CROWN AND CRESCENT, on preorder from MMP

At this past weekends CSW Dallas convention I played a prototype of the new MMP preorder, CROWN AND CRESCENT. I had played some earlier iterations last fall as well. The game covers the battles in South Carolina during the American Revolution. The game has four factions - British Regulars, Tories, American Continentals, Whigs. So its a 2 vs 2 situation.

The game designer is Bryan Collars, who has done extensive work on Combat Commander scenarios. His day job is an archivist for the South Carolina Dept of Archives and History

If you know ANGOLA, this game will feel pretty familiar to you, mechanically. For those that haven't played, simply put at the start of each game turn you pre program a hand of OPS cards , the number of cards varies by season from 4-7 . There are several aspects that are fairly unique . First, you don't know what player will go first. That is done via die roll AFTER the cards are played. Secondly, you don't even know what your partner faction will do either. Finally, once you place your program deck down, you can't look at it again. Trust me, your memory gets a little hazy during turns with 6-7 cards per round per faction.

For experienced ANGOLA hands there is enough similarity that if you know the rules to the former, this game can be picked up fairly quickly. I imagine there may be a sort of quick start guide for ANGOLA vets. At the same time there are some crucial differences beside the obvious time period precluding units like tanks, planes, etc.

- first off is the concept of political control. Each activated formation will have 3-5 points. It generally costs 1 point to move a formation ( rough terrain 2 points ) and one point to place or flip a control marker to your side . There are seven districts ; a majority of controlled space grants control of the district to that side .

- the end of turn bidding for aid in ANGOLA is replicated here but with an important twist. The cards you receive from bidding aren't limited to just reinforcements. Some cards are events. These may either be programmed into your next turns operations deck, or they may be held and automatically played at the end of the turn. Waiting til the end of the turn preserves your ops deck for activations, but sometimes its worth playing an event mid turn. For instance, some cards grant Leader counters. Each leader has a specific ability as well as granting a stacking increase to the brigade ( Column in ANGOLA ) he's stacked with. Another interesting event is SPIES, which allow a player to examine and change the order of the top 3 cards an of OPPONENTS operations deck.

- speaking of brigades, there is a bit more unit differentiation here. While lacking cool toys like tanks and missile launchers, C&C has militia and regular UNITS. Augmenting them are AUXILIARIES in the form of cavalary ( grants bonus on Intercept ) , grenadiers ( bonus on sieges ) , Rifle/light companys ( bonus DRM or combat die ) . Each brigade can only hold four UNITS and an equal numbe of auxiliaries. So absent are the towering "death star" stacks sometimes seen in ANGOLA.

Hopefully this helps flesh out a bit more about the game. Let me know if you have any questions. As a huge ANGOLA game its long past due someone took the system and applied it to other conflicts.

So the control flip thing is adding a touch of Washington's War?

Basically yeah. Space control seems appropriate in this situation. And some event cards allow spaces to change control and have enemy forces pop up in unoccupied spaces.

Wow. It's about time someone riffed on ANGOLA. Looking forward to seeing this in 5-6 years!?!