We can trace the history of tabletop role-playing games directly back to wargaming. Many of the first tabletop role-players started as wargaming enthusiasts, and only became interested in tabletop role-playing because some players wondered what it would be like to control a single character rather than entire armies. It’s important to bear this history in mind, especially when we examine older role-playing systems, resources, and even board games from this time. In many of these older works, there’s an assumption that players are already familiar with wargaming mechanics.[1]
The wargaming hobby itself is rich in styles and systems. I’m particularly interested in board wargames. These games frequently feature hex-grid maps, square cardboard counters that represent units, and combat results tables. I’ve watched plenty of reviews of titles from this sub-genre, but simply couldn’t decide which game seemed the most appealing. Many of these titles focus on real-world battles or conflicts. While I can understand the appeal of historical scenarios, including conflicts from antiquity (or even as recent as the Napoleonic Wars), I’m less interested in games based off modern conflicts. The fantasy and sci-fi genres are far and away more intriguing. If it wasn’t so expensive and difficult to find, I would absolutely love to try the board wargame adaption of Starship Troopers (1976). If there was ever a game that needed a reprint, that is one of them.
All of this preamble brings us to Unicornus Knights (2017) made by Kanai Seiji and Kuroda “Kuro” Yasushi. Although it doesn’t have the traditional square counters, it still features an equivalent to combat results tables. I heard about this game through Geek Gamers. The setting appealed to me (a fairly typical medieval fantasy kingdom viewed through an anime lens) as well as the cooperative nature of the game. The premise is simple: Princess Cornelia is the last of the royal family alive after an invasion into her kingdom by the Emperor and his massive armies. Cornelia vows to march to the capital to reclaim her rightful throne, or die trying. It’s up to the players, who take on the role of characters with their own abilities and strengths, to protect Cornelia as she marches through the lands. Cornelia moves according to a simple set of rules and generally doesn’t care about her own safety. Although she always defeats enemies she encounters, she usually doesn’t avoid any of the enemies’ attacks, meaning that she will be quickly eliminated if the players aren’t careful.
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| Box cover, Alderac Entertainment Group, 2017 |
The box predicts the game will have a 90 minute running time, and that might be true after playing it a few times. Setup alone can take a while. The board needs to be put together randomly by placing the hexagonal tiles, enemy characters must be assembled along with their armies, player characters’ starting armies and supplies must be gathered, and the various decks of cards must be shuffled. The game has a relatively large footprint once the board and all of the character and enemy information cards are placed on the table.
The game is divided into ten rounds. If Cornelia is not sitting on the capital space by the end of the tenth round, the players lose. At the beginning of each round, an event card is drawn and resolved. These cards are always bad news for the players. The players then take their turns. On their turn, a player can draw a card from the support deck, move their character, collect supplies from a space, recruit soldiers from a space, and send soldiers and supplies to another player. These options all require one action each. Players have different amounts of actions per turn based on the total number of players in the game.
Most characters, including Cornelia, need supplies to move. Characters moving around with many soldiers will quickly come to a halt due to the cost of movement. The game is deeply concerned with logistics. Although this mechanic can sound tedious in writing, in practice there is a certain elegance to it. It makes each turn feel like a puzzle that needs to be solved. How can we ensure Cornelia doesn’t run off ahead? Limit how many supplies she has. How can we get these armies to where they’re needed? Send them back and forth between characters.
The game excels at giving players enough options that seem to be equally beneficial at any given moment. Should we collect supplies to be used sometime in the future? Perhaps the next support card in the deck will be particularly useful? It’s also effective at making players consider future happenings. Where is Cornelia likely to move? What can we do now to ensure her safety?
Combat involving characters other than the Princess is determined by dice rolling. The following example details a player making an attack — the rules are quite different when the enemy attacks a player. An attacking player character generally needs to have an army of soldiers with them to make an attack. Each soldier counts as one battle die. The player then checks to see if the target is sitting on a space with terrain benefits. Every point of defense subtracts one battle die. Once the amount of battle dice are determined, the player rolls the dice and compares the results to their attack results chart on the character information card. The results are divided into three possibilities: hits, misses, and penalties. The next step took me a while to figure out, but I think I might finally have a firm grasp on it. The target armies should be totaled up to determine their combat power. For our example, let’s assume that the target is composed of three soldiers. That means they have a combat power of 3. Even though the player is the one initiating the attack, the target can still inflict that 3 damage to the player. In order to negate that damage, the player takes the battle dice results and assigns them to the soldiers. We’ll assume that the player rolled four dice which resulted in: one hit, one miss, and two penalties. The one hit and one miss can be assigned to the target. These negate 2 points of that 3 damage. The two penalties, on the other hand, would inflict damage on the player character, so they are discarded instead. Ultimately then, the player managed to eliminate two of the three enemy soldiers, and now has to suffer 1 point of damage. Damage can be divided as the player sees fit between their character or soldiers.
Whenever an enemy character encounters a player character (or the Princess) for the first time, a fate card is drawn. These characters become “bound by fate,” which is determined by the card. The fate cards can be beneficial (the enemy character immediately becomes an ally) or detrimental (there was a trap, and the player character must take damage). Some enemy characters have “no fate” printed on their information card, meaning that a fate card is not drawn for them; these enemy characters typically already have some sort of built-in equivalent to fate explained on their card (the Black Knight, for instance, will automatically become an ally if he is defeated in combat). The fate mechanic helps keep each game fresh and adds twists to the narrative developed through play.
