Resist! – Game Preview

Thanks to generosity of David Thomson I had (and have!) a pleasure to familiarize with another one of his creations. That will be yet one more solitaire game with a very interesting story to be told. What I am talking about? Resist!

Game topic

The game theme is very intriguing – for me as a wargamer it is very important that the design is deeply rooted in actual history and draws from it. Definitely here we have such situation :

Spain, 1936. General Franco and his troops advance through the territories of Spain, giving way to a long period of civil war and repression. After the Spanish Civil War, a group of loyalists to the Republic continued the armed struggle, forming resistance groups better known as “maquis”. Hidden among the mountains these men and women risked their lives to defend the ideals of democracy and freedom.

Against them they had the Army of Franco, the Civil Guard, and the Armed Police. But the maquis perfected their guerilla warfare in France during the second World War, and were determined to take back their homeland. In the head of each maquisard resonated the echo of the desire of many compatriots: Resist!

Publisher page

How to play

As mentioned, Resist! is a solitaire game, pretty fast-playing and as you might already notice – card-driven. You take here the role of the Spanish Maquis, fighting against the Francoist regime. Over a series of rounds, you will undertake increasingly difficult missions.

Defeating missions gains you the victory points you need to win the game. Failing to defeat missions and enemies may cause you to lose the game. At the end of each round, you must choose whether to end the resistance or risk it and take on another mission. That last element is a great tests of how risk-averse you are 🙂

At the beginning of the game, you will assemble your team of Maquis, drafting twelve Maquis from the supply. Then the game is played over a series of rounds. Each round is divided into 4 phases:

• Plan
• Attack
• Aftermath
• Recover

The game continues until you choose to end the resistance during the Aftermath phase or you trigger one of the game’s three loss conditions:

• failed two Missions
• lost 5 civilians
• you draw a hand of all Spies

At the heart of the game is the tension between keeping your Maquis concealed from Franco’s forces so that the Maquis cards stay in your deck and you can use them for future missions, or revealing the Maquis and unlocking their full potential. Time of the latter is of utmost importance.

Why? You must be careful, as once the Maquis have been revealed they are removed from your deck and you likely will not be able to use them for the rest of the game. While Resist! does have some minor deck-building elements, it is primarily a “deck-destruction” game, wherein you will have to carefully manage your deck, balancing the decision of defeating the immediate threat and trying to move on to the next mission.

Some more information on the game:

• Designers: Trevor Benjamin, Roger Tankersley, David Thompson
• Publisher: Salt & Pepper Games

That will be all for today short game preview. What will for sure follow is a play-through vireo which I am going to shoot soon, presenting the game mechanics in action. Stay tuned!