QMG: East Front
- Board's Eye View
- Jun 26
- 3 min read
We've been huge fans of Ian Brody's Quartermaster General series of games since the very first title appeared back in 2014. That first game was originally published by Ian Brody's own company Griggling Games but it and the other games that followed in the series were subsequently taken on by other publishers. When Ian Brody developed the popular War of the Ring Card Game for Ares Games we feared that that might mean we would not see any more of QMG but Ares Games have continued the line, reissuing most of the earlier iterations and publishing new versions, of which Quartermaster General: East Front is the most recent.
The previous QMG titles were each optimised for a particular number of players. The original Quartermaster General was essentially a six-player game set in WWII. QMG: Victory or Death (PSC Games) was set in the Peloponnesian Wars and was intended as a four-player game. QMG 1914, representing WWI, was designed primarily as a five-player game, and QMG: Cold War (PSC Games) was at its best with three players, representing the West, the Soviets and a non-aligned bloc. All were notionally playable at other player counts but they were very much at their best with the intended number of players. QMG: East Front has been designed as a two-player head-to-head set in WWII pitting the Soviets against the invading Germans and the Axis pact.
As you might expect from the title, lines of supply are a crucial element of this and all the other Quartermaster General games. And as with previous games in the series, QMG: East Front is card driven. There are pieces on a map representing infantry, tanks and planes, and in this game any of the pieces can be moved without order cards, but pieces cannot attack without the appropriate cards. Card attrition has been a key factor in previous QMG games, especially QMG 1914, so it may come as a surprise that players' decks get reinforced with extra cards during the course of the game. The later cards tho' alter the thrust of the game, simulating the way in which the Germans' initial blitzkrieg became increasingly bogged down. In this game the cards are multi-use in that they have a potential defensive 'reaction' on the bottom, tho' its use means sacrificing the card, as does utilising cards for Conscription (add a unit), Forced March (take an extra move) or Desperate Attack.
Players each have five Contingency cards available to them, in addition to those in their hand. These offer one-off specific actions; you flip a Contingency card the first time you use it and you remove it altogether from play when you use it again for the action on its flip side. This feels more streamlined and easier for new players to immediately grok than the more fiddly mechanic in some previous QMG games where certain actions involved 'preparing' cards for play in future turns.
East Front plays quickly; none of our games at Board's Eye View have exceeded the 2 hours indicated on the box. The turn track incorporates appropriate prompts for scoring and for game events like the introduction of the 'late war' cards; with games ended either after 16 rounds or, sooner, if a player has a 10 point lead over their opponent.
We still enjoy the multiplayer Allied vs Axis experience of the earlier QMG games but East Front is the more satisfying experience if you want a two-player game of QMG. Soon tho' it won't be your only option because Ares Games were running demos of QMG: South Front at UK Games Expo, and that two-player QMG game is due to be released in time for this year's Spiel Essen.
