Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 11: Silver Box - War of the Lance (MS-DOS)

Developer:

SSI

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Release Date:

1989

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Systems:

Apple II, DOS, C64

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm checking out the PC port of SSI's fantasy wargame War of the Lance!

I know what the title screen looks like, but I promise you that this is an official Dungeons & Dragons game that you can buy in the Silver Box Classics collection on Steam. It's even by Strategic Simulations Inc., the folks who had already developed Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds by this point. But there is a perfectly good explanation for why it looks so basic: this is just what wargames looked like at the time, especially when they were made for the Apple II.

Wargames have never really been my thing, but from what I can tell, SSI had been in the business longer than anyone and had earned a reputation for knowing what they were doing. Their first game, Computer Bismarck, had been developed for the Apple II (and TRS-80) way back in 1980, which is about the same time that genre-defining RPGs like Ultima and Wizardry were released for the machine.

But by 1989 the Commodore 64 and IBM PC compatible had taken over as the dominant US computers, and I think this is the last time SSI made the Apple II their lead platform. They were really going back to their roots here. Plus Dungeons & Dragons was originally inspired by tabletop wargames, so they were going back to its roots too. 

You can tell they were going old school with this one as they skipped the 16/32-bit Amiga entirely. Other than PC, Amiga was the only system to get all the regular Gold Box RPGs, but it only got three out of four Silver Box games. Though by the look of the game, the machine could probably emulate it.

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War of the Lance was the last Dungeons & Dragons game released in the '80s... possibly. I have to be honest, I couldn't find out if Dragons of Flame came out before or after it, so I've just stacked them together here. Either way this is the end of a decade - a new 16-bit era is dawning, full of graphics and music and stuff. But we're not quite there yet.

I'm also not sure why it gets to be a Silver Box game, as it didn't actually come in a silver box! I suppose it's just the nearest category to put it in, as it's set in the Dragonlance universe and takes place during the same war as the other games.

Like the other two games it's an adaptation of a tabletop module, though SSI have jumped from DL1 and DL2 all the way up to DL11 - Dragons of Glory! Probably because it's a wargame module instead of an RPG and they wanted to make a wargame. The game Shadow Sorcerer would eventually cover DL3 and DL4, but I think those are the only Dragonlance modules that got adapted for games.

There's something really nostalgic about these colours for me, even though EGA graphics were a bit before my time. The game supports CGA graphics as well, if you'd rather have less colours, but there's no 256 colour VGA mode here. Plus the game is keyboard only, mostly just the arrow keys (or numeric keypad) and space. It's from 1989, they could've given it mouse control, but they didn't.

Alright, first I need to set up the game. I wish I could put all those numbers down to 1 and switch it to 'baby's first wargame' mode, but I'm supposed to be playing games on medium difficulty so I'll leave them as they are.

The 'Highlord' option lets you choose whether the Highlord side (bad guys) is controlled by the AI or if you're doing hot seat multiplayer. Either way player 1 is always Whitestone (good guys). The 'Game Selection' option lets you play a campaign from the very beginning or jump ahead a few turns to a more interesting situation. People recommend picking 'Scenario' to skip the boring early game, so I'll go with that.

My first decision in the game: do I heal Berem? Uh, sure! I don't know who that is, but let's do that. And let's tell Tanis to escape too.

Hang on, Tanis is the guy from Heroes of the Lance and Dragons of Flame! I recognise a lot of these names actually: Goldmoon, Riverwind, Raistlin, Caramon, Sturm, Flint, Tasselhoff. It's like playing a Star Wars strategy game and seeing names like Luke Skywalker and Lando Calrissian appear.

Actually it's more like playing The Sims 4 and getting a pop up asking you to help your sim make a choice at work. It seems like the heroes are all off on an RPG quest, so it's possible I'll be able to continue my tradition of accidentally dropping one or all of them down a pit at some point.

Wow, everyone's getting stuff. I've got icons all over the world, all of them getting armour. Is this because I successfully saved Tanis?

You can really tell that this game started out on the Apple II, as the land is black.

"Subversion phase"? What the hell does that mean? I've got no context to help me understand any of this. Sure that's what the manual is for, but I've got no context for that either. It's like reading a cookbook before you know what eggs are. Or heat.

This isn't anything I want to deal with right now - my instincts are telling me to run and escape out of the window. But I said that I'd play the first 10 years of D&D games and this is an official proper D&D game, so I've trapped myself here.

I'm just going to select 'exit' for now and hope I didn't somehow make a losing move already. I mean, getting a score of -2800 points on my first day seems really bad.

