Deck Building. It's not just for Euros anymore.

A Few Acres of Snow.  Image courtesy of Newcastle Gamers.

A mechanic borrowed from Dominion, Ascension, Nightfall and other games, deck building can be added to existing wargame mechanics to produce new levels of decision making and trade-offs that parallel military challenges in the real - err historical - world.

In a basic sense, deck building works like this: players use starting cards to acquire new cards and to take actions.  Players keep their discards and use them to draw their next hand, thus increasing resources throughout the game.  As a player, your strategy directs your choices and actions so that you can shape your deck to achieve your goal.

The most talked-about wargame with deck building is A Few Acres of Snow by Martin Wallace. Some would argue that this isn't a wargame at all, but a number of wargamers feel that it is. It certainly *looks* like a wargame, including a map game pieces, and cards - lots of cards.  110 of them.

In A Few Acres, deck building is used to provide the player with a means of settling the new land, but also for raiding, ambushing, laying siege, and other martial actions that deny your opponent from claiming or keeping territory.  The player needs to establish a goal and put a strategy in place to achieve it... one card at a time.

There are a number of strategies that can be used to win the A Few Acres of Snow, but after an intense month or two of play there is talk that the game is broken because it can be won by the British with a particular strategy that apparently has no French counter. Still, the game is well-themed and provides the period flavor that many wargamers crave. I would imagine user-made variants or revised rules from Martin Wallace will eventually address the balance issue.

Sample Cards from Rune Age.  Image courtesy of Fantasy Flight Games. 

Another new deck-building wargame, one where the deck is more or less the game than it is just a mechanic, is Rune Age by Fantasy Flight Games.  It's fantasy themed and set in the same Terrinoth universe as RuneBound and Descent.  There's no game board or unit counters, but it is 100% wargame as each player competes against the others to win military glory.

Players chose one of four races and build an army to face the threats, achieving points for destroying monsters and saving their lands (or even taking lands from other races).  Critical decisions revolve around what kind of forces to choose and when to go on the offensive.

The game ships with a set number of scenarios for one to four players and so far the vibe about Rune Age is mixed.  It was a welcomed addition to the deck building universe, but some have criticized the game for lacking real depth and many can't help but wonder if the game has been kept deliberately spartan to provide a ready market for the FFG expansion machine.

Nevertheless, the game breaks new ground allowing players to build a deck and score points, all while experiencing the difficulty in keeping an army in the field, as the friction of war whittles away at the ranks.

What is next for deck building wargames?  I don't see a lot on the horizon, but I anticipate - or at least I certainly hope - that deck building will mature as a wargame mechanic.  From an operational perspective, deck building can provide the tension that parallels military decision making in some unique ways.  Further, deck building could layer in nuances that seem to escape wargaming today - things like ulterior motives, rivalries, and more. It opens the door for creative game designs.

I hope we see more of this mechanic, and soon.