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Unhappy Poland: God's Playground by Martin Wallace

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There Will Be Games

 

God's Playground is a solid Wallace design, with lots of historical feel, generally worked well into mechanisms. It essentially pits you as three major noble factions in Polish history from the 15th to the 18th century.
Every turn represents an era of 50-100 years and starts with the players investing cubes into the five major provinces (Prussia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Little and Greater Poland). These cubes represent your influence among the local nobility. Having the most influence in a province grants you the vote of that province in the Sejm, the parliament of nobles (true story!). The cubes furthermore allow you to perform actions during the rest of the turn.

As the players build up their power base in the provinces, their estates become increasingly vulnerable to invasions from the North (Prussia and Sweden), Russia, the Tatars, the Ottomans and the Habsburgs.

As Poland in this era was not a absolutist monarchy, but rather a egalitarian autocracy consisting of a nobility comprising a few wealthy magnates and thousands of impoverished gentry, there was no centralised power. The King was elected by the nobility (don't laugh) and each faction was able and allowed to field their own troops, even legitimately against the King.
There's the added chrome of special actions like making treaties with Poland's enemies to keep them of your back for a turn (expensive and not unlikely to be broken), encouraging Jesuit missionaries (granting VPs for your eternal soul) and improving the administration of your estates (raising your income).
Enemy incursions can be preempted or stalled by attacks on the enemy. This can be done by your own army, with or without help of the royal army. However, the King cannot be relied on to do all the work, or any work at all. You need to have a presence in the Sejm. As seen before, that requires that you have the most cubes in one or more provinces.

The combat is pretty simple, with 2 basic (infantry, cavalry) and 2 special (Cossacks, artillery) troops types. Dice are rolled for each unit to score hits.

Then the enemies attack Poland. If you have successfully attacked, they will be weaker, and if there's Polish troops in the attacked province they will defend. When that is not enough, the province is overwhelmed and the most exposed estates plundered. But of course, you haven't attacked, and there are no troops defending the provinces.

The cool thing is that all the gameplay makes you focus on your own benefit at the expense of the common good. I took a lot of satisfaction from wasting huge amounts of money on the spread of Catholicism (granting me immediate access to heaven), rather than on armies to keep the Turks at bay and see Poland go down in flames. This game is all about free riding, while hoping that others do you dirty work.

It works very well in that way and it gives you a good feel of the period. Most mechanisms have a basis in history. The only blemish on this game is the enemy expansion phase which is convoluted, time wasting and produces no significant result. A drag and an ugly mechanism. That keeps God's Playground from reaching the same level as Liberte and Byzantium.

But that doesn't make it a bad game. Despite the presence of cubes and the glaring flaw of the enemy expansion phase, I think this game has a good bit of AT cred and will not disappoint anyone here.

Anyway, it's a relief to see a Wallace design approaching his former glory after the boring London and useless train games of the last couple of years. Rise of Empires, Steel Driver, Tinner's Trail?  I can't be arsed to even try.

This is of course not a full fledged review as I've only played once, but I think this game deserves the exposure.

There Will Be Games
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