Below is an article featuring Peloponnesian War insights and first impressions from first time player and InsideGMT contributor David Wiley of Cardboard Clash. You can also find this article on David’s blog. Enjoy! -Rachel

We’re creeping ever closer to getting current on the First Impression-style session reports for Wargames played this year! I think three more to go after this one..for now (Charlemagne Master of Europe, Commands & Colors: Ancients, and Nevsky are yet-to-come!) and with the chaos of moves going on for both myself and my Wargaming opponent, well, I might actually get current before adding to the lengthy list of games needing these reports. I didn’t expect that to be a possibility about two weeks ago!

Peloponnesian War is really unique, being designed as a solo game with a MASSIVE board that has far fewer troops on there than you’d expect. Of course, there are several different scenarios and there is a pretty lengthy example of play to “play” through to get that first turn of the massive campaign finished. I started by going through that example, moving pieces around the board step-by-step as it walked me through everything. And then I had to tear the game down, as a friend was coming over and we needed the table space. But the next day, back out the game went to restart that same scenario and try to run through things from Turn 1, making my own decisions.

And boy, it lasted far longer in terms of time than I expected. Those first two Rounds took about an hour each, as I still had to stop and reference the rulebook frequently to make sure I was doing things properly. But by the time I hit Rounds 3-4, at the end of which the game concluded (I conquered Sparta!), it was moving at a clip of closer to 30 minutes per Round. Of course, with each Round lasting a variable amount of turns per side there could be both very short and very long Rounds. I found the shortest to allow 2 turns per side, while the longest had one side get a 5th turn in there. And, well, let’s just get right into the series of insights on this one because I really wish I had been able to understand this first one better before I played.

Insight #1: Your Operations can be anything you desire, and the game doesn’t really make it clear what you SHOULD be doing with them

Boy, this was a sticking point for me. I even went onto BGG after that learning turn to figure out what I was trying to do. I mean, I knew the win conditions for the game but had no frame of reference for what I should be trying to accomplish in order to get closer to those objectives. Ultimately, my first Round was spent closely mirroring the actions taken in the example game because I still didn’t grasp what was worthwhile, but figured there must have been reasons for those things. Fortunately, my Round ended on the earlier side, so I didn’t need to flounder for too long, and as things slowly began to resolve (poorly) I had the first moment of revelation: the AI opponent was spreading Rebellion across the map, and so I could focus the next turn on trying to stamp some of those down.

The next Round saw the AI get a unit stranded really close to my units, so I had my second moment of clarity come really early: I should send a stronger force to attack that stranded unit, so I divided my efforts between mustering a slightly stronger force to go and attack the smaller armies around the map while also sending expeditionary forces to stave off the further spread of rebellion. Well, neither of those went well for me. My die roll in the battle was horrible, so my marginally stronger force with a leader lost to their single Hoplite and I lost the entire stack. And most of my expeditionary forces were intercepted and suffered from the removal of a unit which left my leader stranded because I didn’t send him in anything more than a single boat. Also during this resolution I saw, in a negative way, what those Rebellion and Ravaged markers could do as it reduced my income for the next turn and dropped my SPI value…leading to my third moment of clarity: sending out a force to raze the land is a key way to chip away at the opposing force’s funds while also bringing them closer to a loss. Equipped with those three revelations, I had a much better time of planning out my Third and Fourth Rounds where the momentum shifted in my favor.

Insight #2: Luck can swing the tide in a hurry

My play was a tale of two halves to the game. In the first two Rounds, everything that could go poorly seemed to go poorly for me. No big deal, I thought. I’ll be in a great position once the game has me switch sides, opening the door for an easier victory. Well, no such luck was in store as I didn’t get to switch at all for the game (even on the 3rd Round when I had a +3 modifier to that roll!). But seriously, I was losing battles, losing troops during interception skirmishes, and overall doing a great job of losing the game. I’d like to think it was my better understanding of the game which changed the outcome in those last two Rounds, but it was mostly that the d6 stopped going against me every step of the way. Sure, I did plan things better to where I had better modifiers in small-scale battles, but I also saw my share of rolls go my way – especially at the very end as I tried to take down Sparta with their +4 modifier versus my +2.

Any time that luck plays a factor in games, you’re going to hit situations where you lose when you expected to win and times where you win when you thought it might be completely hopeless. Since you’re rolling a single d6, it has that room for swingy effects, as there aren’t buckets of dice to flatten the curve of chance. Just know that there’s a good chance, when things are swinging hard your way, you are opening yourself up for a greater chance of being forced to change sides.

