Black Orchestra

We had a bit of a departure last night at the Wollongong Wargamers, in that three of us actually played a boardgame. Peter McC was keen to give 'Black Orchestra' a go, and Geoff and I obliged by joining in. It's a co-operative game for one to six players in which each player takes the role of one of the conspirators in the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler and, as a team, set out to do just that.

Each conspirator has a unique especial ability, which, to be honest I don't think any of us used at any point. I took Dietrich Bonhoeffer ...

... Geoff took Admiral Canaris and ...

... Peter took General Beck.

The map is an abstract representation of Berlin, Germany and areas east and south as far as parts of Russia. Scattered across it are hidden items, which can be revealed and collected. They represent the various elements you need to improve success for particular plots. Hitler and his key deputies are represented by a set of markers and are best described as Wandering Monsters; they can move randomly around the map, popping up or congregating in particular areas. A conspirator who starts their turn in the same space as any of the Monsters gets certain penalties applied to them, so they are best avoided. Aside from Hitler, obviously, where you need to move into his space in order to bring any plots against him to fruition.

In each turn a conspirator gets three actions. These can be used for a variety of things; collecting cards with useful bonuses and the all important plots, increasing the motivation of your own or other conspirators (you need to be motivated to use special abilities or actually attempt an assassination), move around the map, collect items, deliver them to other players and various other things. As with any good game there are plenty of things you need to be doing and not enough actions to achieve everything you want. At the end of their turn a conspirator draws an event card. These are held in seven sequential decks, each representing a period leading up to, and in, the war. I think the first deck covers 1935-38, the second 1939 and so forth. Some of the cards cover key historical events, so the war slowly unfolds in a rough historical sequence as the game progresses. Certain areas of the map are off-limits until particular years and towards the end some areas become unavailable as the Allies advance on Berlin.

To actually assassinate Hitler someone has to have one of the many possible plot cards, enough motivation to use it and preferably as many of the listed items for that plot as well. You also generally need to be in the same space as Hitler. You assemble a pool of dice (the game has special dice with symbols on); the more dice the better. You then roll to see what happens with the plot. The more military support Hitler has, the more 'successes' you need to score. Conversely the dice also have eagle symbols, and a certain number of these will cause the plot to not only fail, but be discovered. The number of eagles needed is influenced by how much suspicion the conspirator is under; the more suspicion that hangs around them, the fewer the eagles required.

So a plot that score enough eagles to trigger discovery fails disastrously; the main conspirator is arrested and bad things happen to everyone else. If the eagle threshold isn't achieved but the target threshold is also not reached, then the plot simply fails, but is not discovered. However if you simply score all required targets, then Hitler is assassinated, and everyone wins. 

And that's what happened in our game. Admiral Canaris managed to draw a number of plots, and between us we worked to try and assemble the various elements required for them. In early 1939 we had an opportunity tp plant a bomb on Hitler's plane as he flew from Berlin to Munich, but we really didn't have enough resources in play to make it viable, so we opted to not make the attempt at that time. But towards the end of the year, not long after the invasion of Poland, Hitler attended a rally in Nuremberg and was vulnerable. Canaris was, by now, highly motivated to kill the Nazi leader and, assisted by Boenhoffer, collected the various elements required to try an assassination by sniper whilst having little suspicion attached to him (unlike Peter's General Beck who was actually in prison by this point, having fallen foul of the Gestapo).

Anyway, Canaris travelled to Nuremberg where the vulnerable Hitler was dispatched by a sniper on a grassy knoll (some great die-rolling here, it had to be said) giving us a win.

There's even a card so the successful assassin can show their achievement to the world.

To be fair we were playing on the easiest mode, where Hitler's defence can be set quite low, but given that we spent a few turns unclear of exactly what we were supposed to be doing, it was nice to see everything suddenly come together so quickly.

It's a very enjoyable game (given it's dark subject matter) with enough random frustration to keep it interesting and plenty of opportunities to plot, plan and co-ordinate efforts. I think we're keen to give it another go at some stage.

(Actually I was keen enough to want to buy a copy, but it seems to be out of print and sold out, so that won't be happening any time soon, sadly)

Anyway, it was a welcome change of pace for a Thursday evening, and inspired us to possibly consider some other boardgames further down the line.