We've previously Dragon Dawn Productions' Justice and Tolerance on Board's Eye View. Both were tricksy trick-taking games. Designed by Ren Multamaki, Verdun is the latest title in this series. It's a two-player or four-player (two teams of two) card game themed around the First World War battle in 1916 between French and German troops. The Battle of Verdun resulted in massive casualties (around 350,000 or more on each side) and was fought over a period of almost 10 months. You can play this new game from DDP tho' in around 30 minutes.
Verdun is played with using a deck of 'troop cards' ranked 2-13 plus a General (playable as a 1 or 14) and a Spy, which duplicates the value of a trick's previously played card. There are troop cards in both the French and German suits. In addition, the draw deck includes some 'friendly suit' cards that count as your suit. Players have a set of fortification tokens with a numerical value (0-7) on their reverse side and asset tokens with hidden values 1-7. At the start of each round, players lay out their tokens so that each asset is positioned behind a fortification token.
Players are each dealt a hand of 12 cards. For each trick, the team that leads is deemed the attacker and they choose which of their opponent's fortifications they are targetting. Each player plays a card from their hand and the totals for the attacker and defender are compared. If the attackers' total is less than or equal to that of the defenders, the attack fails. If it exceeds the defenders' total, the targeted fortification is flipped and revealed and its numerical value is added to the defence.
The Battle of Verdun in World War I was especially memorable for its heavy casualties and this game represents that attrition through the effects of winning and losing a trick. Tho' a successful attack can win the opposing team's points-scoring asset and fortification tokens, even the trick's victor takes casualties in the form of the lowest value card played in their suit; the losing side loses the highest value card in their suit. All troop cards show skulls on them (1-5) and these translate to negative points at the end of the game.
Players' hands of cards are dealt from a deck that includes both suits so it's likely that you'll have several cards that benefit your opponents rather than your own side. You'll have to play them at some point, so the twist in this game in working out when best to play those cards; in all likelihood conceding a trick. The other twist is with the 'Tactical' cards that are awarded to the player who played the highest-ranking surviving card regardless of suit. Players can add a Tactical card to a trick and its effect overrides the ordinary rules, so canny use of Tactical cards can help to mitigate the potential liability of playing cards that would seem to benefit the opposing side:
Air Strike adds +3 to your side's total, regardless of the suit you played
Mustard Gas means each side loses an additional card
Artillery means all the cards in the trick become casualties
Decoys means you lose only your lowest value card regardless of outcome or other Tactical card effects
Stratagem is playable as a response to cancel the effect of another Tactical card.
There's no heavy rules overhead before you can start playing Verdun so this is a game you can play straight out of the box. We'd just like to have seen the Tactical card effects printed on the cards: as it is in the prototype shown here on Board's Eye View, players coming new to the game have had to refer to the rules when they earn one of these cards. Tho' gameplay is otherwise simple, there are real dilemmas over how best to make use of the seemingly unhelpful hand you've been dealt. Like Baldrick in Blackadder Goes Forth, you'll need a cunning plan...
With just two players, each player has their own dummy partner. This works, tho' for us Verdun is at its best with the subtle interactions of its four-player team game. It's a great addition to DDP's range of 'trick-taking' card games, and it's the easiest of the three to learn and play.
Dragon Dawn Productions will be bringing Verdun to Kickstarter later this year. Click here for an alert when the KS is launched.