Sidereal Confluence, Argent: The Consortium, Charioteer, Sword & Fire Manila

Week of September 1st, 2025

We had 6 players over the Labor Day Weekend for some gaming. 6 is always a little tricky in the medium-heavy-euro weight class that we like; there just isn’t that much these days that’s both really good and not a bit of a monster like John Company 2nd or Dune (and isn’t Quartermaster General, which recently flamed out for us). Sidereal Confluence is a great 6-player game and while it can be a bit overwhelming at first, wow, this thing is a truly great game. A niche flavor, for sure! But absolutely great.

I was playing the Im’Dril, and their schtick is that their economy is expensive to crank up but very efficient once you get it going. So you need to make slightly more exotic trades, getting people to “loan” you a couple resources now for a nice payoff next turn. This actually isn’t as hard as it sounds; people will only rarely come out even at the end of a trading phase so you can usually find people near the end with cubes they can’t use, and you can make a deal if you’re lucky. If you want a little better selection though and not just the leftovers, you’ll need to be a bit more aggressive. I was able to jumpstart my economy nicely in the first couple turns, managing to aggressively snag some key resources early in the trade round and then fill in later; my economy could produce a truly impressive amount of stuff by turn 3. But it wasn’t particularly focused and relied on ultratech as an input, which wasn’t being produced that much by the other players and so I couldn’t keep the supplies flowing. I couldn’t turn the early game success into and endgame engine.

We used several of the factions from the Bifurcation expansion: Deep Unity, Society of the Falling Light, and the Kt’zr’kt’rtl Technophiles. The Deep Unity particularly I thought were clever and at a very manageable complexity level. They roll 3 dice at the beginning of each turn to see which of their core converters they’ll have available, with doubles and triples giving you fancier converters. They can also develop technologies that give them the ability to modify the dice. They’re a very different challenge but pretty easily comprehensible compared to the more intense expansion factions. Society of the Falling Light on the other hand is rated as one of the most complex factions in the game and yes, that seemed to be true. I was at the other end of the table from them so I never got a great handle on what they were doing, but they seemed to have a sideline in selling regret (which I never took them up on). The nice thing about the factions in the core game is that a lot of them are extremely clean, rules-wise — their powers can be explained in moments once you’ve got everyone going. There are a few (like the Im’Dril) that are more finicky, but in general it produces a lot of range quite cleanly. The expansion factions, while very interesting and usually not that complicated, don’t have that same slickness. You have to spend a little bit of time making sure you understand. Sidereal Confluence is not a complicated game rules-wise, I can teach it probably 10 minutes, but there is a lot going on. And it’s happening in real-time. So even the slight increase in the complexity of the expansion factions adds more carrying weight to the game itself than you might expect. So as usual: take those complexity ratings very seriously. Having now seen most of the expansion factions in action at least once now, I do like them and think they improve an already top-tier game. But do not underestimate the challenge.

Every time I play this I tell myself I have got to find a way to play it at least a bit more often.

Generally when I introduce people to a game like Argent: The Consortium, which is both modestly challenging to teach and highly configurable, I tend to be very conservative about complexity — usually just sticking with something close to the default setup. I think this is sensible, broadly speaking, but Argent is interesting in how it challenges the idea. The game’s core worker-placement engine is admirably clean, and it structurally supports the game’s range nicely. Using alternate sets of rooms doesn’t affect the complexity or how you teach very much. And, crucially, having played the default setup a bunch I am now quite familiar with it and that may not be great when the others are new. So when I was teaching 3 new players at the Guildhouse this week, I just took out some mostly-random rooms, randomized the mage powers, and threw in the Technomancers. I then lightly edited everything for rationality, or at least rationality-adjacency.

It actually worked great. We ended up with one non-standard room from the expansion, the Laboratory, plus the Atelier. Most of the rest was straightforward, although the order was changed up and I included the Dormitory which somehow I have never used. It wasn’t a complicated setup to play, but it was really different from anything I had played before. I think I had also never used the B side of the Blue mages (pay coins to use a merit badge space), so that was fun. It reminded me that the true greatness of Argent — especially with the expansion — is not that it’s gonzo, but that it’s gonzo in a surprisingly controlled way. There are so many different ways to configure the game, and it all pretty much works! I do also love Millennium Blades and Empyreal but I don’t feel like either of them quite nails the same sweet spot. Millennium Blades is beyond gonzo, and therein lies the appeal (for me) but it doesn’t always work and when you have a random card mix you want to be a bit mindful of whether the combination of flavors is going to be comprehensible. Empyreal is great and well-controlled but only somewhat gonzo. If you want something reliably over the top that will also reliably deliver a very solid and entertaining game, you’ve got to have Argent plus the expansion.

