Rivet Wars: Eastern Front Review

Jason

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Posted by Jason on Mar 11, 2015

Miniatures games. They seem really cool, promise lots of immersive theme and provide an excuse to play with toys! There are quite a few games out there that address the accessibility issues inherent to miniatures games- complex rules, modeling, cost and the need to stay current with systems or releases. In some quarters there may even be a potentially intimidating or even unfriendly culture surrounding miniatures games. Rivet Wars does a great job of making miniature gaming more accessible. The design is a streamlined, two-player, tactical board game that strips away complexity and detail to foster speed and create non-stop action.

Players command forces from either the Allied States or the Blightun Empire. Your units represent a soldiery mish-mash of alternate history and steampunk, with a little quasi-science fiction sprinkled in. You’ll order these troops on suicide attacks across No Man’s Land, while safely headquartered at a chateau behind the lines, sipping tea and eating cucumber sandwiches.

If the term “No Man’s Land” sounds familiar, that’s because Ted Terranova’s imaginary Land of Rivet is suspiciously like our own WWI-era Europe. Geographical names bear more than a little phonetic resemblance and there’s a similar backstory about world powers locked in a deadly arms race sitting atop a political powder keg. Its comic-style artwork, caricatured minis, and light humor might have you forget all about the Great War’s mud, blood, and poppycock. Make no mistake, though. You’ll rack up a significant body count by the time you’ve raced through the first scenario.

Rivet Wars’ appeal and strength lie in its accessibility – that and amazing miniatures. The crux here is fast-and-furious, action-packed game play. This isn’t some proper “left, right, left, right, little fingers along the seams of your trousers.” It’s more like “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” The system is designed to get players – especially those new to miniature gaming – up to speed deploying grunts, barking out orders, dashing from the trenches, dodging artillery, and getting tangled up in barbed wire as quickly as possible. You have your troops, a limited number of points with which to buy and deploy units each turn, and a simple grid-based battlefield. While your various units have different stats, ratings and abilities indicated on unit cards, it all comes down to simply moving from square-to-square and tossing dice to score good-old fashioned hits.

Combat is as clean as it is brutal. Choose one of your men or weapons to fire. Pick a target. Make sure you can shoot that far. Check the enemy’s armor rating listed on its card. Look on your own unit’s card to see how many dice it rolls against that armor stat. Roll. If at least one result comes up a five or six, you successfully hit the target. Most units can only sustain the one hit before they’re eliminated!

This is simple stuff. Rivet Wars eschews even the genre’s most basic standards such as measured range, elevation, terrain obstacles, line-of-sight and line-of-supply – let alone more sophisticated elements such as combat modifiers and variable damage modes. This is a more streamlined game than other “accessible” miniature titles like Star Wars: X-Wing, which still includes a range ruler, firing arcs and detailed damage resolution. The field and terrain are relatively unrestricted. There are a few obstacles that affect units differently, but by and large movement is very intuitive. Ironically, the game is so basic that most hardcore miniature gamers will probably scoff at it, though they’ll still delight in painting those finely detailed minis.

If you only have the Eastern Front core set, battles tend to slip into the same pattern. There are expansions that really add diversity, and thankfully you only need one or two to do the trick. With the just the core set, both sides simply exchange body blows and territory in a bloody scrum like some 1890s rugby match. That’s primarily a result of the game’s victory conditions in which most points are awarded for capturing and holding strategic objectives – exposed positions in the middle of the field that scream, “Hey, come shoot me!” The bodies pile up high around these points.

Still, monotony by no means ruins the game because it plays quickly, and there are also cards to add spice. Action cards provide rules-breaking boosts and benefits. As usual, some are better than others and you draw them randomly. But they do inject some surprise and tension. You can also go all “Mission Impossible” with secret mission cards that award bonus victory points for accomplishing certain tasks. You’ll still need to feed grunts into the bloody black holes that are the strategic objectives. But at least these side missions toss in some variety.

Rivet Wars is a great place to get started with miniatures games. With an more appealing theme, streamlined rules, fast play and eye-popping miniatures it is an attractive and addictive design. If you’re a collector who needs every mini and loves to paint, it promises plenty to satisfy. However, if you just want to enjoy it casually, the system offers the promise of fun action at a relatively low buy-in. And that will have your wallet beaming, “Jolly good show, old chap!”