Each time you use a soldier, you’ll need to spend another action later to ready them for more combat. This is the sweatiest portion of the game, where you constantly find yourself wishing for one more action. They aren’t always in your favor, but you know what is and isn’t a last-ditch effort. While dice combat isn’t for everyone, it has always been my experience that Thompson exceeds in creating decision spaces where you have a good sense of the odds. You choose a target and roll a die, hoping to hit or exceed their Defense value. ![]() You can Exhaust soldiers to Suppress, helping to slow the encroaching Germans, or Attack, which removes tokens from the board. Here, in the third phase, you move troops around and use actions in a bid to prevent the Wehrmacht from taking the house. The third section of the board is the interior of Pavlov’s House itself. The middle section of the board shows 9 January Square, where Pavlov’s House was located, and many Wehrmacht cards advance infantry and armored divisions on the paths toward the house. Bombers disrupt your ability to perform actions during the first phase. Artillery fires on the house, damaging the structure and making it easier to wound your troops. ![]() Draw three Wehrmacht cards and resolve their effects. The agony is cranked up by Wehrmacht military interference, which takes place during the second phase. You quickly reach a point where these choices are agonizing, where there are things you want to do being balanced against things you know, for the sake of the mission, you have to do. You get to perform one action per card you play. You draw four Soviet cards, each of which features a random two out of eight possible actions, then choose three. ![]() This is all managed by a simple but tense card system. Here you will attempt to set up communications networks, ready anti-aircraft and artillery, and send both troops and supplies to the house. You start in the area surrounding the Volga, which runs through the city. Each round consists of three phases, working from right to left across the trifurcated board. Pavlov’s House puts you in charge of the Soviet soldiers who held off a German siege of the titular apartment building during the battle for Stalingrad. I lost my first game handily, and that was with three or four rules errors working in my favor. The terms of my contract with Meeple Mountain prevent me from using more accurate, more colorful language. Pavlov’s House, the first entry in David Thompson’s now-venerable Valiant Defense series of solo tower defense games, is punishing.
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