Strategic Choices in 300: Earth & Water

 “If you men think that I rely on numbers, then all Greece is not sufficient...but if on men’s valor, then this number will do.”

— Leonidas

I dabble in ancient history both in my non-fiction reading and my gaming...so I’m always on the lookout for something new and interesting. The epoch often engages me with notable military leaders, wars on land and sea, culturally distinct architecture, and the panoply of pantheons. I’d recently read some positive buzz about 300: Earth & Water from designer Yasushi Nakaguro and released by Nuts! Publishing. So I ordered a copy, read the rules, and played a few games with my son, who very quickly identified the nuances of strategy as we alternated playing the Greeks and Persians. 300: Earth & Water is a wonderfully concise game: relatively easy rules to learn (and reference in game); short play time (30-45 minutes); yet containing a satisfying number of strategic choices for players to consider every turn.

Players command either the Greeks or Persians during the Greco-Persian wars. This is less a traditional hex-and-counter wargame than an abstracted board game about a broad historical conflict...yet it proves challenging and entertaining in its streamlined elegance. Players leverage resources and military forces with historical elements affecting gameplay. Each seeks to gain enough victory points through controlling territory using armies, fleets, and the advantages (or disadvantages) of geography.

300: Earth & Water makes a good impression right out of the box. It’s a rather small box as both wargames and board games go, but, like most of the game, it’s just the right size. The board won’t dominate the game table (it’s A3 paper size, a hare larger than 11x16 inches), but is ideal for sitting between the two players. The design aesthetic remain clear and attractive, with portraits of three major leaders in the corner for each player (which serve the game function of noting when certain events occur). A small deck of 16 cards serves as the core action mechanism; each one contains one Greek and one Persian event. The other components might seem no-frills — an assortment of red and blue cubes and discs, and six dice, three red and three blue — but work clearly during play to identify armies, fleets, and combat results...and give it a deceptively basic feel.

Players have five “campaigns” to affect the course of the war, though events can cut short a campaign should either of the two principle Persian kings die (determined by card draw). Each campaign consists of several phases: one for preparation, operations, supply, and scoring. Player choices figure heavily in the first two phases. In preparation, each side, starting with the Persians, uses a set number of talents (the currency) to purchase cards, armies, and fleets, in that order; the Persians may also pay to build the pontoon bridge across the Bosporus to move armies along roads rather than on fleets. The Greek player may also purchase cards, armies, and fleets, though they have half the number of talents to spend, and a limited number of reserves to draw upon.

Most action occurs in the operations phase. Starting with the Persians, players may either play a card for its event effects or play it to move (and possibly attack) with armies or fleets...or pass. Two consecutive passes ends the phase; sometimes players choose this to see what the opponent does, but sometimes they must pass when they run out of cards. Battles occur when opposing forces meet on the map, the outcomes determined by six-sided die rolls, the more units, the more dice (up to three), highest single roll wins and eliminates one enemy unit...except the Persians fight at a disadvantage, with fives and sixes counting as fours (with some exceptions, like fighting on their own territory).

At the end of the campaign, players determine if their armies are in communication (they can trace a clear route back to the home cities) and have enough territory to support armies...often with overextended Persian armies losing units.

The game does a good job exploring the strategies of long-distance offense and local defense. The asymmetrical conflict emerges through the rules in numerous ways. At first glance it seems the Persians have the overwhelming advantage: they start with double the resources as the Greeks and have a seemingly limitless reserve. But the Persians need to maintain a long-distance campaign against an enemy with solid pathways between cities. The higher success chances in most battles helps the Greeks immensely, frequently allowing a few units to withstand the onslaught of a pile of Persian armies.

Card events give some historically inspired advantages to both sides, though the Greeks have far more “interrupt” cards than the Persians; and if the Persian player draws the dreaded “Sudden Death of the Great King” card during the supply phase, the campaign ends and the game runs one turn shorter.

