"Cruel Necessity" from Victory Point Games, notes and impressions

 "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.

Political track: up good, down bad

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.

Battle Mats setup, then commenced play, units revealed, cards drawn, modifiers applied, etc.

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.”

"Mosby's Raiders" from Victory Games

 "Mosby's Raiders" 

No Phone, No Pool, No Pets, the sterile humdrum life of an ascetic partisan ranger.

Unsurprisingly, Eric Lee Smith has come up twice now in the survey of solitaire games. He is credited as co-designer on “Ambush!” too.

“Mosby’s Raiders” is a solitaire wargame from Victory Games that came out in 1985.

I last played this a couple times in 2011 or so. Maybe 2010. I don’t recall having a particularly strong sentiment either for or against the game, but might recall thinking that it was a little too much fuss and bother for the payoff.

Again, for this game, I’ve largely avoided forums and discussions to minimize potential bias and so I don’t have a feeling for how “Mosby’s Raiders” is seen today by gamers. At some point, long ago, it was considered pretty hip, though. I wonder if there are imitators? Do people even still play it?

This game is a mixed bag and, I hate to admit, I can’t quite decide what I think of it. There are things I really appreciate and respect about the game, but oddly some of those same things might end up being net negatives in the overall experience. I’ll see if I can explain a little.

Oh! but before I do…

Boring pointless digression you can skip and just read on from the section below called “The Good Stuff.”

The story of how I got this game, by me.

Guy received “Mosby’s Raiders” as a present. Then guy gave it to another guy that then gave “Mosby’s Raiders” to me. The first guy said he didn’t get it or he didn’t think it worked, second guy said he didn’t like it, especially – and this was his biggest gripe – the box art. He found the revolvers depicted in the illustration on the game box cover deeply troubling and offensive. He couldn’t overlook them. They bothered him so much that he himself suggested that his intense dislike for the picture on the box cover was interfering with his ability to objectively appreciate the game. So he gave it to me.

But what was his problem with this picture? What was the big deal? 

Well, part of it was disgust with the Victory Games/Avalon Hill editors, but that’s another story. No, his main issue was with the depiction of the revolvers and how they’re gripped in the illustration. Because it’s all wrong.

Here’s why. 

 

Pictured above, a Leech & Rigdon .36 caliber revolver, probably fairly typical of something a confederate cavalryman might have had. And it looks like an attempt was made to illustrate a gun of this type on the box cover.

 

Now here’s how you grip a revolver. Notice the angle of the fingers and hands compared to the angle of the barrel. (I boasted there’d be drawing commentary here somewhere. This is it. If you’re ever drawing someone holding or firing a revolver, especially an old fashioned one, here are some of the tricky bits you need to know to get it right.)

 Pictured above is a fellow holding a revolver something like the Leech & Rigdon piece . . . 

 . . . and another fellow, note the angle between the grip and the barrel. See the relationship between the angle of the gripping hand and the direction the barrel is pointing.

Now here’s the cover illustration. Notice the position and placement of the hands “gripping” the revolvers. See how the grip and barrel are parallel? No angle. 

Now see below an actual historical revolver in situ.

Refer back to the guys gripping revolvers in the original illustration.

Clearly, the illustrated grips are incorrect. They’re in the wrong places at the wrong angles. The guns themselves are deformed as well. So, I get where guy was coming from here with not liking the box art. It is pretty bad.

Anyway…

The Good Stuff:

Heres’ what I like about “Mosby’s Raiders,” though. For one, you get high-end 80’s production values. Nice quality components, fully functional, have held up over time, even though subject to some neglect in storage.

Rules and rulebook are good.

Digestible. Sensible. Navigable. For me, no errata needed or sought. The rules do require a thorough reading, though. Special attention paid to Activations. Some special cases and differences between Operations and Rounds. (Similar to “Ambush!” in this way.) But it’s all coherent and cross-referenced reasonably well. (That said, I’ve found that I really don’t like examples of play as rules instruction. Used to illustrate a recently presented rule or rules in the main body of the text nearby, yes, but sometimes rules themselves are presented in examples of play and it bothers me.)

So, it’s very learnable and playable. The game can be approached, played, and completed in one (longish?) sitting.

As for gameplay itself, it starts slow, but can quickly get into some dicey and entertaining situations. Leading federals on a chase deep into the backwoods (and usually to their ultimate demise) was fun and, I found, a pretty good tactic for dispatching Union drones.

Every turn, the whole time, your chances for success are increasingly diminished by increasing Union awareness. Your activity rarely goes unnoticed. Around turn 5 things get interesting. You start juggling increasingly powerful, aggravated, federals who stir up more federals as time goes by. There's a push-your-luck element, but you can call it and end the turn as an action. This is a core feature of the system. 

Leading union troops on a wild goosechase into the back country. Good times!

