Blitz: Speed War Will Provide Fast and Fun Tabletop Strategy

There is a good deal of overlap between tabletop gamers and electronic strategy gamers, and we see this with the success of Fantasy Flight Games’ board game adaptations of Sid Meier’s Civilization video game series—a series that itself pays homage to the similarly named 1980 board game by Francis Tresham. The Fantasy Flight adaptations are seamless because their electronic source material is turn-based, a trait common to nearly all tabletop strategy games.

However, when it comes to real-time strategy (RTS) electronic games like StarCraft and Command & Conquer, there is a barrier to translating them faithfully into tabletop form. Without a computer interface between the player and their opponent(s), there is little means to prevent cheating, even of the unintentional variety, when the game is absent a turn structure and everyone is doing things at the same time. While many RTS series have been adapted into board games, the real-time element is usually simulated (or abandoned altogether) rather than realized directly. But in the age of smartphones, it has become possible for tabletop designers to accomplish the latter by developing companion apps for use with their games, and this is the route Sinewave Games is taking in its design of Blitz: Speed War, currently funding through Kickstarter.

In Blitz, adjacent units can be moved as a group with a single “move” action. Sinewave Games

Blitz: Speed War is a print-and-play game for which backers will receive digital files, in either 2D or 3D form. The art direction in both versions is dessert-themed, with machines made of macarons and wafer cookies waging war on hexagonal battlefields coated with chocolate, icing, and other themes if the corresponding stretch goal is met. I adore this whimsical departure from the often serious tone of strategy games, though I imagine it was done to make the game more family friendly and accessible—likewise for the extreme simplicity of the rules, which nevertheless offer plenty of strategic depth. To move units around the board and attack opponents’ units, players hit buttons on the companion app’s display, which then begin a cool-down animation until they can be used again. Units can either be moved individually or as a group of adjacent units.

The game’s modest funding goal of $500 has already been reached at the time of this writing, with a number of planned stretch goals that are yet to be unlocked. Though the print-and-play nature of Blitz: Speed War may put off many tabletop gamers who might otherwise back the project (I will admit it had this impact on me at first), the fact that the game consists of PDF files rather than a physically manufactured game means that those of us who have been burned by past crowdfunding projects we’ve backed and never gotten to see completed can rest assured that this will not be the case here. Though a 2D version is available, if you have access to a 3D printer—whether your own, a friend’s, or a public device—I would strongly recommend going for that option, as I imagine the tactile element of unit miniatures will be easier to manage in real-time than paper-on-cardboard.

Blitz: Speed War is open for backing until September 25, 2020.

Sinewave Games