An intruduction to Battle Line by GMT .
Me and maths had a lot in common back in high school, where it was one
of my major subjects. We had a great teacher as well – he was rigorous
yet fair, and gave us a solid amount of knowlegde, that supposed to be
long-lasting, even for those who decided to become lawyers or medicine
doctors. And since board games are, in many cases, based on (or
influenced by) maths, I do like them even more for that particular
reason, but not the only one, of course.
There is this guy who loves to provide us with total maths gaming stuff. And to be honest, I do not like his games! Put a piece here – there you go, you have scored two points. Oh, wait a second, move your piece two spaces away, now you’ve scored three points and your opponent got minus one to his total. Woooow, so damn fascinating. I am not avoiding abstract, logical games, but there are actually so many of them, so I can choose something much more adjusted to my personal taste.
But ‘Battle Line’ seems to be much different. Well, well, Mr. Knizia, I do really have to admit, that this one here is purely awesome. Why? Because instead of simple add-subtract-multiply pattern, there is much like a poker felling during the game and summing up any values is rather exceptional, but still very easy to perform. The ‘engine’ of the game is based on card locations and their uniqueness, because there is only one card of each color and value – like in a typical card game.
The game contains 60 troop cards, 10 tactics cards and 9 red pawns (called also flags). You put those pawns in the middle of the board, one next to another, and both players will be playing cards from ther hands on their side of each pawn. The goals is to collect those pawns – either three next to each other or five total (since there is only nine of them, it is pretty obvious, that once you collect five, your opponent will have no chance to beat you up). The core rule is that you cannot assign more than three cards to each pawn, so you need to pick them up carefully.
There are five basic card patterns, that determine the winner of a single pawn (from highest to lowest):
- three consecutive values of the same color (like 7, 6, 5 red), and it is greater than
- three cards of the same value (like 6 red, 6 blue and 6 yellow), and it is greater than
- three cards of the same color (like 8, 5 and 7 yellow), and it is greater than
- three consecutive cards of different color (like 8 blue, 6 red and 7 yellow), and it is greater than
- three cards of different colors and values (like yellow 9, blue 4 and red 1)
So even if 10 is usually better card than 1, it doesn’t mean it’ll always be. You can play three 10’s on your side, but not to claim a flag when your opponent have just played a 1-2-3 sequence of cards in one color. There are no ties in this game – if both of you have the same values on both sides of the same pawn, the one who put the last card is the one who looses the pawn. So when your opponent have already played three cards on his side, and you have played only to, you need to carefully pick your last card from your hand. The flag is claimed immediately, so once both of you have played three cards, you determine the winner of this flag, who can place it below his cards to mark that he got it and no other cards, as well as tactics ones, cannot be assigned to this particular pawn.
The only maths comes to play in case of playing three cards of the same color on both sides (or three of different colors and values). To determine a winner, you simply need to add up all values on each side – so a 7, 4, 1 red will be greater than 5, 3, 2 blue. You also need to remeber, that there is no need to put those cards in an specific order, so if you first play a red 8, then a red 10 and at the end a red 9 it still counts as a three consecutive values.
Each time you play a card, you draw back one, either from troops deck or tactics deck. This second deck contains only ten cards, that suppose to be some kind of wild cards to be used for different occasions. But you can bring to play only one tactic card more than your opponent at any time during the course of the game. So once you’ve played a tactic card, and the other player didn’t, you cannot play the second card until he plays at least one of his. But he does not have to do that, so it is a nice possibility of blocking this option, especially when you feel like he could make a great use of them (there are fe. leaders cards, that can replace any card of any value when claiming flags, so they are very powerful).
Sometimes you can even collect a flag when you can prove to your opponent that no matter what is he going to play, he won’t be able to claim the pawn anyway. So it is another (kind of) tactical layer to the game – you have to not only play cards and watch carefully for a single pawn, but also keep in mind that each card is different and maybe playing a different card for particular pawn will give you an oportunity to claim this flag even before the other player will have a chance to play his third card.
Since this is a GMT production, you can expect a GMT quality or even greater. Game box is actually too big for what it contains (looks nice on a shelf though), but then again it comes with a nice insert, although I will always complain about it as long as those spaces are a bit to small to keep there sleeved cards and I like to do that as long as cards are in play all the time (as for a card game - they have to). But that is just a minor thing.
The game is still very abstract, it is still not linked to a theme at any point, you could even play with Disney cartoon characters and have fun as well, but instead of dull putting pieces all over the board and arduous counting all the points at the end of the game, you do have a chance to play a very nice ‘brainburning’ game. It is very easy to determine the situation on the board, but don’t be too self-confident – to win this game, you need to be very focused on what is going on there. As for so-called ‘filler game’, this really has a chance to become one of your favourites, but keep in mind, that it is very challenging, so playing it with some random/casual player might be a challenge itself, simply not to let him give up the game and not want to play anymore. Okay, I’m just joshing, play this game with everyone you’d like to and you, Mr. Knizia, give us something more of that kind!