Okay, this seems more promising. It's a map with unit icons on it, I can get my head around that. I can even highlight commands with the keyboard, so I don't have to press the first letter to select them.

One problem though: I'm not seeing 'MOVE' or 'ATTACK'. They made sure to make room for 'QUAD' though, whatever that means. I can imagine classic wargame fans laughing at me right now, thinking "This guy doesn't even know what the quad button does!"

It's not that I'm completely new to the concept of strategy. I've played some of the Civilization games and I watched my brother play a Total War game for a bit a decade or so ago. There's just an overwhelming amount of possibilities for what it could all mean.

I've discovered that I can move units by using 'GET' on their icon and moved one of my horsies north, but I can't move anything very far before slamming into neutral territory. Turns out that I'm not allowed to trespass in other countries, but the game doesn't show the borders so I'm working blind here. Also 'Scenario' mode is like loading someone else's save game, so my units started off scattered all over the map and I don't even know what I have.

Games like Warcraft have separate levels, so you can start off with small objectives like "Build 5 farms and a barracks" and learn as you go. Here my objective is "Win the entire game", as there's nothing else in it but this one map and this battle. I've been thrown into the deepest of deep ends and I don't have enough enthusiasm in me to study the manual right now. I definitely don't have it in me to figure the game out by myself, as this is just impenetrable.

Sorry, my heart is extremely not into this at the moment so I'm just going to quit.


CONCLUSION

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War of the Lance is a game I don't really know anything about because I suffered a critical morale failure and ran away on my first turn. I don't even want to look at the game, as the miserable black landscape drains my joy.

Though maybe I could at least check the manual to see what the different phases of gameplay are. I need to know what the Subversion Phase is about!

I'll find the section which explains it and paste it in for you:

Oh bloody hell, that's just put me off even more! 19 phases every turn? Are they taking the piss?

Though I suppose it's not as bad as it seems, as 7 of them are for the other side. And things like 'Country Status' and 'Victory Display' aren't really phases at all.

I just need to keep breaking it down into terms and concepts I already understand so I can visualise how this game is played. Seeing the whole map at once would be a good start.

There I've stitched together screenshots to show off the entire map. There is a button to see a map in-game, but it's way less detailed than this.

Now that I can see the whole place at once it's even more obvious that there's no hint to who owns territory besides the capital city forts, and those are often hidden behind unit icons. I've spotted the country 'Maelstrom' though; it's the big swirly storm in the sea on the top right. Looks like a great place, I should grab it right away.

It seems like Highlord (red shields) have the mountains in the middle and an island in the east. Meanwhile Whitestone (blue shields) has the place with the rivers to the middle-left, plus the forest area on the bottom right located just below the massive enemy invasion force.

I looked up where the other Silver Box games take place, and found that their locations line up pretty well with the mountainous area on the bottom left. The game doesn't label anything though so I had to draw the names on myself.

Xak Tsaroth is the dungeon you fight through in Heroes of the Lance to get the Disks of Mishakal and Pax Tharkas is where you're trying to get to in Dragons of Flame after Solace got burned down. Qualinost and Thorbardin are both capital cities, so you can see how close the nations are to each other on the map.

Right, I'm going to start a new game from the beginning and figure this out one phase at a time.

TURN ONE: QUEST PHASE

The first phase is where RPG heroes phone me up and ask me to make a choice. Here Tika's been wounded, so I can pick options like 'Rest Party', which slows everyone down, or 'Seek Aid', which is more dangerous. I went for the risky option this time and it paid off.

There are no little hero icons on the map for me to command, they're all doing their own thing entirely out of sight, like exploring dungeons and finding artefacts.

Alright, Berem is still wounded, but everyone else is good and the quest is proceeding on schedule.

The screen doesn't give you any clues about what their quest is, but they're apparently out getting important items to make your units more effective. They're especially useful for Whitestone players as they'll eventually bring the good dragons back, and find the tools needed to manufacture dragonlances - the anti-dragon weapons that the whole campaign setting is named after.

TURN ONE: REINFORCEMENT PHASE

In the reinforcement phase you watch as reinforcements arrive. There's not really a lot to think about here.

Hey did the game just give me a wizard? I've read that you can get up to three of these guys and they're apparently fantastic couriers. If you have an item that needs to be given to a certain unit, they can teleport right over to them instantly.

I'm glad that I seem to be getting units out of nowhere, because I can't produce them myself. This isn't Civilization, my cities are forts that the enemy is trying to capture.

