This system has some dramatics, both in the revealing of the cards and the rolling of the dice, which I always enjoy, but I find the sum of the parts odd. At the end of all this, the player with the greater troop strength emerges as the winner. Players also have single-use cards they can choose to play during combat, which can influence the outcome. These casualties are lost for the duration of the game. Dice are rolled for cannons, with each hit ejecting a random troop card. The first step of any contested battle-a battle over a space where both armies have units-involves both players choosing a specified number of troops from their deck and playing those cards out to the table. Each player has a troop deck, made up of troops with strengths between one and three. The Habsburgs can Barrage, which thins out the Ottoman troops, and Sortie, which triggers combat.įor my tastes, the combat in Fire & Stone, like the façade of the Wienzeile Jugendstil, has a bit too much going on. The Ottomans can also Entrench, placing fortifications and consolidating cannons onto a single hex Bombard, which can remove fortifications from Austrian-controlled spaces and Assault, which I’ll go over in greater detail in when I cover combat. Both sides can Mine, which removes enemy fortifications, and Fortify, which adds them. Most of the time, cards are Basic Action+, so you’ll want to use them as much as circumstances allow.Ī point in this game’s favor: the basic actions are, in fact, basic. Fire & Stone uses a variation of the Card Driven Game system, eschewing action points in exchange for simpler rules where you either play a card for its event or discard it to perform a basic action. They win by taking control of particular locations within the city. The Ottomans start out at the bottom of the board, their comparatively paltry cannons during their best. Their batteries of cannons look out over the entirety of the board, and they only have to hold off the Turks for five rounds. The Viennese troops start in a promising position. There is no culminating battle, regardless of the outcome. While in reality the siege lasted for months and culminated in the Battle of Vienna, when swarms of Polish and Imperial troops joined the Viennese to rout the invaders, the game compresses things down a bit.
One cannot help but feel that the world would be better off had they succeeded.
This was the second attempted siege of the city by Turkish forces in 150 years. I’ve Seen Fire and I’ve Seen Stoneįire & Stone is set during the Ottoman Empire’s attempted 1683 siege of the proud Austrian city, then the center of the Habsburg Empire.
I was excited by the opportunity to burn Vienna to the ground. Nor was it because of the opportunity to explore an entry-level war game for two. I wasn’t interested because of the game’s beauty, though publisher Capstone Games has come up with a gorgeous and inviting product centered around bold red and yellow wooden pieces. I was interested in Fire & Stone: Siege of Vienna 1683 from the moment I saw it.
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