OUR REVIEW

Love, intrigue and heroic knights

MIL

Conquer, boost military forces, marry off daughters

It is the Year of our Lord 1049! Infinite spaces are populated by Knights, Lords, Soldiers and Vassals. Young squires grow up and turn into knights, age and die. Their descendants take over their places and in their turn increase their worldly goods. But those are hard times, too: Disputes result in changes of ownership; knights are lured away by other feudal lords. And besides all that you must not forget to reckon with the power of the clergy. This is the scene in which MIL has been set. If you now suppose that MIL is another game of conquest you suppose wrong. The game is primarily an economics game, the conflict element, on the other hand, cannot be neglected-

The name of the game has been made up from the Roman numbers for 1000 (M), 1 (I) and 50 (L); the correct way to write 1049 in Roman numbers would be MXLIX, but has been shortened to make the name pronounceable, MXLIX does seem to be an ideal name for a game.

Already during Spiel 11 at Essen I had the opportunity to try out MIL. The opinions in our group after the game varied considerably. The game features very copious and details rules and was not ideally suited to be played in the hustle and bustle of the Fair. Therefore it is probably also only well-suited to experienced players. I was attracted by the topic and was able to acquire one of the last three games at the end of the Fair.

MIL comes with a set of rules in both English and also in Spanish and offers quite a lot of game components. You place the board in the middle of the table: On the one hand, each player has his own area for women and privileges on this board, and on the other hand the board enables players to place knights on sic different so called Power Spheres, which represents the Worker Placement element of the game. The board also features a Victory Points Track, as victory points mostly are acquired and marked in the course of the game. And, last but not least, there is the rounds Marker, because MIL comprises exactly five rounds.

Each player represents a Noble Family and commands up to four knights of his own. The knights live on the lands of the player, which are represented by a player board in front of each player. At the start of the game each player directs 2 knights, who are marked by a tile which is deposited on the player board and by a cardboard marker on the game board. Each knight commands his own area on the player board, where he can create up to two areas and construct a castle. A knight can also hire soldiers which settle on his stretch of land. Soldiers, by the way, are represented by black plastic Carcassonne meeples.

In the course of the game players acquire little cubes in five different colors which are kept out of sight from other players behind a screen. Those cubes are used for payment, for several different auction actions, or for donations. Blue, black, green and yellow cubes correspond to resources, while the red cubes either represent influence or … women! A double use that introduces flair and makes sense, actually! What the red cubes represent depends on their location: Behind the screen of a player they represent influence; on the board they represent women. Each player starts the game with two cubes of each color behind his screen. Those cubes, by the way, are plastic ones, too.

The areas for the knights can be acquired on the board, in the shape of land tiles with cubes pictured on them; those cube images correspond to the revenues given by the tiles. Depending on the number of players a different number of land tiles come into play. When all tiles from the board have been acquired all that is possible is to conquer tiles already acquired by other players. The two different sides of a tile usually yield different revenues, too.

Let’s start the first round now: The starting player is always marked with a special token, which can be acquired from the Power Spheres. A change of starting player for each single round is possible. From the starting player on you play in clockwise direction. In each round five phases are completed, in two of those phases players have more than one turn.

Each round starts with the Action Phase: In this first Phase each player can choose from five different actions, but, once the Action Placement of a Knight has been chosen, the choice is reduced to two actions. You choose an action, resolve it with one of your knights, and play passes to the player on your left-hand side. This is continued until one of several possible conditions happens. Very important features of the Actions Phase are the Time Tokens. Most of the Power Spheres only have a limited number of spaces, which are filled at the start of the round with time tokens. Those time tokens have a black side and a white side. At the the start of the action phase they are all white; when there are only black tokens on the Power Spheres the Action Phase ends. Some of the available actions demand that the knight takes a Time Token from a Power Sphere of his choice and deposits it with himself. This makes the knight age. When a knight takes his fourth Time Token he dies. Due to this aging process it is of utmost importance that a player, at the start of an action, names the knight who will be resolving the action.

Let’s now take a look at the individual actions:

· Harvest: A knight can harvest goods cubes from the visible side of one of his land tiles according to the number and kind of cubes pictured there; the land tile is then turned over to the other side. For this action a knight must take a time token.

· Recruit a Soldier: A knight can recruit a soldier which he then places on his land tiles. The player pays the cost for the soldier from his store of cubes. Each Soldier has the combat/defense strength of 3. This action, too, forces the knight to take a Time Token.

