"Cruel Necessity"
"Is . . . is that absolutely necessary?
Alrighty, this is the last
post in the series. You’re relieved, I can tell.
Again, I have the first edition
of this game, so that’s the version I’m looking at here.
I’ve played “Cruel Necessity”
a few times before. Probably last time just a couple years ago, and honestly, playing
it again, it’s more fun than I remember. I think somehow my “Charlemagne” experience
colored my memory of this game.
“Cruel Necessity” is a solitaire
tower defense type game in the States of Siege series from Victory
Point Games.
Similar to “Charlemagne,” from
Hollandspiele, not VPG, they share some features and I will compare them here
in this post because I want to.
A Good Game:
This is a good game. Let me
just say that first to better frame all the criticism I’m about to heap on it.
If you like this sort of thing, you should like this. I can see why this series
is so popular. Loads of little difficult choices. Options. Risk. Ups and downs.
It’s got cool thematic game components and it might also be a little addictive too
which is another sign of quality in something like this.
I’m not a fan of the
slipcover sleeve pizza box packaging, though. Otherwise, I think the parts and pieces of "Cruel Necessity" are fantastic.
Good rules and rulebook; ordered
intelligently, logical, helpful to the new player, writing is clear and
straightforward and the game works well, has an organic natural flow (apart
from back-to-back Battles, which I’ll address below).
Map and game components on the
table look great and are conveniently and smartly arranged.
Several interesting mechanics
employed in “Cruel Necessity.” The flexibility of Zeal is a great solution to a
number of solitaire game design problems.
And I appreciate the Clubmen
and Deviltry markers.
Love the political-religious
tracking system. Accessible and at the same time an excellent mapping of some complex
hard-to-pin-down abstract factors.
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Political track: up good, down bad
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Gameplay is pleasantly busy.
There’s always something you can do. You always have options. That’s great
design, in my opinion.And there is Ireland, well
done.
Criticism:
But for me, there’s a big disconnect between events, the strategic situation,
and the general flow of the game. There’s not enough of a convincing “responsive”
feel coming from Royalist forces so that it at least suggests to me on some
level that I am struggling against another will that’s both aware of and acting
against my interests. The way events affect opposing forces and their value levels
would make more sense in a game meant to model an actual siege operation, where
defenders suffer a particular brand of fog of war.
And so, I imagine this
system works really well for a literal siege game, but using this engine for
other more abstract or figurative “sieges,” conflicts like insurrections or
rebellions, it maybe doesn’t work all that well. I feel a mismatch, an ill fit,
a crammed, forced, tightness or imbalance somewhere. It is perhaps a mésalliance
for a siege game to attempt to model macro geopolitical situations. There’s a
certain persistent incoherence or fogginess to the pattern and chain of events
in “Cruel Necessity.”
For instance, in the game, you generally don't know where any of the
important people are at any time. It's a feature, not a bug. Charles does
eventually turn up sort of attached to a Scots Army but that is a special case. Except in Battles, you have no
idea where to find Rupert or Cromwell or Hopton and Waller. I think this too
adds to the overall fogginess or disconnected sense I experience playing the
game.
However, the main driver of
the disconnected sequence, or lack of coherent narrative, is the event card. It’s
just too much, they overwhelm. The complete randomness is often jarring.
Charles hoists his flag in Nottingham after you’ve already fought a bunch of
hard battles. You’re attacked by an Army you just trounced and the Monarchy
gets a boost in the polls. It can seem really senseless at times. Other historical
game designs do this as well. I don’t like it. “Wilderness War,” for example. There’s
too much card play emphasis. History gets all jumbled and it’s hard to ignore
that in a historical game.
Also note, that you can
totally lose the game early, but you can’t win early. As long as you don’t lose,
you will play through the entirety of the event deck. As a reward for enduring a
steady procession of unavoidable unpreventable difficulties and penalties, and holding
your own against same, the game nevertheless insists on subjecting you to a
strict, yet arbitrary, lengthy, predetermined, course of abuse.
