The beating of drums. The flash of musket fire. Flags unfurling in the breeze, and the booming of cannon fire mark battles fought to create the Birth of America. Before installing the game, I thought that of all the war games I’ve played, few were of the Revolutionary War period. There would be the occasional board game, and I would read a review here or there. Compared to the many other war games that have been produced, we would have to say the revolution that formed the first thirteen united states is far and few.Suffice to say, we actually start out with French and Indian Wars, which was an early prelude to the War of Independence. This war pitted the British against the French with Indian Allies on both sides. A young general by the name of George Washington would be a participant, then years later fight against the British troops to free thirteen colonies from an oppressive England. There are also other scenarios and campaigns that were part of our nation's birth, such as an ill fated invasion of Canada.
The overall design is a strategic turn based game. The map is made up of small regions with strategic zones. Representations of towns, cities, forts, and naval ports have been simplified. Each one is clearly marked, important cities, forts, etc. are marked with stars. The board’s troops remind me of stand up placards and are represented by larger pictures with military type symbols.
Movement is mainly a pick up your piece, move it to a region, while being mindful that you have a fog of war in effect. Your moves are calculated into the number of days it takes to move from one region to the next. Since one turn is thirty days, depending on how you placed your armies the movement portion can take a number of full turns. Terrain is taken into account, so that crossing mountains will take longer versus moving through, say, a plains region.
Combat is pretty straight forward as there are just three actual modes of combat with a fourth mode being passive. You can siege when using assault mode as well as entrenching. There is a defensive mode and the last is like doing an all out attack, but your losses go up dramatically when using this mode. The passive mode allows you and the enemy to co-exist in the same region without combat. There is a fog of war effect regionally as well, increasing chances that you can be soundly defeated by a overwhelming force if you move into the region, say by crossing a river, or into other detrimental land effects.
There are other effects that make this an interesting game including militia ambushing, where being in wooded areas will affect combat damage versus regular troops. Forts can be added to towns, which I never really got into since the troop movements, where so fluid that hanging out in a fort, unless being a militia unit where a non issue. The only time would normally be defending a strategic city which affected the conditions of the win for that scenario.
Camera wise, you can zoom way out to very close in and there is a mini map to speed movement around the main map. I bring this up because the map is so big and your units are so spread out you need to either zoom way out to get the big picture or use the mini map just to get to each individual unit. My thoughts on this were a bit negative as moving from unit to unit was very time consuming. The mini map just shows colored squares indicating the American and British units. Unless you have a really good memory, remembering where the main forces are located was a bit trying.
What really got me was how the units looked compared to what I normally play in a war game. They reminded me of some board game pieces I used to play where you had a cardboard stand up with a plastic base attached to the bottom. Also interesting was how they incorporated the different combat modes to each unit or group of units. I really never the used the what I call "frontal assault" mode. Another problem was understanding the supply rules since depending on who was controlling what, large swatches of regions could be controlled by the opposing side, making supply a major sticking point.
For a turn based game it wasn’t bad, and it held my attention when I played. But this is what I would call a bread and butter game. Something you can leave for awhile and then return to when you’ve got nothing better to do. The only major problem I really had with it was the mapping area was so large that it made it difficult to get the big picture, since I was busy moving from section to section. This became a turn off after awhile. If you’re a history buff that likes this period then you may be interested in Birth of America.
Father of two, now grown children.What are my kind of games? Strategy, RTS, RPG, Fantasy, Science Fiction, and online games such as Dark Age of Camelot and Asheron's Call. Of my dislikes I would say puzzle games such as Myth, FPS type games such as Doom. Also simulation type games, and games that are just plain bad.
My knowledge of the industry mostly evolves around beta testing games, such as Earth & Beyond from EA, Saga of Ryzom, and companies like MSN and Acolade. Self taught web design is another interest I have. Family life is entertaining at times. It also can get weird as well, after you have been married 31 years.
