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The heat and noise is almost unbearable. At times, you envy the shock troopers flanking your Mark 2 Landship in No-Man’s Land – they may have a life expectancy measured in minutes, but at least they get some fresh air. No-Man’s Land is right, though – no regular man could survive in the apocalyptic quagmire that was the woods and fields of Flanders. Now it is the realm of our clunky Landships and the Kaiser’s mechs, man-made golems and mechanical spiders wielding field artillery like a Tommy wields a Browning.
As you grind over a bank of earth, you glimpse the tell-tale exhaust plume on the horizon of a mech before you tip over the crest. From your position as commander, you can’t quite make out what it is as your viewport is still obscured by the endless brown of the landscape, but your gunner has a better, if more precarious view. “Badger at two o’clock, looks like it’s got an entourage. Fragmentation or Hi-Ex, commander?” Mow the lawn or cull the Badger? If you didn’t know better, you could swear you heard the sound of rolling dice…
Pocket Landship first appeared as a print and play in those halcyon days of 2017, when we thought solo games were just an interesting quirk as we’d never be without the opportunity to get people around a table. In 2019 it reappeared as a portentous Kickstarter and was quickly snapped up by anyone who had played and loved the rudimentary print and play. Roll on 2022/2023 and here comes another Kickstarter, ready to be swept up an eager crowd (including myself) of converted solo players. So: what’s it all about, Alfie?
Tanks For The Memories
Pocket Landship is a solo/two player dice-and-card-based shooty-shooty game. You pitch your Landship (that’s what Tanks were originally going to be called, but due to the sneaky tactic of labelling the shipping crates containing said Landships as ‘water tanks’… the name ‘Tanks’ kinda stuck) against the various mechs, artillery, infantry and obstacles that the enemy are throwing at you. Winner is the last peep or peeps standing.
The initial print and play only had one set of cards for your Landship , only nine enemies to face and instructions for just one player – more has been added, but the set-up of the full game remains the same. The player chooses three different components for their Landship: hull, cannon and sponsons/shock troopers (sponsons are the bits on the side of tanks that have cannons or machine guns in them – you won’t see them on modern tanks).
In Pocket Landship, each component has a starting HP (hit point) number on the card that will be tracked using a D6 during the course of the game – when that component takes damage, the dice goes down until it reaches zero. At this point, the component has been destroyed and cannot be used anymore. If the cannon or hull is destroyed, it’s game over – a Landship without a cannon is basically a tractor and a Landship without a hull is basically… wreckage; sponsons and shock troopers are disposable as your Landship can keep going without them (harsh). As well as components, you can also choose a driver and/or a commander, which have a one-off ability/effect that can turn the tide of the battle.
Once the player has assembled their Landship and/or commander/driver, they then choose 6 – 9 cards for their opponent and place them face down in rows of three in front of their Landship. These opponent cards can be infantry – nippy but often pretty weak, artillery – heavy hitting but work better when supported by infantry, mechs – all round dealers of destruction that have a knack of repairing themselves at the least opportune moments, and obstacles – minefields and the like that, rather than be destroyed, count down to their destruction and cause mayhem in the meantime. These also have HP (apart from obstacles) that must be whittled away by your assault. At first, only the front line is revealed, but as actions are taken or as units are destroyed, other cards are be revealed to take their place.
Cannon Fodder
The player and opponent take it in turns to attack each other, with the player going first. In the player’s turn, they will roll three dice and assign them to each of their still functioning components (if your sponsons/shock troopers are done for, you only get to assign two). Each component will have six possible action options, ranging from going into defensive mode through repairing components to full out unleashing the frag shells.
The hulls rarely have offensive actions, but can add extra dice to rolls for extra options or modify other rolls. Cannons and sponsons are more about dishing out the damage, but do have repair options and of course all three can swing and miss. Once the three actions are chosen, they can be done in any order to either yourself or the opponent (repair and defence to you; fiery mayhem to your opponent). If any mechs are reduced to zero HP, you can take that dice and place it on the advantage deck (if you have decided to play the advantage deck). Once there are two dice there, they can be discarded to reveal two advantage cards – choose one of them to give you an edge over your opponent.
The opponent also rolls three dice (or as many dice as they have units if less than three units remain). These are assigned smallest to largest from left to right on their frontline units and will activate the actions according to their value. These can be straight forward attacks to different components of your Landship, moves either left, right or into the row behind, repairs or misfires. When one of the units move, if it hasn’t taken its action yet, it will take its dice and action with it.
Play in Pocket Landship will alternate between the player and the opponent until either the player’s cannon or hull has been destroyed (you lose!) or the opponent has been reduced to three units. At this point, neither party can heal anymore, so make sure you go into the final assault with as much HP as possible. Knock out the remaining units and you win - ahoy, land sailor!
Kickstarter My Heart
Now I realise it might be a hard sell for a game that you can get for free, but there are a lot of good reasons for buying this little ol’ game (and it is little… cute almost). First off, the presentation is wonderful. Sure, your Landship cards look pretty much the same regardless of which hull, cannon or spanson you choose (I know they all do the same thing, but there could be just a wee bit of variation on the art) but everything else is just gorgeous. The dice look good enough to eat (don’t eat the dice) the illustrations on the box are fabulous and the opponent cards are small but delightful (and possibly deserving a lawsuit from Jakub Rozalski, as one of my fellow bloggers pointed out). The backs of the individual decks look great too (an underrated but welcome benefit as you spend most of the time looking at the backs of cards), but the commanders and drivers… these are the jewel in the crown.
Each driver and commander may only have a one-time action, but each face has its own character and probably a backstory (the backstory mostly being ‘I went all in on Kickstarter’) – I only wish they played a bigger part in the game because… well, just look at that face.
The physical copy also gives you the aforementioned drivers and commanders, missing from the print and play, more enemies to throw at yourself, more Landship and shock trooper options and the advantage cards. The instruction booklet, which is well-designed and easy to follow, also includes a series of single-player scenarios and rule variations including a two-player co-op variation (the expansion, No Man’s Land, also has a two-player competitive variation, more bits for your tank, more drivers and commanders, more enemies, another scenario with a sorta Santa theme and a Weather card/dice, which throws meteorological chaos into the mix). To sum up: the print and play is the Costco taster; the Kickstarter is the 20-inch Mega Meat Feaster. Only very small and portable.
Fight Or Flight?
Sometimes there are times when you want to be alone and still want to play. And on some of these days, you don’t want to spend an age setting up automata, boards and dummy players. One Deck Dungeon has usually been my go-to on these days, but this can take more time than I actually have. Pocket Landship may just give this some competition.
Now despite the artwork, this is not Scythe; this is a nice, quick dice throwing game with some very nice artwork and not too table hungry. It’s the sort of thing you can take out in a pub whilst you’re having a swift pint… or two, and want to do a bit of gaming that doesn’t involve looking at your phone. It sets up quick, has a variable difficulty level and even a bit of a campaign with the scenarios. It can feel a bit static, sort of like a Space Invaders where the base can’t move, and it is not a very complex game, but it is quick and fun but not so quick that it’s not worth setting up. Hey, with the two-player mode (and two-player competitive mode included with the expansion) you can even play with a friend if the conversation dries up. So if you like the social experience of a board game without the social experience and you really are pressed for time and space, Pocket Landship will do you very nicely, thank you very much!
That concludes our thoughts on Pocket Landship. Do you agree? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames. To buy Pocket Landship today click here!