Insight #3: The losses from a defeat can be absolutely staggering and change the landscape of an entire turn.

If you thought the dice had power before, it has staggering power when you consider the ramifications of a battle outcome. See, the winning army stays where they are and has you lose/gain VP and affect the SPI track. The losing army likely goes down on that SPI track and, even worse, loses their entire army to the Going Home box after taking permanent losses. Yep, even if they outnumber you 10:1, if you manage to win they lose everyone off the map. Huge. This could cause a massive swing in the board. In fact, this was the very thing that caused me to consider going for victory in Round 4. See, on my 3rd Operation I was on my way to squash Rebellion in the north and the nearest path took me right past a large enemy force in Corinth. Sure enough, they intercepted. Skirmish ensues, and the armies are large enough it goes into a land battle. A very close-in-size land battle that I won, wiping that space free from enemies. That left a wide open path down to Sparta that I couldn’t pass on. Thankfully, my next activation happened and I was able to trek down and overcome the lopsided multiplier to pull off an unexpected victory.

Just know, those losses go both ways…and when you lose, you also suffer a -15 VP hit which stinks, since you only get 10 VP per victory.

Insight #4: The most frustrating part of this game comes in calculating the route an Operation will take

It isn’t even close. My least favorite thing to do is to count out 8-13 spaces over and over again, taking slightly different paths, to figure out which path the force should take. Because the rules state they must take the shortest route, and when two (or more) are equal, you roll a die to determine which branch they take. Well, this really sucks to do. I’m pretty sure I managed to recount the same route accidentally at least once every time I had to math out paths, and there were several times when I couldn’t remember what a route counted as so I would have to count it again. Take this out of the game and it shaves at least 45 minutes from my overall play time. I’m not exaggerating here.

But I do understand the importance of this in the rules. After all, it prevents you from strategically making decisions to avoid – or encounter – specific spots on the board. All you can do is pick the destination and “chance” determines the rest if there is more than one good way to get there. It is how I wiped out Corinth, after all, so I can’t be too upset about the process. But this is easily the most frustrating part about the Peloponnesian War.

Insight #5: The AI only changes tactic if you put it on the defensive or if you do well on a turn. So when you suck, you can use that to your advantage.

All things accounted for, spreading Rebellion isn’t such a bad thing to see your opponent do for 3 Rounds in a row. It sent them off to distant parts of the map (and yes, it Ravaged pretty effectively along the way), but the forces sent were really small and vulnerable to attack. Rebellion is easy to remove, just needing a friendly force adjacent to the space. And for the most part, it keeps your own forces intact. Once I started to see the advantages it gained me, I was able to leverage that to a strong Round 3. And next time I hope to be able to analyze the board, and the action’s intentions, much sooner to be able to exploit that early on to my benefit – although not too strong of a benefit in case I get forced to switch sides.

Insight #6: The threat of changing sides is always in the back of your mind.

This game has that really cool and interesting approach where you can be forced to switch sides, which is a bigger threat based upon how well you do in the previous Round. Yes, it is a d6 roll, and every step on the positive direction for SPI adds to your roll. A 6+ makes you switch sides, and suddenly all that work you did to deplete the forces of the enemy becomes what you have to work with as you try and strike back and bring the game to a successful conclusion. And this is always on the back of the mind, especially as things go well for your side. There’s always a temptation to hold back just a little bit, in order to minimize the disadvantage you could possibly inherit. It seems like a game where you want to take small steps toward victory, until you can have one big turn to sweep the board into a victory – and it certainly played out that way for me unintentionally. However, my victory was not strong enough to lock up a decisive victory, something I may come to regret later in the campaign…

Wrap-Up

I sure had fun with this one overall. Peloponnesian War helped to reignite my desire for a nice, sprawling epic of a solitaire experience while I was borrowing it from a friend. And we’ll have to definitely try out the 2-player scenario in the game at some point. While I’m a little sad that I never had to flip sides, I still learned a lot from the game as it gradually unfolded. Which means my next game should start off a little better, at least in terms of how I approach what I am accomplishing on my turns. That understanding may also come to be a strong disadvantage, should I find myself needing to defend out of the hole I dug for myself. Which is why I am excited to revisit this one sooner than later, before these lessons fade into the past. If you like solitaire wargames but dislike playing both sides against each other equally (I’m definitely not a fan of that approach), take heart: the inactive side is fully automated with tables and dice rolls. You might really dig this one, just like I did.

Previous Articles: 

A New Wargamer’s Guide to Failing Spectacularly at Twilight Struggle (i.e. Lessons Learned from My First Failure)

A New Wargamer’s Reflections on Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan