Last weekend I was at the GMT Weekend at the Warehouse gathering and Gene was kind enough to give me an open copy of Nevsky. To set the stage, I am friends with the designer, so if I did not like the game I would never post anything. If I liked the game I would have tweeted out some happy words. But if I really like the game, I write a strategy analysis.

As background, I knew next to nothing about this topic until I played this game and read Volko’s historical notes, which are quite good. Second, I learned the game from reading the rules. No one taught me, so I can state that the rules are quite clear, but you will need to read all of the words or you will miss stuff. I had no issues learning, setting up, and playing the game.

That said, figuring out how to lead a mid-thirteenth century military campaign requires that you play the game and learn what makes sense as you go. The game comes with six scenarios; one short (Pleskau 1240 – the one covered here), 4 medium to long, plus a Campaign game. This scenario is essentially the beginning of the Campaign scenario, so it feels like a great place to start.

I have played the game exactly once in solo mode, so I am sure that my strategy knowledge will evolve, so take my comments with a grain of salt. What I hope to accomplish with this strategy analysis is discuss how the game works without a deep dive into the rules. The rules by the way are available for free download on the GMT Nevsky game page. You may find them helpful if things I talk about aren’t clear.

Each turn begins with a Levy where each of the Lords uses their Lordship rating (Each lord has four ratings: Fealty, Service, Lordship, Command), which gives them a number of options for gaining transport assets, mustering vassals, and choosing new capabilities such as crossbowmen). You can also try to activate Lords that are Ready, but not yet in play. You can choose any combination of these options and you can make the same choice multiple times.

The first thing you will realize is you need transport and food if you want to get anything accomplished. The season determines what kinds of transport are useful. This scenario takes place entirely during the summer, so carts, boats, and ships are all useful, but without a mix of carts and boats you aren’t going to get very far unless you don’t want to feed your troops. In Winter, only Sleds (Carts auto convert to sleds in Winter) are available; in fact it is easiest to move around in winter, heck it’s Russia. In Mud (Rasputitsa), only Boats and Ships are available. If you examine the map, there are many places where you require an ability to move along both water and tracks, so in certain seasons (especially mud), cross country movement is more or less impossible.

Therefore, you need to have sufficient transport of the correct type to carry provisions around. You can carry one Provision per transport type that can be expanded to two for one, but then you are Laden and you essentially move slower (one command to move one Locale versus two commands if Laden). If you cannot drag food with you, the troops get very unhappy, which shortens their time in the field.

So let’s first talk about Service. Each Lord has a predetermined amount of time that they are obligated to stay in the field. Spending money can extend this service, while not feeding the troops and being unsuccessful in combat will shorten it. So, it stands to simple reason that if you don’t feed the troops, your army is going to simply disband and go home. I like to use right to left thinking when I play a game, so you need to look to where you want to go and then make sure you muster sufficient amounts of the correct types of transport. Since this is a summer scenario you will need carts and boats.

At the beginning of the scenario, the Teutons have three Lords with a combined Lordship (not transferable between Lords) of 7 Levy actions. Because my plan was to use the Danes along the coast, I had them build more ships, while my other two Lords mustered carts and boats. The normal inclination is to muster more Vassals and combat capabilities, but my analysis of the situation was that the Teutons did not need to raise additional Vassals (larger forces eat more, requiring more transport that moves slower) and while there were some capabilities I desired, I pushed that off for future Levy actions.

The Rus has two Lords with a combined 5 Levy actions, but they start with a bit more transport and given the strategic situation appeared to be more on the defensive. I added some boats so I could move cross country, but also Mustered Domash in Novograd plus gained a few capabilities (chosen not random) such as Crossbowmen (Streltsy).

