Solo Card Game on Spanish Maquis Fight Against Franco
Overview
David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin have been cranking out a lot of games together. From the very popular Undaunted series from Osprey to more abstract game War Chest, they have proven that they make a great team in fleshing out simple games that deliver on big gameplay. This time around they are joined by Roger Tankersley (co-designer of Sniper Elite with David Thompson) and with absolutely stunning art by Albert Monteys.
The product is a solo-only card game with lots of big choices and a push your luck style play that focuses on the Spanish Maqui’s fight against Franco’s fascist regime in 1940s and early 1950s Spain.
History
Civil War consumed Spain from 1936 to 1939. This battle in the interwar period between World War I and World War II was significant. It was here that both Hitler’s and Mussolini’s forces would see action and test their military strength before the coming World War consumed the globe. The main belligerents of the conflict involved the left-leaning Republican forces and nationalist fascists led by Francisco Franco.
In the end, the nationalists won the civil war. Many supporters and sympathizers of the Spanish Second Republic fled to the mountains. Much like their French counterparts, continued the fight through guerrilla tactics. The focus of this game centers on these Maquis. Specifically, these are stories of regular people in hiding and doing what they can to sabotage and try to topple the Francoist government.
Game Overview
The basic premise of Resist! is that you will create two decks of Maquis from the included fighters. One deck will be your hidden deck of which you draw Maquis from. The other is your supply deck. If you are lucky you can bolster your cell from these cards in the fight for freedom.
The gameplay centers around using your Maquis to complete missions against the totalitarian government. Each of these missions will be guarded by various enemy soldiers of different types and strengths. The core action and decision of the game is how you utilize your Maquis. Each comes with two sides: First up their hidden side. This represents their work in the shadows against the government. These actions are usually weaker in attack values and effects. However, using a hidden ability means that your Maquis will stay in the fight and be discarded to be shuffled and drawn later.
The other side is the revealed side. This side represents your Maquis stepping out of the shadows to actively fight and attack the enemy. This side of your Maquis is very strong, however, using a Maquis this way means you will lose them for the remainder of the game.
Taking the Fight to Franco
This element of hidden vs. revealed is the main engine of the game. Each game consists of 6-10 missions you must complete. The more you use Maquis in revealed status, the fewer resources you will have to complete future missions. It is this decision spot that really will keep you on the edge of your seat. Is that quick victory against the current mission worth losing your best agent? This is especially tough when you learn that failure of just TWO missions means you immediately lose the game. Winning that mission now might be the only way to keep the fight going even if you have a more difficult time later.
The second element of push your luck revolves around how much you want to press the government. Each mission is worth a number of victory points. At the end of each round, you are given a choice. Do you draw the next mission card and keep going? Alternatively, do you take your accumulated victory points and end your resistance before your cell is caught and ultimately eliminated by the government?
Gameplay
Set-up
Mechanically, Resist! starts with assembling your hidden and recruit decks. The game recommends that you “draft” Maquis shuffling all the cards together. Then draw two at a time and pick one to go into your starting hidden deck and the other into your recruit deck. You do this with all 24 Maquis cards until you have both decks with 12 cards.
The next wrinkle is that you are required to shuffle three of the six spy cards into your hidden deck. Thematically, these spy cards represent Franco spies within your Maquis cell. The other three spy cards are kept in supply and some actions might add the remaining into your hidden discard pile.
From a game perspective, they act much like “fog of war” cards from the other David Thompson/Trevor Benjamin games in the Undaunted series. If drawn with Maquis they are essentially “dead” cards that can’t be used that turn. However, they have another detractor. If you ever draw a hand of all 5 spy cards, the spies have overtaken your cell and you automatically lose the game! This means removing spies and avoiding adding more is critical to the long game.
Next, you assemble the mission deck of which a typical game you will see half of the missions. This keeps each game unique as the combination of missions and order will always be different. You draw the first 4 mission cards and enemies stacked above each. The remaining enemies go into an enemy deck to be drawn when required.
Civilian losses
The last setup piece is one we haven’t mentioned yet: the civilian deck and graveyard. This mechanically thematically invokes the collateral damage that active resistance against Franco would take against the Spanish citizens. This deck contains pictures of your civilian brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and children. If certain enemies and/or missions are not completed, you will be prompted to draw from the civilian deck and add it to your graveyard. If you ever get 5 civilians in your graveyard you also lose the game. The resistance has taken too much of a toll on the good people of Spain.
Round Structure
Each game is divided into a series of rounds, with each round containing four phases: Plan, Attack, Aftermath, and Recover. The breakdown of each phase is as follows:
Planning phase
If it is the first round of the game you begin by drawing 5 cards from the hidden deck into your hand. Remaining rounds you will go straight into the planning phase. In this phase, you will decide which if any Maquis you wish to play initially, mostly if they have an ability listed with a heading of “Plan” meaning that ability would trigger during this phase. The main reason to use a Maquis here is if the plan ability grants you a bonus such as scouting a mission to reveal it’s enemies, or drawing additional Maquis card from the deck, or perhaps discarding or removing a spy card from your hand!