There is this guy who loves to provide us with total maths gaming stuff. And to be honest, I do not like his games! Put a piece here – there you go, you have scored two points. Oh, wait a second, move your piece two spaces away, now you’ve scored three points and your opponent got minus one to his total. Woooow, so damn fascinating. I am not avoiding abstract, logical games, but there are actually so many of them, so I can choose something much more adjusted to my personal taste.
But ‘Battle Line’ seems to be much different. Well, well, Mr. Knizia, I do really have to admit, that this one here is purely awesome. Why? Because instead of simple add-subtract-multiply pattern, there is much like a poker felling during the game and summing up any values is rather exceptional, but still very easy to perform. The ‘engine’ of the game is based on card locations and their uniqueness, because there is only one card of each color and value – like in a typical card game.
The game contains 60 troop cards, 10 tactics cards and 9 red pawns (called also flags). You put those pawns in the middle of the board, one next to another, and both players will be playing cards from ther hands on their side of each pawn. The goals is to collect those pawns – either three next to each other or five total (since there is only nine of them, it is pretty obvious, that once you collect five, your opponent will have no chance to beat you up). The core rule is that you cannot assign more than three cards to each pawn, so you need to pick them up carefully.
There are five basic card patterns, that determine the winner of a single pawn (from highest to lowest):
- three consecutive values of the same color (like 7, 6, 5 red), and it is greater than
- three cards of the same value (like 6 red, 6 blue and 6 yellow), and it is greater than
- three cards of the same color (like 8, 5 and 7 yellow), and it is greater than
- three consecutive cards of different color (like 8 blue, 6 red and 7 yellow), and it is greater than
- three cards of different colors and values (like yellow 9, blue 4 and red 1)
So even if 10 is usually better card than 1, it doesn’t mean it’ll always be. You can play three 10’s on your side, but not to claim a flag when your opponent have just played a 1-2-3 sequence of cards in one color. There are no ties in this game – if both of you have the same values on both sides of the same pawn, the one who put the last card is the one who looses the pawn. So when your opponent have already played three cards on his side, and you have played only to, you need to carefully pick your last card from your hand. The flag is claimed immediately, so once both of you have played three cards, you determine the winner of this flag, who can place it below his cards to mark that he got it and no other cards, as well as tactics ones, cannot be assigned to this particular pawn.
The only maths comes to play in case of playing three cards of the same color on both sides (or three of different colors and values). To determine a winner, you simply need to add up all values on each side – so a 7, 4, 1 red will be greater than 5, 3, 2 blue. You also need to remeber, that there is no need to put those cards in an specific order, so if you first play a red 8, then a red 10 and at the end a red 9 it still counts as a three consecutive values.
Each time you play a card, you draw back one, either from troops deck or tactics deck. This second deck contains only ten cards, that suppose to be some kind of wild cards to be used for different occasions. But you can bring to play only one tactic card more than your opponent at any time during the course of the game. So once you’ve played a tactic card, and the other player didn’t, you cannot play the second card until he plays at least one of his. But he does not have to do that, so it is a nice possibility of blocking this option, especially when you feel like he could make a great use of them (there are fe. leaders cards, that can replace any card of any value when claiming flags, so they are very powerful).
Sometimes you can even collect a flag when you can prove to your opponent that no matter what is he going to play, he won’t be able to claim the pawn anyway. So it is another (kind of) tactical layer to the game – you have to not only play cards and watch carefully for a single pawn, but also keep in mind that each card is different and maybe playing a different card for particular pawn will give you an oportunity to claim this flag even before the other player will have a chance to play his third card.
Since this is a GMT production, you can expect a GMT quality or even greater. Game box is actually too big for what it contains (looks nice on a shelf though), but then again it comes with a nice insert, although I will always complain about it as long as those spaces are a bit to small to keep there sleeved cards and I like to do that as long as cards are in play all the time (as for a card game - they have to). But that is just a minor thing.
The game is still very abstract, it is still not linked to a theme at any point, you could even play with Disney cartoon characters and have fun as well, but instead of dull putting pieces all over the board and arduous counting all the points at the end of the game, you do have a chance to play a very nice ‘brainburning’ game. It is very easy to determine the situation on the board, but don’t be too self-confident – to win this game, you need to be very focused on what is going on there. As for so-called ‘filler game’, this really has a chance to become one of your favourites, but keep in mind, that it is very challenging, so playing it with some random/casual player might be a challenge itself, simply not to let him give up the game and not want to play anymore. Okay, I’m just joshing, play this game with everyone you’d like to and you, Mr. Knizia, give us something more of that kind!
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