· Family expansion: You roll a special die and the result determines the addition to your family: The result either is take a Time Token or add a woman to your area on the board or, best possible result, get a descendant for your knight. When the result is not a descendant you can roll again, but you must resolve each dice result before rolling again. To mark descendants, each knight tile on the player board has two different sides - one without a descendant and one with a descendant. If your knight already has a descendant, you can place a new knight on your board, provided that you have not yet reached the maximum of four knights. When an existing knight is given a descendant this descendant is married instantly. For this wedding an auction round is played in which each player offers a dowry and marriage into his family, resulting in two victory points for this player. There is no need to go into the detailed rules for this event here. What is important, that a knight has a descendant, because that is a deciding factor in the time after his death: All of the knight’s assets/property are simply passed to his descendant; the knight tile is simply turned over again to the side without descendant. If there is no descendant this means a loss of four victory points for the player and even the loss of the knight tile when he does not own land, castle or soldiers.

· Place a knight on a Power Sphere: You take the card board marker of your own chosen knight from your player board and put it on a free spot on a Power Sphere. A spot holding a Time Token is considered to be free, but invokes costs for placing a knight there. The choice of this action has a very decisive influence on the choice of actions available to the player for the rest of the round: He can no longer harvest, recruit or expand his family. This goes for all of his knights. Furthermore, when placing a knight on the Power Sphere it is important to consider the choice of knight and his position there. The position is important for resolving the bonus in the Political Phase and the choice of knight when owner ship of a knight is important in resolving the Power Sphere.

· Pass: When a player passes he turns a Time Token on a Power Sphere to its black side or places a black Time Token from general stock on a free spot on one of the Power Spheres in order to speed up the end of the Actions Phase.

The Actions Phase is followed by the Tributes Phase. Each land tile also shows the income from the Tributes Phase. Players receive all those revenues from their knights. Knights which have become vassals of another player (the lord) in a previous Power Sphere Phase provide additional fixed revenues to the Lord. Then all land tiles are turned over.

In the next two phases following tributes the Power Spheres are resolved: The Political Phase is resolved in order to determine for each Power Phase the player who will be receive the bonus. This player is determined via majority scoring and the bonus is given out in the guise of victory points, gold, influence or bonus characters - Arch Bishop, Starting Player and King’s Soldiers. This Political Phase is then followed by the Power Spheres Phase itself with resolving and scoring each individual Power Sphere.

With the help of the six Power Spheres players can, among other things, provide their knights with land(In the War Power Sphere by conquering land without an owner or owned by another player (knight)) and castles (in the Market Power Sphere due to auctions) or enrich their Noble family with privileges or influence (in the Court Power Sphere). The Power Spheres on the board are scored one by one: Of course you can as an alternative use the market to trade materials of your own for other materials (goods).

Women on the board are featured in two of the Power Spheres: The Monastery, where you can dispatch women back into the general stock, and Curia, where women can be transformed into influence. Women are of very special importance in the game: In the course of the game they offer advantages, as a knight, who wants to conquer land owned by another knight, must first discard an amount of influence equal to the number of women that are owned by the knight whose land one wants to conquer. At the end of the game, on the other hand, each woman causes the loss of two or three victory points. Besides the reduction of female elements in the power Spheres women can be married (as a consequence of the action “Family expansion” in the Actions Phase) and so made to leave one’s family tree.

To conquer a land tile of another player in the War Power Sphere is coupled to a bidding mechanism. Each knight has an attack value based on his soldiers and a defense value based on soldiers, castle and land. Those values can now be raised by both players involved by covert placement of influence (red cubes) or comestibles (green cubes). When the attacker in this way has achieved a higher value than the defender, he conquers the land tile and can hand it over to one of his knights.

Independent from the way it was acquired (directly or from a previous owner) each land tile is worth four victory points, which are taken from the player who lost a combat for the land when the land was won by conquest.

Should one of the knights involved be a vassal the Lord can decide if he wants to participate in the battle by bidding influence or comestibles.

Vassals are one of the singular features of this game. With the help of the Court Power Sphere you can acquire a knight for a vassal. In order to do this, as a prerequisite, the number of soldiers owned by the knight, who starts this acquisition and is situated on the Power Sphere, must be bigger than all property of the knight - castle, soldiers and land -who is targeted for a vassal. If this prerequisite is established another auction mechanism is involved: First, the potential vassal offers gold (yellow cubes) and influence to the knight wanting to recruit him; the recruiting knight can accept and the take-over try ends. This earns two victory points for the passive player. When the active player refuses the offer, he must enhance the bid of the passive player or give him land. Both alternatives count for a successful try of recruiting and the knight of the passive player is turned vassal. The deciding element in this for the game is not so much the vassalage itself but the hand-out of victory points: For each land owned by the vassal the lord earns four victory points and another two victory points for the successful try.