After choosing which Maquis to play during Planning you then select which mission you will attack this round and flip any remaining enemies attached to that mission.
Attack Phase
After selecting the mission for the round the game moves into the Attack Phase. Here if the chosen mission has any Defend conditions those activate first along with any Enemy cards for the mission.
Next, the remaining Maquis in your hand is played. Again they can be chosen in their hidden or revealed state. Only this time any cards with an “Attack” action listed on their chosen persona will trigger. Attack actions might again add more Maquis cards this turn, remove an enemy from a mission, or even double your Maquis attack values.
Defeating your foes
After playing all your Maquis the game turns to the time to defeat targets for the chosen mission. Defeating targets is easy. Each mission and enemy has a defense value and each Maquis has an attack value for its chosen persona. You start by totally your attack value, then choosing targets one by one and subtracting from your total attack value the defense value of a chosen target. You repeat this for either: All targets until they are gone, or until you run out of attack points.
This leads to another hard decision point of the game. RARELY will you have enough attack points to defeat the mission AND all the defenders. You will need to decide which survive, but this comes at a cost:
- Do you focus on the mission, but leave defenders? This progresses the game, but many defenders will either force you to remove them first or add civilians to the graveyard, or possibly spies to your deck.
- Do you remove the negative state defenders, but skip the mission. The risk here is if ever you fail 2 missions you will immediately lose the game. Failure against the superior government forces just isn’t an option for the rag tag Maquis
Aftermath Phase
After resolving your attacks on targets you move into the Aftermath Phase. Here the first step is to check your graveyard. If you have value of 5 or more Civilians in the graveyard it is an auto loss for the game.
The next step is to check your mission outcome. If you defeated the mission you set it aside and draw the next mission from the deck. You draw and place the correct number of enemies with this new mission.
If you failed the mission you turn the mission over. This will take up one slot of missions on the board. However, if you already have failed a single mission and fail a second one, the game is over.
The last choice is if you want to end the game here. If yes, you total up the points from all defeated missions and refer to the outcome in the rulebook. If not, you move to the Recover phase. Keep in mind though Maquis that were active are lost from the game meaning in future missions you will have fewer resources to fight with!
Recover phase
In this phase, you clean up your played Maquis by moving all hidden Maquis and spies to the hidden discard pile and revealed to the revealed discard pile. You then draw a new hand of 5 cards for the next round. If you run out of draw cards you shuffle the hidden discard and continue drawing. As mentioned earlier, if you draw 5 spy cards, you immediately lose the game.
Final thoughts and Wrap-up
What did I think?
First off let me get to the chase. I loved this game. To readers of this blog, it should come as no surprise that I like the following: Easy to play solo games that have crunchy decisions, low rules overhead, and big narrative outcomes. Resist! checks all those boxes!
Rules-wise, the game is incredibly simple, draw missions and enemies, draw your Maquis, decide if they are hidden or active, add up your attack points and remove enemies point by point. What makes the game great is the touch choices. Do I use Adolfo’s in revealed status for the 3 attack value but know he’s gone for the rest of the game? Or do I have enough special actions to still defeat the mission without taking too many spies, or civilian loss if he stays hidden and lives to fight again?
Tons of options
As mentioned before, even in the base game you will only see at most half of the missions each game as they are shuffled and the 10 mission cards selected from an option of 20 total missions. However, the game ALSO has several alternative narratively focused scenarios you can play through. Eight of these scenarios give specific background and objectives and might tell you different victory conditions or specific missions to seed the mission deck with.
However the coolest part is a historical campaign made of 3 historical scenarios, one from each era represented in the missions eras:
- Historical Scenario 1: Focuses on 1944 and the Spanish Maquis returning to their homeland from assisting the French in their fight against Nazi occupation. This campaign will have you defeat 6 eras 1 mission before you can move to the next
- Historical Scenario 2: This covers the time of 1945 – to 1948 when the Maquis were forced into the mountains and were supported by the local population which made Franco send in the regular army to pacify them. To move on this scenario requires you to complete 5 era 2 missions
- Historical Scenario 3: The last and toughest scenario you can only complete if you succeed in defeating the first two. This era covers 1949 – 1952 when Franco shifted to counter-guerrilla tactics that eventually broke the Maquis and scattered them ending open resistance by the early 1950s. This scenario requires you to complete 5 era 3 missions. A task that is not easy given these are the most difficult missions in the game, but if you do what a great narrative you will have woven!
Wrap-up
Resist! is being published by Salt and Pepper games out of Madrid, Spain. The game hits Game found on May 12th if this is something that you want to check out. Here is the campaign page: Game found Link. I found Resist! to be interesting and addicting to play. A huge shoutout to Print and Play games: http://www.printplaygames.com that created the prototype. It is beautiful and hard to remember that this is just a prototype copy. I can’t wait to see the final product.
I had a blast playing Resist! and it is definitely in my rotation to bust out again very soon! The combined mechanics, theme, and art style are something very special here and if you are a fan of lighter solo games or interesting historical games, this is definitely something you should check out! Stay tuned as I plan to cover my run-through of historical scenario 1 as we get closer to the campaign launch!
A preview copy of this game was provided for review
