Fortress America

Crothian · Dec 10, 2008

Here is an old game from the mid eighties. I played it for the first time last night and it was surprisingly fun. The idea is that America is getting invaded by the east, west, and south by three separate groups. The invaders are not allies and though destroying America is the common goal they can and do fight each other.

It is a game kind of like A&A. There are different pieces and they do different things. The invaders have a finite number of units and I like that. So, once they lose a unit it is gone and can't come back. America though gets cards that determine where and how it gets reinforcements. This turned out to be uneven. THe east invader had most of the America forces come up near him and include some bad rolls and he was getting his butt kicked. I was the south invader and few cards effected me and I was able to conquer more cities then the other two guys combined. In the last round of the invaders getting more units though the 2 cards America pulled didn't give him any new troops and that pretty much sealed it for him.

Anyone else have this game gathering dust in your closet? It seems to have held up really well as far as playability. Our game took 4 hours since none of us remembered anything and what we thought we knew was mostly wrong. But I doubt our next game will last half that long.

brehobit · Dec 10, 2008

Crothian said:
Anyone else have this game gathering dust in your closet? It seems to have held up really well as far as playability. Our game took 4 hours since none of us remembered anything and what we thought we knew was mostly wrong. But I doubt our next game will last half that long.

It's a very good game. In general, as a 2 player game the invaders should win. As a 4 player game (where the invaders might not work together as well as possible) it is a bit closer. My best friend and I played a year ago and have it on google calender to play in 2017

The general secret to winning with America is to hold in the East and make sure the West never moves up more than one space per turn (and less on the fast path near the south). The it largely turns into:
A) How the big battles in the East go
B) How the South does.
Having the US retake cities is huge. The invaders need to try to stop that. In general if you get cards that show up in the south at the right time you can retake things fairly easily. The West and East are a lot harder.

As a variant you can either:
A) Give the American player one or two cards at the start of the game that he can play whenever (but only 1 per turn)
B) Let the American player draw an extra card and discard one of his choice.

We've done A a lot and 2 cards seems about right (slight US advantage maybe?) Also starting out with a laser or two makes a huge difference (I think the game suggests this) but I like the cards better.

It has the "way too random" problem going for it, and with a set of horrible rolls in the East the game can be over quite quickly.

Crothian · Dec 10, 2008

The US's ability to retake cities and thus get more cards was big. The funny part of our game was that the East invader was doing so bad he rarely took cities and the other two invaders did so well when they took the cities there was no way to get them back. I think america might do better trying to lose cities they can get back just so they can get the extra cards.

brehobit · Dec 10, 2008

Crothian said:
The US's ability to retake cities and thus get more cards was big. The funny part of our game was that the East invader was doing so bad he rarely took cities and the other two invaders did so well when they took the cities there was no way to get them back. I think america might do better trying to lose cities they can get back just so they can get the extra cards.

That's pretty risky as the defense has such a big advantage.

The thing is that with lasers and reasonable reinforcements in the west/south you can often retake a city. Which leads to more cards which leads to more chances to repeat...

Mark

JiffyPopTart · Dec 10, 2008

I like the ruleset, but the design (of requiring the invaders to have a LITTLE bit of infighting but not too much) makes it less than ideal.

For example...in a two player game where one person controls all the invaders and NEVER infights with them....its almost impossible for the US to win.

Conversely, in a 4 player game where the invaders fight a little bit too much....its almost impossible for them to win (usually due to the massive amounts of lasers that exclusively target bombers until they are all toast, then moving down the line of usefulness to helis then tanks).

Of all the games in the Gamemaster line, I rank them as follows....

Shogun (Just like risk but WAY more strategy)
Axis and Allies (Great except for the guy stuck with Russia)
Fortress America (Balance issues mentioned above)
Broadsides and Boarding Parties (an exercise in dice rolling luck, little strategy)
Conquest of the Empire (Catapults rule the galaxy....broken)

I have all but CotE sitting on one of my many gaming shelves and Shogun is the only one to get some action. We usually play one of the other A&A games when we want an A&A fix.

DS

Shade · Dec 24, 2008

We still dust this one off from time-to-time. It's a fun game, and seems less time-consuming then Axis&Allies.

It seems funny, though, that the Detroit and Minneapolis always become the home of the Air Force and early Laser Defense Grid.

Crothian · Dec 24, 2008

Ya, that is where the ended up in our games, too. It does play a little faster then A&A, but I still like A&A better.

Shadeydm · Dec 25, 2008

Those were great games we used to play quite often back in the day Fortress America was fun but it never got the amount of replay that A&A got. A&A used to get really interesting when some would get luck with research and get heavy bombers etc. I don't think we ever had someone play only Russia. Maybe because if we had that many people we would just end up playing DnD.

Shadeydm · Dec 25, 2008

When exactly did A&A under go the change to the packs of pieces i see in my FLGS? When I used to play this game it came with everything you needed...

MerricB · Dec 25, 2008

Shadeydm said:
When exactly did A&A under go the change to the packs of pieces i see in my FLGS? When I used to play this game it came with everything you needed...

There are two games.

Axis and Allies (the board game) remains as everything you need.

Axis and Allies (the collectible miniatures game) was launched 2-3 years ago.

Cheers!

Fortress America

Crothian

First Post

brehobit

Explorer

Crothian

First Post

brehobit

Explorer

JiffyPopTart

Bree-Yark

Shade

Monster Junkie

Crothian

First Post

Shadeydm

First Post

Shadeydm

First Post

MerricB

Eternal Optimist

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