Days Of Ire Review

Budapest, 1956. After a decade of communist rule, waves of protests throughout eastern Europe are showing fault lines in the soviet bloc. When the troops march into Budapest to quell the protests, a violent response is provoked… and the Days of Ire begin.

Players: 1-4
Time: 60-90 mins
Ages: 10+
Designer: Katalin Nimmerfroh, Dávid Turczi, Mihály Vincze
Artist: Sami Laakso, Kwanchai Moriya, Katalin Nimmerfroh
Publisher: Cloud Island, Korona Games, Ludonova, Mr. B Games

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Days of Ire is a cooperative or one-verses-many or solo game of rebellion, resistance, and molotov cocktails that feels very different to any cooperative game I have played before. Not just because of the subject matter, which is itself unique, but also because of the mechanics and, through those, the arc of the game. But perhaps we should expect nothing less when it comes, in part, from designer Dávid Turczi of Anachrony fame and the upcoming Petrichor. Anyone making a game about clouds is bound to come up with something different!

Days of Ire feels inspired by card driven war games, at least in part because you are at war, on a tactical level, battling secret police militia and soviet tanks across the streets of Budapest. Also because it’s card driven, but you know, that’s probably less surprising. It is much simpler than any ‘classical’ war game though. While some of your player cards will offer actions, the majority provide symbols that you’ll be collecting to overcome the various challenges you face. On the tactical side, you mainly have one character each to control, like many common co-ops. But as the game goes on you’ll gather supporters who provide extra abilities and symbols to complement the cards in your hand. It is at once classic co-op and simplified war game without falling one way or the other.

Your aim is to, firstly, survive the 7 days until a ceasefire is declared, and secondly, to have successfully resolved enough of the many Event cards that are regularly added to the board. You also need to keep your morale high, to maintain a good supply of cards (running a revolution is expensive after all), to try and keep the populace supporting you and not your opponent, and to prevent the soviet forces from overrunning the city. Though all of these objectives interrelate in a natural way.

Resolving the historical events will reward you and is often the only way to raise your support (eg… pulling down Stalin’s statue). Destroying a tank boosts morale, which gets you more cards per round which gives you more options for resolving events. The militia forces will shoot you and your allies if you don’t fight them off. Yet you also need to find time to rally your own troops and get them into position to help you resolve events. This, again, isn’t trivial as moving around gets expensive and even dangerous if the tanks are out in force.

It’s your classic balancing act of immediate concerns vs long term plans. Yet there is a twist to this tale. Your objective is to end the final round with 4 or fewer events on the board, but every round will see more being added. It typically costs more resources to complete an objective than you ever gain in benefit from that completion. Furthermore, Events don’t stack, so new Events will tend to replace older ones. Which puts you in the slightly strange position of not wanting to do the thing you’ve been told to do, for most of the game, and then rushing to complete enough objectives in the final rounds. It creates a weird-feeling arc to the game, where you are entirely building up to the final round, improving your “economy” of allies and cards while treading water on the ostensibly main objectives.

This is an intentional feature. If you try to chase all the events happening across Budapest you will lose, you simply do not have the resources. If you ignore them completely, you will probably also lose as you reach the end of the week with insufficient time and resources to win. You need to act just enough to keep your morale and support high, while conserving resources and rallying your supporters.

While holding the showdown for the end of the game guarantees a big finale, and thanks to the stacked Event deck this is well scripted, yet still varied, it also takes out a fair amount of tension from the early game. While the tanks and militia present a threat, it is a mostly predictable one. For the cooperative and solo modes there is a deck of headline cards to represent the soviets and their attempts to control the narrative. It is a cleverly designed AI, but fails to ever feel as threatening as the infection deck of Pandemic, say. But these concerns, that limited tension, is very effectively dealt with in the one-vs-many mode.

In this mode, one player is given control of the military and economic might of the soviet forces. Appropriately enough this feels even closer to a card driven war game, as each round begins with the soviet player using headline cards in much the same way as Twilight Struggle and others: for the given action or for resources to bring events on to the board. But depending on support levels, favourable headlines for one side or the other will trigger. I’ve found as both sides you fear what exactly your opponents will do. The militia, in the hands of a human general, become unpredictable and terrifying, yet as the soviets you feel forever pressured by the rebels and managing the headlines. Neither side feels like they are in control and that is perfect for this kind of game.

Frustratingly the turn structure of Days of Ire does it no favours when it comes to the usual issue of one-vs-many games: down time for the many. Here the soviet player gets two turns a round: the complicated process of playing headline cards and buying Events at the start of the round, and the tactical considerations of militia movement at the end. Both of these phases are important with generally lots to consider. They therefore take a little while, so although their equivalent phases in the cooperative game are pretty quick, here the revolutionaries are left twiddling their thumbs with little planning they can do. This is compounded by how few actions each revolutionary can perform. A single partisan gets 4 actions, but the action count is merely spread across all players with more revolutionaries on that side. This is as much a problem for the cooperative mode as it is for the other, players might find the only thing they do in a round is activating one of the allies. It’s for this reason Days of Ire is a rare game that plays much better at lower player counts than at its max of 4.

I have a fair few criticisms of the play experience of Days of Ire, but one thing I don’t have a criticism of is its wonderful attention to the history. No surprise as the designers are Hungarian. But the game goes to great lengths to highlight both the real events that occurred and the people who were involved in them. Your allies are all named characters, the events really happened, and the rulebook is full of wonderful historical details. For instance, there are references in-game to assistance given by the Polish, which was so readily given (the rulebook reveals) because the Hungarians had supplied aid during the German invasion 17 years before. It’s details like this that really breath life into the game. Sure, it’s not the first historical game, but I’ve not seen one that ever felt so personal.

For that reason I feel like Days of Ire is a game that everyone owes it to themselves to experience. This is one of many world events that the majority of people in the West simply won’t know anything about. There is an inherent value in a game that examines such a theme and even more in one that does so in such a unique and thematic way. While I do find that the overarching structure of the game let’s it down somewhat, the turn by turn decisions are still interesting, challenging and unlike most other co-ops I’ve played. It’ll be staying in my collection for the time being!

 

Rating: Days of Ire Lives

 

Days of Ire and its thematic sequel, Nights of Fire, are on Kickstarter now!

For a more complete overview of how to play Days of Ire, check out Gaming Rules! video.