Diceless combat, an invincible super unit, and a solitaire variant that’s very different from the two-player alternative… Archie’s War: The Battle for Guadalcanal, a fast-playing 2023 board game from Worthington Games has three pretty striking features. Oddly, the £7 PC port that hit Steam a couple of weeks ago only inherits two of them.
Derek Croxton, the designer of the cardboard original, was more interested in surrounding players with apt, noggin-warming uncertainty than accurately simming OoBs and historical balance…
“Most games about Guadalcanal (all of them, as far as I know) feature historical orders of battle. As a result, everyone knows from the beginning that the Japanese have no chance to capture Henderson Field, so games revolve around alternate victory conditions. My goal with this game was not to recreate the historical forces, but the historical feeling of the commanders, not knowing whether the fall of Henderson Field was imminent, and being forced to employ their forces accordingly.”
Buyers got two fairly distinct diversions – a dice-free, bluff-heavy, block game for two players played on a map consisting of twelve linked locations, and an (arguably) more colourful solo entertainment played on a smaller four-node battlefield with dice-generated events and disclosed enemy strengths. Rather than faithfully replicating both of these games, porters Bull Elephant Games have chosen to digitise only the two-player form. This questionable approach means they’ve had to code an artificial opponent, and we miss out on some interesting decisions and flavour.
Although said AI seems competent, it sometimes ponders for a surprisingly long time. The minute-long thinking sessions, together with a smattering of minor bugs (Occasionally attacking units seem to vanish for no reason, and special actions such as amphibious assaults and bombardments don’t seem to work as they should), and the lack of any sound effects, dent the appeal of what should have been a tempting lunch hour diversion. Pacy, approachable Archie’s War can be both engaging and resonant, but right now it’s not nearly as appealing as Pavlov’s House or Castle Itter.
Add another to the list of PC games I would never know about without you!