Wargame

Spain, 1936: General Franco and his troops advance through the territories of Spain, giving way to a long period of civil war and repression. After the Spanish Civil War, a group of loyalists to the Republic continued the armed struggle, forming resistance groups better known as "Maquis". Hidden in the mountains, these men and women risked their lives to defend the ideals of democracy and freedom.

Fighting against them were the Army of Franco, the Civil Guard, and the Armed Police, but the Maquis perfected their guerilla warfare in France during the second World War and were determined to take back their homeland. In the head of each Maquis resonated the echo of the desire of many compatriots: Resist!

Resist! is a fast-playing, card-driven solitaire game in which you take on the role of the Spanish Maquis, fighting against the Francoist regime. Over a series of rounds, you undertake increasingly difficult missions, and completing missions earns you the points needed to win. Failing to defeat missions and enemies may cause you to lose. At the end of each round, you must choose whether to end the resistance or risk it and take on another mission.

At the beginning of the game, you assemble a team of twelve Maquis, which are represented by a deck of cards. At the heart of the game is the tension between keeping your Maquis concealed from Franco or revealing them to unlock their full potential. Unfortunately, revealed Maquis are removed from your deck, and you likely won't be able to use them for the rest of the game. While Resist! does have some minor deck-building elements, it is primarily a "deck-destruction" game in which you have to manage your deck, balancing the decision of defeating the immediate threat with trying to move on to the next mission.

In Factions: Battlegrounds, you take on the role of a general who's leading an army of troops, spellcasters, beasts, and mythological monsters into battle. You and the opposing generals determine the battleground, gather resources, and score points by eliminating enemy units. Whoever first captures 25 points of units wins.

In more detail, to set up choose one of the six factions in the game; each faction has twelve unique units and five "home terrain" cards that work well with your units. Players then take turns building the battleground by placing one terrain card at a time into the 3x3 grid, each terrain card is divided into a 2x2 grid, so the entire grid of play is 6x6. Whoever places terrain first has an advantage since they have more home terrain than other players, while players who go later during set up determine the location of resource centers on the battleground or recruit their starting units last so that they can respond to the choices of opponents. Units cost 1-5 gold, and each player can spend up to 10 gold on starting units, keeping anything unspent.

During a round, all units have the chance to move, with the highest-ranked units moving first and with ties being broken in favor of whoever has the most captains, followed by whoever has the most units. Each unit has a movement, attack, and health value, along with an indication of whether it generates gold or mana and (possibly) a spell that it can cast. After moving a unit, you can attack with it, whether melee or ranged as indicated on the card. If you defeat an enemy unit, you can points equal to its cost in gold, so while expensive units tend to be the most powerful, they also provide an opponent with their biggest target for points.

Prior to activating a unit on your turn, you can pay gold to recruit new units, and those units will slip into rank order for the turn, possibly allowing you to put a high-ranking unit into play directly and giving an opponent someone on the battleground that they didn't expect.

Once all the units have moved, players collect resources for units that gain them automatically and for units located on resource centers. Rounds continue until someone has collected 25 points of captured units, at which point they win immediately.

Factions: Battlegrounds is centered on inclusion and diversity, incorporating mythology from all over the world and representing traditionally European-based fantasy elements with underrepresented cultural elements.

In Air, Land, & Sea, two players participate in a series of Battles, with the objective to control two of the three Theaters of war after both players have played all of their Battle cards, or convince your opponent to withdraw!

As Supreme Commander of your country's military forces, you must carefully deploy your forces across three possible theaters of war: Air, Land, and Sea. The order you play your Battle cards is critical, and so is how you play them. All cards can either be played face-up or face-down. Playing a card face-up triggers its Tactical Ability, but the card must be played in its corresponding theater. Face-down cards are wild and can be played to any theater, but only have a strength of 2 and do not grant Tactical Abilities.

At the start of each battle, you will be dealt a hand of six cards. You will not draw additional cards during the Battle, so you must formulate your strategy based on only these cards. Players take turns playing Battle cards one at a time, until all cards have been played, or one player decides to withdraw.

You do not have to continue a Battle to the very end. Sometimes, it may be best to withdraw in order to deny your opponent complete victory! In Air, Land, & Sea, a strategic withdraw may lose you the battle to ultimately win the war! Victory points are awarded at the end of each Battle based on the results, and the first player to 12 victory points wins the war!

A war game that fits in the pocket!

When pressed for time and table space and the hankering for battle hits, this is the perfect remedy - and it is portable!

Tiles represent troops and troops make up units in your army: just determine the size of the battle and create your own army from a pool of existing troops.

Each tile hits on certain rolls, and some can only melee while others can shoot. Some tiles also have special traits which can affect their whole unit or their whole army.

Armies fight in three sectors - the battlefield. The goal is to eliminate at least half the value of your opponent's army.

Celts vs. Romans is the first in the Ancients line and also the first in the Pocket Battle series. Each Pocket Battles game will feature two armies from a particular era or genre (yes, fantasy and sci-fi, we are looking at you).

The basic rules of the game are fairly simple; two armies face each other in battle. The armies are split into three columns and two rows. Players must decide, at the start of the game, how many points they will give to their armies, determining how many points it will take to defeat the opponents army. (At least half of the points).

On you turn; you have to choose which faction of your army you will send off to battle! Attacks are made by using Order Tokens. If no Order Tokens are present on a unit, it costs just 1 token to issue orders to that unit. Issuing orders to the same unit in the same Battle Round would cost you the number of tokens present on the unit, plus 1. (So if there is one existing token on your unit, it would cost you two additional tokens to activate; if you had three tokens on the unit, it would cost you four additional tokens, and so on).

After a round of battle, you may choose to redeploy you units. (Units may move from the back of the row to the front of the same row, from the back of a row to the back of another row, or from the front of a row to the front of another row). Redeployment will not cost you any Order tokens.

The battle is over when one army defeats the other.

Contents:
60 tiles, 6 dice, 20 wound/order tokens, 2 player aids, 1 set of rules.

Romans: 1 aquilifer, 5 archers, 4 auxiliares, 1 ballista, 3 cataphracts, 3 cavalry, 1 centurion, 1 imaginifer, 1 imperator, 5 legionaries, 1 onager, 3 praetorians and 1 scorpio.

Celts: 1 champion, 1 chariot, 1 druid, 2 gaesatae, 1 hero, 3 horsemen, 4 javelinmen, 3 noblemen, 3 noble cavalry, 4 slingers, 5 warband, 1 warchief and 1 warrior queen.

Refight battles between the greatest armies of the Ancient World: Republican Roman, Carthaginian, Alexandrian Macedonian, Achaemenid Persian, and more!

Milito is a card-based, diceless wargame by Martin Wallace that puts you at the head of an Ancient army, making the key tactical decisions that will win or lose you the battle. Commanding a combination of troops unique to your own army, you'll play unit cards to take control of the battlefield. Skirmish with light troops to hold the enemy at bay, use your cavalry's maneuverability to your advantage, and advance your units of well-armored infantry to drive the enemy away. Flank attacks and army-specific leaders provide further tactical depth. Choose the right moment to commit your best units into the battle line, and capture three terrain areas to win the game.

Each card in your hand represents one of your army's units, which has the same strengths and weaknesses as its historical counterpart. Units are rated for speed, attack strength, defense strength, and other modifiers based on battlefield performance. Leader cards offer combat bonuses and have their own unique abilities — but be warned that not every leader card is an Alexander or Hannibal!

—description from the publisher