Phantom Fury (2nd Ed.) First Look & Giveaway | Solitaire Wargame | Board Game | Nuts! Publishing

0:00 hi everybody I'm Zilla Blitz and Welcome to our overview of phantom Fury designed by Lauren closier and published by nuts publishing this game covers the Second Battle of fua in 2004 between largely US Marine forces and Iraqi insurgents now the historical battle lasted more than a week but this game covers an intense 4-Hour segment of the battle for one section of the city so this is tactical house-to-house combat fighting some of the most intense Urban fighting that US forces faced since the Vietnam War this video will also be the first of three videos covering the game and as part of this series we'll be giving away for free a copy of the game details on how to enter this largely worldwide contest are at the end of the video Let's jump in and get started before we jump in and take a look at the components let's do a highlevel view of the game first up this is a soliter game as the player you control the US Marine forces that are trying to basically clear this map that we see in front of us so your goal is to basically go blocked block taking out the Insurgent forces and working your all the way up from the bottom of the map to clear the entire map as you go through now the gameplay length is listed as 2 hours and there are 16 turns in the core scenario now each turn represents about 15 minutes of real time so doing the math the historical length of this engagement to clear this sector of the city is about 4 hours long and it's really at the Tactical level each counter represents 6 to 12 men we'll take a look at some of the details of the map later but let's talk a little bit about kind of the big picture things

1:31 that are going on first up there's very much an element here of hidden placement and suspected enemy presence and ambiguity and where the enemy is so as you move into areas you're going to activate them and you're going to have to kind of hit these suspect areas to determine what's really in the area and then move forward with a plan of attack so as you kind of move through the city you're going to see these strong points and defensive points that you're going to have to react to and build your strategy around in addition to your core infantry squads as the US player you've got Abrams tanks that you can have moved through you're going to have some aerial vehicle support as well as some close air support that you can use to bring to bear on the opponent forces in terms of what you're going to run into gorillas Martyrs improvised explosive devices and snipers are your main opponents but there will be some fortified strong points that you're going to have to take as you're working your way through the city as well and those uh are randomized and they vary each playthrough creating kind of an element of replayability and that you don't know where those strong points are going to be every time you play game Let's jump in and take a quick look at the r book now it is 24 pages including the front and back cover however the last three pages are a very graphically Illustrated uh example of play of one part of one turn highlighting some of the different assaults that US forces can make the game has as we look at this this highlights another aspect of gameplay the game has one main scenario uh so you're playing basically the same setup the same scenario there is however a stor a historical variant that gives the

3:01 US forces uh some more resources and changes the victory Point conditions a little bit and then a shortens the game to 13 turns instead of 16 so there's that one option for variability and there are some optional rules that you can fold in later generally one that adds kind of some random events so some trouble markers that can get popped up in different pop up in different areas and then population civilian casualties and how they would might work in the game uh the core rules however 18 Pages lots of Graphics I've read through most of them now they seem very clear I I didn't have any difficulties in understanding everything there is uh some complexity to this I will say that but it's not I wouldn't say an overly complex game if I had to give an estimate of gameplay I'm going to go with about a three and a half I think you can learn this game in about an hour probably a you know play through to get kind of your feet under you and then you'd be kind of having no issues with the rules as far as I can see and again the real test com when we play it but so far I really like the layout and the graphic illustrations the just even the parsing of text with the headers it's visually a very clean rule book to look through and uh it should be a real kind of I think it's going to be a joy to learn let's explore our counters there are two sheets of counters 219 counters in all 94 of them are 5/8 in counters that we can see up here the larger counters largely used for the the the units in the game and then down the bottom here we can see some of the 1252

4:32 inch counters that are largely the chits that you're pulling out of cups or some of the markers that You' be using to identify I'm kind of highlight what's happening in particular sectors on the map we can see up the top here on this one these are the US forces one little design element that I really like here is that you'll notice this fired marker and then pinned marker on the left and right side and so often times in a game you're going to be turning a counter sideways to highlight what's happened and that's what you do with this so after the US force is you will turn your counter on the map put it fired side up to let you know that that unit's fired and it's no longer available for fire in a particular segment of a turn likewise if a unit gets pinned by enemy fire you flip it this way to identify that it's been pinned so really clever use of counter design to highlight some things that I think players do a lot as you're playing games it's nice to see it built in I thought that was a really clever twist there is a backside to these counters and there's a step system so US units can be getting step reductions and you can see their fire power which is that top left number reduced on this side now down below here on this front sheet we have the area control markers so this uh marker face up signifies that the US has gained control of that particular that particular Zone on the map and then down below here we can see these markers that get added to zones to indiv indicate that US forces have activated that zone they've uh they've begun to move in they begun to explore that zone and try to try to start to clear that zone I mentioned earlier on that the addition to to the regular us Ground Forces there are some other

6:02 elements that fold into gameplay that increase the options for the US player as they are clearing blocks and moving through the city we do have uh Abrams Tanks here that can be added as that are added as support for your forces then we have combined anti anti- Armour teams down here that add in there are security elements to largely prevent uh the insurgents from being able to flee zones that you're trying to pin them in and then there is a hero rule so Heroes can appear in particular zones depending upon the activity in that zone so we take a look at the second sheet we can see the top up here are the Insurgent forces largely two different types we've got gorillas on the top here and then on the back uh there is no step system for the insurgents we've got the the martyrs that uh are different type of enemy insurgents and then on the bottom here we can see there's a lot of markers and these are the suspect markers so as you activate a particular Zone you're going to be pulling two of these that will dictate where the enemy forces are and this is a priority system so second floor first floor rooftop and so you'll be pulling these to determine where the Insurgent forces may be and then you determine what actually is there as you go through so it's kind of a process as you work your way through zones to uncover where the enemies actually are um some other elements to make note of here there is uh some dragon eye which is an unmanned aerial vehicle support we have some Cobra close a support and then a hornet uh close a support that you can call in so I get a sense that by kind of looking at the units and exploring some of the the rules that using your ground force well as the US forces and learning

7:33 how to combine them with the various supports for example the Abrams tank and then your your unmined um you know aerial vehicle support and and combining these in a way that gives you that leverage you need to clear zones is probably one of the skills that you have to learn in order to play well at this game let's take a look at our two player AIDS the one on the left here is a single-sided player that all the tables from the manual that from the rule book that are pulled out so for easy reference really nice to have these in one place and again as a soliter game you're only going to be have one player so you just really need one of these to be able to reference so this is a kind of a basic card stock uh element in terms of quality of play but nice graphic design pulling those tables out that you'd be using a lot from the rule book our second player Aid uh is largely B this is a a setup here and victory points that are determined for determining final Victory we'll talk about that as we look at the map but this is the detailed sequence of play probably a good time to highlight this a little bit uh to kind of get an idea for what you're doing in a particular turn so initially there's a support phase where you determine what types of supports and where you want those supports to come in this would be like the Hornet and the the Cobra support and down here then we shift into a reinforcements phase which is just what it sounds you're determining where and how you're going to bring reinforcements in and then your fire combat phase so we have fire combat resolution that goes on in that previous part and then a movement phase and then a big part of the game as we look at the back part here is uh the assault phase and there are three different types of assaults you can use depending upon where you're coming in into the location and how you

9:04 want to take that location lastly there's a reorganization phase and then you lather rinse repeat and go through the process until the end of the game so I do think again giving that idea this to me feels like a complexity about three and a half in terms of a sequence of play it's it's got a nice I think it feels like it really hits a sweet spot for a tactical game like this in terms of uh it's not overly simplistic from what I can tell from the rules and looks like yet at the same time you're not going to get bogged down in the rules so I think you fingers crossed but it really looks like this one might hit that sweet spot between complexity and playability that I really like in a game the idea that you can sit down and play this in a couple of hours um is is really appealing to me lastly let's take a look at our map I really like the visual look of this it's uh 24 in X 32 in and you just get a look at it this kind of congested Urban feeling as you kind of imagine your forces working in deep out Insurgent forces as they move upwards from basically from the bottom end of the map up through the top is where you exit we can see um these are starting zones down along the bottom and then up here tricky to see on the big map but are marked with exits so you're getting your forces through and sweeping through this area it symbolizes an area of the Jolan District of fuja and each one of these blocks here if you were to zones are basically 50 m x 50 m is what they represent in Real uh in real life and there are 61 zones in all that you'll be clearing as you make your way through this so you can I get a sense

10:34 there's a sense of urgency here for US forces 16 for 16 turns 61 zones you've got to you've got to move to keep going if you're going to win the game let's talk a little bit about Victory conditions the US player has to clear the entire map clearing out every Zone by the end of the 16 turns in order to win if the US player does win there are three levels to Victory a major victory a minor Victory or a costly Victory and those vary dependent upon casualties you've inflicted casualties you've been taken taken in a couple of other factors let's take a moment now and zoom in on an area and just talk a little bit about some of the detail in each one of these zones cuz I think that's helpful for understanding gameplay as well as we look at this Zone here we can see that each one of the 61 zones in the map has a number this is Zone 36 um and it starts the game under Insurgent control so that's why you've got this baked into the map as the US forces move through you put a marker down on this to indicate either activated or Us control up here these are the numbers of zones that the enemy forces can exit to insurgents can exit to as you're working through but the biggest part of the area and again this represents a 50 m x 50 m area of actual terrain are these locations within the Zone OG stands for open ground and we can see there's a door here so this is kind where forces will enter in this area there are two first floor areas two second floor areas and this is the rooftop area that you can be used also all of the the line of sight is baked into the map so we can see zones 28 and 37 here are also within the line of sight of units in this uh

12:06 location in the zone here so a lot of information here and these arrows indicate directions of possible travel so you can go between these two first floor zones but not between this first floor and second floor zone and each one of these areas is unique have their own kind of make their own little puzzles in terms of how you'll be kind of working through an area and trying to fight your way through it I also think it's worth mentioning I think this is going to be a very visually easy game to play because of the limited stacking rules so there is a limit to one Insurgent Squad per per location within a Zone and then when you're attacking you're limited to one US Squad per active Zone you can bring in more after that to but you can only again have one per location so you won't be parsing through big piles of stacks as you play the game I think it's going to be a visually clean game and make it easy to play as you go through as we zoom out once more on the map it's worth noting that we have some player Aid supports surrounding the map in general starting in the top right we've got the player turn track the game record the game turn track Victory Point track down here a little Compass there down below we have control of us reinforcements and support forces and then over on the left here we have contract uh keeping control of the Hornet the super the Cobra close air support and then the dragon eye because those are limited uh numbers of uses you can use them in each battle lastly as we wrap up it's worth noting that we have a 10-sided die to control a lot of the combat that goes on in the game be bringing some gameplay of this to the channel soon I'll put a link to it as soon as it's ready really impressed by the design on this one and by the clarity of the rules and just by the vision and execution of what looks like to be a really fun game to play

13:37 soliter so it's pushing a lot of buttons for me tactical level uh it it looks like it's going to be real fun and a real challenge to play I'll be bringing some gameplay to this channel to the channel in about a week and that's at some point within a week or so we're going to pick the winner of the free copy so to enter into that contest there is a link in the descrip description to a short Google form um it does ask for your email but I destroy the emails after the contest is over I have no interest in collecting people's emails it's going to ask you three very brief questions about the game and then you just have to click submit it's good worldwide with a couple of limitations I think like Russia isn't included but other than that it should be good for worldwide participants in entry good luck everybody in entering the drawing we'll be picking the winner in about 10 days so uh good luck as you enter the contest and I'll see you in about a week with some gameplay video