Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis Reviews

Another step by Playdek toward bringing all of GMT's games to electronic playability or words to that effect! (Disclaimer: I don't recall if this game is published by GMT, but it was designed by Mark Hermon so at least it counts as practice.) This is a nice little area-control card game, where (two) players play cards to put influence into areas, generating various effects including scoring points. In that regard it's a little like Twilight Struggle, but mechanically it's mostly different -- and of course the flavor is pre-ACW politics. Great flavor, rarely attempted in games (ACW yes, leadup not often, aside from larger scale games like Paradox's Victoria 2). Voice acting in English is tolerable to good (for historical quotes about the debates leading up to the ACW). Patching has started immediately, so at least support isn't dead on arrival? Far more focused than Playdek's other entries, this game can be played much more quickly than (for example) Twilight Struggle (their first GMT adaptation), Lords of Waterdeep, or the mobile versions of Agricola and Le Havre (the full games, not the 2-player versions which are crossplatform and naturally play a lot faster). Multiplayer is a main focus of the design, but solo play is available. I don't have much experience trying out the AI yet. User interface is good to great, helping you keep track of what you can do, and your game state, at any time. Well worth full price (US$10) -- _if_ you like this type of game and/or the topical flavor. Good job Playdek! ONWARD TO MORE ADAPTATIONS! (PS please don't abandon this game with any bugs left unresolved as per your TwiStrug DLC, kthxbi. :p )

Too many bugs! The underlying game system is good. But the implementation is bad as it currently stands. The reason is that one often chooses cards which the game does not properly execute. For example, the chosen card will say to put up to a given number of tokens in this or that region, but the game unnecessarily restricts you to placing a *different* number of tokens in the region. I know the rules are complex and various factors can affect what a card says, but that's not the issue -- the game has bugs. Hopefully these will be fixed soon, but until then I can't give a good review. I've had to stop playing out of frustration because I can't trust that the information on the cards will be reflected in the gameplay.

Game detail advised single-player is possible, but there is no AI to play against.

I just really don't recommend this at all, not so much as a video game implementation because that is fine, but as a board game. It might be ok as an transitional game to get someone into more kind of core type games, and there are definitely a lack of territorial control games that have been ported to PC, but I just don't think this game has a terrible lot going for it compared to its cousin Twilight Struggle.

Video game implementation is good. I think that I am just not a fan of the boardgame, at its core. Doesnt have a lot of variation to hold my interest. Check some gameplay videos and be sure of your purpose. The setting of the game doesnt really have anything to do with the gameplay. Any setting could have accomplished the same result.

I've been on the road a ton in the past couple of weeks and played the hell out of this. In about 60 offline games and a half-dozen online games I haven't noted any gameplay bugs or rules/cards implementation problems as noted in another review. The recent AI bugfix improved the AI, and it's competent enough in a mechanistic sense, but it' still a bit weak against experienced players, especially as it relates to setting things up in terms of the long game and Final Crisis. To be fair, that's something the many human players don't grok until they've played a while (which I have as an owner of the board game). This is a really good game and at less than 10 bucks it's a huge value purchase.

Great game ! Wee need more digital editions like this of GMT games : Rules enforced Easy way to find people around the world to play with No tedious set up or tear down, just sit down and play Thanks playdek and please go further with other games!

This is a great quick play area control game that is a lot deeper than one would at first suspect. I understand the game, mechanically, thought the strategy part is still a challenge. Once I have a better grasp of this I plan on playing against human opponents. For a relatively abstract game it does have a reasonable amount of "historical flavor". For the price, if you like abstract, Civil War, Area Control or Mark Herman games this is a definite no brainer to pickup.

Summary: A polished implementation of the board game. Unfortunately, the game mechanics themselves provide limited replayability, and a lacklustre narrative. Pros: - A thorough and clear tutorial, which has you grasping the key game mechanics in one easy play-through. - Apparently sound and faithful implementation of the board game - decent graphics and some quality period sound work, although you'll want to turn the sound off after an hour of hearing the same few period piano pieces and re-enacted speeches. - Intuitive and clear UI. - Plausible AI opponent Cons: - This is a resource placement game. Put your abstract tokens down, and vie for domination of four separate domains over the course of a few game phases. The key thing about a resource placement game, though, is that the mechanics have to reinforce the narrative, which itself has to be coherent. Alas, that was missing for me. I just couldn't piece together what various things in the game were meant to represent in terms of the narrative leading up to the Civil War. For instance, I get dealt cards, which have a nice period flavor - but they are a mix of Union and Confederate cards. So playing as the Confederate player, I can get dealt "Frederick Douglass" and play that card, albeit not to its full effect. What am I to make of this? When I'm the CSA and I play "Frederick Douglass", what's the story that goes with that play? Does Fred not have quite the same influence he did irl? It feels weird. Similarly, what does it mean when the union stacks up a bunch of tokens on, say, "Deep South", in the succession realm? Has the union actually prevented succession of a Deep South state? I really struggled to piece together some kind of narrative that was different from the historical path, but it never got there for me. The deck of cards is the same the whole game, so it really just a disconnected stream of cards being played, that never seems to add up to story - certainly not in the way that, say, Terraforming Mars shows a strong and clear narrative from beginning to end, and it's different every game. Without that narrative, the game really just amounts to the mechanics with a bit of flavor, and the mechanics are not sufficiently complex or diverse to hold attention by themselves. There is no asymmetry in the play, nothing different about the four domains, just not much subtlely in the design. With the skeleton of the game mechanics so close to the surface, I doubt I will return to this after having beaten the AI in my first two games, one as each side.

Wonderful adaption of this great little gem from one of the best, and my personal favourite game designer, in any genre of boardgames. Mark Herman is the "Godfather" of Card Driven Games and all of his games hit the sweet spot for me. The UI is excellent in Fort Sumter and the quality of GMT's real world components that they are known for comes across beautifully in this digital recreation. The game play is fun as heck and the flow and feel of the game is just like it is with the boardgame. As has been mentioned, the depth and strategy to this game is a lot more then it might seem when you first look at the game and consider if it's worth you buying it. The tutorial is done extremely well and makes learning the game easy and displays the mechanics and different phases in very clear steps. The game is played in less then 30 minutes when you have played it a few times so that you can play it a number of times in each sitting as you'll always want to play "Just one more game!" Playdeck has shown once again that it is the best developer to port this kind of CDG for digital play. They have done right by GMT and Mark Herman and I hope that GMT will stick with them exclusively as the studio that creates the digital versions of their games. Fingers are crossed and I'm wishing up a storm that one day soon I hope, we will see a digital version of one of GMT's greatest and most popular games, Combat Commander by Chad Jensen! Oh, and much more Mark Herman games too, GMT, if you please!