Another important element to receive victory points is the Curia Power Sphere. Before Curia is resolved each player is urged to make donations to the clergy in the guise of gold. This is the time for yet another covert simultaneous bidding. The player offering most gold is awarded six victory points. All other players can decide if they take back their gold or donate it all the same, which earns them 6 victory points minus the difference in the offers.

At long last, the last Power Sphere, Crusade which is important for the final phase of the round. In this phase the knight goes on a crusade and is safe from hard winters.

In the last phase, the Winter Phase, the dice decides if it will be a hard winter. One player rolls the die, the result applies to all players. When the die shows a snow flake, the winter is hard one and all knights who do not own land or castle, die according to the rules unless they are on a crusade. Then the king rewards all players with a privilege if they contribute to the defense of his kingdom. Privileges are individual tiles for each player and can be used several times for payment instead of gold.

In all five rounds you play all phases, followed by a final scoring after Round Five. In this final scoring majorities decide on the acquisition of up to 2 victory points. Influence, gold and privileges as well as the sum of blue and black cubes are scored in this way. And finally, each player loses two victory points for each woman; should you be the player with most women you even lose three points for each of your women.

MIL is a game which is targeted primarily to expert players. The rules are incredibly rich in details, and it is even necessary to carefully read the notes added in some places, because they contain not only additional information, but also rules! You could come to the conclusion when reading the rules that the designer has packed all rules variants that occurred to him into this game. Even identical mechanisms get their own special shape when used in different places in the game, for instance the auction mechanism. The player aid which is given to each player, is of some help, but does only cover part of the complete set of rules, as does this review! Other confusing aspects are the different roles of a player; some of the rules are valid for the player, then only for one of his knights and yet some others are only meant to be used for a vassal of for a vassal’s Lord. All this might sound somewhat derogative now, but if it does not frighten you off you will be rewarded with an interesting game! I want to put special emphasis on the game elements of Time and Vassalage. The transience of life demands also to take into account that your knights will die, even if this demise can be accurately planned as you do not receive Time Tokens randomly and as it is clear from the start that taking four Time Tokens means the death of the knight. Vassalage on the other hand enables you to have a very interactive game. The victory points which can be acquired from that are of great importance. And the nice thing about this is, that you only marginally damage the player in his property and his actions, with the exception that a vassal cannot attack his Lord. Vassals only bring additional income, but no loss for the owner of the vassal. Conquest of lands is an entirely different story; one player’s gain is another player’s loss. Due to the plethora of choices you are not forces to use all of those elements, but our games have shown that the scoring markers only advance slowly and steadily with few deviations when those choices are not used.

Not only vassalage turns MIL into an interactive game. The occupation of the Power Spheres is an important factor, too. When do I start on this? Is there a danger that the Actions Phase ends and I could not place all knights onto the Power Spheres? Should I put my knights on free spots or pay for a good position? Is it an advantage for me to shorten the Actions Phase?

As regards to the flow of the game MIL is not very variable: First you try to upgrade your knights in order to then place them as best as one can on the Power Spheres. This is not the allure of the game. This comes from the intensive cross-linking of events which makes each game challenging and different. Each action you take has several consequences and you must always consider carefully what would be the optimum decision. And: Different sequences com from interactive actions. An additional variation possibility comes from the choice of land tiles in the set-up of the game. They can be chosen to your liking.

All in all MIL is enrichment for each game collection, but it takes a few games to really fathom all the possibilities inherent in the game. Once you have mastered the rules, you will look forward to another game of MIL.

Bernhard Czermak

Players: 2-5

Age: 12+

Time: 150+

Designer: Firmino Martinez

Art: Pedro Soto

Price: ca. 40 Euro

Publisher: Homoludicus 2011

Web: www.homoludicus.org

Genre: Worker placement, conquest

Users: For experts

Special: 2 players

Version: multi

Rules: en es fr

In-game text: no

Comments:

Copious Components

Development game with conflict elements

Very complex rules

Minimum playing time of 150 min

High level of interaction

Compares to:

Blood Royal and Village for spanning generations or taking death of characters/pawns into account

Other editions:

Iello, France

My rating: 5

Bernhard Czermak:

If you have been willing to spend the time to get familiar with the copious rules, has decided on a game which combines game mechanisms of worker placement, auction and conquest games and is also well suited to a game for two players.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0