TURN ONE: SUBVERSION PHASE

The subversion phase is the one that really confused me when I first put the game on. If I select 'add' it lets me pick a unit on the map, but there's no hint to what I'm supposed to do with them and what is being subverted.

It turns out that this is actually the other side of the quest phase, which lets you counter what the other side's RPG heroes are up to. You can select combat units which will be taken off the map and sent to go slow down their quests. Preferably rubbish units with low quality and high fatigue who are stuck somewhere well away from the fighting.

That's it, that's as complicated as the subversion phase gets.

TURN ONE: DIPLOMATIC PHASE

There are a few ways to acquire a neutral country's territory in the game. If you're Highlord you can just declare war and try to take it by force. This can actually work to Whitestone's favour though, if the country immediately allies with them for protection. 

Whitestone can't attack anyone but Highlord, so to claim more of the map I'll need to send out diplomats and make alliances.

The trouble with the diplomacy screen is that it uses abbrevations so it's not obvious what any of the columns are. AG is allegiance; low numbers mean they're leaning toward Whitestone, high numbers mean they're siding with Highlord. AL (alliance level) shows how keen they are to join up, with L for low, M for medium and H for high.

Apple II

The original Apple II version looks very similar, except it reuses the border from Pool of Radiance! I'm starting to suspect that this game may have been made on the cheap...

I lost the virtual dice roll here and Caergoth decided not to accept my offer of an alliance. Fortunately things went better on the PC version, and I was able to get them to join up on my very first turn!

That means I get their city, territory and all their armies to command, just as soon as I figure out where to put them. They can only be placed within the border of their country at first, but I can't see where that border is!

Hang on, it says who the tile is owned by when you hover the cursor over it! I don't know why it doesn't show you this information while you're actually moving your troops, but it's something.

I only get a chance to ally with one country per turn, but I'm not done with the diplomacy phase yet as now that Caergoth is on my team I can focus my diplomats somewhere else. Plus they've given me their diplomats to transfer as well!

Diplomats are used to sway other countries to your side, and they've each got a DR (diplomat rating) that shows how good they are at it.

The catch is that countries have a DR limit of 25, so you've got to do a bit of maths to optimise your persuasion. For example, you may have six diplomats available with scores of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. If you send the first five to one country, that adds up to 25, and you'll have an 8-rated diplomat left over to send some place else. I'm sure diplomacy works pretty much the same in real life.

I have to be honest, I barely know where any of these countries are and who I should be trying to win over for the greatest tactical advantage. I'm just going to pick the easiest ones to get.

Funnily enough, the countries with AG (allegiance) numbers in the middle are apparently the easiest to sway, as the diplomats are more effective on people who haven't made up their mind yet.

TURN ONE: MOVEMENT PHASE

Okay now I'm in the movement phase and I won the initiative roll so I get to move first (plus I get a 25% bonus to operation points, apparently).

This means that I can now reveal what the map looks like zoomed out. It's not very detailed, but it does show lots of yellow and red boxes on their way to conquer my territory of Silvanesti on the bottom right. 

Unfortunately my armies are miles away, up on the top left, and there's no obvious way to get them down there. I can't cross the sea without transportation and there's a mountain range blocking me on land.

Worse than that, there's a whole country in the way, Throtyl, and they're neutral, so it's currently impossible for either side to move units through their tiles.

On the plus side I've figured out that I can move units across the smaller rivers without using the bridges in Vingaard's territory, so my army isn't entirely trapped. I don't know how going north helps me, but at least I know now that it's an option.

Here's a tip for you: units use up their limited supply of operation points (OP) as they move, so it's recommended to use the numpad so you can move them diagonally instead of zigzagging around.

Apple II

Here's the original Apple II version in case you were curious. This is where the game's aesthetic comes from, as they needed to work within the machine's graphical limitations. Oh, plus this version has disk swapping every turn, so that's fun.

One thing that's annoying in any version is that when you stack units they turn into a unhelpfully generic shield icon, so you can't tell if it's infantry or cavalry or griffons etc. Also you can only stack two armies, which seems like a weirdly low number. Why let me stack units at all if that's the best I can do? I suppose it does let me send a leader unit along with them.

At least when you're stacking ships you can get a whole fleet together. Trouble is that all four of my boats are down in Silvanesti.

These ships have an enormous range though. I keep thinking that they're going to run out of OP points, but nope they can keep going a little further, and then a little further. It's apparently best to move them a bit at a time like this to make sure the pathfinding doesn't mess up when you order the rest of the stack to follow.

