Trench Commander Preview

As I am wont to do at the beginning of reviews, I have to make a confession. I have not played many games set in a war. I have not played many WW1, WW2, Vietnam, etc. games, because I am under the impression that most of these are, in fact, wargames. I have not yet ascended into a wargamer or miniatures gamer. That said, I have previewed a game from Daniel at Garden Path Games before, and it was a huge hit with my band and me. So when he offered to send me a card game set in WW1 I was hesitant, but trusted my friend to deliver something I would enjoy. Luckily, he sent me something super fun and I am extremely happy to be able to cover it here.

Trench Commander is a head-to-head (or more heads, depending on number of players) card game where each player will send troops to their fronts on either side in order to deplete their enemies’ reserves and emerge victorious. The last player standing will win this war, and the game of Trench Commander!

DISCLAIMER: We were provided a prototype copy of this game for the purposes of this review. These are preview copy components, and I do not know for sure if the final components will be any different from these shown. Also, it is not my intention to detail every rule in the game, but to give an idea of how it is played. You are invited to download the rulebook, back the game via the Kickstarter campaign, or through any retailers stocking it after fulfillment. -T

To setup, give each player (a two-player game is featured in this preview) a Reserves card with marker cube, shuffle the large deck of cards, and deal each player seven cards for their starting hand. Players place their cubes on the Reserves value of 9 and the game may begin!

Trench Commander is played over a series of rounds. Each round encompasses four main phases: Draw, Place, Flip, Battle. The first phase is Draw, where players will refill their hands to seven cards (after having played cards from the previous round). The first round of the game skips this phase, as players start with seven. Next, all players will choose two cards to play and Place one each on their two fronts. A “front” is the space between two players, with each player having a front on their left and a front on their right. For ease of photography, this reviewer has created two adjacent fronts between the two players. With the cards placed face-down on their respective fronts, all players will simultaneously Flip their two cards and add them to their fronts.

After cards have been flipped, the last phase is Battle. During this phase, each front is evaluated to determine if a battle takes place on that front. Battles can be triggered in two ways. Firstly, if all played cards on the head-to-head fronts show three or more red whistle icons, a battle begins on that front. Secondly, if players have added five total cards to their front a battle begins. Battles are resolved in sub-phases: Count Bullets, Lose Reserves, Eliminate Players, and Reset Fronts.

The number of cards played to a front indicates the number of armies present on that front. For example, if three cards have been played to each player’s front and a battle begins, the number of armies present are three for each side. If a battle has triggered, both players involved in this battle will notate the row corresponding to the number of armies (cards) involved in the altercation. In the photo below, a battle would have begun between six total armies (three on each side) because three or more red whistle icons have been played, had the Barbed Wire card not been played. Barbed Wire negates one red whistle icon. So these players each would have Counted Bullets present on the third row from their played cards to arrive at a total attack value. The player with the most bullets showing on that row wins the combat. The loser will Lose Reserves matching the number of armies played – in this example, three. If this completely depletes the number of Reserves for one player, they are Eliminated from play and new fronts between the eliminated player’s neighbors will be built. Should this battle not result in elimination, the players Reset Fronts by discarding all armies involved with the previous battle and new fronts built on the following round.

Play continues in this fashion of playing cards to each front and eliminating players until only two players remain. Each player still battles on two fronts, even though it is against one player. Once one of the players is eliminated, the victor is crowned!

Components. Again, this is a prototype version of the game, and I am pretty sure that some things will be changing as a result of a successful Kickstarter campaign. Art and graphic design is not final, but the rules are mostly set. That said, for a prototype, what I was sent is pretty darn good. The quality of components is all fine, but I am digging this art style and design choices used throughout. The art is retro and awesome, and the design on the card backs looks very worn and vintage. A nice touch, in my opinion. I have relayed my thoughts to the publisher about ideas to change certain component aspects, so we shall see if any make it into final consideration. It is difficult to judge a game’s components based on prototype materials, but I like the direction they chose for Trench Commander.

A game can look and feel great, but if it doesn’t play well, then it won’t be making it to my collection. With Trench Commander I found my games to be super quick, even with more players, because most things occur simultaneously. Several battles can be resolved at once, or the group may choose to witness each battle individually. When players are comfortable with the rules, then this game can fly, and that’s a GREAT thing. This is a light card game with opportunities for some tough tough decisions. Each player has a hand of seven cards and only plays two total each round. So players have the ability to control how many whistles they contribute to the skirmishes, or how many offsets are used to either delay battles or decrease the number of Reserves to deplete.

There are at least 100 cards in this game, and a two-player game typically will not even come close to playing through half of them. Why is this important? Each card features specific art, is named, but may not necessarily possess the same characteristics as other copies of that named card in the deck. So perhaps one of the cards features two bullets on the fourth row and two bullets on the fifth row, but another card with the same name may have one bullet each for rows three, four, and five. This variability is also attractive to me so that specific strategies can’t always be enacted with the same cards, even though they share the same name.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed all my plays of Trench Commander, even when learning the game. It is very easy to teach, each Reserves card has a player aid on the back to remind players about the game flow, and turns can be very quick. This isn’t the meat and potatoes of a game night, but can definitely fulfill the appetizer or dessert course very well. A filler? Probably, but a great one at that! If this sounds interesting to you and you want to check out the Kickstarter campaign, I fully support that decision. Welcome to the fray, private!