Of the variant content we used, I feel like the school of Technomancy was the biggest change to the feel of the game. The new mages, which give you access either to research or marks, open up new ways to play but change the balance a fair amount. Not in a way that’s wrong (I’ve enjoyed it), but of the expansion content I feel like it’s the most optional and I’ll probably try to find a way to leave it out in future unless players are experienced. Also interesting to note: there is a scenario in the expansion, Key to the University, which dampens the final scoring and turns the game into a more traditional point-scoring euro. I’ve never tried any of the scenarios, which I’d like to do. Like all the other expansion content, on its own it’s very simple. But it adds up.

Charioteer is a game that I quite enjoyed when it first came out (and it plays very well with 6!) but at some point I felt like it got fired by Heat. They are extremely similar games, but Heat just felt tighter and more flavorful to me and was significantly faster to play. Plus it’s better at lower player counts. Charioteer was on my trade/sale pile for a while, since I didn’t think I needed two very similar games in the same niche.

But we had 6 on game night and couldn’t agree on much else, so it came off the pile. I’m glad it did! While it’s true the two games are very mechanically similar, the play feel is really different. Heat is an intense sprint where you need to constantly hit corners accurately or lose ground and small mistakes can be punishing. While it definitely has a nice ebb and flow, if you hit a corner badly on the first lap or take a bad risk and blow it, that may be the end of your chances to win. Charioteer is more of a marathon. It’s a long race, the track is a simple oval, and between the random flow of cards and the crowd and the Emperor the short-term environment fluctuates a lot. It’s a long-term card-management game. It’s one of a very small number of games which I think benefits from slightly leisurely pacing. No one turn or even one lap is going to make or break you, but you have to keep making smart decisions all game long in a grueling race.

There is definitely a lot of luck to the game. Unlike Sekigahara or Tin Goose, where skill by far the dominant factor, it’s not totally clear to me where the balance is for Charioteer. It feels skillflu, but the cards can be with you or not for much of the race. It’s lighter than it looks, I think. But it’s great at generating drama, so it all works out for me.

After being slightly disappointed by Slaughter at Ponyri and Task Force Faith, I really wanted to revisit Fire & Sword Manila. There is a lot that I like about the module: the great and evocative maps with a wide variety of urban terrain, the distinctive flavor of the late war US vs Japanese city fighting, the fact that Manila is very different from the European cities we’re used to in ASL, and the fact that the module is really distinct from anything else in the (incredibly expansive) game system. Plus I had generally positive experiences with the scenarios. The caveat was, though, that I’m not sure what the Japanese are supposed to do here.

The Japanese are not that strong — mostly 2nd line naval infantry rather than army units. They have a small handful of high-morale units, but not much in the way of heavy weapons, and no vehicles to speak of. The US meanwhile are line army soldiers, well-led, armed to the teeth, and very well supported. Because of the Japanese tendency to stand and die rather than fall back when things get dicey, they get shredded by devastating US firepower. Any attempt to hold the line in the face of that is doomed even in pretty strong buildings. Although the fighting was intense, historically US casualties were relatively light by the standards of the Pacific war while the Japanese garrison was totally wiped out. And the city was left a shattered husk.

Anyway, I had the Japanese this time and I came in prepared to really milk those urban rules sections you don’t think of much outside of HASL — in this case, cellars for defense and sewers for in- or ex-filtration. But Manila is not Stalingrad; the cellars are much harder to usefully fortify and are mostly deathtraps. Well, the whole city is a deathtrap, but the cellars even moreso. Entrances into the sewer system are not super-common; in our scenario (SF20, Through the Breach, Into the Fire) there weren’t really useful ones. So it’s kinda the usual thing: dodge and weave, try desperately to hang on to concealment, limit how much firepower the Americans can bring to bear as best you can, give ground when you can, try not to get annihilated, and grab any close combat with ambush possibilities that you are offered.

