TDG: Congress of Vienna

0:04 Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the discriminating gamer. You know, I once knew a guy who had a metal pole that went all the way down his leg. They called him Rodney. Ladies and gentlemen, today we're going to go ahead and take a look at Congress of Vienna from GMT Games.

1:18 In the Congress of Vienna from GMT Games, one to four players take on the various powers in Europe during the Congress of Vienna from 1814 to 1850. You will either play as France, as Britain, as Austria, or as Russia. Now essentially this is a game in the great statesman line. So it's very similar to say Churchill or Pericles. In fact Mark Herman is credited with actually creating the the game design whereas the game actually has its own specific designer. So what's going to happen here is you've got a game board that has kind of the the debate side of the uh board and then kind of the military side of the board which is kind of a very abstracted map of Europe and the various fronts in the Napoleonic Wars. All right. So each player is going to get their own leader card. This represents either Castle Ray, you know, Meternick, the Zar, Napoleon, France is represented uh on the board there. Uh but anyway, you've got these kind of four different nations.

2:18 Uh you're going to have on the military board, you're going to have various armies in these different uh locations leading to France. It's almost like a states of siege as these different armies are converging, allied armies are converging toward France there. And the first thing you're going to do every round is draw a an initial diplomacy card. And you draw this initial card and it's going to have various events that that are going to affect the different players, different things they can do or they must do. So you're going to go ahead and resolve that for all the players. Uh then what you're going to do is kind of begin the diplomacy phase and you're going to start with a wager. Who gets to kind of go first in the diplomacy phase? Uh you're going to select uh a card. You each get dealt out a base of 10 cards. Possibly you may have more in addition to your leader card. Uh you're going to select a card that you're going to play and you're just looking at the number on the card.

3:10 Nothing else really matters. I think the Russians get some advantages if they play a Russian card, but you play this card and whoever has the highest valued card is designated as the winner. You're going to have six rounds of diplomacy. You're going to start by selecting different issues. There's a bunch of different issues. issues that deal with specific countries like like Poland or Holland or Norway. Um there's things like military operations. How many military operations can you conduct? Uh there's things like that the British can pay out kind of subsidies to other players. There's different issues that you can debate here. So what you're going to do is you're going to put them out in the center of the board. Now there may already be some issues on the board along somebody's diplomacy track that the initial setup card or the initial diplomacy card uh put out there. You're going to put these issues in the center. Now, what you're going to do is um I believe the person who won the diplomacy phase, they're going to go last. And starting with the player to his left, they're going to go clockwise.

4:07 And what you do is you play a card and that allows you the number on it allows you to move an issue so many spaces toward the end of your track. Now, there may be some modifiers and DRM, not DRM, but certain kinds of modifiers that allow you to move that further under certain circumstances. But as soon as somebody moves an issue, all the other players in turn order immediately have the right to debate it, meaning they can play a card then to move that back toward them. So, that is that is something that they have there as well. If you do choose to debate, you can actually pass the next round and that way you're not going to run out of cards for everybody else does. Uh or you can just play through. It's up to you. But if you do play through, then that that pass goes away. So you got to be judicious here. Now, you're trying to get these issues toward you because they're going to some of them will help you score. If you get military operations, it's going to allow you to to to move. Um there so there's a lot of different things that are going going on here. There may be opportunities to to get military support which will help you. There's different different items that are that are moving around on that diplomacy track that are going to help you during the the military phase of the game. But as I say, you do that for six rounds. Now, if you can get an issue all the way to the end of your track, it's locked. You've got it. Don't worry about it. It's yours. But at the end of the six rounds, any issue that is on your track is yours. Okay? It's it's it you you ended the game. You enter the the diplomacy phase rather with what those

5:38 issues on your side. So you get them. So next you kind of have to resolve these issues. This is the government phase. The government phase you're going to collect resources. You're going to get money and then you're going to go ahead and figure out you get any points for any of these things. Uh I got military operations. I can set them on the board next to these armies. Uh and I'm going to I'm going to use those for military operations. There's other things like replacements. You can get more more units. few other things here, but essentially you go through and complete the government phase. Now, when you get to the military phase, this is actually where during the milit war phase, this is actually where you place your military operations rather than the government phase. You do it in the war phase. And you're going to place those on the board. Uh if you have any military support tokens, you can place those with them as well. And now you're going to do combat. So the Russians, the Austrians, and the British along the different fronts are all going to fight the French as they are trying to move closer to Paris. So you go ahead and you can enact military operations. Now what you're doing here when you enact military operations is you're looking at the size of the armies. They have cubes and holding boxes and each of those cubes is going to give you a plus one DRM. You both start at zero. The allies and Napoleon both start at zero. And for each army you're going to get a positive DRM. But then you may play cards that give you other DRM. You may have advantages on the location of where you are may give you DRM. Uh so there's all sorts of things give you DRM. And you're going to roll the dieice. You're going to see who wins by how much, etc., etc.