I don't actually know what I'm going to do with my ships, I just know that there's nothing I can do with them down here. Unless they can fire missiles over at those red shield troops...

Nope, doesn't look like it.

Damn, I just realised I accidentally moved all my actual troops out of Caergoth and left a couple of leaders behind as its only defence. See, this is why it's awkward that it shows every stack as a generic shield icon.

I'm sure leaders are great at increasing the effectiveness of the units they're with, but they need to be with a unit to be any use, and everyone's moved too far to come back. Without an army garrisoned here an enemy unit could just walk in and take the place in one turn!

Fortunately they're all busy attacking Silvanesti and there's a neutral country in the way, so they can't actually get here.

TURN ONE: ENEMY MOVEMENT

Now it's Highlord's turn to move their units and it's not looking good for Silvanesti. The enemy moved right in and they've got the capital surrounded. You can't tell what anything is because of these bloody shield icons, but one of the blue shields on the left is a tower, and the one on the right is the capital city. Being surrounded like this is making my units weaker so I really didn't want to let this happen.

Also being next to an enemy unit reduces your movement range, so those elven archers on the right can't escape. The game's complicated!

TURN TWO

The first thing I did on my second turn was get another ally! I saw some advice which said I should turn the 'alliance rate' up from 3 to 5 to get things happening faster and it turns out that was a good call.

Unfortunately I didn't think to check the map to see who I was allying with, otherwise I would've known that Gunthar was an island nation on the other side of the world. On the plus side, a place like this is going to have boats and it's never a bad thing to have control of the oceans.

I can't move anything yet though, as Highlord won the initiative roll this time so they get the movement phase first.

Now that Highlord has their units where they want them, they're starting the siege of Silvanesti. I've got three options: retreat, stand and counterattack, and I'm in a nice fortified location so standing sounds good right now.

Oh crap, I just noticed that they brought 25 dragons! What the hell am I supposed to do against 25 dragons? The bloody things are almost unkillable! That's what the RPG hero quest phase is about, to make the dragonlances needed to finally take them down.

The game's it's giving me the option to watch the battle, so I'll see what that looks like.

Hey it's like the Gold Box games, except with tiny dragons. And it's completely automatic.

Well the attack on the Silvanesti capital went about as well as I expected. They killed 248 griffons! This is a really demoralising thing to watch happen during the second turn in the game.

Yeah, I'm going to have to stop watching these battles, as we are not doing well. We're doing really really badly, actually.

I don't know if I could've prepared for this better, I've only had the one turn and all I can do with my armies is move them somewhere or attack someone, but this is not a good start.

What the hell? They sent a dragon over to take Caergoth while it was undefended! Who the hell knew that dragons could just fly over half the map and take your damn towns? Now Laurana's dead, and she had a name so she must have been really good.

Now that Caergoth's been conquered, all of their units are going to vanish off the map, which is a significant percentage of my army. They only left the place undefended for five minutes!

Well, screw this game then. I don't see a point in continuing at this point, because that one mistake has really set me back. I'm sure a skilled player could still turn things around, but this is only my first try.

Wait, false alarm. It turns out that the enemy dragon did not conquer Caergoth, as you need to hold both the capital and the towers before a nation is defeated. So I've still got all my Caergoth units for the time being.

They can go retake the capital while I move my Solanthus units north through the narrow gap between neutral nations. My Silvanesti warships have already arrived at the north coast and I'm going to use them as troop transports. I've only brought four ships and they can only carry one unit each, so I'm not sure if they're going to be any good, but I'm not seeing any better options. I just hope there's still a city left by the time the boats get back down there.

I also hope there isn't a Highlord navy waiting for me, as I don't need a naval battle while my armies are on board. I know they've got boats, I've seen them moving around, but I've lost track of where they are.

Once the boats are loaded I'm going to start moving them back down the east coast, careful not to go anywhere near the Maelstrom in the top right. Because it's neutral territory and I'm not allowed in there.

Also I've read that it's a really bad idea to send ships in there... unless a massive fleet is chasing you and the situation looks bleak, in which case you might as well pull a Han Solo and take a chance that the storms hurt them more than they hurt you.

Damn my Caergoth troops actually managed to take back their capital city from the dragon! The dude's flying away. 

Dragons are really tough, but they're not quite indestructible enough to face those odds. And my guys even got a quality increase for it, which is the closest this game has to level ups. It makes sense, considering the fight they just survived.

