Greenfield Leads British to Victory At Versailles!

For the third year in a row, the members have voted in Versailles 1919, the marvelous game of treaty arguments created by designers Mark Herman and Geoff Engelstein. This game has staying power out in the real world of gaming, and it has enough fans in BPA to keep showing up as a trial.

Try this game out in your home gaming group and come join us next year. It’s a thoughtful but quick game, more akin to a Euro than a war game, with strategic play, varying victory conditions, and room for negotiations to make more than one player happy (or unhappy).

The fun of the game is the competing scoring priorities among the 3 or 4 countries represented, and how that drives issues to be settled, re-opened, and settled anew. You don’t have to know anything about the treaty that shaped the Twentieth Century to enjoy the game, but it adds to the fun if you see the world shaped in different ways by the choices each player makes. For example, in one Heat game this year, almost every dispute in Eastern Europe got settled in a way that created a greater Poland including Glacia, Slovenia, East Prussia and even Ukraine – a country that would have rivaled Germany and Russia in the years after 1919. In another game, the U.S. signed on for Racial Equality clauses because Japan signing the treaty and having an anti-Bolshevik coalition mattered more to the US victory conditions. Each game is different in the issues it addresses, and in the priorities of each country beyond overall national happiness and return to normalcy.

Nine players qualified for the Semifinal (Billy Fellin, Bill Morgal, Anthony Daw, Chris Byrd, Ted Castranova, Rachel LaDue, Chris Greenfield, Stuart Tucker, and Roy Pettis). Bill Morgal withdrew due to scheduling concerns, leaving us with a Semifinal of two 4-player tables.

The Final was Anthony Daw (Italy), Chris Byrd (France), Roy Pettis (USA), and Chris Greenfield (UK). It was a hard-fought game, and one all agreed was a challenging and fun two hours of influence trading, planning, and negotiations. The lead changed hands several times, as did the issues. In particular, the disposition of the Rhineland was settled and unsettled 4 times, eventually winding up with the historical return to Germany, and the question of the scale of post-war disarmament changed hands three times even though each time it was settled as limited and balanced disarmament. By the last two rounds, everyone but the USA had demobilized all but one army – but those armies were in the field in Africa, Europe, and the Pacific. A few final moves in the Race to the Finish led to a British victory, a strong second for France, and Italy edging out the USA by a single victory point.