Bitskrieg
A game for 2 players by <PERSON> and <PERSON>
Published by Hollandspiele
"Two adults who want to play Bitskrieg should play with all the fixin's from the get go."
<PERSON> first thing you might notice about Bitskrieg is that it shares an iconic look with a famous Avalon Hill game about tank warfare from 1970, a game that sold over 300,000 copies.
Hollandspiele, a small publisher that takes pride in not only having a modern retro chic to the art of its game covers also publishes what some might call quirky titles that have a specific niche.
<PERSON> developed a introductory war game with his son, and the result is this charming title that should have a broad appeal to many.
The Game
The game is played on an 8x8 grid of squares, and the inner 6x6 grid has pairs of dice showing the coordinates of those squares. At the beginning, six obstacle spaces are randomly placed by rolling a pair of dice. Those obstacles block tank traffic and travel. Then one player selects which axis the board will be played on and the other chooses the end they want to have. Statistically, the most likely outcome is one side will have four obstacles in its half.
Each side then places the five tanks it has chosen (from the available mix) and places them on the board (including a specific direction they're facing) and their two flags.
A sample set up
The objective is to capture both your opponent's flags, although you can also win by eliminating all your opponent's units.
On your turn you take one of four actions - move (one tank), fire (one tank), flip (all finished tanks), or rebuild (replace one destroyed tank, max 2x per game).
That is it. Despite this simple action set, there is a lot to consider. 597
Do you want to move every tank you have before you reset them? Or flipping back early necessary to make sure you can shoot at a target that is in reach of your flag? Should you take a chance on shooting now when the range is so far away, or do something else this turn?
A game in progress
There are several kinds of tanks (light, medium, heavy, and tank destroyers). There are optional rules to add elements to the game as needed or desired, including bounding fire (move and shoot), and different obstacle effects (in the base game, obstacles are simply impassable to both movement and fire).
The art of the game pieces remind me a lot of the MetaGaming Microgame , and the game play makes me think of classic games like that just aren't really around anymore.
Conclusions
Back in 1913, <PERSON>, famous for his science fiction stories like War of the Worlds, released a set of game rules for , subtitled "a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books."
Imagine you're wargamer and your kid wants to play too. And heck, you'd like nothing better than a handy opponent. Where can you turn? Well, fewer places than one might think.
For instance, take my daughter, who took great delight in smashing me at Ogre when it first arrived in the house (and she now plays Gloomhaven, among many others).
But had <PERSON> been around when she was little, well, this would have been an obvious game to turn to.
If you have a younger kid in your life (niece, nephew, daughter, son, kid of a friend), and you like this kind of game and want something they can play too, I can heartily recommend this title.
Thank you for reading this latest installment of Roger's Reviews. I've been an avid board gamer all my life and a wargamer for over thirty years. I have a strong preference for well designed games that allow players to focus on trying to make good decisions.
Among my favourites I include , the , , , , and .
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