Victory after battle ought
to, at least potentially, have more of an automatic, immediate, and pronounced
impact on the military and political landscape than it does in “Cruel Necessity.”
It’s impossible to effectively destroy a military association or an Army? If
only for a turn?
History isn’t a parade of
disconnected random things. Acts of God do happen, but when representing
history, the story of something like war, I think a linear coherence isn’t an unreasonable
expectation.
Also, to me, it feels like
the player is always reacting in “Cruel Necessity” (echoes of “Charlemagne”), is
never allowed to take the initiative and make the big play. The Battles, always
foisted upon Parliamentarians, never sought, can erupt at any time regardless
of how beat up or pinned down the Royalists appear to be. And Parliament can’t
ever force the enemy to battle. (Yes, you can Campaign, but it won’t result in
a Battle) The player can never really go on the offensive because turn to turn,
anything can happen and the happenings are often largely unrelated to the
current state of game or the player’s strategic positioning. Regional Royalist
forces possessed of seeming endless reserves, a sort of incredible tactical
immunity and an adamantine spirit, are able to exert steady unrelenting
pressure on your strategic strongholds. They just keep on coming. It’s hard to develop
anything long-term here apart from shoring up stuff while playing whack-a-mole and
running ‘round putting out fires, which might, again, be fine for a literal
siege model, but the British Civil Wars weren’t a siege operation.
Finally, there’s the mini-game
Battle Mat thing again. Many many games do this in some way. Many. It rarely
works well, in my view. The version in “Cruel Necessity” is better than most,
though. Certainly better than “Charlemagne.”
There are special units you can risk using, more nuance, much faster resolution,
so much so that it almost feels not worth sorting the pieces and setting them up
half the time. In and of itself, the Battle Mat sequence is fine every few
turns, but it becomes disruptive when the event deck gives you battle after
battle in a row. You just sorted it all, put the pieces back in their box, shuffled
and then Battle again. This can happen. On and on, actually.
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Battle Mats setup, then commenced play, units revealed, cards drawn, modifiers applied, etc.
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And yet…
I am still more than willing
to try another one of these, though.
But next time it will be one
themed with an actual siege situation, a Rorke’s Drift type thing, which is I
think maybe where this game came from originally, i.e. was hatched, developed
to model an actual siege scenario or something like that, anyway.
All in all, I don’t love it,
but it’s cool.
Conclusion of this survey of
solitaire games:
Finally, in the spirit of
wrapping up the survey . . .
Right.
Originally, I wrote 1200+ words on this presenting a few of the findings
suggested by the survey. There are several tentative conclusions or testable
questions raised by the survey that could be examined or argued at length. But
as I looked back over the section I’d written, something came over me,
something told me, whispered in my ear, to keep those findings to myself and
leave it at that. Was told that I’ve said more than enough already to convince
anyone who wasn’t quite sure before that I should probably just
be quiet, anyway.
A bunch of games didn’t make
the cut for inclusion in the survey. Excluded were some unapologetically
paragraph-based games (as opposed to “Ambush!” that almost seems ashamed of its
paragraphs) or games that are multi-player but also include solo play rules, or
any of the many cooperative games that can also be played perfectly well, or
better, solo.
And I know that most of the games
I’ve covered in this series of critical posts are old now. One reason for that is
it seemed like a logical place to start a survey and then also some of these
games, “States of Siege,” for example, they keep putting out interesting new
titles that are really just tweaks to and reskinnings of older core engines.
Some of these are undoubtedly better than others, but still, one can probably get
an idea about the newer games playing an older title.
So, now this survey, along
with some other materials, has yielded a substantial catalog of suggested do’s
and don’ts and things to try in an attempt at a solitaire game design.
Recurring themes and some telling consistencies emerge even in this tiny
sample. All things considered, I’d have
to say, the survey of solitaire games has been a very useful exercise.
“He says, yeah, he’s afraid it is.”
