by Brant Guillory, 18 May 2023 ~ #UnboxingDay
Long (loooooong)-awaited and finally here, We Are Coming Nineveh started out with some of Professor Rex Brynen’s students at McGill University up in Canada, and after undergoing some light revisions and a bunch of playtesting, was picked up for publication by NUTS! over in France. The US distribution of the English-language version is being handled by Ares, and it’s about damned time it got here!
click images to enlarge
Mandatory outside of the box photos. The yellow & black “caution” bar gets repeated throughout the graphic styling
Take the books out and there’s still a hefty amount of weight in here. Why?
There’s a full mounted map in here, with everything else. And it’s big, too.
That map takes up a pretty good chunk of my table. Like all new maps, it still need a little flattening, but that’ll come.
The games comes with blocks, not stickers, so there’s a bunch of prep work you need to do before playing. Some of the blocks are not square, either, so you’ve got some different shapes to work with. There is one small sheet of some admin counters that are normal punchboard cardstock.
There are 2 books – rules and design notes. The rules include several well-illustrated examples of play, and (interestingly) the component listing at the end of the book instead of up front where you normally find it. The design notes include a variety of historical background info on the specific fight in this game, as many players are likely more familiar with the broader conflict and not the local details here.
Hey, I recognize a bunch of those names!
The map details include well-defined areas over a modified version of what looks like an older satellite map. The player tracks are nice, too. The slides for “casualties” and “collateral damage” are fantastic in the way they show increasing intensity as they scale up.
There are several decks of cards in here: priorities for both Daesh and the ISF, and separate core/additional unit decks, plus capabilities for each. There’s another “military council” deck, plus an event deck whose card backs have either “1” or “6” on each.
The priority cards are identical for each side. While the units/capability card types are the same, the specific contents on each side are different. The events are all over the place, with some duplicates in the deck. The military council cards all have different options on them. Some have 2, others have 3.
This one is likely to hit the table soon, once the current fascination with Littoral Commander wears off, and then it’s off to the Middle East for the fighting in Mosul.
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With trembling hands and eager zeal,
I unbox a wargame with great appeal.
Countless components I behold,
Strategies yet to unfold,
In this box, a battlefield surreal!
