In the last article, we explored the Victory track and how factions score VP. This time, we’ll cover the cards players use to achieve their goals through concrete actions.
You can’t make soup out of promises. – Francis Spufford
Events
In Hammer and Sickle, turn order is not fixed. It is determined each Season by a bid for Morale which occurs during the Events phase at the start of the Season.
On the top-left of each Event card is a Morale number ranging from 1 at the lowest to 100 at the highest. The Events phase consists of each player drawing two cards from their Event deck, choosing one to play and discarding the other, then all four chosen Event cards are revealed simultaneously. The faction that bid the highest Morale number becomes the first player in Turn Order for that Season, followed by the second-highest Morale, etc. Along with the advantage of acting first, the first player also gains the May Day card, allowing them to Pass once per Season, saving an Action for last in the Season once everyone else has finished. Furthermore, as we’ll see in Part 4 of this InsideGMT preview, the tie-breaker in Combat is higher Morale!
In the example above, the White Army player wins the Morale bid, taking the May Day card as the first player. They will also win all tie-breakers in Combat this Season. The Bolshevik player will act second, followed by the New Nations player and finally the Anarchist. The revealed Events will now also be resolved in this sequence (some of them may be ongoing effects that will remain in play for the rest of the Season).
The downside of choosing a high Morale card is that its Event card will be proportionally weaker, whereas cards with low Morale numbers tend to have much stronger Event effects. This makes for an interesting decision at the start of each Season – how valuable is turn order this Season, to yourself as well as your enemies?
Actions
Each Season, factions take a total of three Actions, one at a time in turn order, each resolved through an Action or Commander card which is specific to that faction. After the first player chooses their card and takes their first Action, play passes to the second player, who does the same, and so on. Once all factions have played three different cards, the Action phase is completed and the Propaganda phase begins (which we will explore in a future article).
Each faction has six different cards to choose from during the Action phase. Some are Commanders, used to initiate or participate in Combat (stay tuned for Part 4 for an exploration of Combat). The rest are normal Action cards, explored here.
Normal Action cards have certain core features shared across the various factions. First, each has a basic effect, which is free to activate (in the lighter background above). The basic effect always activates one of the faction’s territories and improves that territory, by adding troops, adding or removing Nationalism, or adding or removing Agitation. When adding troops, it is advantageous to do so in a territory that matches your faction’s base – either Hammer or Sickle territories (mentioned in Part 1 of this series). Not only will it yield more troops, but it will avoid adding Agitation by not angering the local populace. This is illustrated by the Bolshevik Mobilize card above, showing that Mobilizing in a Hammer territory is doubly beneficial because the Bolsheviks are an (industrial) Hammer faction.
Then each Action card also has an advanced effect (in the darker background), which may or may not be tied to the same territory, but which always comes with a cost. Depending on the card, the cost for the advanced effect may be Food, Firepower, or even your own troops, but it will always be powerful and performed in addition to the basic card effect. For example, the New Nations Rally card above indicates that at the cost of 1 Food, the basic effect of the card can essentially be doubled, or the player can draw a new Objective card. Each faction has a similar card to this, but instead has an option to add faction’s troops rather than Nationalism, which is unique to the New Nations.
The advanced effect of the Bolshevik Mobilize card (above) is also indicative of how troop movement works in Hammer and Sickle. Outside of Combat (covered next time), this type of Mobilize card, which each faction has a version of, provides the main way to shift troop numbers around the map.
In this example, the Bolshevik player uses the Mobilize card (above) to add troops to Moscow, then spends 1 Food to transport troops from the active territory to any number of connected Bolshevik or vacant territories. In other words, the troops from Moscow can be divided and moved to any connected territories, connection being defined as not being separated by enemy troops. In the example, the Bolshevik territories of Astrakhan, Chernihiv, Olonets, and Tsaritsyn are all connected to Moscow, but Turgai is not because White territories disconnect it.
Connection is applied more flexibly for the New Nations and Anarchist factions. With the backing of the British Navy, the New Nations can treat all coastal territories as connected, even if they are on different seas. This means they could for example move troops from Finland on the Baltic Sea to the Caucasus on the Black Sea. However, they can only transport troops by land OR by sea, not both – so troops could not be moved from Kyiv to Lithuania by land and then to the Caucasus by sea. The Anarchists, as a guerrilla force, can effectively ignore connection and move behind enemy lines, so long as they are moving to territories with Agitation and no enemy troops. Agile movement partially compensates for the general lack of troops and Firepower that the Anarchists and New Nations possess, when compared to the larger, more rigid forces of the Bolsheviks and Whites.
Next time, we’ll delve into Combat, and see the strategic importance of bluffing, and of reading your opponents.
Previous Articles:
The Four Factions of Hammer and Sickle
Author: Alex Knight
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