Stately Sessions: Liberty or Death, Turn 7

Tabletop •

We’re back with our parade through (alternate) history via GMT Games‘ brilliant COIN title, Liberty or Death. I’m getting the sense that you, the Stately Players [I’m really trying to get him to stop. This will be the last time, I swear -ed.], are losing interest in these turn-by-turn walkthroughs, so I’m going to really try and wrap the whole thing up before Thanksgiving so we can move on to a different game. When I started the affair, I had it in my head that I would spend 5-6 hours playing the game and then chop it into a week’s worth of material. When I saw how much information had to be relayed while writing up the first turn, I realized I may have bitten off more than I could chew and moved to the one-two turns per day format. That works well for me, but it needs to work well for you as well. I’m new at this, and still learning. Stick with me. We’ll wrap up LoD as quick as possible and then throw something else on the table.

1775, Turn 7

The Patriots and Native Americans both acted in Turn 6, so they’re ineligible to act on Turn 7, leaving this turn open to only the British and French, both being run by the game’s AI system. The card we’re looking at is Edmund Burke on Conciliation and the British get first dibs.

Looking at our flowchart for the British, we check to see if they want to play the Event on the Edmund Burke card. The event for the British states, “Place 1 Tory from Unavailable or Available in each of 3 spaces.” One of the criteria for the British to play the Event is if it brings in British troops from Unavailable, which this one does. Thus, the British will grab three Tories from the Unavailable box and place them on the board using the rules for random placement. One Tory is placed in Charles Town, while the others are placed in Boston and Pennsylvania. The Tory in Charles Town moves that city’s control marker to the British side, whereas the other two tories simply strengthen already strong British forces in those two areas.

The British turn is remarkably short (got to love those Events), so let’s see what the French are up to. Looking at their flowchart, we see that they cannot play the Event this turn (the British already just played it), so we move downward. The French have >0 resources and the Patriots have >3 resources, which means that the French will mobilize. This costs them one Resource, and then they can place two underground Militia into either Quebec, New York, New Hampshire, or Massachusetts. They will choose a place that changes control of a territory or city to the Patriot side first. We don’t have any locations that fit that bill, but we do have New York which only has three British/Native American troops in it. With the one active Patriot Militia already in New York, adding two more would remove British control and turn New York to Uncontrolled. That seems better than putting the two Militia into any of the other spaces, so that’s what we do. Two underground Militia enter New York, joining the already existing active Militia. We remove the Control marker and leave New York Territory uncontrolled.

The French also get to perform a Special Activity, which allows them to move squadrons to the West Indies. Because the French have no unavailable squadrons (they’re all in the West Indies already), they instead can move three regulars from Unavailable to Available. This bumps up the French War Preparation by 3, raising it to 11, only 5 points short of the French being able to enter the war.

So, will the French get their War Prep up to 16 next turn and enter the war? What can we expect on Turn 8? The next event is French Settlers Help, but we draw the upcoming event and it’s our first Winter Quarters card. There are six Winter Quarters cards in the deck, each one being a maintenance round where we check supply routes, desertions, and more. This being our first Winters Quarters card, I’m going to have it be its own post (I know I said I was going to speed up, but…). Watch for turn 8 and our first Winter Quarters turn tomorrow.

• Stately Sessions: Liberty or Death, Turns 1-2
• Stately Sessions: Liberty or Death, Turn 3
• Stately Sessions: Liberty or Death, Turn 4
• Stately Sessions: Liberty or Death, Turns 5-6

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