I first became aware of the Barbary War when I was around fourteen years old. I was in my hometown’s Barnes and Noble and saw a book that covered the career of William Eaton, focusing on his role in the Barbary War and eventual conflicts with Thomas Jefferson. It had been granted a prominent place in the bookshop since it involved TJ – our local hometown hero, of sorts, and yes, we do call him TJ – and while I didn’t buy it at the time it stuck with me. Later I convinced my parents to buy a copy of the audiobook on CD and after one failed attempt, eventually listened to it with my father on a road trip somewhere. It is perhaps not the most ringing of endorsements that I remember almost nothing from that book, not even its title. I tried looking it up, but it turns out that several books on the Barbary War were published in the mid-00’s. Still, while my first encounter with the Barbary War was not the most engaging it has sat in the back of my head all these years as one of the more interesting, and forgotten, American wars.
The Shores of Tripoli is a two-player card driven wargame about the First Barbary War. One player plays the Tripolitan pirates and their allies, while the other plays the Americans and theirs. The game is quick, you could easily play a full game in 25-30 minutes. I’ve been playing all my games on the digital implementation on Rally the Troops and while some games drag on a bit as real life gets in the way, for the most part they have been quick and engaging the whole way through.
The display for The Shores of Tripoli on Rally the Troops. This is from the US perspective at the start of the game - we have summoned Swedish help to Tripoli, which is useful in the early game but comes at a cost later in the game.
In a game of Shores of Tripoli each player draws from their own small faction deck. You can, and slowly will, memorize this deck. Knowing what cards, you’ve played and what are still to come is essential to the more complex strategies of the game. To begin with, though, you don’t need any of that and your first playthrough will have exciting twists and turns as cards named for historical events crop up and cause chaos with your plans. That is, of course, what the historical actors would often have found when living through the war so in many ways it is the most authentic experience. With that in mind, for your first game I would recommend not flicking through the decks – let them be a series of chaotic discoveries! It won’t make for a very competitive game, but it’s a very memorable experience.
A few turns later. The Algerians, marked in orange, have joined the fight, while the US has built a gunboat in Malta and the Tripolitan corsairs in Gibraltar have broken out and returned to Tripoli. I didn’t actually think to screen cap one of my real games, so these are all examples from me playing myself!
There is a considerable amount of luck in The Shores of Tripoli, both in terms of when cards come up and in the large numbers of dice you’ll be rolling throughout the game. I still feel like I’m only beginning to explore the strategic depths of the game – even after six games I still barely know what I’m doing – but my impression is that in general the player with the better strategy will win Shores of Tripoli more often, but only in the aggregate. There are going to be games where the dice or cards just punch you right in the gut, and you must be prepared for that. That said, the game is only 30 minutes long (and possibly shorter if things are going really badly for you!) so you won’t be in misery for long if that happens. I’ve had games that I’ve won and lost based on luck, but for the most part it has been the luck nudging me to winning a game that I was narrowly losing strategically or vice versa. For something as easy and quick to play as this I don’t mind that at all, but pure strategists who hate luck in all its forms should beware.
The US has committed Frigates to the waters around Tripoli and successfully intercepted several Tripolitan corsairs during their raid. However they were unable to stop the North Africans from capturing three ships and securing their first three gold of the game!
In my games so far, it looks like the Tripolitan player is favoured initially – playing the American side involves a much better knowledge of your resources and careful planning to achieve success. However, a well-executed American strategy can be a formidable thing to face, and I suspect over time the two factions will have a close to equal win rate. One interesting strategic consideration is that each player has two possible win conditions – one more likely to succeed and one less so. The Tripolitan player can either successfully pirate 12 gold or they can destroy 4 American Frigates, the former is fairly achievable but the latter, while possible, is not particularly likely. Still, having two paths to success is really interesting. The options for the American player are even more interesting. They can either follow the historic option of capturing Derne, ensuring the Tripolitan player’s allies are subdued, and destroying any Tripolitan Frigates that were on the board. Then if they play the Treaty card, they win the game. However, they can as an alternative assault Tripoli itself – this card is a do or die play, if the American player fails, they lose instantly, but if they win than they can do what the actual American navy was unable to. I think this is kind of brilliant, it’s so tempting in a wargame to want to see your opponent totally crushed, and some of the real-life individuals involved would have agreed that total submission should have been the goal, but in general the more reliable play is to go for the Treaty win. It’s a great implementation of multiple paths to victory and one a lot of designers could probably learn something from.
The late game. Tunisia has almost won on gold and is looking strong by having already captured a Frigate even before the US captures Derne. Still, the US ground forces have been assembled and Tunisia doesn’t have too many corsairs left so it could still be anyone’s game!
Shores of Tripoli is easy to pick up and play, the rulebook isn’t very long, and the systems are not particularly complex. The board only has a couple spaces on it, and most of the action is further limited to only a few of those. Despite this small scale, there is impressive strategic depth to be found in it. I can’t think of very many games that are this narrow in scale and that play this quickly while managing similar levels of strategy. I’m not sure Shores of Tripoli is a game for everyone, as I said you will lose games to bad luck and that might rub pure strategists the long way, but if you love chucking handfuls of dice but also want some serious strategy to your game then you should check out the Shores of Tripoli.
As the opening of this review has implied – I am not very well read on the First Barbary War, but after my time with Shores of Tripoli you can be sure that I’ll be looking up the game’s bibliography and doing some further reading on the subject! If you have a favourite book on the subject please let me know what it is and why you like it!
If you’ve enjoyed this (or my other) blog posts maybe consider buying me a coffee via Ko-Fi at https://ko-fi.com/stuartellisgorman. Let’s be honest, instead of buying an actual cup of coffee I’ll probably spend the money on books and wargames and you’ll see the results here!