Once Levy is concluded, you flip into Campaign mode that begins with a planning segment. As soon as I saw the main campaign, I realized that Volko had finally found a place for the Angola mechanic that he loves. My later reading of his design notes confirms my initial assessment. Each Lord has three command cards that you build into a Command deck. Starting with the Teutons, you flip over the top Command card that activates that Lord who can take a number of actions equal to their command rating. Once the Teutons finish their first command card, play alternates to the Rus, and so on until all Command cards have been played.

My Teuton plan was to advance on Pskov to tie down Rus forces while I would use the Danes to grab a section of Rus coastline. Toward this end, Hermann and Yaroslav (Teuton) started the siege of Isoborsk (fort). The Danes landed at Narwia. As an example Domash, who was mustered this turn, did not have any boats, so although he could advance about halfway to Pskov, he had to stop as he could go no further without boats. While Hermann unsuccessfully prosecuted the siege of Isoborsk, most of the other actions were to collect provision via supply and forage. As I said, you need to feed the troops or they get upset.

I will not go into this in any detail, but the Rus political situation is handled through a Noble assembly called the Veche. They do not want help from the Suzdal Princes (Nevsky), as they want to operate independently. One of the capabilities that I chose in the Levy was Black Sea Trade, so I had a steady stream of Coin coming in while the Teutons had to rely on Taxes. The issue with Taxes is you have to do it at your Seat (home base), whereas the Veche can fund any Rus force. Nothing surprising here, you need money and food to run a war. So ended the Early Summer turn, with the siege of Isoborsk being the only hostile action.

This all feels correct to me as this war is mostly the brain child of Hermann (Bishop of Dorpat) and everyone else is in it for the money. As you can see, you need to be on top of your Quartermaster game if you want to get anything done. What was accomplished was the Teutons put in place the infrastructure for an offensive that is still in its early stages.

During the Late Summer (last turn) Levy phase the Teutons build some additional transport, but did acquire Crossbowmen and Warrior Monks for the siege of Ivoborsk. I also got the Papal Legate into the game, but I should have done this in the first turn if it was going to be useful in this scenario (lesson learned). In the campaign game, the Legate gives you additional Mustering capabilities that are quite useful for a longer scenario. The Rus, on the other hand, needed boats and the ability to improve fortifications.

The Teutons opened by prosecuting their siege, but because the garrison would not surrender (more on this later) the Siege lines became stronger. Vladislav moved forward to Kaibolovo (north) to block any Danish advance. It so happened Knud/Abel (Danish princes) advanced and I chose to see how a battle would go. In retrospect I am not sure this was the best Rus move, but the two forces were close in size and a victory would open up Rus counter pressure.

The battle of Kaibolovo was good fun. Basically you array your force with both sides establishing a force in the center, with additional forces placed on the left/right flank and in reserve. Any Lord can be designated as a Lieutenant to lead one other Lord. Only a Marshall can lead more than one additional Lord. The Teuton Marshall is Hermann who is in the siege. The Rus have two potential Marshalls, but neither of them is available in this scenario. Note that there is also another Teuton Marshall, Andreas, who outranks Hermann, also not in the scenario. The point being is most battles will be either one on one, two on two, or two on one affairs. The main advantage to having a flanking force is you gain more flexibility on how you take hits.

I will not cover how to conduct a battle in any detail. If you want to know the details, download the rules, but here is a short overview. Essentially a battle (and storming a fortification) is conducted as a series of rounds. In battle, you conduct rounds until one side is eliminated or concedes. In a Storm, you conduct a number of rounds equal to the number of siege markers (max four). Each round in battle is a defense-attacker exchange of fire in the order of archery, horse melee (not in Storm), foot melee. Each unit generates from one-half to two hits. The opposing side then makes protection rolls. Pass a protection roll and the hit misses. Fail the protection roll and the unit routs. That’s basically how it goes. In a one to one attack, anything is possible, so do so at your own peril. In this battle the Danes prevailed.

