INTRODUCTION

When I was in the ninth grade, our class went on a field trip to Germany. Among the many excursions on the curriculum was a visit to the Mauer Museum, an exhibition dedicated to showcasing the (in)famous Berlin Wall which divided the German population both physically and ideologically between the years 1961 to 1989. The Mauer Museum is one of a kind, depicting the daring attempts to cross the border and how the barrier became a symbol of the Cold War. That museum visit would prove to have a profound impact on me, illustrating the true force of the human spirit.

Based on these recollections combined with a keen interest in history, ever since it was first announced by publisher Mighty Boards I have been interested in taking a closer look at Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest, the sequel to Days of Ire: Budapest 1956. Designed by Brian Train and Dávid Turczi, the game depicts the Hungarian revolution and the events that transpired between November 4th and 7th when rebel insurgents battled the invading Soviet forces on the streets of Budapest.

Full disclosure: a review copy of Nights of Fire - Battle for Budapest was kindly provided by publisher Mighty Boards.

COMPONENTS

Allow me to begin this review by going on record with the following statement: the cover art that famed illustrator Kwanchai Moriya created for Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest is hands down one of the most striking ones I have ever seen. For me, it manages to evoke a sensation of dread and trepidation whilst painting a picture of the events that transpired on the streets of the Hungarian capital. The stark contrast between the vivid red and cold, muted colour palette of grey and blue is carried over into the actual components as well, creating a sense of imminent danger as the blood red tokens of the Soviet forces are pushing into the streets hellbent on retribution. The rebel insurgents are represented by thick wooden blocks, which create a lovely tactile sensation for the player controlling the revolution fighters. Also, any board game that includes glass beads as markers/tokens gets a gold star in my book.

Seeing how the game contains two separate game modes, each with its own set of regulations and corner cases, the rulebook does a commendable job providing the reader with the essentials whilst simultaneously avoiding the pitfall of becoming too specific. This is achieved through clever use of colour coding the parts of the text that strictly applies to one of the two game modes rather than general rules. It is as simple as it is effective. I also really appreciate the level of detail publisher Mighty Boards have applied to the source material. There are footnotes sprinkled throughout the rulebook, displaying historical recollections from survivors of the armed conflict and rare photographs taken during the Soviet invasion. In addition to designer’s notes from Brian Train, the rulebook also includes an historical essay written by Zsombor Zeöld (MA in International Relations) who served as historical consultant to the project. I applaud Mighty Boards and all that was involved for the level of commitment and respect shown towards the events that transpired on those fateful days in early November of 1956 and their representation in Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest.

THE SOLO MODE

“This is a hopeless war of survival, plain and simple.”

Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest takes place mere days after the events that transpired in Days of Ire: Budapest 1956. Having successfully driven the armed forces of the Soviet Union out of the capital, the freedom fighters of the Hungarian revolution find themselves in a city that has suffered catastrophic damages as a result of the conflict. With reinforcements from the 8th Army and under new command by Marshal I.S. Konev, the Red Army returns to the Hungarian capital with a single purpose: retribution. As the Revolutionaries, you must hold the line long enough to allow the civilian population to flee the war-torn city before the full force of the Red Army is unleashed upon them. When I sit down to review a board game, usually I will start off by describing the overall structure and core game mechanisms before diving into the actual solo mode. However, in the case of Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest I have decided to merge the two categories into one coherent fragment. The reason for this is that the game features not one but two different modes of play, each one containing a unique ruleset: the Conflict version, where one player takes on the role of Commander of the invading Soviet forces while the remaining player(s) control the Revolutionary insurgents, or the Konev counterpart which is a pure solo/cooperative experience and the version this review will focus on. When playing the game in solitaire the human player takes on the role of the Revolutionaries fighting the Red Army, controlled by the artificial opponent Konev aptly named after the marshal appointed to command the Soviet armed forces. As the resistance, a military victory against the invading forces is an impossible task. Rather, you will have to deploy guerrilla tactics in an attempt to slow down the Red Army long enough for them to lose Prestige i.e. honour. This is achieved primarily through disabling Soviet units and aiding the civilian population in fleeing the war-torn streets of Budapest. Similarly, the focus of Konev is to apply enough pressure to reduce the morale of the insurgency to the breaking point and crush the uprising once and for all.

Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest is played over a maximum of 10 rounds, each simulating eight hours of activities that occurred during the Soviet invasion of the capital. At the start of each round, depending on your current morale level you will draw a certain number of Revolutionary cards. These cards are the heart and soul of the game, allowing you to move your units, stage daring ambush attacks, build barricades or assist in the evacuation of the civilian population to name but a few of the available actions you can perform on any given turn. Each Revolutionary card will have one or two symbols and an additional numerical value ranging from one to three. The symbols correspond to the various Hungarian insurgents i.e. your units that are available on the main board. Certain Revolutionaries can construct barricades; others are more adapt in the art of guerrilla tactics and can perform ambush attacks on the Soviet forces and some have decided to apply a non-violent course of action in the role of peaceful protesters. For the majority of the available actions one can perform in Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest, the Revolutionary player needs to play cards which symbol(s) correspond to a specific category of units located throughout the various city districts. The numerical value printed on the cards indicate the amount of Operation Points (Ops) that you can allocate to any one specific action. Some, like for example Attack or Ambush, has a static cost of three Ops while others such as Help Civilians Flee can cost as much as six Ops (depending on certain in-game specific criteria).

When solo playing Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest, as the Revolutionaries you will always take the first turn which is followed by an action performed by the artificial opponent Konev. On your turn you must play between one and three Revolutionary cards or decide to pass and forfeit the remainder of the current round. This is where the intricacies of the variable Ops costs come into play. Let us return to the example of the Help Civilians Flee, one of the main ways for the Soviet forces to lose prestige and a key strategy for the Revolutionary player. If there are no insurgent units sharing the same space as a civilian token, the amount of effort and coordination for evacuating these non-combatants is represented by a staggering cost of six Ops points. Suppose each Revolutionary card in your hand has a value of 2. You could play all three cards for a total of six points, allowing the civilians in the current part of the map to flee towards the Austrian border. But by doing so, you have spent a fourth of your total amount of cards available to you for the current round thus ending your turn. As a result, it is time for marshal Konev to make his countermove…

As the leader of the Red Army, marshal Konev is tasked with the mission to crush the rebellion and gain control of the capital by any means necessary. The goal of your artificial antagonist is to dampen the fighting spirit of the insurgents and to cause their morale to reach the breaking point, where they either surrender or are utterly annihilated. The automated opponent performs its actions based on a deck of 12 cards. Throughout the course of the game, at the start of any given round Konev will have five cards to choose from. Each card is assigned a target value token, corresponding to the numerical values of a six-sided die. When it is Konev’s turn to perform an action, you will roll the die and based on the outcome select the card which target token matches the result of the die roll. The chosen card will have a headline and a list of commands that you will resolve, once all the text has been implemented the card is added to Konev’s discard pile and the target token(s) are re-assigned to the remaining cards in the tableau, replicating the exhaustion of your hand of cards over the course of the current round.

What makes the automated opponent in Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest so interesting, is the way it manages to mimic the unpredictable nature of armed combat in terms of planning and intelligence gathering. This feeling of uncertainty caused by the “fog of war” is achieved by having two of the five Konev cards remain unrevealed at the start of the round. On paper, this small adjustment to your adversary’s tableau may seem insignificant, in practice though this game mechanism creates a solitaire experience that for me can best be described as combining the best of two worlds. By examining the three face-up cards in Konev’s tableau, you will know for certain that at some point during the current round events X, Y and Z will occur. But in which order the marshal decides to perform his available actions is left in the hands of Lady Luck to decide, and as we all know she is indeed a fickle mistress. Further adding to this tension are the two face-down cards, representing hidden information about Konev’s plans you currently do not have access to which can drastically alter and hinder your strategy.