I think the thing to remember when playing the Japanese is the historical attitude of the Japanese defenders. The Japanese defense of Manila was brutal, senseless, and futile even by WWII standards, which is saying something. The Japanese army was ordered to evacuate Manila, but these naval units defied orders to came here and seek death in combat and try to take the city and some Americans with them. And do some war crimes while they were there. Seriously, don’t look in to this battle if you don’t have a strong stomach. This isn’t Stalingrad, a tooth-and-claw struggle of vital strategic importance to both sides with fate in the balance. This is whatever the hell this was. While I’ve recently been coming to terms with the fact that even though ASL is trying to be an everything-game for WWII tactical combat, there is stuff that it’s just bad at because the core design decisions made in 1977 had a rather specific vision and that vision can’t rationally deal with a surprising amount of stuff that it seems like maybe it could. When the Japanese first appeared in ASL, in 1991’s Code of Bushido, like all the armies in the game they involved a lot of abstraction and design-for-effect. The designers chose a pretty extreme portrayal; not historically unfounded, but highly contrasted against their initially US, UK, Australian, and even Soviet opponents. The design did Guadalcanal and the jungle fighting in the South Pacific very well, but ultimately had trouble adapting believably to mainland China or the 1941 Philippines campaign where not every battle was a death ride. All that said, it was born for the brutal, nihilistic, pointless bloodbath of Manila. The fanaticism of the defenders up against the hesitance and raw firepower of the attackers is compelling and evocative. It’s history, it’s tragedy, it’s brutal, and it’s raw.

I’m still not sure if it’s a totally satisfying game experience for the Japanese player though. You’re trying to take out a Sherman tank with a hand grenade; it’s not going to end well for you. But after the questionable historicity of Task Force Faith, and the not-immediately-obvious gaming interest of Slaughter at Ponyri, I really enjoyed revisiting this.

Around the Internet

Brian Bankler (over at the excellent Tao of Gaming) passed on this link asking, did the Nagasaki bomber miss on purpose to save lives? You can read it and string together a narrative and it makes sense, so maybe there is something here? The operation did unquestionably have complications. It piqued my curiosity but on two seconds reflection it seemed implausible, so I started exploring it. It turns out this is not the first time anyone was “just asking questions” in this direction, but it all collapses on like 5-10 minutes of inquiry. The only way to make the story sound plausible is to eliminate literally all context. See above re: Manila. The US had just come off of a firebombing campaign against Tokyo that had been several times more deadly than the atomic bombs, unquestionably a heinous war crime, and to which there were no serious objections amongst commanders or airmen. Nobody was worried about civilian deaths, not even Truman who by all counts had a functioning moral compass. Curtis LeMay, the guy in charge of the strategic bombing of Japan who was so bloodthirsty he would later show up in Dr Strangelove almost not even as a parody, did not cultivate a force of soldiers inclined to restraint. They did not give the atomic bombs to randos; the crews were hand-picked for reliability. Given the number of people involved and the way the military hierarchy and discipline works there is just no way the entire crew of a B-29 went freelancing (or were ordered to drop short) and we don’t know about it in 2025. There would be a far clearer signal in the historical record. Do better, The Times.

So this deeply mysterious WWII-era Kugelpanzer is a thing. Apparently there is exactly one, it was captured by the Soviets in Manchuria, and precisely zero records of its history or function exist. It’s not one of life’s great mysteries — to me it’s obviously not German and not a tank, and what it actually is, is of no great consequence. Still, it is no doubt straight-up weird, and fun to guess what its backstory is based on the little evidence available. I have my own narrative. Don’t tell anyone at LFT about it or next thing we know we’ll have a set of counters and some serious-sounding Chapter H notes and we’ll know for the record exactly when ASL jumped the shark.

Last week I recommended a couple covers of Golden, from the recent K-Pop Demon Hunters. I will confess I had not actually watched the movie at the time, just listened to the music; I did not think I was in the target demo. But Robin Laws called it a “triumph of cultural diffusion” and it got to the point where it was so completely saturating my feeds that I had to watch it. I can confirm that while it has a bit of a slow start, it is totally delightful. It’s an American-made film by a Korean-Canadian director that’s set in Seoul. Like a lot of culturally Korean media I’ve watched, it seems simple but there are many thoughtful layers of metaphor and it feels emotionally honest and pointed and relevant in a way that I found very refreshing.

Coda

Here is my latest clarinet project, now that a new concert season is starting up:

You will notice the 2nd movement is fairly technically and rhythmically demanding. A good friend who I’ve performed with for years has always wanted to play it, but I never thought we were going to be able to find enough high-level amateur clarinetists to have any real chance. But I kept adding to my contact list and this spring I thought to myself you know, I think I know enough people that this could work. Now, after some very significant scheduling challenges, we have a septet and I’m looking for an amateur concert series to get us on to. There are still some significant challenges to be overcome but it’s very exciting.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.