Jagged Alliance: The Board Game Review

 Today, PC and console games sometimes delight us with turn-based tactical strategies, X-COM 2 and Phantom Doctrine were worthy projects, although they received their share of criticism from old-school gamers, the same was the case with X-COM Enemy Unknown (Within) and Wasteland 2. However, all the listed games, in addition to critics, have gained popularity among their audience of fans. But not all remakes of classic games were successful. Unfortunately, the Jagged Alliance game series is a prime example of this, after the release of the legendary second part back in 1999, with each new sequel, prequel or remake, JA hammers another nail in the cap of the game series. Therefore, fans of the original first two parts of the strategy can only turn to board games. To the great joy of fans and fans, the German company Underground Games with all rights from THQ Nordic released Jagged Alliance: The Board Game in June 2019. In this regard, I want to share my small review of this board game.

 Jagged Alliance: The Board Game is a cooperative board game (1-4 people) of the American genre with wargame elements in a Modern War setting. Before us is a turn-based strategy in which players act as mercenaries from the AIM organization who overthrow dictators in fictional countries of the third world. Everything is like in a classic dungeon crawler: choose a campaign, scenario or skirmish, collect a game modular map, lay out cards, choose heroes, arrange miniatures, and go, De Oppresso Liber, free the oppressed.

 Briefly about the gameplay. Players choose characters from 13 mercenaries, equip them with available equipment and begin the task. During his turn, the player performs an action with his mercenary (changing items in the inventory, exchanging items, retreating, moving, team actions or attacking) and ends his turn. Next comes the opponent's turn, which attacks the mercenary who has finished the turn according to his scheme (protocol), during the opponent's turn, the player can only defend himself. Then the next player is activated, accordingly, the opponent then plays his turn. When all players have made one turn, the dictator and his lieutenant enter their phase, who can counterattack, complicate the game additionally with their special abilities, missions and events.

 Each mercenary has stamina, a special ability, and team skills that you can use during combat as well as when completing missions. For example, mercenary Kyle "Shadow" Simmons is a master of camouflage in the jungle, which gives him a huge advantage in locations dominated by forest terrain, and ancient Leon Anderson, due to his age, has the weakest stamina of the mercenaries, but he makes up for it with his leadership, veteran qualities and additional cells for partners.

 All scenarios have certain tasks. Despite the fact that mostly the main tasks are the capture of the territory, there are also tasks with the search for liaison officers, pilots, convoys, escorts of civilians, etc. Naturally, all this is accompanied by various conditions. Somewhere you will have limited time and the task must be completed by night, somewhere the enemy will be helped by a dictator's officer, somewhere your mercenaries will be vulnerable due to the landscape of the scenario. The story will develop in Arulka's campaign as in the original JA2. If at some point the game seems easy to you, there are enough mechanics in it that you can use in the main gameplay, making it more difficult, more interesting... or you can introduce additional rules yourself.

 Now a few words about playing time. Each scenario or skirmish battle lasts 30-120 minutes, but it all depends on the players. For example, you can put all 17 modular cards on a table with experienced opponents, and such a skirmish can take 4 hours, or even more.

 The game currently has one campaign book - "The Arulco Campaign" - consisting of 12 scenarios. During the campaign, capturing civilian or military objects, players will receive additional bonuses by displaying special AIM cards on the global map of Arulco Island. Thus, a scenario won in the city of Omerta will give players an additional bonus in the form of supporting the rebels in subsequent scenarios, while the city of Drassen will provide income from silver mines. It is worth noting that the second book of campaigns should be released in the near future. "Campaign Metavir" will be free to download from the official website, a small bonus from the publisher.

Now about the complete set of the game Jagged Alliance: The Game Board:

• Rulebook (40 pages).
• 1 script book (16 pages).
• 17 bilateral sectors.
• 13 AIM mercenary tablets
• 2 dictator tablets (1 single-sided, 1 double-sided).
• 1 Arulko card (double-sided).
• 1 game save envelope.
• 13 colored cubes.
• 70 wooden cubes.
• 22 miniatures: 6 redshirts, 3 snipers, 3 shieldmen, 3 blood cats, 1 tank, 6 AIM mercenaries
• 21 large maps: 5 enemy maps (4 double-sided), 16 mission maps.
• 255 small cards (44x67): 89 AIM cards, 104 item cards (3 decks), 18 event cards (3 decks), 8 Larry Roachburn behavior cards, 29 enemy appearance cards (4 decks), 7 lieutenant cards.
• 120 Cardboard Tokens: 20 Encounter Tokens, 16 State Tokens, 2 Mission Access Tokens, 2 Day/Night Tokens, 12 Object Tokens, 24 Resource Tokens, 2 Next Tokens, 16 Sniper & Tank Tokens, 8 Minis, 2 Tokens- counters, 4 threat tokens, 4 counter attack tokens.

 The quality of the components is generally good, the mercenary tablets are made of thick cardboard, just like the Arulco modular maps. The miniatures are higher than average, they are recognizable, they have good detail, they are not made in the style of heroic scale, so they can be painted qualitatively by very "even" hands. The cards (I remind you, there are almost 300 of them) are standard, not quite thin, but not dense either, it is advisable to purchase card protectors.

 Jagged Alliance: The Board Game - a game, as it seemed to me, with a low entry threshold, despite 40 pages of rules, the mechanics are still similar to similar games. But beginners will have to spend several hours studying the rules and delving into some subtleties of the game.

 In conclusion, I will say that fans of the Jagged Alliance series will get a unique board game of its kind, with nostalgia, a lot of game components, nice art and favorite characters. Of course, the game is primarily for fans of the JA series, and secondly for those who are tired of elves, dwarves, comic paratroopers, etc. fictional

USEFUL LINKS

Jagged Alliance: The Board Game on BGG

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/231553/jagged-alliance-board-game

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