Quartermaster General 1914

I have played the original Quartermaster General game a couple of times. It was okay as a group game but playing the game as a two player game can be a bit too much. I was promised that this was a better game. I was a bit dubious as I get told stuff like this all the while to get me to play in the game.

Not my picture but it might as well have been

So the gameplay is alright. It has learned a few lessons from the original game. The board is nice the cards are alright and it even has some plastic figures instead of counters. I fought the battles and did okay as the central powers. I did eventually win in 1917 but breaking the victory point margin but I still felt a bit unsatisfied. I didn't really manage to take any territory in fact I seem to have a lot less space that the Germans started with in the real world. I got into Belgium in the first round but never got close to it after that and invading France was never on the cards.  Russia always seemed to be a long way away and the was a lot of Russians between me and them. The French seemed to do well, the British struggle to do anything at all, the Americans never arrive and the Russians never go away. I felt like I had no chance from the get go. I had assumed that the game was all about territory when in fact that it was all about getting bonus victory points, as the central powers at least. As each national group has a deck with a different amount of cards, it becomes a game of making your opponent use his cards. Some nations run out of cards very quickly. When I did win the game I had one playable card left out of about and there were two more turns to go.

This is a game about scoring points. You can lose the war and still win the game. This is supposed to say something about the skill of the player but I never felt very skillful. World War One. to me at least was a bit of a bloodbath. This was not a war about how much you won but how much you lost. This should be a game about losing points no gaining them.

It's not a bad game. I would play it again but think it is more a game about the interaction of personalities on a side and that this would make it a more fun game than the two handed version I played.