Sunday, May 04, 2008

Hohenfriedeberg - Review


This is just a short review of Hohenfriedeberg which is a very small Print and Play game.

This is a 1 page wargame. Rules, counters and map are all printed on a single side of paper ( or card ).

The map is hex based and I'm glad to say very nicely presented. Hex borders are used to denote movement restrictions. A thick black line means impassable and a thick gray line denotes movement stops after crossing. A very simple and nice mechanic. The images/drawings on the map are hand drawn and quite appealing.

The counters have a simple silhouette and a number in each corner. The numbers are Attack, Defence, Movement and Range, pretty standard wargame fare. The two sides have different background colours.

The Rules are short and to the point, well written and I didn't have any problems following them.

Set up is straight forward, starting spaces on the map are indicated by circles. A nice feature is that players take turns placing one of thier counters onto the start places. This means that despite the rigid start locations you can vary how the troops are distributed, meaning you can try many initial set ups.

On a turn, you can move two of your counters and attack with two counters. The attack counters dont have to be the ones you moved.

Counters that lose a combat are flipped and have to retreat. A flipped counter that loses a combat is destroyed. Very simple, very straight forward.

Winning comes about by causing all of your opponents counters to be destroyed or to end a turn with all of your opponents counters flipped.

I felt that the fight to destruction led to a slightly overlong game. It felt to me that it could have been improved by a set end game or scenario objective.

In summary, this game is worth printing. Its simple and quick to make and will fill 40 minutes of gaming time.

I've posted an audio review of this game on the Print and Play podcast.

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