Until a few months ago, I had literally never heard of the concept of a Roll & Write game. But, I started seeing these things pop up on Kickstarter from a new company called Solo Wargame and I was immediately intrigued as the topics for the games were so interesting and varied that I thought that there just might be something worth looking into. Since that time, I have played 2 of these Roll & Write games from Solo Wargame and really found that Siege Works: A Napoleonic Siege Roll & Write was my favorite. I say my favorite because who doesn’t like a siege game and a game set during the Napoleonic Wars is always fun! After now playing the game several times, I am ready to share my First Impression thoughts with you in this post.

First off, let’s take a look at the production of the game. This game is a Print ‘n Play product, meaning that when I backed the project on Kickstarter I was backing access to the files needed to play the game including the rules, which consist of 7 pages, and the Game Sheets or board that you play the game on. Once the campaign was complete, in a few weeks I was emailed all of the required files and began the work of printing those out. I printed out the rules, 10 copies of each of the 4 Game Sheets and then placed them all in a manila folder with a print out of the title header taped onto the front. That was it! Very easy, very clean and most importantly very affordable. The base game cost CA$5 or about $3.60 in US Dollars and I chose to add on the expansion, which game me 2 additional Game Sheets for a total of 4, and increased my pledge to CA$8. A great little product that is not only affordable but fun to play and frankly pretty addictive.

The other thing about the production is that the designer Martin Melbardis also doubles as the illustrator and artist and has done a fantastic job with the look and feel of the Game Sheets and the other materials. The Game Sheets are very thematic and do a fantastic job of connecting the concepts of a Roll & Write Game to the realities of this type of siege warfare with the parallel trench lines approaching the main walls of the various fortresses and the interesting color pallet that gives the feel of a prolonged operation that is slow and foreboding. The player will have to provide their own dice, a pencil or pen and then also various colored cubes or markers. I was very glad for the chance I had to use my gaggle of cubes collected over the years from various prototypes we have played and/or games that I have dismantled and gotten rid of from my shelves.

Let’s now take a look at what a Roll & Write Game is and how it is a perfect vehicle for this type of siege warfare. Roll & Write Games are typically small and portable games, some are even Print ‘n Play games like Siege Works, that involve the player rolling dice and then marking the results on sheets of paper or sometimes erasable boards. These markings can mean several different things including goals being met, pre-requisites being completed or enemies defeated. The genesis or archetype for these Roll & Write Games is Yahtzee, where players roll a handful of dice looking for various combinations of results to mark off on their sheet that then score points in the end. But recently that game genre has started to include a bit more player agency and choice about how they go about reaching goals including dice selection from those that are rolled, choosing results that are needed at the time but may be less than optimal in the long run and in completing certain goals that will open the door for additional future beneficial options for the player. Don’t get me wrong. A Roll & Write Game is very simple and is not a traditional style of wargame with hexes, counters and Combat Results Tables. But the game tells a story of a siege and how it works. So I was initially skeptical about this form of game and just had to give it a try to see what it was about. I have actually played 2 of them and found them to be lite, fun and interesting. And Siege Works is a solitiare Roll & Write Game so I have played it by myself on my gaming table and had a good time with them.

So what are my thoughts on the game? Well, I really liked it. I am a fan of Grand Strategy and find that it is one of my favorite forms of gaming. I enjoy the fact that my smaller decisions, such as when to forego using an action in a round to get a re-roll for a future round, creates a very interesting mental tug of war for me and causes me to think about conflicts in a different way and from a different perspective. These Grand Strategic wargames are typically long games, such as Unconditional Surrender! from GMT Games that will take months to play. But if I can get a similar kind of feeling and thought exercise from a 30 minute game then I am all on board and that is the case with Siege Works. I especially like the way that your actions in this game work together. Dig In is vital as this allows you to advance your trenches and get nearer to your objective of the city walls and storming them. Setting up Battery is key as they more of these that you have set up on your way to the walls, the more dice that you will roll when you are taking the Bombardment actions to tear those walls down and make breaches to Assault. And finally, setting up your Assaults to be successful by placing out Mines at the base of those walls by sacrificing a potentially more useful result to build more trenches. I just think that the choices here are interesting and are not necessarily just about the immediate attacks and assaults. You must go about the siege with a purpose and with a focus on where and when you will strike. Yes luck is involved somewhat as you are rolling dice and those dice are sometimes unleashing bad events such as rain, that will slow your progress, enemies putting out mines of their own to blow up your vanguard as they assault or enemy sorties killing your troops and making it harder and harder numerically to be successful. But there are ways to mitigate some of these challenges by sacrificing actions to amass re-roll attempts, placing an action cube into the Guard Lines action to to try to stop those sorties and the like. There is a lot to think about in a short and compact game and the best part is that it plays in less than 30 minutes and if you fail, and believe me I have failed many a time, you can set it back up in less than 2 minutes and go again.

