The Cousins’ War Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review The Cousins War, an area control board game published by Surprised Stare Games. In The Cousins War, two players are fighting against each other in this abstraction of The War of the Roses.

I’m still very early into my experiences with war games and campaign games but knew that I wanted to dip my toes into a game that offered a little more complexity than just “dudes on a map”. When this game claimed a short gameplay investment as well as a theme with historical ties to the 15th century in England, I decided to take the leap.

The Cousins’ War is an area influence campaign game for 2 players that takes about 30 minutes to play.

Since the game is based on the Wars of the Roses, there are two sides: white for York and red for Lancaster. Each side starts with one cube in each of the three regions, and after each player picks a side they take 2 of their cubes from the supply to create their reserve. Six action cards are dealt at random to each player, with the rest of the cards removed for that round.

The game takes place over a maximum of 5 rounds, with the possibility of ending earlier should certain victory conditions be met. Each round consists of 7 phases: Deal Action cards, Swap 1 Action card with an opponent, Determine Battlefield, Play Action cards, Resolve battle, Victory check, and Clean-up.

To determine the Battlefield, both players simultaneously pick a Battle card from their hand and reveal the chosen cards. The battle card with the earliest year is the selected Battlefield for the round, which also shows how many cubes each player must add to their side.

Players then take turns playing action cards which can trigger events or provide actions like Gain troops, Add troops, Move influence, Place