Loyalty or Liberty? Replayable Deck-building LCG War Game

“Loyalty or Liberty?”: An in-depth and highly customizable deck-building tactical war game about the American Revolutionary War. This game is the outcome of many years of effort to construct a card game that allows characters to participate in hypothetical battle scenarios (even possibly recreating small-scale historical battles). It strikes a balance between casual and hardcore rule systems, historical accuracy, and financial cost, all while still providing an engaging wargaming experience.

Using a point-purchase draft system, each player chooses one of nine factions (British, French, Spanish, German, Loyalists, Rebels, and a collection of Native American nations) and builds an army. Each army consists of event cards (manipulating the battlefield situation), soldier cards (unit types include various infantry, cavalry, and artillery, each with abilities specific to the unit and culture, appropriate starting weapons, morale threshold, movement value, cost, etc.), and currency cards that enable their deployment. Additionally, to further modify your deck, players can decide which weapons, including melee and ranged, can be used in the upcoming battles. Officers are also appointed at this point to lead the soldiers into combat.

Once this task is complete, players randomize the battleground and take turns deciding who first places cards equivalent to the officer’s “scout” value on a 5×5 match field. The battle can commence once all cards are in place.

Victory in “Loyalty or Liberty?” depends on reducing the enemy’s morale from an agreed-upon amount to zero, forcing the enemy to retreat, or otherwise eliminating all enemy forces on the battlefield. These objectives may be similar, but one might be achieved before the other.

To advance towards victory in these ways, you’ll find yourself using cards from your currency deck to deploy the personnel you’ve recruited. Your luck and deployment cards are shuffled. To win, you must repel enemy tribes and ravage enemy camps. Combat is joined by rolling ten-sided dice to shoot or charge at enemy positions, these dice have modifiers for weapon type, terrain, and cover, formations, etc., and must beat the opponent’s “defense value” to cause “casualties”. If a unit’s casualties exceed its “morale threshold”, the opposing officer has a chance to do a “rally check” to keep the wounded unit on the battlefield. If unsuccessful, the unit will rout and be defeated in the battle, and the side’s morale will be affected accordingly.

Praised by Protospiel and Protospiel Mini, game designer, and CEO Daniel Lessin, alongside artists Jason Grossman and Carl Duff, overcame numerous challenges to create a robust wargaming simulation system that requires minimal resources and possesses a strong rule system. More importantly, although this is his first game, Lessin is a former American Revolutionary War reenactor and hired many other reenactors as consultants in addition to creating this game. Besides enjoyable gameplay, you can expect a somewhat realistic system.

Anybody interested in basic but fun hypothetical adversarial war games is advised to purchase this game. While it might seem a bit open-ended at first, after a conservative initial playthrough, players will quickly grasp the mechanics and be able to strategize!