Commune player has political points when the game ends.

Meanwhile, the Commune player (red components) represents the people of Paris rising up against the bourgeoisie and the government of Versailles. Their goal is to expand their political influence over France and have more political victory points than the Versailles player has military points at the end of the game.

Red Flag Over Paris hit the streets in late 2021 and is a new addition to GMT’s Lunchtime Games series, which features games that play in 20-60 minutes. As a fan of CDGs and quick-playing board games that I can play with anyone, I was very interested in playing Red Flag Over Paris. Thankfully the kind folks at GMT Games hooked me up with a review copy so I could check it out and share how it works, along with some of my initial impressions.

The game board for Red Flag Over Paris is good-looking and functional. The core area of the board is divided into two sections, Political and Military, and within each section there are six spaces split into two different, color-coded Crisis Dimensions -- Institutional (green) and Public Opinion (orange) on the Political side, and Paris (purple) and Forts (blue) on the Military side. Each Crisis Dimension also has a different shape associated with it, making it color blind friendly.

At the top of the board, you'll find Crisis tracks filled with wooden cubes for both players at the start of the game, a tug-of-war score track with two different cylinders for keeping track of military and political VPs, and Momentum tracks for each player -- Revolutionary Momentum for the Commune player, and Prussian Collaboration for the Versailles player.

Red Flag Over Paris is played over up to three rounds followed by a Final Crisis phase, which represents the “Bloody Week” in May of 1871. Each round follows a nine-step sequence of play, starting with dealing four Strategy cards and two Objective cards to each player (1). After players carefully review their cards and the state of the game board, each player secretly chooses one Objective card to keep, and removes their other Objective card from the game (2).

There are total of twelve Objective cards in the game and each represents one of the twelve map spaces on the game board. At the end of the round, players reveal their secret objectives, and whichever player controls the corresponding spaces gains victory points. Each time you secretly choose an Objective card and throw one away, you gain some useful data since you know your opponent doesn’t have the card you removed from the game (or the one you secretly picked), and they never will for that particular game. This becomes helpful when you’re trying to figure out what your opponent’s Objective card might be.

Objective card examples

Next comes the Initiative phase (3). Players calculate their initiative level by subtracting their Player Momentum value from their Political VPs. Whoever has the highest initiative level decides the player order for the round, with the Commune player deciding in case of ties.

The player who has the initiative plays the first Strategy card each round, and decides the order in which the Pivotal Space bonus actions, Crisis Dimension scoring, and Objective cards scoring will be resolved at the end of the round. It's great that there are pros and cons to having the initiative and when you get to choose player order, it’s often a tough decision, especially in later rounds, deciding whether to take the initiative yourself or pass it to your opponent.

If you have the initiative, your opponent gets to play the last Strategy card for the round, which can leave them in an advantageous position when it comes to bonus actions and end-of-round scoring, and nobody wants that, besides your opponent, of course. On the other hand, having the initiative allows you to decide the order in which Pivotal Space bonus actions, Crisis Dimension scoring, and Objective cards scoring are resolved, which can also be very powerful in certain situations. So there's definitely a lot of thought that goes into this decision, should you be in the position to decide.

Having the initiative at the end of the game is also one of the final score tie-breaker elements, which makes it especially hard to decide on the Final Crisis phase. Regardless of who starts a round with the initiative, next comes the meat and potatoes of Red Flag Over Paris as players get the opportunity to play Strategy cards to dig into the action on the game board.

Players alternate playing one Strategy card at a time, starting with the initiative player, until each player has played three of their four cards (4). A Strategy card can be played for its event, for operations, to use a discarded event, or to advance Player Momentum.

To play a card for its event, the background must be neutral (gray) or match your faction’s color (red/blue). Then you simply resolve the event text and place the card on top of your discard pile. Events give you juicy ways to add and/or remove cubes from various spaces on the board, manipulate Player Momentum, add barricades (Commune) and fortifications (Versailles) in Military spaces, and more. Since the Strategy card deck is shuffled and dealt randomly, you’ll often have a mix of neutral cards, your faction’s cards, and your opponent’s faction cards, so you might not always have the opportunity to play a Strategy card for the event, which is why it’s cool that you have other options.

Strategy card examples

You can discard a Strategy card to use the operations points on the card to remove and/or place cubes on the board. Whether you’re removing cubes, placing cubes, or both, operations can only be conducted in spaces where you have presence, or in spaces adjacent to spaces you control. You have presence in spaces that have at least one of your pieces, and you control a space if you have more pieces in it than your opponent.