Despite these elements of pure randomness such as the act of rolling a die to determine the course of action for your automated opponent, the game never comes off as being unfair toward the solo player. The reason for this is twofold. First, because most of the cards in Konev’s tableau are revealed, you have the necessary information needed to formulate a strategy without your opponent displaying a completely arbitrary behaviour. Second, and perhaps even more important, is the way Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest recreates the actual events that transpired during the second week of the Hungarian revolution in 1956. It is even stated in the very beginning of the first page of the rulebook: “This is a hopeless war of survival, plain and simple”.

To put this statement into context, having played the solo mode six times I have yet to make it past the seventh round. By the end of the first day i.e. third round you will undoubtedly feel the tension rising, as more and more Soviet garrisons are being deployed throughout the city. Once placed on the board, a token representing a unit from the Red Army can never be removed, it can only be temporarily disabled. What may initially seem as a manageable situation quickly evolves into something resembling a gruesome game of whack-a-mole, as you desperately try to cover one flank of the battlefield only to find that you are hopelessly outnumbered, outgunned and out of time. Playing against an automated opponent that manages to feel both predictable to a certain extent whilst simultaneously being able to surprise you creates a very dynamic feel to the game, on more than one occasion while playing Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest I found myself so absorbed I actually had to remind myself that Konev is just a deck of cards.

There is however a price to be paid for this level of complexity in terms of how sophisticated an artificial opponent can act. Much like Scythe from publisher Stonemaier Games, it has been my experience that one of the more difficult areas of solo board game design is mimicking player movement and specifically area control. Not that this game mechanism is impossible to replicate, however it does lend itself to situations of uncertainty as to how the human player is supposed to execute the command properly. To a large extent, the game that is Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest boils down to area control and troop movement and as a result the main “issues” I have with the Konev deck of cards is interpreting certain action commands that call for deciding which part of the map the artificial opponent will target. To its credit, the ruleset for the Konev mode does an admirable job at guiding the human player in the process of ranking several potential target areas based on criteria like number of available insurgents, active Soviet regiments et cetera. But after several plays I still found myself on occasion doubting my interpretation of certain Konev cards and that is a feeling I really dislike when playing a board game in solitaire, the last thing I want to do is “cheat” even though it is unintended act on my part. The silver lining though is the fact that repeated plays will make you more comfortable in regard to the process of executing the commands listed on the Konev cards, such is the nature of the beast; a more sophisticated solo design is prone for corner cases to arise.   

FINAL THOUGHTS

It is my firm belief that board games have the inherent ability to recreate narratives that extend beyond feelings of enjoyment. A brilliant example of this idea of being emotionally invested in the story and experience is Black Orchestra, the board game design by Philip duBarry that deals with the story of the group of conspirators who planned to overthrow Hitler, and who Gestapo referred to as “Die Schwarze Kapelle”. Whenever I sit down to play that game (which reminds me that I really ought to do a proper review) I feel a sense of urgency and dread few other board games in my collection can recreate. Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest is most definitely one of those rare games that transcends from the act of shuffling cards and rolling dice into a much more profound experience. Taking on the role of the Hungarian insurgents, a real sense of fear creeps down my spine as more and more Soviet forces pour into the streets of the capital. As an automated opponent Konev is as ruthless as it is relentless, sooner or later it will break you. The question is, how long can you hold the line?

Is Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest the sort of board game I want to play every other week? No, mainly because I find the experience somewhat emotionally taxing due to the historical backdrop. But when I do find myself in the mood for something more profound than “trading in the Mediterranean, draped in fifty shades of brown” then this design from Brian Train and Dávid Turczi will have a permanent place in my collection for years to come.