The Great Hunger caught my eye on Kickstarter because of its theme… the 19th century famine that decimated Ireland. As I come from Ireland originally, the events here are a significant part of my history, so I was intrigued by this game: will it be a respectful and informative experience, or will it trivialise the affair for the sake of entertainment?
I have to say things didn’t get off to a good start with the video at the top of the page—or rather, with the cheesy faux Irish accent of its narrator, but putting that aside, I decided to look deeper.
The game’s creators are Kevin McPartland and Jerry Shiles, both responsible for a number of historical games and not averse to a bit of controversy, such as concerns about appropriation in Māori: Warriors of the Long White Cloud, depicting Polynesian clan warfare in the 15th century.
The pair introduce the game with: ‘A new crop has revolutionized farming in Ireland, allowing people to raise enough food for their whole family on just a small, rocky plot of land. The nation’s population expands dramatically, as your family grows and prospers, thanks to the humble potato.
‘In 1845, the blight arrives, unleashing complete and utter devastation on the potato harvest. Dependence on a single variety and growing on marginal land poured fuel on the fire, and famine and disease soon spread through the island.
‘British economic policy discourages assistance, but help will arrive, often from unexpected sources. Some will find work in new industries or on the ever-expanding English Estates. Millions more will emigrate, booking passage on dangerous “coffin ships” to other lands.’
In The Great Hunger, you play as families of Irish tenants and workers, drawing and acting on event cards. For the first part of the game, you use the upper part of the cards, expanding your reach as the good times roll. When the ‘blight arrives’ card is drawn, you switch to the bottom half of the event cards and do your best to save as many people as you can.
Gameplay Summary
During setup, the ‘blight arrives’ card is shuffled into the bottom part of the event draw deck. Until that card is drawn, each player takes turns to perform the following steps:
- take 2 population blocks from your supply and add them to one of 6 available population spaces on the player board;
- roll a die to determine which of those spaces will be used to move blocks onto the map;
- optionally play cards from your hand, then place the population blocks from the preceding stage onto the map in counties adjacent to ones containing your blocks already (one having been placed at the start of the game), but not on counties containing English estates (typical, sheesh!);
- draw a card into your hand.
As mentioned, the event cards have pre- and post-blight halves, and the upper halves used in this part of the game include actions to, for example, add population blocks to existing sites or estates (not possible in the direct placement phase), or create factories or new estates at various sites. There are a few ‘reaction cards’ which can be used on other players’ turns to affect their actions.
The story behind estates and factories is that a lucky (?) few native workers will gain employment there, hence this is triggered by event cards rather than part of the default population movement. People employed in this way also benefit from a level of protection against the starvation when the blight occurs, so will be among the survivors at the end.
This continues until the ‘blight arrives’ card is drawn. At this point, any population blocks on player boards are discarded, and players flip to the other side of the board. The ‘blight arrives’ card is removed from play and a new draw deck created with the addition of the ‘blight abates’ card shuffled in.
The steps in player moves now are:
- move a population block into an adjacent county with space (see below); you can discard cards from your hand for additional moves;
- play cards from your hand, this time using the lower half.
You can move blocks into counties that are empty or which contain ports or empty factories. As before, those miserable English won’t allow you to enter their estates. A population block entering a port automatically moves onto an emigrant ship. (The single ship on the map represents many such vessels across the country.)
The ships have 6 spaces and when all are occupied, they set sail. Of course, things are as simple as that… Roll a die to determine who doesn’t survive the journey, and eliminate that population block; the other 5 blocks make it to America.
As well as actions similar to the first part of the game, the event card actions now include shortcuts to get your population onto ships or into America, as well as causing you or other players to lose population blocks.
When the ‘blight abates’ card is drawn, the final (part-filled) ship is dealt with and the game is over. Scores are calculated based on how many population blocks have survived in both America and Ireland.
Verdict
Despite the cheesy intro, The Great Hunger does look moderately interesting. There’s not a huge amount of information on the campaign page, but a draft rulebook is available, containing a smidge under 4 pages of instruction and a detailed example of gameplay.
There is an odd note in the description: although the game described as a 2–5 player game, it’s also labelled with a medium ‘solitaire suitability,’ whatever that means.
Alas, however, I won’t be backing The Great Hunger, solely for the reason that delivery costs to this side of the Atlantic are huge, more than doubling the price of the game, and that’s before VAT gets added on top. I can just hope that there’s some cheaper way to get the game when it hits retail.
About the author
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
