First off – I want to state that by no means is this a war game – despite the context of the title. If you are looking for a game that feels like a war game – you need to look somewhere else. In this Battle Line game review, we take a look at a strategic card game that will require careful thought, deduction, and a little luck of the draw to win. The game is a 2 player only game that can be finished within 30 minutes. It is a fun game that still tops “Best 2 Player Game” charts for over 20 years. It sits within the top 200 strategic games on Board Game Geek. That puts it within the top 10% for strategic games.

Recently the game has been redesigned into Battle Line: Medieval. While the original art has changed, the base gameplay is identical.

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How The Game Feels

Over the course of the game, you are trying to capture pegs (Battlefields cards in Medieval edition). The pegs are put setup into a row of 9 between the two players. If you can capture 3 adjacent pegs or 5 total pegs – you’ve won the game. The way to capture a peg is by creating a three-card formation that “outranks” your opponent’s three-card formation. There are 6 different colors (flags), each having a card ranking from 1-10. The text on the cards really doesn’t matter and is there for flavor only. Each turn you must play a card from your hand to a peg. With only one card to play per round, you find yourself carefully considering where the best play will be. At the beginning of the game, you only have your immediate starting hand of 7 cards to formulate some idea of what types of formations you might shoot for. As the game progresses, and as more cards are revealed, providing very valuable information, you find yourself constantly re-evaluating or reaffirming what the best course of action is.

Some turns will be very easy. The cards in your hand and the cards you end up drawing will seems to line up and affirm your initial plans. Other times you’ll cringe when you see your opponent play the card you need – or worse see, that the formations they are forming will defeat yours if they are able to complete it. You’ll need to either see if you switch to a new formation, quickly play cards into that formation or simply abandon all plans having to do with that peg.

You face decisions such as –

• Do I break this pair and instead of going for three of a kind, try to get a straight flush?
• Should I play my second card to a peg – essentially declaring how strong my final formation will be?
• Do I play a card to a peg I know I can’t win because I just want to see what my next card will be before I commit to another strategy?

What A Turn Is Like

The gameplay is extremely straightforward. Select one card to play on to a single peg. You are hoping to create a 3-card formation that will ultimately defeat your opponents. Once you play a card to a peg, you may not move that card elsewhere. After playing, draw a card to refill your hand. The three-card combinations are shown in the image below. The Wedge is the strongest which defeats all below it. The Square loses to the Wedge but will beat all formations below it. So on and so forth. (Anyone who plays poker will quickly identify with these formations).

Now while how to play a turn is seemingly straightforward. Where to play that single card is entirely not.

A peg can be won in one of two ways. Once a peg is claimed, no further cards to be played to that location. Even if one of the players haven’t played a total of three cards there.

First Way: After each player has played three cards each to a peg – determine which 3 card fomentation wins, and award the peg to the winning combination.

In the event of two types of formations of the same type, for instance, two “columns” you go by the highest card to determine its strength. In this case, if there were two “columns” one with 8 as its highest card and one with 6 as its highest card – the one showing the 8 would win. There is never a “tie.” where a peg isn’t claimed. If a player would play a card to a peg that would match card for card strength – then whoever had the first 3-card formation played would win the showdown.

Second Way: If, after having completed a 3-card combination on your own side, you can prove your opponent can not produce a winning three-card combination, you may claim that peg.

For instance – Let’s say I have played to a peg a “Square” of 9-9-9 and my opponent has shown 10-10 to this point. If my opponent plays a 10 to their other two 10s completing the three-card formation then their 10-high square would defeat my 9-high square. Let’s say that there are 3 other 10s displayed at the other pegs. That means out of the 6 – 10’s available there are 5 that are visible. This means that should I, or for that matter, my opponent, play another 10 (other than on the pair) then I would win the peg. I can do this because I can now prove there is no way my opponent can win that formation. There is not another 10 they can play to win it.

I find the second way to win to be very rewarding. It is also an integral part of the strategy. A player may play a card out of their hand somewhat sub-optimally just to prove that they will win a contested peg. Besides the advantage of winning a peg – you also deny a critical spot for your opponent to play cards. Having one less spot to play cards can be crucial, because now as the player with fewer spots to play, players may have to play a card in a spot you really didn’t want to.

Learning The Game

Battle Line is very easy to learn. I’ve laid out about 80% of the gameplay above. As mentioned anyone who has played poker will intuitively know the formation rankings and how one formation will outrank another. If you printed the reference card below, you will have a handy cheat sheet for formation rankings and how to win a peg. However, I would suspect after one or two plays this won’t be necessary.

Replay Value

Battle Line, once comfortably learned, can be played under 30 minutes a match. It’s a good “Best 2 out of 3” type of game. I don’t see it as a game that you’d play multiple times in a row like Dominion or Star Realms. It is a good game to have a glass of wine or bottle of beer and play with your partner or friend.

I haven’t gotten to it yet but the game does come with 2 variants you can add. The game comes with a 10-card deck of “Tactic Cards” you can choose to put in play. The Tactic Cards become a second deck you can draw from in lieu of the standard “Troop” deck. The cards perform a variety of different things. Some essentially are wild cards, some allow you to mess with your opponent’s layout, and some may actually let you move cards around. I won’t go into each one.

The Tactic cards certainly do add some variety to the game. At the same time – they detract from makes this game a really good game in the first place. When the Tactic Deck is in use, it makes it very hard to “prove” your formation will be best – based on the other cards in play. It really amps up the luck factor and lowers the strategic element of the game. I hardly ever use the Tactic cards when I play Battle Line. I really don’t think they are needed.

The second variant is unique to the Medieval edition. As mentioned in lieu of pegs there are now “Battlefield” cards. Well, the Battlefield cards are two-sided. One is generic and really does just flat out replace the peg. However, on the opposite side, there is the “Terrain” variant. This does add a bit of wrinkle, as each card may award the winner one perk or another.

In all honesty – I much prefer the vanilla game over any of the variants.

The Upside/Downside

Battle Line is truly a good game. For more information than you need – it was designed by Reiner Knizia. In the board game nerd world, he is a bit of a rock star. He pumps out board game hits like Michael Jackson did back in the day. Battle Line is a perfectly balanced 2-player game. Without the use of the Tactic deck, everyone has access to the same cards, and equal opportunity to win. The game plays all the way to the end. By this I mean, that even if someone jumps out to an early lead with some captured pegs, it is still very possible for the opposing player to come back and win the game.

For a game to be good – it needs to present meaningful decisions throughout the game. Battle Line excels at this. From as early as your opening hand you will need to make decisions about how to play your hand. For instance, let’s say you start with a high pair. A pair of nines (One blue and one green). That would be a very good start to a Square (3 of a kind) formation. But let’s also say that with that pair, you also have the blue 8 or the green 10. That’s also a good start for the highest formation – the Wedge. (3-card straight flush). Should you break your pair of nines to go for one or both tougher to get Wedges? Oh-snap your opponent just played the green 8. Now you can’t get the Wedge in green, because your green 8 has been played. – Now what!?!

I can do without the Tactic deck, and I’m glad it is an optional variant. The art on the original version is a bit bland for me, but it certainly doesn’t interfere with the game. The medieval art is really good, but again, aesthics isn’t what drives a game home for me. The version I have used a high glossy, but thinner, card stock. After more plays than I can count, I haven’t noticed the cards sticking at all. I will say though that (and this could just be because of a high play count) that I felt like the cards warped a bit.