Valley Games Liberte

Excellent design by a master, fun to play and lets me sneak a history lesson in too.

Liberte is a classic game by legendary game designer Martin Wallace. Liberte is a clever, card-driven, area control game set during the French Revolution (1789-1799). This game was one of the first 'heavy' Euro-Games I ever played, and was one of the best 'area control' games of it's day (2009?).Liberte Is a card-driven action game where players will fight for control over revolutionary France! The basic game mechanics are simple. On your turn you will either play one or more cards or you will draw one or more cards...that's it. However, there are A LOT of small, fiddly rules in between those simple actions. France is divided by three major factions: The Radicals (Red), Moderates (Blue) and the Royalists (White)! Players represent the 'powers behind the scenes' manipulating the three factions! You don't play as any one faction! In fact, you can manipulate ALL THREE to advance your power (i.e. gain VPs) and win the game! To do that, players will use cards that can have multiple uses/actions to gain control of provinces, battle other players and gain influence.The main purpose of the card play is to win control of the most French counties during the election phases at the end of each turn. Each set of counties is divided into six colors that are matched by the player cards. There are wild grey cards as well. Furthermore, each card has between 1-3 faction block symbols on them. Some cards also come with special symbols on them that all for special actions. By playing a card a player can place 1-3 faction blocks in one ore more of the provinces that match the color of the cards. Players place their control marker on each stack they place. However, each player can only have ONE stack of a faction in any province, but each faction can have multiple stacks within the same province! This can be confusing at first, but makes for really cutthroat game play! Furthermore, there is a max limit of 3 tiles of one faction per player. This continues around the table as players place control cubes across France, or draw cards, until one faction's control blocks run out. Once that happens, the round ends immediately, and elections take place.The election phase is the key to the game. During the election phases players check each county in France (of which there are nearly 30!) to see which faction wins. The faction, and player, with the highest stack wins! The actual number of faction tiles in a county is irrelevant! Only the highest stack wins. For example, in Brittany player 1 has a 3-high stack of Red (radicals), and players 2 and 3 each have 2-tile high stacks of the Royalists (white). The Radicals win, even though there are 4 Royalist markers to 3 for the radicals. The Radicals have the highest stack. The winning player removes his winning stack and keeps one of the tiles and puts the rest in the general supply.This is repeated for all 30 provinces.There is a faction score board that has 16 spaces for each faction. Each time a faction wins an election, it will move up the faction score track. At the end of the election phase, the faction that wins the most provinces will control the government for the next turn. Then, the player who controls the most control markers of the faction the controls the government will core 5 VPs (a lot in this game!); second place scores 2! Interestingly, the player that controls the most markers for the faction that has the second most provinces will score 3 points! This mechanic will also lead to A LOT of ties (see below)! In fact causing ties is a huge part of the games strategy (again, see below!)!!There's also a battle phase (starting on the 2nd turn) where players can complete with each other to lead the rebel army and gain addition VPs by winning battles for the revolution! The player placing the most of his control markers (by playing a card with a cannon symbol on it) get to lead the armies of liberty to victory (and gain himself VPs)....if he has a general card!Sounds simple, right? It is....almost. See, the way Liberte is designed means there will be A LOT of ties when it comes to elections and just about any other way to score points in the game! That's by design. In fact, how and when you choose to break ties in the game is one of your key strategies. Once a card is played, you can choose to discard it (and loosen up your hand to draw better cards) or keep it in your personal tableau. You can have up to 4 cards, 5 with a special ability, in front of you. During any phase where there are one or more ties (battle phase, elections phase, faction control phase, etc) players (in player order) may play cards (in player order) from their tableau to try and break ties. The number of block symbols is counted on the card and added to whatever tie is being broken. Each player involved in the tie can do the same!But , remember, you only have 4-5 cards! You have to choose when and what ties to break! This is seriously neat and very tense! One lost or mistimed use of a tie breaker and win our lose you the game!To make thins even more interesting (or fiddly depending on your point of view!), two of the factions (Radicals and Royalists) have special win conditions that can end the game immediately! In which case, the player with the most control markers of the winning faction wins the game outright!! This means, of course, that you have to constantly be aware of the board state and make sure two of there three factions get powerful enough to get you some VPs, but not so powerful as to potentially hand victory to another player...unless of course that other player is you!!The reprint is beautiful, and in the art department, an improvement over the original. Most of the rules mistakes seem to have been fixed. However, Liberte does show it's age, and why it loses a star rating. If this was the early 2000's, this would be a FIVE-STAR game, hand down. But it is 2018. The game is 10 years old and, honestly, does feel that way when you play it. Liberte is excessively fiddly when compared to more modern games. The rules, despite being only about 6 pages are extremely dense.But, despite it's age, Liberte is a GREAT game! If you don't mind older, heavier games, then you won't mind the heavy rules set. If you're a history buff, you'll have a blast. The game drips with theme. The only thing missing is the soundtrack to "Les Miserable.'!