Hammer of the Scots After One Year
I received Hammer of the Scots as a birthday present last June and after about a year of playing, I thought a review was in order. Because of its slightly long playing time, I only got this to the table eight times, about every month and a half.
Components
Hammer of the Scots is typical Columbia Games fare. It comes in a black cardboard box with a sleeve. The sleeve has a colorful (some might say gaudy) depiction of battle. After opening the box, you’ll get a set of blue and red wooden blocks, a set of stickers to turn those blocks into units, some rather unexciting playing cards, a garish map, and a short set of rules.
As for the blocks—these are pretty high quality. I own three Columbia block games and have never seen a block that was poorly coated in paint, chipped, or cracked. These are definitely a step above the blocks found in other games, like GMT’s Commands and Colors: Ancients.
The map is functional, although I’m unsure why anyone needs a topographical map. This often makes it hard to read, especially for first time or older players, or players with poor eyesight. It’s made out of cardboard, so you’ll need a trusty poster frame or Plexi-glass to fit over the map.
The playing cards are perhaps my biggest gripe. The card backs feature Columbia’s bland logo, and the pictures on the card faces are grainy and pixilated. You’ll probably need some card sleeves too, to prevent card bending or nicking.
Rules
One of the beautiful things about most Columbia games is that the rules are almost always under ten pages. This holds true for Hammer. You can read the rules from cover-to-cover in about 30 minutes, and then set up and play a few turns. There are a few ambiguities here that I discovered in my first play or two, but these are usually ironed out pretty quickly by skimming through other sections and applying common sense. Three scenarios are presented for play. You’ll probably spend most of your time with the “Braveheart” scenario, although “The Bruce” is included, or if you want a good afternoon of gaming, try combining the two.
Gameplay
The goal of the game is to control the majority of nobles in Scotland. Each noble is a block, and acts like any other military unit. 92
But here is where the fun comes in—when you “kill” a noble, you remove him from the board and place the exact same piece on the board, but with your color! So there are two “<PERSON>” nobles—one red for the English, and one blue for the Scots. The “killing” of a noble represents either his change of allegiance after capture, a dubious deal, or the death of the noble and his son’s subsequent betrayal of his father’s political beliefs. This is what makes the game stand out.
Each turn (or year) is divided into a few phases. After dealing five cards to each player, most of the year is spent laying a card, activating that number of groups on the board, and moving. Then your opponent does the same thing, and you play out any battles that result. Most cards in the deck are a 1, 2, or 3, card, but there are a few event cards. These let you do things like move by sea, raid the enemy at no cost to yourself, get free reinforcements, etc. There’s a neat twist here; if at any point you and your opponent lay down an event card at the same time, the year immediately ends. This adds a surprising tension to the card play.
Movement might seem a simple matter at first until you begin examining the board. This is an area-movement game, and each area either has black or red borders. A black border means that six units can traverse that border during your turn, while a red border means that only two units can do so, and they must halt once they reach the far edge of the border. The “highland” areas in the north have lots of red borders, which make it slow going up there. By contrast, the southern lowlands have many black borders, so players can gallop about as they please.
Battles take place in three rounds, with the attacker retreating at the top of the fourth round. All units are rated as either A, B, or C units; this indicates what order they go in during combat. After that designation is a number: 1-4. This indicates the punching power of that unit. A 3, for instance, will get hits on a 1-3 on a six-sided die. Last, each unit has a number of diamonds indicating current unit strength. 597