The game is won by reducing all of the enemy’s defenders by marking off all boxes on the Defenders Track or by reducing their morale to zero by marking off all the boxes on the Morale Track to successfully take the city. Pretty simple to understand. But a bit harder to put into action and complete. See the reduction of Defenders or Morale is somewhat of a mixed bag as you cannot directly influence those things but must rely on Assaulting and then rolling the appropriate numbers on those assault dice to reduce one or both of the categories. When assaulting, a player gets to roll as many D6 as sections of the wall column that they are attacking and have reduced to rubble through successful bombardments. When the player assaults, they can up to 2D6 and a result of 1-2 means they are repelled and the player will lose a manpower on the Manpower Track or sometimes 2 when enemy mines are present from events. On a roll of 3-4, the player can reduce the Defenders and on a 5-6 the Morale gets reduced. So you know what you might need to do but sieges are somewhat unpredictable as you never know how they will turn out or how exactly the assaults will effect the defenders. Sometimes their lose men and sometimes their spirits are broken and this is determined randomly from a dice roll. But you can mitigate that through several factors including the use of Mines as previously mentioned to gain a +1 DRM to the dice rolled for that assault attempt or by conducting multiple assaults in a row on different wall columns as you will gain a +1 DRM for each dice rolled after the first assault. Or you can use your Re-Rolls to re-roll those dice that won’t cooperate. The art of Assaulting the walls is a key part of the game and preparing to do them, preparing to mitigate your results and preparing to suffer is part of the game.

One of the other parts of the game that I wanted to mention was the concept of the D3. The D3 is important in the game when you are using your limited actions to roll dice for things like Dig In, Bombardment and Setup Batteries. When you roll a D6 it will end in results of 1-3, not 1-6. You simply divide the roll in half and those are the points that you will gain to then carry out the actions you are rolling for on the board. Wish the case of Dig In, you will roll as many D3 as you have placed cubes in the space up to a maximum of 3 and then total those D3 results to get a final number. Let’s say you roll a 1, 4 and 5. This will equate to a total available points of 6 (1-2 results in 1, 3-4 results in 2 and 5-6 results in 3). These points are then spent to mark off white circles on the board which are segments in the progression of the trenches. Each of these circles cost 2 points to mark off so with this result the player can mark off 3 white circles and lengthen their trenches. The beige circles are a bit different as they can be marked off with the Setup Batteries action and will take 3 points each to mark off. I really very much liked the D3 mechanic used here and understand why they did this. Sieges are difficult, slow moving and painful processes. The D3 kind of reinforces this and makes the player feel like they have little hope to get the results that they need to push their trenches forward and set up their batteries for bombardment. Just a great choice that doesn’t seem like much but adds to the thematic setting and feeling of the game.

I said this before but the biggest plus to the game is the simple rules, easy setup and fast onboarding with learning and being able to get the game played. You can play this easily with a simple read of the rules and a bit of review of the Game Sheet before playing. The sequence of play is very good and easy to follow as well and I found that the game is pretty intuitive. My only issue with the rules was that I found that they sometimes needed just a few more words or an additional sentence for clarity. But this is combated somewhat by the fact that the rules contain a lot of good play examples for the different actions in the game.

I hope that you do give this game and this company a try, as they offer games on so many historical topics that are all fun to play and easy to learn and most importantly are cost effective!

If you are interested in learning more about the game and buying a copy, you can visit the Dice Pen online shop at the following link: https://shop.dicepen.pl/shp/products/details/prd:653

-Grant