It is a short game, 8 turns long. If you’re familiar with the rules, depending, games could be very short. Like many solo games, actions are limited by min/max optimizing and counting moves and odds. But it does work.

As solitaire wargames go, it’ solid. Feels like a real game. Some type of tactics and strategy employable, or feels like it, anyway.

The Not So Good Stuff: It’s bland.

Let’s cut to the chase: it lands flat and plays dry. Not sure exactly why, likely a combination of factors together, but it’s just not very entertaining. It’s shallow or gamey. Lacks a narrative feel of any kind, really. It’s impersonal with a distinct lack of personality and for a game about an outstanding personality . . .

All the mechanisms for different actions are the same except combat. Want to probe? Activation check. How about blow something up? Activation checks for that too. And that’s about it. Except Kidnap. But I’ve played this game four times, I think, and I’ve never once had the opportunity to Kidnap.

Often decision space and options are quite constrained. Interesting moments do emerge in that narrow window where you could use some more performance points but the union awareness is getting high. Do you quit while ahead and disband, or blow that section of rail line? Those are the good moments, but that’s your game in a nutshell. And there aren’t many of those moments. By the time the the tension starts to mount, the game ends. Or can. Something premature in the rhythm and climax here.

It's a skirmish game at arm’s length, seen from a zoomed-out bird’s-eye-view operational vantage point.

So there’s no sense of a tangible relationship between the rules and the specifics of Mosby’s operations. It’s hard to explain. You’re planning to blow up a supply depot deep in enemy territory, but it never feels like you’re planning to blow up a supply depot deep in enemy territory. You count up nearby bad guy combat strengths, consider the odds of an activation and try it or not. It’s very generic, I guess, is what I’m saying, even with the Optional Rules included, that do try to make the demolition actions have some distinctions from one another. It’s all still just a bit hollow.

For a situation so full of potential for action, adventure, bravado, drama and intrigue, the game has none of it. You do two thing that require a die roll. That’s the game for you. And draw some cards that essentially take away the die roll and give you the equivalent automatic result. And so, to me, it really seems like something’s missing. The action and event cards, I assume, are intended to flesh out the more narrative and other pertinent elements not modeled in the game that might impact Mosby and co., but with dull drab cards, a limited menu of special effects, and the rather blunted effects of those effects, they don’t really add much to the theme or atmosphere, drama, etc. Seems like they should, but they don’t. 

 

The final showdown. Mosby blows a bridge while dodging angry federals in hot pursuit.

 

I don’t usually have much to say about game graphics unless they interfere with gameplay, but something is wrong here with the graphics on this game. Not functionally, not mechanically, the game components are top-notch in terms of utility and and convenience, it's just that the graphics are very grade school classroom in style. The map looks like it came out of a 1970’s social studies textbook. Bright completely logical conventional colors and white. Big white spaces on the cards and counters. It completely fails to evoke any sense or feeling of covert confederate guerilla actions.

I will say, though, that “Mosby’s Raiders” isn’t too random, which is a common issue in solitaire games. The random elements are weighted sensibly and placed appropriately. There is a skill or knowledge of some kind involved in playing well, I think, but stripped of its relatively thin veneer of theme, and of its adequate, but rather unexciting, Union bot system, “Mosby’s Raiders” is just basic and bland.

There is an obvious conscious and particular emphasis in the design on streamlined brisk play. While an admirable and worthy pursuit, in this case, the actual effect of this emphasis in practice contributes markedly to the detached superficial quality of the game. I feel the game could have provided a little more crunch and grit for the player. The managing of Union forces is simple enough that it doesn’t overwhelm play, leaving an uncluttered space for the player. Something like a mechanism that would allow the player to spend or risk Mosby’s resources for some possible advantage would make a big difference.

Conclusion:

But I’d still have to say it’s a pretty good game. Especially for a solitaire effort. If you like this sort of thing to begin with, you’ll probably get something out of it. It definitely works. It might work well. There’s something to push against apart from dice and fate. And it definitely has its moments, but really isn’t outstanding in any way. It doesn’t, for instance, even do any one thing really well. The play is thin in places. And it’s not totally evocative of the theme. Still, it feels like an actual game which is more than can be said about a lot of the solitaire designs out there.

Also, I feel like there’s an optimal sort of codebreaker strategy one could find there somewhere, so it may be “solvable” to a degree.

I suspect using the Optional Rules may give you more of the intended game experience.

And even though the action picked up around turn 5 and became more interesting, it still had this superficial gamey feel.

It’s weird and I wish I could explain it, but it’s like “Mosby’s Raiders” should be a better game than it is.

In closing, as a topical aside, as of this writing, Mosby is seemingly one of the few historic Confederate figures to avoid the recent purge of public Confederate tributes. As far I know, Mosby country is still healthy and extant in Piedmont Virginia, though I haven’t visited the area recently.