We march into battle in pursuit of glory, fame, and perhaps a tiny bit of strategic overconfidence. But every skirmish comes with the risk of setbacks: tanks sink into the mud, planes remain grounded by unruly weather, and sometimes a single soldier can turn the tide of an entire military campaign. Slava!
In many East and South Slavic languages, such as Ukrainian, Russian, and Serbian, slava means glory, fame, or renown. The word often appears in patriotic or religious expressions, such as Slava Ukraini (“Glory to Ukraine”). This game by the Dutch publisher Brothers in Games has nothing to do with Ukraine, by the way, but for many players in the Netherlands and Western Europe the phrase will probably trigger that association immediately.
Across a series of won campaigns — three or five, depending on the game mode, old or new rules, and of course the preferences of the commanders gathered around the table — players clash using military units in card form. With the new ruleset three won campaigns leads to victory of the war. Each campaign consists of eight rounds, or tricks, in which every player plays one card from their hand. The deck contains seven different types of units. These units not only determine what happens on the battlefield, but also provide victory points if you manage to claim the trick.
Slava is a trick-taking game, but one where the emphasis is less on tricks as you know them from classic card games. Each round, every player plays a card, but Slava does not rely on familiar suits and ascending values. Instead, everything revolves around seven types of units, whose strength depends on the weather and the current hierarchy on the battlefield. The game combines the feel of a trick-taking game with victory points and a generous dash of rock-paper-scissors. That may sound as if someone shook the rulebook out in a foxhole, but in practice it simply means that you constantly have to assess which unit has the upper hand at any given moment. In good weather, a plane easily defeats an infantry unit, but it can be shot out of the sky by an anti-air missile — which can then be disabled by infantry. Anyone getting warm Stratego flashbacks from that is probably not entirely wrong.
During a campaign, the weather can change, and that weather then determines the hierarchy of the units. So you never know exactly which cards you should keep until the end. In clear weather, your planes are impressively powerful, but in bad weather they will not even get off the ground. As if that did not already create enough fog of war, players also have to take the bomb into account. It neutralizes a trick in one fell swoop, sending everyone home without points. A wonderfully nasty way to shoot your opponents’ carefully laid plans out of the sky at precisely the critical moment.
Each campaign therefore consists of eight battles. After every trick, the winner collects the played cards, and that same winner also opens the next trick. At the end of a campaign, the player with the most points receives a victory point. Once someone has won enough campaigns, the war is over and the glory can be added to the imaginary banner.
Slava takes some getting used to at first, mainly because players need to stay very aware of the hierarchy of the cards. Fortunately, that system settles in fairly quickly, but do not expect to march straight to victory just because you are a seasoned trick-taking veteran. And perhaps that is exactly the point. Slava gives the trick-taking genre its own twist, with enough uncertainty to keep you constantly on edge. The weather can turn, a bomb can throw everything into chaos, and a seemingly modest unit can suddenly become decisive. That confusion is exactly where the game’s glory lies: Slava feels like a small tactical battlefield where you are never entirely sure whether your masterstroke will still be standing when the dust settles.
