Description

(from the designer:)

Triumph of Fascism: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 is a two-player a Card Driven Wargame: a board game integrating the political and military spheres of a historical conflict, with cards driving the action. Players assume the side of RED (Republican forces – the elected government) and BLUE (anti-Republican forces/ ”Nationalists”/ Fascists / Francoists – those seeking to overthrow the elected government) in the Spanish Civil War (SCW). This epic conflict involved the toppling of a democratically elected government, its replacement by a totalitarian regime, significant foreign intervention, a major component in the march towards WWII and a struggle for control of Spain.

Each side begins enlisting its political “camps” (BLUE: Nationalist Army, Carlist, Falange and Army of Africa, RED: PCE, Republican Army, UGT, Anarchist, POUM, Cataluonia and the Northern Autonomous Governments ) to build their national armies and by gaining support from foreign powers (BLUE: Germany, Italy and Portugal, RED: Britain, France and Russia) to improve their resources to wage the conflict. Players will also decide their resource investment in force preparation: there is an “untried columns” mechanic very similar to one first utilized by Panzergruppe Guderian.

There are three phases to a game turn: Strategic, Action, and Logistics.

The Strategic Phase requires players to “spend” their Action Cards (think of ACs as currency) planning their turn, influencing political dynamics (enlisting support of “camps” and “foreign powers”), impacting the battle for hearts & minds, pursuing alternative historical foreign policy paths and shaping the air and naval war. Additionally, players construct a Hearts & Minds (H&M) pool. The H&M pool is supplemented during the turn by wide variety of actions and events (reflecting the vagaries of support for both sides); the more friendly H&M blocks placed into the pool, the greater the chance of gaining dominant control of Spanish provinces.

During the Action Phase, players utilize their respective decks of Action Cards (ACs) to activate units for movement and combat, implement events (receive reinforcements, etc.), conduct a range of political operations, generate replacements or strategically redeploy units. And, in a twist from other games in the Paths of Glory genre, players must plan out their play of ACs in advance: players secretly specify the order of play of their ACs ("the AC stack") and allocate one AC to "the AC reserve". Limited air operations occur during the Action Phase.

During the Logistics Phase, players addresses attrition, rebuilding units, determining province control and other odds and ends. Province control is a function of controlling Provincial Presence Locations and the Provincial Capital and making a successful Province Allegiance Attempt (H&M blocks have an important effect). One key H&M dynamic is a random draw from the H&M pool, placing those H&M blocks on provinces and a variable ending to the phase; players are not quite sure “when the music will end”.

The campaign game is playable in about six to eight hours, while a shorter introductory scenario takes between two and four hours. The game is won by controlling key geographical locations (ex: dominant control of provinces and control of urban areas), which generates victory points.

Triumph of Fascism is somewhat of a sequel to Triumph of Chaos (ToC). Changes versus ToC include inclusion of:
• A less-abstracted air and naval components
• A significant hearts & minds mechanic
• More of an emphasis on the buildup to the conflict
• A foreign policy track; allowing for a wider range of outcomes the conflict could take

Both games utilize the Paths of Glory game engine, supplemented by a significant political “game” component, which has its roots in Days of Decision and Persian Gulf: Battle for the Middle East.

Originally planned release date was Spring 2015.