play

Comments.

Physically, this is a very nice game to sit down to. The map uses very bold text / symbols and together with the chunky game pieces, provides a refreshingly comfortable and practical gaming medium. The game captures the 'to & fro' of shifting alliances nicely and in this system, the fortunes of the players also swing from one to the other with surprising regularity. This really does help the game as players can usually survive multiple mistakes and the rollercoaster of 'ups and downs' will keep things fairly open for most of the game.

Game facts.

Hammer of the Scots is designed as a two player game. The fog of war that naturally flows from the wooden block system and the use of combat cards adds atmosphere to the game. However, although designed as a 2 player game, it can be played solitaire by dealing 5 cards to each side (face down) and then drawing the top card from each sides 'hand' and playing each card to that sides best advantage. Cards continue to be drawn and played in accordance with the rules. The best games will obviously come from face to face games but this system does give a very enjoyable solitaire game.

There are two scenarios 'Braveheart' 1297 - 1305 and 'The Bruce' 1306 - 1314. There is also a campaign game that uses the 'Braveheart' setup but plays through to 1314. Each of the scenarios take about three hours to play in a face to face game (faster for solitaire play).

There are just 56 blocks in the game, but between a half and a third of those are off map at any one time. The single map (6 panels) is divided into large areas and uses large symbols and bold text to convey information. The rules are held within 6 pages of an 8 page folder.

This is a low complexity game, the rules are in the usual style of Columbia Games, using 2 columns of text and a third column of notes in an extended margin. Though complexity is low, the historical flavour and political intrigue has been preserved.

The rules are short but it is worth jotting down some of the smaller 'one sentence' type rules, just to refresh your memory prior to play. The first time that I played, I missed a couple of small rule points - though it didn't matter too much, I still enjoyed the game, the design is very robust in that regard.

This block is magnified by 50%. The bottom left number is the movement allowance, the Bottom right is the activation / combat factor. Dunbar's 'B2' means that as a 'B', he can activate once all 'A's have activated and the number '2' means that he will score 'hits' on a die roll score of 1-2.
The triangles around the edge show how many steps the unit has left. Here, Dunbar has 3 steps, so he can roll 3 combat dice and each result of 1 or 2 would score a hit. Dunbar is a noble (his heraldic badge denotes this) and so he has 2 blocks in the game, one is red to use when he is allied to the English and the other is blue for when he is allied to the Scots.

A year is represented by dealing each player 5 cards which are then played out simultaneously. The card deck has 20 movement cards and 5 event cards (the pillage card shown here is an event card).
The movement cards have different values on them and will allow either one, two or three groups of units to activate and move. Once the players have played their 5 cards, the year concludes with a special winter turn that deals with attrition, recruitment and allegiance. To get a decisive victory, players are seeking to eliminate the enemy king or to control all of the nobles in Scotland. Failing that, victory is determined at the end of play, in favour of the player who controls the most nobles.
Overall, the game looks great and is fun to play, this has become one of my favourite games.

One of the interesting aspects of the game for the Scottish player is the business of creating a king. The candidates are Comyn, Bruce and Balliol but Comyn and Bruce cannot become king while Wallace is alive and Balliol must wait until more than half the nobles are pro Scottish and French knights are deployed within Scotland before he can take the crown. Regardless of who gets the throne, the rival nobles will defect to the English side. A coronation can be called by playing any event card and bringing the king playing piece into the game.