Report from the Popular Front

Andrew and I managed to sit across a table from each other on Friday and play a game of Popular Front, my impulse buy from StabCom based somewhat erroneously on the lovely graphics. One good thing about Fascism, it does inspire the artist within.

Anyway having spent much of Friday bigging the game up to Joe - who was unconvinced - I was hoping it would live up to my optimistic billing. I took on the role of socialists and anarchists trying to unseat Andrew's Franco-supporting Carlists and company as we reenacted Spain's bloody civil war using little wooden discs and the aforementioned pretty cards.

The first part of the game is placement of military units across the cities of Spain, a canny affair as we tried to make sure none of our troops were isolated and we occupied some of the larger cities - one way to win being total occupation of the six largest cities, the other being a slow war of attrition and political manoevering. Then the fun really began - the fun in this case being a sequence of card-playing to strengthen your cities, attack your opponents', and play for political strength. Still new to the game, were only just coming to terms with how it all worked when the game ended, as I stormed Vitoria to free the Iberian peninsula from Andrew's heartless grip, gaining control of the six cities.

So a rather short version of the game and there's probably more to it. Upsides I think were the surprisingly tense army-placement section at the start, and quick game-play. Downsides were the feeling that the card-playing section - the main body of the game - might end up feeling repetitive in a longer game, and that military battles often seemed to end in a stalemate. We both felt there was enough evidence there for another crack, perhaps with four or six players (as two teams) as the game seemed designed with that in mind.

One final thing, would it be too much to design a board that lies flat instead of popping up all over the place like a restless concertina?