Dale Yu: First Impressions of Battle Cards (Postmark Games)

So, last week I woke up to find this email in my inbox:

“Dear all,

Postmark Games is doing something a little different for our new Kickstarter – this time we are collaborating with David Thompson (Undaunted, War Chest and others) and Nils Johannson to bring their game Battle Card to a wider audience. 

Battle Card is a series of print at home micro solitaire games that depict iconic battles and campaigns of the Second World War with only a handful of components. Each dice-based scenario is played on a single sheet map with specific rules that allow players to face some of the unique challenges and struggles of that particular battle. Series 1 of Battle Card series is launching on Kickstarter on the 19th of September with fulfilment as print at home files immediately after the campaign if successful.“

Included in this email were some pdf files for two different scenarios.  A little snooping online also allowed me to find a Battle Card scenario posted online at BGG.  As I got this the morning I was leaving for a weekend roadtrip, I printed them all out, went to my supply closet and pulled out a bunch of different colored d6, and was ready to go.

Each of the games has a one page set of rules and then a one page map – also, for those with younger eyes, there is a single page version with everything squooshed on it.  The only thing that you need to supply are a bunch of d6.  To make it easier on myself, I chose dice of different colors so that I could keep track of which dice belonged to which side.  You could play with all one color as the location of the die on the map also tells you the identity – but I thought it was much easier to have all the Japanese dice be red and the Allied dice be green.

The scenarios are pretty straight forward with a small paragraph explaining the scenario goals and simple win conditions for each side.  Each die represents a unit of your force, and the number of the die represents the strength.   Scenarios have different movement rules, but battle rules are pretty simple where you roll a die, and then refer to a CRT (combat results table) which uses the unit strengths of each side combined with the extra d6 roll to give you a result.

The games do not take long, maybe 10-15 minutes each, and the rules are clear and succinct.  I have played each of the three scenarios available to me so far, and while each feels different, they definitely share the same DNA.

Though I didn’t have a big wargame phase, these games did bring back some memories of afternoons spent around GMT games.  These days, I’m not as interested in the wargame genre that much, but a fifteen minute foray into that realm feels just right.  I’ll probably keep these in my bags for my trip to SPIEL as well as these games will totally fit onto the tray table in the plane as well.

The Kickstarter is scheduled to go live Sept 19 – if you’re interested, here is a link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/postmarkgames/battle-card

If you want to try one out yourself – here is Market Garden (Available on BGG) – https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/377068/battle-card-market-garden

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor