First off, this series is being done as a bit of a lark as wargaming has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas so if anyone is offended, please just stop reading now.
On the 5th day of Christmas War Gaming, my true love gave to me…
5 Mongol Invaders Assaulting Delhi
Vijayanagara: The Deccan Empires of Medieval India, 1290-1398 from GMT Games is a the first game in the new Irregular Conflicts Series. This new game is not a COIN Series game but it shares some of the same elements and its genesis was in a design contest held called Consim Game Jam where designers had to repurpose a COIN Series game and it’s components and make a new playable game in about 48 hours! The game that won the competition was Vijayanagara. The game is an asymmetric 1-3 player game depicting the epic, century-long rise and fall of medieval kingdoms in India over two dynastic periods.
Vijayanagara is very COIN like but with some new tricks that keep the game fast paced and interesting. We have now played the game 3 times and really love how it models the 3 unique factions with their own goals and abilities that have to fight each other, but also the 2 insurgent like factions of the Vijayanagara Empire and the Bahmani Kingdom must team up and work together somewhat to defeat the mighty Delhi Sultanate. The game plays in about 90 minutes and one of the coolest things about the design is that events are very powerful and when they are taken about half of them allow the player taking the event to remain eligible. This makes the game very interesting and fast paced with little to no downtime for any player.
One of the real pains for the Delhi Sultanate are the continually invading Mongol forces who come down from the mountain passes pillaging and plundering as they go. The two light brown irregular spaces located to the northwest of Delhi, one called Mountain Passes and the other Punjab, are Mongol Invasion Regions. These spaces are not Provinces and as such they are never marked Tributary or Independent and are never Controlled by any Faction. Only Mongol Invader and Delhi Sultanate pieces may enter or be placed into the two Mongol Invasion Regions. Regular play is periodically interrupted by the actions of the non-player Mongol Invaders, who threaten Delhi from the northwest, with the play of Timurid Empire Cards which bring in Mongol Invaders to harass and attack the Delhi Sultanate. Ultimately, the game ends with the climactic arrival of the great Mongol warlord Timur and an invasion of the capitol city of Delhi will result.
In the above picture, you can see that 5 Mongol Invaders have survived the initial assaults in the Mountain Passes and Punjab and have arrived in Delhi for the final confrontation. There to meet them and resist are a total of 6 Delhi Sultanate Troop cubes and they will clash here for the ultimate control of the location.
Here is a link to a rules overview video we did with one of the designers Saverio Spagnolie while visiting Noble Knight Games prior to playing the game:
Here is the video where we discussed the game after playing (and man that game is very good!) and also asked Saverio a bit about the design process:
You can catch up on the posts in this series to date at the following links:
2 Aircraft Bombing – General Orders: World War II from Osprey Games
-Grant
The Players' Aid 