The game offers a lot I admire beyond the concise core rules and asymmetrical elements:

Limited Resources: Each player struggles with decisions about how to spend their precious few talents on resources. Despite starting each campaign with 12 talents, the Persian player always seems to fall short. Everyone weighs the benefit of drawing more cards to allow for more actions in each turn...or buying more armies and ships to pursue their strategies.

Card Choice: Players must constantly evaluate whether to play a card for its event or discard it for a movement action. This becomes more complicated when you consider many events hinge on particular circumstances (including “interrupts”). The Persian player lives in fear of drawing “Sudden Death of the Great King” and losing a turn, since time is on the side of the defending Greeks. Since cards show an event for both Greeks and Persians, players also have the option of holding onto a card to deny their opponent from using it in the future.

Card Order: Historical events that occurred in a documented linear order...but that come up randomly throughout the game. So while players might have a great deal of familiarity with the history, or even of the cards and their effects in the game, the random occurrence of 16 cards provides a huge degree of uncertainty, especially when many remain effective only under certain conditions.

Supply & Command: At the end of each campaign players must make sure armies have enough resources to stay on the board; this is where the Persians become stretched to the limit, especially if they field huge armies in Greece to buck the poorer combat odds. Those armies that can’t trace a line back to home cities — or have ships to help them do that — fall out of command and are also removed from the board. In one game I had fleets in both Persian home cities, which cut two overseas armies off from supply and command, eliminating them.

Historical Context: The game relies on a small deck of 16 cards, for a total of 32 events (half Greek, half Persian). While the cards display a historical title and relevant game effects, the rulebook offers brief notes for each event putting them in historical context. To dabblers in ancient history like myself, these notes offer some insight into the game events and help me consider how the designer interpreted the actual history into game effects.

My son and I played about eight games, with the Greeks winning every game except one. My sole long-shot Persian win came when, on a lark, I sent a fleet and army directly to Sparta, which had one fleet and no armies; I lucked out, with the Greeks rolling poorly and the Persians rolling high. I might still have won otherwise; but we noticed the Persians often led early on, but stretched themselves too far and took a beating from the Greeks on the final turns. Overall the game offered some good swings of fate, with event cards waylaying a campaign’s strategy and the Greek strength in battle slowing any Persian advance.

Games for Learning

The short play time, accessible rules, and historical core make 300: Earth & Water ideal as a game for learning. Once participants have grasped the rules they can set up and play a game in 30 minutes, leaving plenty of time for discussion afterward. Reading the historical context notes aloud when playing event cards can help everyone gain a better grasp on the history. While the game provides some historical fodder for reflecting on the Greco-Persian wars, it also demonstrates for any era the principles of interior defense and an invader’s stretched supply lines.

My son and I frequently talked about certain elements after each game: the relative ease moving Greek armies around their home territory; the risk of leaving home cities undefended or without a fleet to at least put of some semblance of a fight; the Persian tactic of dumping armies in on location to try overwhelming Greek cities to even the odds against disadvantages in combat; overextended Persian armies suffering from communication and supply issues; the wide swing of fate, sometimes from the dice, other times from card plays.

Two-player games offer a challenge adapting them for use in a larger group setting (beyond providing multiple copies for pairs of players). Yet the strategic depth and “decision space” seem well-suited to what I’d call “committee play,” where two teams of multiple players run the Greeks and Persians. Each strategy choice can fuel a debate: what overall strategy to pursue in a campaign; how to allocate talents to purchase resources; how to adapt to changing conditions as each side’s strategy plays out; how to take advantage of fortuitous events...or use those cards to implement moves and battles. Team play can promote discussion as each group estimates the strategic situation, musters and deploys resources, and pivots as implemented plans go sideways.

The game might also spur interest in different subjects from this period, from specific battles, fighting styles, period literature, historical accounts of the wars, political issues, and the ebb and flow of city-states and empires.

“Of all men’s miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.”

― Herodotus