Road to Independence: The American Revolution 1775-1783

It's like Elder Sign with an operational component. You conquer locations by meeting the dice requirements like Elder Sign, but you attack connected locations while adjusting to historical events.

It's far from a detailed sim, but if you like pressing your luck with dice, you'll like this one.

Overall I like the game

Positives:

• Small footprint
• Simple rules
• Good production values-cool custom dice, nice map and better than usual registration and resolution on the counters by Blue Panther
• Reasonably quick playing though definitely longer than the 60-90 minutes quoted. I’d say about two to two and a half hours

Quibbles:

• Definitely a dice checker which makes the game easy to play, but the amount of dice rolling can get exhausting.
• Definitely a game and not a detailed simulation. That’s what I wanted, but your mileage may vary.
• It felt like the Spanish were a bit overpowered in their ability to seize a number of British areas. I don’t know anything about that theater of the war so this may be historically accurate, but still felt like a bit much.

I do give this game a buy rating as it is fun, and you’d be hard pressed to find a game on the American Revolution that is so easy to get to the table and complete in a reasonable time period.

Bought at WBC 2023 through vendor.

Nice idea. Original battle system comparable to Table Battles. Clever Garrison mechanism punishes loser of any defended Location.

I bought this on the strength of The Conferedate Rebellion (White Dog). I look forward to seeing what S. Kling's next USCW title will be like.

Quibbles:

• Map cramped in places, with some tracks / lines being difficult to spot in the North East,

• Location cards are redundant (sorting and exchanging is tiresome). I suggest just using the symbols on the map.

• Attack counters don't stand out (I suggest swapping out with arrows or coloured cubes)

Fun and lite dice chucking historical game. I liked it a lot!

The Road to Independence does something really spectacular, it is a simple game that you could play with one of your kids, but in a myriad of subtle ways, it sneaks historical detail into the design with no rules overhead. It is a bit like We the People meets Yatzee, and while that may sound bizarre, its incredible fun. Highly recommend this. Also I understand that the designer is an historian on the AWI in the West (Ohio Valley down to Spanish Louisiana). That expertise gives him an interesting perspective, and provides this design with a slightly different emphasis than most AWI designs, which tend to focus on the Atlantic Coast.