Soviet Dawn: The Russian Civil War 1918-1921 (Deluxe Edition)

In Soviet Dawn you play as the newly established communist Russian government at the tail end of World War 1. You are under attack from forces both within and abroad and must fend off your enemies while also working toward political legitimacy. Each round you draw from an event deck, which will give you actions, choices, die roll modifiers and sometimes restrict your offensives, while also advancing your enemies. Your options are usually limited to offensives to push back your enemies, advancing your political agenda, or trying for restructuring, which will give you certain bonuses. Ultimately, you win by either surviving the entire event deck (A decent challenge) or by maximizing the political track (Kind of an easy win with a little luck). Either way, it amounts mainly to luck. If the die likes you, you'll have an easy time. If the rolls don't go your way, you'll lose regardless of your choices. Still, the game isn't stingy with actions, so you do get plenty of attempts. I recommend getting a couple extra d6's to keep track of your action count and for certain effects that allow you to roll for a bonus.

The game components are well made. However, be careful when punching out the paper counters, one of mine got a tear. The cards are very high quality, but do not lay flat. Luckily this does not cause any problem for my card shuffling device. The game mechanics are simple and elegant. Basically you are Lenin, trying to beat back the various military forces, and to survive various other historical challenges, by using limited resources and some luck. The game takes place during the time when the Bolshevik party with the help of the military, and some well placed riots, took control of part of the country and had to deal with many challenges ( end of 1917). Among them, World War I, strategic diplomatic decisions, the civil war against the provisional social democratic government, battles against various foreign forces trying to stop the spread of communism, countries fighting for their independence from Russia, internal political fighting, modernizing the archaic Russian Red army and more. (Fun fact, general Tukhachevsky, who was one of the most useful assets for the revolutionary army, was later purged (killed) by Stalin along with millions of other Russians on made up charges of treason , 'just in case'. The game is full of various historical tidbits, that can give you the start of a thread for more independent research.) The game throws at you real historical events in semi random order. There is some basic order, but within that is a lot of randomness to keep things interesting. Some events can interact across the game time, but most effect just the 1 turn. These events let you gradually learn some historical details that drove this conflict. (Reading them is optional and does not effect game play in any way, but I find them very interesting.) Another nice touch is that you can grade your loss as well as your win. So you can see that you are gradually loosing by a smaller margin. Overall the game is easy to learn, fun, quick and educational. An added bonus for me is that its a win-win situation. If I win the game (did not happen yet), I will be proud to have defeated a difficult solitaire game. If I loose, I am happy that the fall of the revolution, saved hundreds of millions of lives in that game reality, and I presided over that fall, so I win anyway.