About this product

The Cousins' War is a 2-player tactical card-game where you must fight to gain control of England during the Wars of the Roses.

The Wars of the Roses were fought between the Houses of York and Lancaster for over three decades during the 15th century in England. The houses were both branches of the royal family, therefore the Wars were originally known as "The Cousins' War".

Each player represents one of the houses as they fight battles and gain influence to control England. The Cousins' War is played over a maximum of five rounds, with each round representing between five and ten years of the conflict. Each round involves gaining influence across England and preparing for a climactic battle. In each round, the players decide where the current battlefield will be, playing action cards to deploy troops to the battlefield, while also increasing or decreasing their influence in the regions, after which they fight. Players resolve the battle by engaging in bluff and counter-bluff, using three dice, until only one side has troops remaining on the field. Winning the battle helps to consolidate your house's influence on the board. You win The Cousins' War either by dominating all the regions of England or by controlling the most regions at the end of the fifth round.

Pocket Campaigns games: All the games in the Pocket Campaigns series have relatively few components, typically cards, wooden pieces, perhaps a board, and a rulebook. The games are designed to take about 30 to 45 minutes to play. They are within the hobby games market, not family games, and they have significant depth of strategy and/ortactics for such a small package.

• Designer: David J Mortimer
• Players: 2
• Duration: 30 minutes
• Age: 12+
• Publisher: Surprised Stare Games

About this product

The Ming Voyages

"It was a great pleasure working on this follow up to The Cousins'War with Alan whose experience from having designed Confucius was a great help in the design process,” said co-designer David J Mortimer. “Whilst this has a similar feel to The Cousins' War this is a much slicker and asymmetrical game. And it has a strong solo version to boot!”

Aim of the Game: One player is the Ming Emperor trying to complete 7 Treasure Voyages as well as protecting the Chinese

Borderlands from invading barbarians. The other player controls 3 disparate barbarian factions who are trying to settle on the Borderlands with China.

Pocket Campaigns games: All the games in the Pocket Campaigns series have relatively few components, typically cards, wooden pieces, perhaps a board, and a rulebook. The games are designed to take about 30 to 45 minutes to play. They are within the hobby games market, not family games, and they have significant depth of strategy and/or tactics for such a small package.

Components:

• Game board
• 54 cards
• 30 cubes
• 5 discs
• 7 junks
• 6 6-sided dice
• Rules

• Designers: David J Mortimer and Alan Paull
• Players: 1 - 2
• Duration: 30 minutes
• Age: 12+
• Publisher: Surprised Stare Games

About this product

The March of Progress

“The idea for the game came to me when I was reading Clausewitz’s On War,” said designer Alan Paull. “Back in 2016, I thought ‘what about a microgame that would attempt to show abstract strategy, and that might also introduce variants to show the limitations of more realistic warfare, such as 18th century ‘limited’ war, Napoleonic wars, even WW1 and WW2?’ The March of Progress was the result.”

The March of Progress has an introductory scenario to set out the core rules, and a further 4 historical scenarios that change the set-up and tweak the rules to give a flavour of strategy in different time periods. The scenarios create a varied and challenging 2-player game.

Aim of the game: Players compete to control countries through the play of Action cards, in order to generate VPs during scoring. The winner is the player with most VPs at the end of the game.

Pocket Campaigns games: All the games in the Pocket Campaigns series have relatively few components, typically cards, wooden pieces, perhaps a board, and a rulebook. The games are designed to take about 30 to 45 minutes to play. They are within the hobby games market, not family games, and they have significant depth of strategy and/or tactics for such a small package.

Components:

• 50 cards
• 18 cubes
• 6 army meeples
• 6 6-sided dice
• Rules and scenarios

• Designer: Alan Paull
• Players: 2
• Duration: 30 minutes
• Age: 12+
• Publisher: Surprised Stare Games