If you’re planning to remove and place cubes in the same turn, always remove first, then place. You can remove a cube in Political spaces for each operations point you spend. However, removing cubes from Military spaces is not always guaranteed and requires one or more attempts to be successful. The reason behind this is to represent how both factions were ineffective at combat due to the lack of motivation for Versailles troops and the lack of organization by the Commune.

To remove a cube from a Military space, you need to spend one operations point per attempt, or two if the space has an opponent’s barricade/fortification. Then you assess your military strength which starts at a base of zero, but can be increased by a few different factors including having control in adjacent spaces or having presence in the target space. If your military strength is three or more at this point, the attempt succeeds. Otherwise, draw a Strategy card and if your military strength is greater than or equal to the operations points on the drawn card, your attempt succeeds and you can remove a cube.

If you got a wisp of Combat Commander vibes from the military cube removal process, you're spot on. In his designer notes, Serval mentions his tribute to the late Chad Jensen's classic CDG hit as an influence on this, as well as the initiative card in Red Flag Over Paris.

Jake is stressing over where to place his blue cube...

When placing cubes, you spend one operations point per cube, or two operations points if the space has an opponent’s barricade/fortification. When adding cubes to the map, you must first use any cubes in your cube pool. Once that’s empty, you remove cubes from your Crisis Track, one at a time from the middle of the board outwards.

As cubes are removed from the Crisis Track, zones (Starting, Escalation, Tension, and Final Crisis) will become breached, often giving players bonus cubes to add to their cube pools. However, the player who breaches their Final Crisis zone first loses one political VP and gains two bonus cubes, whereas the second player to breach their Final Crisis zone doesn’t get the penalty, nor the bonus cubes. In addition to carefully managing your hand of Strategy cards in Red Flag Over Paris, you also really have to watch how you use/spend your influence cubes.

The Versailles player has an infinite cube pool, so there is always a place to store removed cubes and bonus cubes. However, the Commune player does not start the game with a cube pool at all. They have to increase their Player Momentum to unlock a limited number of cube pool spaces. Here lies some of the asymmetry between the two factions and something the Commune player should strive to unlock early on in the game so their precious influence cubes aren’t completely removed from the game. This brings me to the next thing you can do when you play a Strategy card.

On your turn you can remove (not discard) a Strategy card from the game to advance one space on your Player Momentum track. For the Versailles player, each advancement unlocks bonus cubes you add to your cube pool, whereas the Commune player unlocks spaces to build their cube pool with each Momentum advancement. On either track, when you advance to spaces two and three, your opponent gets an opportunity to place an influence cube in a Political space. I really like how this offsets the benefit you're receiving by letting your opponent get a little treat too. It's something minor that makes you really question if it makes sense to increase your Momentum, especially in a game where timing can be everything.

Once the Versailles player hits gets to space three, they gain control of the Prussian Occupied Territory space, which significantly helps them spread their military influence. Also, at the end of the game, players gain a victory point, political VP for Commune and military VP for Versailles, if they made it to space three.

You can also discard a Strategy card to use a discarded event on your opponent's discard pile if it was discarded this round and matches your faction. The card you discard to trigger it must have an equal or greater ops value.

This adds an interesting layer to the game and contributes even more to tough decisions you have managing your hand of only four cards. If you discard one of your opponent's cards early in the round, you're practically welcoming them to leverage that event, which you typically will want to avoid. That's another reason it's great that you have the option of removing cards from the game when you choose to advance Player Momentum. There are trade-offs with everything, so this game can be a real thinker.

Another factor that makes the hand management so spicy in Red Flag Over Paris, is that after you each play three cards, you set the remaining Strategy card aside for the Final Crisis (5), which is a special round where you only play the events of your Final Crisis cards to close out the game. Therefore, you typically want to pick one of your own strong event cards to save for the Final Crisis, but that means you might have to discard more of your opponent's cards during the round, giving them the opportunity to use the events. Such tough decisions, I tell you! I love it.

After you set aside a card for the Final Crisis, you perform Pivotal Space bonus actions (6). Each Crisis Dimension has a special star-shaped space, which is the Pivotal Space. If you control a Pivotal Space at this point, you can take a bonus action to shift some cubes around in the corresponding Crisis Dimension. The player with the initiative decides the order these bonus actions are resolved.

The Commune player has Paris locked down for Crisis Dimension scoring

There are three different Pivotal Space bonus actions you can take if you control a Pivotal Space. You can de-escalate and either remove up to two of your cubes, or one of yours and one of your opponents. You can spread influence and move up to two of your cubes between any of the spaces in that Crisis Dimension. Or, you can turncoat and swap an opponent's cube for one of yours.

