Rally the Troops! A site where boardgames can be played free online with rules enforcement

Nevsky! I have the boardgame. One of the more imaginative designs I have seen in recent years. Can’t wait to see it get the Rally treatment!

Nevsky is now on the site.

I’m finally getting around to checking out this site. I must say, the implementations look really slick, and as a dyed-in-the-wool VASSAL hater and the president of the VASSAL Haters Club, I would totally play games on this platform. It seems every bit as solid as something more ambitious like Boardgame Arena.

However, I don’t think it supports any solitaire play. It looks like it’s strictly for people who want to run head-to-head games online. As far as I can tell, the only games in their catalogue that support solitaire play are the bot modes for Shores of Tripoli and Pax Pamir, neither of which is implemented on Rally the Troops.

The site is not meant for solitaire play. Although to learn the games you can easily make one and fill all the seats yourself. Bot support will never be implemented. The developer was pretty adament when discussion about the COIN series came up.

What is great about this site is i am now playing Pax Pamir, Richard III, Wilderness War and now Nevsky. Something that would be hard for me get done in person with the people I know.

Now you tell me! The original post advertises Rally the Troop as a place where you can “play against yourself”, and Don later says Wilderness War is “very easy to play solo”. You yourself mentioned “testing solitaire”!

So, yeah, I’m afraid I went in expecting support for the games that had solitaire modes, especially given that you spoke approvingly of the implementation of Shores of Tripoli. Which might be great, but without support for its solitaire mode strikes me as incomplete, like Pax Pamir. But since the site clearly isn’t made for solitaire play*, I figured it was worth mentioning in case anyone else got the wrong idea.




* I guess you guys are talking about that weird wargamer thing of playing both sides of a two-player game? I’ve tried many times to coin the phrase “duo-taire”, but it’s clearly not taking. :)

Yeah, I have been doing that since the seventies. Rule enforcement of this mode of play is a dream come true for me. I hope GMT will hire the Rally guy to take this to the next level for GTM games.

There certainly is nothing wrong with pointing out the limits of the site.

I still think It would be great to play some of these with fellow forum members. Pax Pamir is great on Rally the Troops and i know we’ve got some Pax players here.

Currently im really loving Nevsky. And would love to play with the Qt3 crowd as well. I know @Brooski has played it.

If i could control Tor’s next project id put him towards getting an Empire of the Sun implementation going. I think Andean Abyss is likely the next one, although there’s been nothing official on that.

I understand you people even less that the people who play miniatures wargames! Bunch of weirdos. If I were a bully, I’d be stealing your lunch money every day and twice on Sundays. Wait, you probably don’t even have lunch money on Sundays. Is lunch money still even a thing? It’s really hard for a wargamer of a certain age to work out his place in the pecking order these days!

Once I bought a Mark Herman game called Peloponnesian War that boasts solitaire support. Like, the box actually says, “Hey, this is a solitaire game for one player! w00t! Let’s go!” But the “solitaire support” consists of playing one side for a while, then turning the board around and playing the other side for a while. So I beat up the game, took its lunch money, and spent it on a copy of Friday, which I then threw in a river.

Oh, absolutely! I would definitely be a cheerleader for that if I knew any of the games. I initially went the site to see if Wilderness War supported any sort of solitaire play, since I really want to learn that game at some point. I blame your enthusiasm.

But I guess there’s no excuse not to get a Pax Pamir game underway? We should start a thread.

Ok @Tom_Mc, you’re on. Let’s take Nevsky for a spin.

Wilderness War is really really good and id be happy to go through a game of that sometime. Im not particularly good at any of these games, just an enthusiastic player. I’m a little proud that it looks like im finally closing in on a French victory in a Wilderness War game.

Well, its official Andean Abyss will be the next game. Well ok, semi official Tor, the developer, posted screenshots of it while we were busy guessing what the next game was going to be. So, im confident it will be Andean Abyss but there is no timeline posted yet. I’m still very excited and the prospect of a good online venue for a COIN is great news.

I just got that, but I have decided to resell it. Game looks fascinating, but, as usual, my problem is too many games and not enough. Playing with rules enforcement online really speeds things up.

Looking forward to it. I just got a copy of it but I decided to resell it. The game looks fascinating, but time, as always , is the drawback.

Andean Abyss is live today! Who’s coming with me?

Andean Abyss has been great.

Well, today Time of Crisis was just put up.

I have the boardgame version of Time of Crisis. A solid game.

Another surprise entry on the site today:

No solid date yet but it has been confirmed on Discord that there will be an implementation of Plantagenet coming. I like the Levy and Campaign series and ive been really happy to play Nevsky there. Can’t wait to get Plantagenet played there.

Hmm, is it odd that he’s skipping the Reconquista and medieval Italy games in the series?

After Nevsky, GMT released Almoravid and Inferno before Plantagenet. It seems like Almoravid and Inferno were more modest follow-ups, not pushing too hard against the basic system as it was established in Nevsky. But with Plantagenet, the system is grappling with entirely new mechanics because of the longer time span. The earlier games were laser-focused on specific two-year periods, but Plantegenet is drawn out over the course of 25 years. That’s going to make for a different kind of game, it seems.

Anyway, I was hoping he’d do Almoravid for rally-the-troops next. The Reconquista is more interesting to me than a bunch of dippy English wars of succession. Oh, look, someone else wants a turn ruling England. Yawn.

The designer/owner of the site, Tor isn’t working on Plantagenet directly. I hope it works out and there can be more games developed and played there.

As to implementing Plantagenet, I’m really excited to see it there and will be diving right in. I do think this is the point in the L&C series where we see the system really start to change. Plantagenet is very very different from Nevsky, Almoravid, and my understanding of Inferno (I’ve never played that one). I am with you though on personal preference. I kind of wish it was Almoravid. And at the site’s Discord there’s a constant clamor for Pax Renaissance, which I’d love to see. But I’m the weird guy that would also love to see Pax Trashumanity or some other (even more) niche game.