About the game:
Hammer and Sickle: Hunger and Utopia in the Russian Civil War, 1918-1921 is a fast-paced, four-player asymmetric game covering one of the most desperate and world-shaping conflicts of the 20th century, in which four competing ideologies battled for supremacy over the former Russian Empire.
With the Tsarist Empire collapsing under the dual crises of World War I and Revolution, two fragile alliances emerge to fill the power vacuum: a Revolutionary alliance of Anarchists and Bolsheviks and a Counter-Revolutionary alliance of New Nations and the White Army. Yet only one faction will ultimately achieve victory through a combination of strategic resource management, negotiation, and choosing the right moment to bid everything for glory.
Each season, players will alternate using Action and Commander cards to rally their forces, spread or clamp down on Agitation and Nationalism, and launch offensives into enemy territory. An event card played by each player at the start of the season will determine initiative order and have a unique effect on the game, while at the end of each season players must gather Food from the countryside (Sickles) to feed their factories (Hammers) and generate Firepower, or else risk rising Agitation and eventual Anarchist uprisings! After six seasons the player who has completed the most objectives and whose alliance is most successful will be victorious, determining the fate of Russia.
Hammer and Sickle allows players to experience the full sweep of the world-changing Russian Civil War in a single evening, while still allowing room for negotiation, scheming, and strategic experimentation. The players are grouped into two natural alliances of convenience, with the counter-revolutionary White Army and New Nations opposing the revolutionary Bolsheviks and Anarchists, but these alliances are unstable and will collapse as soon as one player comes close to winning. Simple and innovative production and combat systems provide plenty to think about while not impeding gameplay, and historical Event and Objective cards ensure that every game will play out differently. A dedicated non-player system also allows for any combination of factions to be automated, supporting one, two, or three player games.