In retrospect I think that Vladoslav (Rus) should have avoided battle, because when you lose a battle your Service length is shortened. If it is shortened to the left of the current turn then the Lord is removed. In this scenario alone, removing a Lord is a VP. On the other hand, the Danes only had a one unit advantage, so the fact that the Teutons won was not an exercise in superior tactics, but just what the dice felt should happen. I have been thinking about this battle as an important point of strategic discussion: when should you fight?

Because battles are uncertain affairs, how should I think about them going forward? If you have a clear force advantage, your opponent should avoid fighting and just retreat. You potentially give up supplies that you cannot move, but you get to fight another day. I think this very accurately models the thinking of the ancients, which is an area where I have some knowledge. If you are weaker, it goes without saying that launching an attack is a risky maneuver. Therefore, if you want to fight a battle, you have to either outmaneuver your opponent (cut off their ability to avoid battle or use Ambush event) or you have to attack with close to one to one forces and hope the quality of your troops prevails.

In this situation, I now believe the Rus should not have fought the battle. Vladoslav (Rus) could have been kept in the field with Veche Coin and would have been a threat to the Danes that would have made sieging Kaibolovo difficult to prosecute. Once defeated, the Danes were able to both storm the fort and then capture a Trade route port for 2 VPs.

The Teutons on the other hand needed to attack if they wanted to win. Therefore the risk was necessary and it paid off. If the Danes had lost, the coming of winter would have made a Rus counter offensive possible, but of less near term concern. Bottomline: consider the strategic situation carefully before you initiate or accept a battle.

As it turned out, this battle led to the Teutons winning two VPs for two successful sieges, plus one VP for capturing a Trade port, and one VP for knocking out the Rus Lord. That’s a total of 4 VP. The Rus only had the 1VP that they began the scenario with, so this was a clear Teuton win. However, that was not the main purpose of the session. Learning the system and the situation to enable more informed play on my next and subsequent sessions was the goal. I have challenged Volko to a match in November, but he is unlikely to want to face defeat. (I’m smiling as I write this).

(POSTSCRIPT: Challenge was accepted.)

Here is what the map looked like at the scenario close.

As a closing exercise, I went through the full last turn to see how the conversion from Summer to Winter works. Basically your Carts turn to sleds, but then you lose stuff due to wastage and such, so the first thing you will be doing during the next Levy is bring on more sleds. That ends the session.

It should be obvious that i really like Volko’s new design and I look forward to playing this one and the others that he already has in development. To close, here are a few Strategy lessons that I have learned so far.

Some Strategy Lessons

Do you need to muster Vassals? Large forces have advantages, but my thought is not most of the time; stay lean. Muster Vassals when you need them to replace losses, but keep each Lord under 6 units to be efficient with Provision use.

When sieging don’t automatically roll for surrender as you don’t gain any spoils if they yield. If you are in a hurry, forts can and should be stormed although you will take some losses. Larger locales will require a longer siege, but if you are in a hurry, then rolling for surrender makes less sense. Because surrender is a die roll, you have to weigh whether to conduct a long siege if the enemy will let you versus Storming the castle. If the enemy is bearing down on you, either fall back or plan on winning your objective by Storm.

Don’t fight battles unless you have to, even if you are slightly stronger. Otherwise, only fight when the strategic situation requires it. Battles are uncertain affairs, especially if you insist on failing your protection rolls. As soon as you see the writing on the wall, concede and save as much of your force as you can.

For the side on the defensive, usually the Rus, Vassals mustered when you are in a key position makes sense as it makes being attacked a very uncertain affair and is likely to deter your Teuton opponent from even trying.

Pay attention to the calendar. Whose Service is running short? Make sure you have Coin available in the right places to keep a Lord in the field. Due to the Veche, the Rus have an advantage in this area.

Pay attention to the calendar. Where are your forces? What kinds of transport will they need for next turn if you want them to move? Do they have sufficient food? Failing to pay attention to what comes next is a recipe for failure.

I am now going to start the full Campaign scenario so I can see the full sweep of Nevsky.

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