7:01 And that is going to dictate exactly what happens on the board. Depending on how far along the track you are, how big the battles are, um, is going to determine what your casualties are like for both sides. Now, some of the spaces you may move into may increase your card hand size that you can have. They may give you other advantages. You may get VPs for moving in there. There's all sorts of things you can do there. But you go ahead, you conduct all the battles on the military board, and then you wrap up the war phase. The endame is going to come depending on the specific scenario that you're going to play because there are several different scenarios you can play through. Once you uh reach the specific victory conditions of a scenario, then you win Congress of Vienna. We'll get back to the review in just a moment. I want to take a minute to ask you to check out my other channel that is Cody Carlson PhD where we talk about history, books on history, military history. I even post some of my uh lectures for my classes on there. Please check that out. Please subscribe to that channel. And now back to the review.

7:59 All right, ladies and gentlemen, Congress of Vienna. Um, there is a ton ton more going on here. I'm just giving you a barebones overview of how you play this game. It is this is this game's got a lot of meat to it. There's a lot going on here. So, just be be aware of that. Now, uh, the game, as I say, it's very similar in a lot of ways to Churchill or Pericles. [snorts] Um, I I I really like Churchill quite a bit. I thought Pericles, I don't know. I thought it was all right, but it didn't I didn't love it. This game, I think, at its heart, is a war game. It is a war game because it really all the debating and stuff, a lot of that really comes down to what are you doing on the battle board? How do you manipulate the battle board? And how do you how do you make your your military how do you put it in a more advantageous situation here in order to defeat the enemy?

8:58 So I I I think while it is a diplomatic game to be sure, there is a lot of of going for for the military side of this game, right? And it's funny too because like when you're playing the cards for the debate and you got some cards that are really going to help you in the war phase, you want to hang on to them because if you play them for the debate or you know the diplom the debating phase, the diplomacy phase, you will not have them for the military phase. So there's a there's a good tension there with the cards. Uh the the interactions of the diplomacy phase with the and how that plays into the military phase and the government phase, some of the other things you go on, that's all really well done here. In fact, I I'll be blunt. I really I really like this system of the diplomacy phase. And I really like how you can, you know, move units or sorry, move issues up and down that those tracks and somebody can counter that and try to reverse that. And I really like that system and and how that plays out.

9:54 I I've always found that very fun, like I say, in some of these these earlier games. And then I really like the military part of this game and how what you do in those diplomatic interactions colors and informs what you're doing in in the military track. I think that's fun and it and it kind of, you know, it's kind of a good blending of these two systems kind of coalition warfare diplomacy and the actual, you know, operational uh maneuvers. So, I really I really like this these kinds of how how how these games marry those two ideas. I think they they generally they do it well. So I like the s the major systems in these games. However, [clears throat and cough] this game is rulesy.

10:47 It seems to me I would have personally enjoyed this game more if it was a if it was a bit more streamlined. There are a lot of different smaller tracks around the board that do things and I just think some of them to me didn't feel as necessary as perhaps the designer did. You know, you really get a sense that the designer is trying to really really do a good job in capturing the history, which I appreciate, but at the same time, and I say this as a historian and and as a gamer, I want to play a game. I don't need a lot. I don't need every little aspect that is going on in history here. A little abstraction can go a long way. And I felt like if the game had, as I say, been a little more streamlined, a little more accessible, this could have been a much better game in my opinion.

11:38 I feel like it's just it's just too ruy. There's too many little things. And the rule book doesn't help. Uh, the rule book is one of those rule books where you're searching for something, a concept that you just read and you're going back and trying to find it and it's not where you think it's going to be. And and it's got an index, but sometimes that's not the most helpful. And I I felt like the rule book was just it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't overly helpful either in the way I wanted it to be. They have the playbook which has the scenarios in it. You can find some stuff in there which is good. They do have a quick start book which I really liked. I [clears throat] really appreciated the quick start book here that really gets you going and kind of intro introduces you to the basic concepts. But when it comes time to really look at these exceptions and special rules, and there are a lot of them here, um, the rule book is not super helpful in my opinion.

12:31 This is a game that I liked. I wanted to like more than I did. And because it is so rulesy, because there's so much going on, and because this is going to be a game that frankly is going to be kind of a bear to teach, I'm probably not going to hang on to it. In fact, this is a game that if I was at somebody's place and they they said, "Hey, let's play it." I'd play it, but it's not one I think I would ever recommend because of these reasons. I'd rather play a Churchill. So, for all these reasons, I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to give Congress of Vienna a six out of 10. It's It's a good game. I liked it, but again, I'm not going to be the one to recommend it for game night. Thank you once again for joining us today on The Discriminating Gamer. As always, uh I'd ask you to please leave a comment here on YouTube, on Board Game Geek, on Facebook, on X. We love to hear what you have to say.

13:17 So, please, please, please leave a comment. We ask you to please like this video and subscribe to this channel if you haven't done so. And if you do like what you see here, I would ask you to check out my other channel that is Cody Carlson PhD where we talk about history, books on history, fun things like that. I even post some of my lectures on there. It would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to that channel as well. And ladies and gentlemen, if you do like what you see here on this channel, I would humbly ask you to click on the super thanks button and leave a tip. A king and a queen walk into a bar. The bartender says, "I can't serve you because you're not 21. my feet again. And I DON'T KNOW WHERE I'M GOING. And I don't know where I've been. Please somebody

14:09 one Japanese reserve must go to the Southwest Pacific Theater down to Papa. Hing, good shot.