varingblaarCondottiere
Spoiler warning: If you haven't played Condottiere, I suggest you do so before going any further. If this spoils it for you, it's not my fault.You have been warned.
I've played the Fantasy Flight version at some point, but the version I own is the Z-Man Games edition from 2018. It does include the "classic" version of some cards to play the older version. The game is actually 30 years old with several revisions, so I'm not sure how much the rules have changed over the years.
It's basically Gwent but much simpler. There's only one line of battle and the cards don't "activate". The rules are mostly simple. A spot is picked that we fight over, then we take turns playing cards to up our total strength until everyone passes or a Turncoat is played. The person with highest strength places a token there, but on a tie nobody gets it. Rinse and repeat until someone either has 3 connected tokens or 5 total tokens on the board.
The tricky part is when the cards refresh; If you have no Mercenaries you can discard your whole hand, but then you can't participate. When everyone (or everyone except one) is out of cards, we shuffle everyone gets 10 cards again, plus one for each token they have on the board.
What Makes It Fun?
Each card you play feels like a big move. They're not very complex cards, but the way they interact, and what opponents play, create some interesting combinations. It does mean people sit and stare at their cards trying to decide their best move, which slows down the game. The box says 45 minute game, but most of our gamer are 90 minutes or more. Might just be inexperience with the rules.
This version includes a 2 player mode, but honestly it's broken. Half the deck is removed, including most of the fun cards. Maybe we need to give it another shot, but I have way better 2 player games we can play instead of this.
Aesthetic Is Nice
The art style is a hand drawn or watercolour type look. It's nice. Feels classic and fits the theme. And it's small. I love a game with a small board that does what it needs to, without taking up the whole table. The Fantasy Flight version had an even smaller board, but this one is still nice. The cards are a standard size, which helps with shuffling because this is a monster of a deck of cards to shuffle in one go. The special cards have icons along the bottom as a reminder, and once you understand the iconography it's quite clear.
Why Don't I Love This?
The problem is we don't play it enough. It's such a finely balanced game, that you don't want to play the rules as writ. The rules should be innate so you can play the other players. If you commit all your best cards to the wrong battle you might sit out several rounds, especially on higher player counts. If you don't know the game as well as other players, they will absolutely destroy your chances of winning.
So it's fun to play every so often, but unless we play it more often, we probably won't play it more often. If you get what I mean...