After the players have moved, the enemy phase starts. Enemy soldiers will automatically fight any adjacent player characters. Some enemy characters will do likewise, and others will either move closer towards nearby player characters or never move at all.
Finally, before a round is finished, Cornelia takes her turn. She can take three actions and can either move or collect supplies. She will always prefer to move and moves to the space with the lowest movement cost that puts her closer to the capital. There are edge cases in which two options may be equally viable; any of these situations are left to the players to determine what she does.
This game is difficult to win. It’s definitely a game that should be premised with the mantra: “losing is fun!”[2] Due to the random nature of the board, there are many board configurations that make it difficult to adequately protect Cornelia. Moreover, each enemy character has unique abilities, with some of them being especially dangerous. The Black Drake, for example, inflicts double damage in combat. The Chancellor’s ability changes the victory conditions: put simply, the players cannot win the game as long as he is left alive. Although winning is quite challenging, there’s still plenty of fun to be had seeing how far Cornelia can get. Every small victory against the enemy feels rewarding.
One mechanic that alleviates some of the difficulty is the disposable nature of the players’ characters; even if a player’s character is eliminated, they can simply pick one of the unused characters and join the fray again immediately (the rules are explicit in this case: a new character chosen in this fashion can be placed on any unoccupied space on the board — even in enemy territory!). It’s likely that victorious players would frequently take advantage of this mechanic.
The components are generally well-made. The area tiles are thick cardboard with a vinyl coating. There is at least one tile that has a misprint on it: all other road spaces are -1 to movement cost, but a single road space is inexplicably +1 to movement cost. Players could decide for themselves whether there’s an in-universe explanation for it. The various tokens, which are the most commonly used component, are also thick cardboard. They’re satisfying to handle and place on the board. Prospective players should be aware that there is stacking in this game, which may be unappealing to some.[3] The various decks of cards and character information cards are a little thinner than normal playing cards; it would’ve been better if they hadn’t made them so thin.
The rulebook is large (about 11" x 11" or 28cm x 28cm) and full-color; it certainly looks nice, but there are some issues with it. Echoing sentiments from others online, I found the printed rulebook that comes with the game to be a little vague about certain situations. Fortunately, there is a revised version available as a PDF on the publisher’s website that clears up some of the ambiguities. Even with the revised rules, there are still plenty of situations that seem to be left up to player interpretation. That’s not a major issue because the core rules (player actions, Cornelia’s movement, and combat) are generally explained well enough that leaving some of the situations up to player fiat is fine. For instance, when an event card declares that all misses rolled this round should be instead treated as penalties, should an ally’s ability that treats all misses as hits be affected as well? I would lean towards ruling in favor of the players, but I have a feeling that the opposite is the intention. [Update 2021/03/30: The back of the printed rulebook includes a section of rule clarifications, including a brief mention of this exact scenario. Surprisingly, the rules side with the players in this situation. Although there are ambiguities in the printed and revised rulebooks, this is not one of them. The preceding paragraph has been left unedited as a reminder for myself to completely read the rules before critiquing them.]
One design choice that is particularly frustrating is the use of the shield icon to mean different things. Its use to represent defense points on spaces is fairly straightforward, but its usage on player character and enemy information cards is counterintuitive. For the player character cards, the shield number represents the maximum number of armies that the player can control. For the enemy cards, the shield icon represents the combat power of the enemy character (i.e., this number should be added to the number of soldiers that the enemy has with them) and is only used when the enemy initiates an attack. Different icons would have made it more clear that these numbers are entirely different mechanics.
The game is quite enjoyable for even a single player. Although there’s a lot going on, it wasn’t too challenging to get a handle of the general flow of the game. Combat is definitely the most vaguely treated subject in the printed rules, but it feels natural after going through it a few times. It definitely deserves emphasizing that victory will be elusive. Players should focus on the enjoyment of deciding the best choice of action for any given turn, especially considering that the random event cards can quickly change the situation. One such card makes all of the enemy characters aggressive, meaning that they will automatically move towards the closest player characters that are on the same area or adjacent area. Players should keep in mind that their characters are expendable, and be willing to take risks accordingly.
As someone still new to board wargames, Unicornus Knights has been a good starting point. It’s less complicated than some of the other options out there while offering enough crunch to cut my teeth on. It might not be the best introductory board wargame in general (the rules are perhaps a little too vague sometimes), but it’s definitely fun and lends itself well to role-playing. One thing that might help when I introduce it to new players is a homebrew player’s aid that clearly lays out the steps to follow during each round.
I’m excited to share this game with friends who are interested in tabletop role-playing. It has also left me eager to continue exploring this sphere of gaming that tabletop role-playing can trace its roots to.
Notes
- For more detailed history about the development of the role-playing hobby, see Jon Peterson’s blog. I’ve yet to find and read a copy of his book Playing at the World (2012), but I’ve heard good things.
- I borrow this mantra from the computer game Dwarf Fortress (2006).
- Stacking is a mechanic common to board wargames in which soldier tokens can be stacked on top of each other; in other words, more than one token can occupy a single space. It can be tough to manage when games feature hundreds of tokens. In Unicornus Knights, most stacks don’t get higher than eight soldiers (which translates into four physical tokens).
Bibliography
Kanai, Seiji and Yasushi Kuroda. Unicornus Knights. Translated by Ziemon and Akira John Sugimoto. San Clemente: Alderac Entertainment Group, 2017.