Save the Nizam!
A 'Soldier Raj' Small-Power Variant
By Doug McNair
July 2006

The Nizam of Hyderabad is one of my favorite characters in Soldier Raj. The perennial fly in the ointment for the plans of empires, his tiny but well-fortified kingdom is smack in the middle of India where it can attack or protect almost any other Major Power’s territory at a moment’s notice. So even though he never has more than a few armies to his name, his strategic location gives him negotiating power and lets him demand concessions of land and money from allies at crucial moments.

But as fun as the Nizam is to play, long wars of attrition can put him and other small powers like Mysore and France at a disadvantage in some Soldier Raj scenarios. Other things being equal, a power that starts with a large army and a high level of domestic Money and Manpower production will tend to grind down and destroy smaller powers in scenarios that take place over several years. A smaller power (with its smaller treasury) won’t be able to pay for building armies as often as the larger powers.

And while smaller powers can ally against the larger powers to equal them in the field, each of the smaller powers has to pay money every time it attacks in concert with its allies. The smaller powers will run out of money before the larger power does. And a power with no money will see its armies deteriorate due to lack of maintenance funds and eventually be destroyed.

The original game in the Soldier series, Soldier Kings, solves this problem with an automatic victory rule, which lets any power win the game as soon as it conquers enough territory to reach a pre-designated victory point threshold. But the long-term nature of the struggle for India makes the use of such an automatic victory rule historically inappropriate in most Soldier Raj scenarios.

To survive a long war of attrition and have a shot at victory, the Nizam and other smaller powers must have maximum freedom to do what every small power through history has done to cripple larger powers: Spy, threaten, bribe and intrigue.

The Soldier series event cards bring into the game the politics, intrigue, espionage, human error, and plain old random chaos which drive the outcome of wars just as much as the generals on the battlefield do.To give smaller powers in longer wars the non-military ammunition they need to win, I suggest setting the number of event cards drawn per Major Power in each Event Card Phase as follows:

This lets the smaller powers mess up the larger powers’ plans and efforts with more frequent event card play, and allows them to pull non-military rabbits out of hats to give themselves advantages in crucial situations. It also gives them more negotiating leverage with the larger powers during the Diplomacy Phase. (“Surely you don’t want me to play this one. . . .”)

Players should only use this alternative event card draw in Soldier Raj Scenarios 1 through 4. The other scenarios are either short enough not to be wars of attrition, or use the Automatic Victory rule.

Enjoy!

Click here to buy Soldier Raj right now!