It’s been a whole year of GMT One, and to say thank you to our customers and supporters, we have a Holiday Gift for you: a free print-and-play Solo Opponent for Mark Herman’s Fort Sumter.
During the pandemic, I spent many nights working on the Solo Opponent for Fred Serval’s Red Flag Over Paris, which uses the same game system as Fort Sumter. As we were wrapping up, I realized that the underlying approach could easily be ported to Fort Sumter, so I asked Gene if we could do the Solo Opponent as a free giveaway. He was quite enthusiastic, so I got to work. It turned out to be a bit more work than I expected – as most Solitaire rulesets seem to be – but it was also a lot of fun to dissect Mark’s game.
Mark Herman’s ground-breaking, innovative and thoroughly enjoyable game (insert any title of his here, but in this case, Fort Sumter) is the kind of game you can play over and over again and get a different outcome almost every time. It’s only failing, at least for me, however, is in its victory conditions. No matter whether you win a draw or score twice as many points as your opponent, it just means that you are better prepared for the upcoming war than the other side.
Really? That’s it? Really? As much as I love the game (board and the new computer version alike), that simple, single level of victory (or defeat) is something I find quite unfulfilling and unsatisfying. So much so that it seems anti-climatic. In order for me to better enjoy the game, and to increase the challenge in playing it, I have come up with levels of victory, and what each level means (at least for me).
Now that Fort Sumter has entered the gaming universe, I thought it was time to do a few articles on strategy. If you are unfamiliar with this game, please look at my earlier Inside GMT articles or download the Playbook and read the comprehensive example of play.
We now continue with Round 3 of Mark’s AAR ofFort Sumter. If you missed the first three articles in this series, click on the following links to read them first: Part 1Part 2Part 3.
We now continue with Round 2 of Mark’s AAR ofFort Sumter. If you missed the first two articles in this series, click on the following links to read them first: Part 1Part 2.
Round 2: Lame Duck Buchanan
Round2 Unionist hand and objectives. They choose Washington as the Objective.
Because the score is still tied, the Unionist will still go first. We now see for the first time a 3 card whose event is available to both sides (Seizing Federal Armories). The Unionist decides to choose the Objective card Washington, where they already have one token.
As promised in Part 1 of this article last week, what follows next is my Twitter game of July 1st, with accompanying photos and my original text. The only edits were to take the necessary abbreviations that Twitter’s 140 characters impose and write them out in full. This is an instructional game, so the strategy is solid, but there might have been superior moves at times. I will supplement each photo and tweet with a short dialog on what is going on so you can follow the action while learning the game.
Caveat: I exceeded my multitasking abilities, as this experiment occurred prior to a family BBQ. One of my nephews hit the map, a neighbor’s cat decided to see what was going on, and my wife appropriately insisted that anything she wanted me to do had immediate priority. As a consequence, errors were made when reconstructing the situation and are indicated where appropriate in the text. Everyone participating in this experiment was a professional; do not try this at home.
On July 1st, I did something that I have never done before. I sat outside and I played a solo game of Fort Sumter while taking a picture of each move, then tweeted it out to my approximately 1300+ followers. It got a very good response, so with the aid of a very technically savvy millennial (thank you Rachel B.), I am commenting on what occurred so that you can see and learn how to play Fort Sumter.
The American Civil War lasted from April, 1861 to May, 1865, just over forty eight months.
When I was researching the background information for “Infernal Machine: Dawn of Submarine Warfare” I knew there would have to be some way of showing the influence of the outside world on the Player’s project.
The Player’s role in the game is that of Inventor and entrepreneur.
As such, you must be forever cognizant that, while that team of engineering wizards you’ve hired are busy constructing that underwater terror of yours, there is a Civil War raging across the formerly United States.
Current events generated by that Civil War will occur both near and far in relation to your machine shop’s front door, frequently accompanied by a frisson of dread.
Every year when we roll out our Yearly Sale, we get lots of requests from customers asking for a variety of information about the games that they can buy in the sale. Which games have the lowest stock levels, which games of a certain series are available, which hot games are available, which games have the highest retail values (usually for the folks who are looking to resell some or all of their sale purchases), etc. So this year, as we approach the GMT Sale that starts on Tuesday, September 3, Rachel and I have created this Buyer’s Guide to try to give you some of that information to help out with your buying choices. We encourage you to use this information and the links below to build your sale carts on the GMT website between now and Tuesday when the sale begins. I hope you find this Buyer’s Guide useful.
Manoeuvre is one of my favorite under-the-radar games that GMT publishes. It has an approachable playtime of around 45 minutes, so it’s easy to get to the table, and rewards careful play and clever hand management. The asymmetric factions and decks of cards provide lots of variety, but the core system is tight and chess-like. I also really appreciate that while the combat system has enough chrome to make battles satisfying, it does so without obscuring the elegance of the underlying mechanisms.
Because I love the game so much, I wanted to find a way to make it even more approachable and likely to be played. The idea hit me to use the CDG Solo System to replicate some of the fog of war in the hands of cards. But there is one core problem with that approach: the CDG Solo System assumes you are playing one card per turn (for the most part) and in Manoeuvre, the entire conceit of the game is that you can play up to your entire hand in a turn. Is it possible to find a way to modify the CDG Solo System to accommodate this style of play? It turns out that it is!
For those familiar with the CDG Solo System, the main change to the gameplay is that when rolling to determine which slot to play from, all of the cards in that slot become available for play during the turn for any legal purpose. This means that multiple unit and HQ cards could be played in a single combat, for example. Then, I added two things to the usual flow of the CDG Solo System:
During the Discard and Draw phases, you can select any cards to be discarded and replaced from the draw deck.
If you choose not to play a card during your turn (i.e. you move and do not initiate combat, nor restore a unit), you may move any one card from one slot to another (or from the top of the draw deck to any other slot).
Taken together, these give the feel of building your hand and shedding less useful cards. The tension of the game stays intact: do you respond now while you have a sub-optimal attack, or cycle cards and try to get that extra unit card or leader to boost your chances?
CDG Solo System Playsheet for Manoeuvre (click image for link to PDF)
We hope you have a very Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year, and that this playsheet brings you some enjoyment in 2024!
