LEGENDS OF SLEEPY HOLLOW

Gothic Americana ready to haunt your kitchen table

Legends of Sleepy Hollow comes in a large box. Dauntingly large, some might say, but unlike other shelf-space dominating titles – it's not so crammed that it needs a “how to fit the lid back on” section in the manual.

That size is explained by the inclusion of large, colourful playboards, custom dice, a bucket-load of detailed miniatures and… cards. Lots and lots of cards. Maybe not as many a behemoth like 7th Continent, but far more than most games, all split into multiple intriguing decks – each emblazoned with warnings not to sneak a peek, for fear of engendering “the Curse of Sleepy Hollow”.

Legends of Sleepy Hollow is a campaign game based on the classic American story by Irving Washington, a gothic tale of headless horsemen at Halloween. The campaign element means that your decisions and progress carry along through an arc of ten story chapters. It has legacy elements, in that there are sealed boxes and previously unseen packs of cards revealed along the way, but unlike draw-on-the-boardand-mount-it-over-your-fireplace Pandemic Legacy, you can reset to zero at the end, and repeat the journey without having to replace anything.

Those decisions you make? They have weight. Without spoiling the story, the Legends – the characters controlled by players – gain items, outfits, skills and relics that alter the mechanics of future play. At points you have the option of selecting a life path for each character, which further defines current and future options for you. Some linear games can offer insubstantial choices; but the decisions in Legends of Sleepy Hollow have a real tactical and thematic impact on the game; my gaming groups found they added a very satisfying conversation at the end of a chapter, reflecting and remedying the strengths & weaknesses of our group play.

The action economy in Legends of

Sleepy Hollow involves basic activities and more advanced options added through skill cards. Each needs an action token to activate, but some events and attacks add ‘fear’ tokens to your pool. These can be used to activate some actions, but they also delay how long it is until you can refresh and use your best skills again. Plus, reach ten fear and your Legend runs away, losing the chapter for everyone. The balance of courting fear but also delaying your most powerful skills is part of the rich tactical dilemma.

The production quality is reasonable, although maybe not as high as you’d hope at this price point. One of our scenario setups was made significantly harder by a cutting error on the play boards, meaning we weren’t sure where room boundaries lay, and missed a useful staircase. The boards are a touch too dark too, even if the aesthetics are absolutely on point for the gothic Americana of the theme. Some of the art is beautiful; one chapter has an area with wooden boards dappled with sunlight which instantly evoked in me memories of a hot, humid, US summer trip many years ago.

One aspect I loved was the personalised character dashboards. Each character has one, with indented sections for items or upgrades, and for holding action tokens during play. They are lovely, adding theme and aiding the mechanics of the game and setup.

My main other quibble is the life dials on models. Each Legend and monster has a numbered cardboard disc incorporated into the base. Fundamentally a great idea – tracking hit points on 10 identical models can be a nightmare in other games – but the dials are too loose. They fall apart when packed away, and you have to be super careful when moving models as dials bounce around. I fixed mine with a little nub of Blu Tack to gum each one up, but ideally you shouldn’t need to employ such a hack out of the box.

Overall, the crescendo of complexity is close to perfect in Legends of Sleepy Hollow. Ten chapters is the perfect amount for a committed play group to blast through in a few weeks. Later episodes are punishingly difficult, but the game has revealed itself as a tight tactical puzzle at that point, requiring players to flex every tiny advantage on their Player’s dashboard in order for the Legends to win out.

Ah, history-themed games. That phrase is either a trigger for you to run a mile, or sit down with a nice beverage to read and relish the historical notes compiled by the designer. The Shores of Tripoli is one such game – and if you’re familiar with the story of the USA’s post revolution problems with, er, losing entire merchant ships to pirates – you’ll be able to pick this up with a quick skim of the rules. For the rest of us, it’s a surprisingly simple system of ‘do what the card says’ for event cards, or discard cards for generic actions. Generally the US player is attempting to take Tripoli and keep hold of all their gold without losing too many ships. The Tripolitania and Allies desire the opposite.

This is all handled by generating boats at ports, and moving them into different blockading positions for the US player. Eventually they’ll also mount a land war and the final invasion of Tripoli itself (a battle that has to be resolved to the death). The Tripolitania and co will be attempting

pirate raids to gather all twelve of the US player’s coins (this is exactly as fun to pull off as it sounds) or to sink four of the American Frigates. It’s all very simply and deftly managed with port zones (for attacking and recruiting to) and patrol zones (for trying to sink pirates as they head out to the floating Uncle Sam ATM), movement between them is limited by the number of vessels, not distance, making it a very free-flowing game. Had this been an abstract we’d have given it the ‘asymmetrical chess’ nod.

It might be that this reviewer has developed a soft spot for simply resolved dice combat, but there’s oars of it here. Roll sixes to destroy or damage ships (the Frigates roll two dice and have two health) – and if the pirate player sinks one in a single combat round, that gets returned to their side of the board like a little hunting trophy. Is this combat particularly complex or rewarding beyond the fun of randomly bashing against one another – not really – but we cannot deny we had a really good time with it.

The power curve of the game offers interesting choices. It’s very frustrating for the US player early on, but as each year progresses and they get reinforcement frigates, they become more and more powerful. The early race to make protecting the ships unprofitable from the Tripolitania player gives way to attempting to survive, as combat becomes more central to the game. This balance makes for increasingly fraught turns towards the end as one player tries to hold on under the barrage of the other. The (almost always) guaranteed dramatic finale of the game is also welcome.

And with all of that, it’s excellent – a great entry into the world of cardbased historical games, even if the subject doesn’t yet interest you, yet.

CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT

❚ WE SAY

A great way into wargames with an interesting naval twist. For those with an interest in the period this should be an immediate purchase.

◗ Six-piece kingdom

board

◗ Magnetic market

wheel

◗ 4 Wagon boards

◗ 4 Player screens

◗ 4 Player aids

◗ 4 Wagon pawns

◗ 4 Prestige markers

◗ 48 Hero cards

◗ 22 Companion cards

◗ 7 Steed cards

◗ 19 Deed cards

◗ 26 Event cards

◗ 30 Commission tiles

◗ 6 Wagon upgrade

tiles

◗ 5 Double-sided

building tiles

◗ 84 Goods tiles

◗ Dark Market

marker

◗ Ruins of Yin marker

◗ 52 Tokens

◗ 48 Custom dice

◗ 60 Coins

◗ 28 Solo play

components

◗ 140 Cards

◗ 6 Player boards

◗ 24 Timer tokens in

6 colours

◗ 24 HP tokens

◗ 12 ATP tokens

◗ 2 Dice

◗ 122 Cards

◗ 50+ Tokens

◗ 4 Scoring dials

◗ 3 Finance Boards

◗ 120 Cards

◗ 48 Cardboard

Counters

◗ 45 Agents

◗ 48 Meeples

◗ Elephant Token

◗ 9 Purple Ship Tokens

◗ 21 Disks

◗ 4 Dice

◗ 3 Cubes