Going (crowned) head to (round) head
THIS WAR WITHOUT AN ENEMY
Designer: Scott H. Moore | Publisher: Nuts! Publishing
PLAYED
We have to start this review with a small disclaimer that this was our first block wargame. These games bring the joy of wargaming to your tabletop with the element of hidden information. This is handled by the fact that the information on your blocks faces you and your opponent can only see the blank, coloured, side of the block. They know where you are, but not what is in any particular location.
This War Without An Enemy is a fairly tightly historically themed block wargame. It’s played over the years 1642-1646 and see the royalists and the parliamentarians clashing across England. The game is set up as either the full war, or just slices of it, for quicker games. Either way, players set up their armies as per the instructions and it’s a game of carefully moving your forces around the map, securing key cities – your means to gaining victory points – and generally putting the pointy end of whatever you’ve got hold of into the enemy. It’s a card driven game, with players choosing a single card for each round and revealing it simultaneously – this dictates the initiative (player order) and number of actions a player performs in the round, mostly moving and recruiting in various flavours.