Battle Line

Battle Line – recently reprinted as Schotten Totten – is a game for two that moves fast and is not too complicated for younger players to pick up.

There are nine flags (or pawns) placed in the middle of the playing area, and players in turn play cards to the flags in order to do battle there. The goal is to capture either three adjacent flags or five in total. On their turn the players lay a Troop Card (they begin the game with seven) next to any flag they choose, and when they have laid three cards next to any particular flag they can add no more. Once both players have laid three cards next to the same flag, that flag is instantly awarded to the winner.

How the flags are scored and awarded will be familiar to anyone who has played poker. If both players have three random cards of different colours, then the highest numeric value wins. But three cards that have numbers running consecutively will be beat three cards that don’t, three cards of the same colour will beat a run of cards, three cards of a kind will beat three cards of a colour, and the best hand of all will be a run of cards of the same colour (a straight flush in poker parlance). If both players have the same type of hand, the highest number value wins. If they still tie, then the last player to play a card to the flag is defeated.

Added to this battle of troops are the Tactics cards. After playing a card on their turn a player can pick up another Troop Card, or they can take a Tactics card instead. The tactics cards do various things that ‘break’ the standard rules, so they can be advantageous. The key thing to to remember is that you can only ever play one more tactic card than your opponent has, so stockpiling them isn’t a viable strategy.

Battle Line is a fun game of combat that allows for strategy and suits older children and adults.