After performing all bonus actions, players gain one political VP for controlling all spaces in a Political Crisis Dimension and one military VP for controlling all spaces in a Military Crisis Dimension (7). I'm sure you can see how strong it is to not have the initiative so you can be last to play a Strategy card before all this pops off. But trust me, there are definitely advantages to calling the shots when it comes to deciding the order in which the bonus actions are resolved.

After scoring the Crisis Dimensions, both players reveal and score their Objective cards (8). The player controlling the space on either Objective card gains a VP, political or military depending on the space. Then, players who controlled their own objective get to perform the event on their Objective card in the order that the initiative player decides.

It might not be obvious, but deciding the order in which this happens and the bonus actions can be awesome. You can arrange to have your event resolve first, which might prevent your opponent's event from even happening. Timing is everything in this game, so again, there are strong advantages and disadvantages to having the initiative, which keeps the game tense throughout every phase.

The last phase of each round is to check if it's time for the Final Crisis phase (9). This happens if both players have breached the Final Crisis zones of their Crisis tracks, or if it's the end of the third round. If not, you deal out four new Strategy cards and two Objective cards and play another round.

Final Crisis cards

When it's time for the Final Crisis round, both players gather the cards they set aside plus their Final Crisis card, and discard down to a hand size equal to the number of rounds they played so far. Then you conduct an initiative phase as usual, and then alternate playing Strategy cards only for their events until all cards are played. If you play an opponent's event , they get to decide if it's executed. This is why I was saying you want to avoid setting aside your opponent's events for the Final Crisis.

After playing the remaining card events, players perform Pivotal Space bonus actions and Crisis Dimension scoring in the order decided by the initiative player, then players with their Player Momentum on space three gain a VP (military for Versailles, political for Commune).

The Versailles player wins if they have more military VPs (0+) than the Commune player has political VPs. Conversely, the Commune player wins if they have more political VPs (0+) than the Versailles player has military VPs. If neither of these conditions are fulfilled, then there are some tiebreaker conditions that are evaluated.

Red Flag Over Paris also includes solitaire rules where you can play against either side. I've been so immersed with the 2-player mode that I haven't gotten around to checking out the solo mode yet, but the player aids for each side seem clear and there are only two small pages of rules to learn how it works, so I'm sure it will be smooth to get into when I have time to try it.

I have been enjoying my plays of Red Flag Over Paris. It's quick to play, very tense, and packed with tough decisions throughout. Sure, there are some typical tug-of-war moments where you might do something, then your opponent immediately undoes it, but there are also plenty of strategic layers that will unfold as you familiarize yourself with the game over time. Plus, for such a short, relatively easy to play game, it has a lot of depth.

There is a good mix of strategy and tactics in Red Flag Over Paris. Each side needs to plan ahead to position themselves well for scoring the victory points they need, but you also have to constantly react and respond to what your opponent is doing. Or maybe not. Sacrifices will need to be made. There were many moments where I was sweating inside, nervous about what my opponent might do, and the tension always felt mutual.

Juggling two different victory point tracks (political and military) adds a fresh twist to Red Flag Over Paris, especially with each faction having different victory conditions. You have to decide if and when it makes sense to be defensive and hold your opponent back versus going heavier on the offensive side to try to gain a lead by earning the points you need to win. I don't know the right answer, but every time I play, I want to try to figure it out.

End of a tie game where I won the tiebreaker

Considering the secretly selected Objective cards can be scored by either player, there are all these mind games you and your opponent can get caught up in, which amuses me. In this game, every victory point matters. How much effort do you want to devote to trying to achieve your Objective, or trying to guess your opponent's Objective, versus doing other things that all feel equally as important. Let's admit though, when you do prevent your opponent from scoring their Objective, or even better, you win their Objective...it feels good...it feels really good.

I really dig that Red Flag Over Paris covers a unique historical topic, and I appreciate how well the mechanisms tie in, especially with the asymmetry between the factions based on how they operated historically. In addition to the rulebook, there's also an awesome playbook with not only examples of play for both the 2-player and solo modes, but also detailed historical notes to give you context on all of the game's events, the history behind the cards in the game, and even pronunciation tips for those of us who don't speak French. It's really well done.

Even though, Red Flag Over Paris is a short, straightforward game, modeled after Fort Sumter the decision space feels innovative, therefore it might take you a game or two to wrap your head around. At least that's how it was for me. For example, it wasn't until after my first game that I realized how important the cards you set aside for the Final Crisis can be.

I'm very impressed with Red Flag Over Paris and look forward to playing it more, in addition to Serval's upcoming release, A Gest of Robin Hood, in GMT's Irregular Conflict series. If you're a fan of CDGs, or tense 2-player games with tough decisions that play in less than an hour, be sure to check out Red Flag Over Paris.