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News from the North: ‘Friedrich’ by Richard Sivel.
Kendall is a veritable bundle of energy. Showing most unRagnarlike thrust and drive he has turned the Ragnars into a stripped-down, multi-faceted business empire fit to rival even that of Richard Branson. Phil’s contribution to the wind of change is to go out and buy a new game. The venue is Dave’s; Roger, Ian and Dave are in attendance; tonight is its debut.
Friedrich is described as being part wargame, part card game, and is the lifetime’s labour of love of Richard Sivel (who perhaps not surprisingly is German). The theme is Frederick the Great’s desperate attempts to ward off the combined might of France, Russia, Austria, Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire, aided and abetted only by the best darned army in Europe, some British subsidies and a rather strange looking portrait on the box top. The components are solid and straight forward (rather like the Prussian army): a well-mounted map, decent counters and four packs of very nice playing cards. The rules are quite short and surprisingly simple, and within twenty minutes roles are allocated, and away the Ragnars go.
The central theme to the game is combat, and a very clever system it is too. Each turn a country receives a certain number of cards (ranging from seven for Prussia through to one for Sweden) – the more cards you have in a suit, the more options you have. The map is divided into some thirty or so squares, each square showing a particular suit. Within each square only that particular suit can be used. In a battle players compare their army sizes. Whoever has the lowest number must play some cards from their hand until their total is greater than their opponents. Play then passes to the other player who in turn plays cards until he has the greater value, and so on. The loser (the player who is first unable to top their opponent’s total) loses a number of armies equal to the difference and retreats that number of cities on the map. Simple, bloody, but very very atmospheric. With the exception of one or two smaller rules, that is virtually it for combat. But so clever.
Here’s how well it plays. Phil is France. He has been left relatively unmolested by Prussia until now and has had the chance to build up his hand. Some careful manoeuvring has resulted in most of southern Hanover falling into his hands, and a brush with the army of the Butcher Cumberland has seen the Hanoverians falling back northward. But what next? Advance into Germany? Nope, it’s a hearts square and France is thin on the hearts. Go north to give Cumberland another good thumping? Sounds promising but it leaves France’s conquests exposed to the Prussians, and, anyway, if Hanover has the right cards they can possibly reduce their losses to maybe no more than one or two armies, and then fall back very slowly. Great choices – very historical – it feels just like you think it should.
Friedrich feels right. There are though a couple of downsides to it as an experience. Firstly, it takes a long time to play. During a turn there’s nothing terribly complicated to get your head round. However, like many games, because you collect your countries cards at the start of your turn, there is a lot of thinking through of what you can achieve. As a consequence the pace of the game is rather slow (Sunday’s game lasted three hours to play about half the game – perhaps there was too much pondering, but methinks not).
Far worse is the swings and roundabouts effect to the game. No matter how big your army, if you hit the opponent in what for them is a good area, you can pretty well wreck your field army (they too can be equally devastated). Now although within the style of the Seven Year’s War you can rationalise this – there were some very decisive combats - when coupled with the effects of the chance cards, things can go rather haywire. Dave, having rebuilt his Russian army after getting severely hammered in Prussia, successfully overran most of that province and proceeded to invade Germany. Unfortunately on what was effectively the seventh turn of the game, the Tsarina decided to ‘pop her clogs’ and home went the Russians (“Yes, that’s it – that’s the end of the game for Russia”). Roger’s attempts at sympathy (“it’s not that bad – you’ve still got Sweden” – one card per turn and 4 points of army - ha ha ha) failed to cheer Dave up. And you can see his point. Possibly a house rule to reduce the effects of the ‘Death of the Tsarina’ card will be in order. Possibly more will be needed to induce Dave to play it again.
But worth trying again definitely. Phil and Roger both thoroughly enjoyed it. For anyone else who likes their games with a generous dollop of history, this one could be for you.
Note: In typical Ragnar fashion, Phil can’t resist tinkering with the components. The game provides players with a handful of roster sheets to keep track of the ebb and flow of each commander’s army. On the other hand, with some wooden cubes from Wallenstein, a cardboard rectangle for each commander and a screen per player from the latest Ragnar creation (‘M’ – and no, it isn’t a James Bond game), – voila – a much better solution. He is roundly applauded by all present. Far better than scribbling out numbers on a piece of paper.
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