Alright, lessons have been learned. I'm going to station a proper garrison here to defend the city and make it a less tempting target for the computer in future. And that's the second turn over.

TURN THREE

Each turn starts with a news report and this one seems entirely accurate. They didn't have to rub it in though.

I looked up the year 349 and it turns out that the game takes place a couple of years before the two Silver Box games I've already played. I'm also a little surprised that they use the Gregorian calendar in the Dragonlance setting. The months in Forgotten Realms all have fantasy names like Kythorn and Flamerule.

Hang on, the game has a time limit of around 6 years, so it's not set before the other games, it's set during them. That means that the quest that the RPG heroes are currently on is the one I was playing myself in Heroes of the Lance and Dragons of Flame!

I started off turn three by winning over another country, Kaolyn, and by the look of their mountain lairs and that axe icon, I'm going to guess that they're dwarves! This could be very useful for me, as dwarves can cross mountains and take a shortcut straight to the enemy. Well, they could if it wasn't for neutral Throtyl being in the way.

I don't really know what to do with these Kaolyn troops, to be honest. I guess I could march them north for the Silvanesti warships to pick up, but it may not be tactically sound to throw everything I have at the enemy in waves of four units.

Now Whitestone has five countries! Unfortunately Highlord has ten.

Funny thing is, I've succeeded in making a new alliance on every single turn, so this is about as well as things could've gone for me. If I hadn't gotten those countries I would've been even more massively outnumbered. Your only advantage in the game is Highlord's bad AI and unfortunately I'm even worse.

Okay, I think the next country I'm going to try to ally with is Maelstrom. It's basically just a collection of ships, but I really need ships.

I really need griffons as well now, seeing as Highlord just got done with murdering them all. Those two units are just gone now.

On the plus side, I took out four dragons somehow! I don't know if they ever get them back during a reinforcement phase, or whatever, but I hope not. I want to be fighting finite dragons.

Having to sit and watch Highlord wipe out all my units one battle at a time isn't much fun. Though at least when my soldiers fight a hopeless battle and survive they sometimes get a quality upgrade.

This is such a disaster that I'm not sure it's even worth sending my Solanthus troops down here. Maybe I should be taking some of Highlord's countries while all their forces are committed to this battle. That'll annoy them! Or maybe I should get a force in place to protect wherever they'll be heading next.

Oh, I know what I should've done! I should've moved those ships from Gunthar over. I completely forgot about them.

Here's what the PC version's CGA graphics mode looks like. I just felt like a change but I already regret it.

The dragon icon that attacked Caergoth is still hanging around, so I'm going to tell my new dwarf buddies to sort it out. 'Target All' sends the whole stack after them (all two units) and I'm doing that with all three stacks, in the hopes that sending hundreds of people against a dragon turns out to be a smart move.

Man I'm getting sick of having to press 'Exit' twice to get back to selecting other units.

TURN... I DUNNO, FIVE? SIX MAYBE?

That's it, I can't take the CGA graphics any more. I'll never take green for granted again.

Hey my heroes found something in their quest! Solanthus 3rd Elite Human Infantry now has gnome technology, which may or may not be a good thing. I'm hoping it's a steam-powered machine gun.

I successfully allied with Vingaard in the diplomacy phase, so that's one alliance every turn so far, but Highlord has been keeping up and they still have more countries than me. I can see them moving units over from all over the bloody place to support their invasion of Silvanesti. Also the latest country they took was Throtyl, so now the buffer between us is gone. 

Damn, I was worried this would happen. Highlord has taken both Silvanesti's capital city and the tower, wiping out the last of their defences. The boats finally arrived with my Solanthus troops, but they're seriously outnumbered and the other side has dragons, so the chances of this leading to anything good seem slim.

The good news is that the game has a 30 turn limit and I can win without conquering the enemy. All I have to do is hang in there for another 25 turns and have the biggest army when it's over. But these five turns have felt like an eternity so I'd rather just give up. Again.


CONCLUSION

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War of the Lance has been a real stumbling block for me, an obstacle in my quest to play the first 10 years of Dungeons & Dragons games. Because it doesn't matter how much I learn about it, or how far I get into it, I just don't want to play it.

It doesn't help that it's one of the most basic-looking games I've played yet, to the point where it harms the gameplay. You can't see the borders between countries, everything turns into shield icons, and I've played space strategy games that are less black and depressing. The sound is even worse, because there basically isn't any. It's as silent as a game of chess. 

Though in chess the two sides are evenly matched and that's not true here, with Scenario mode setting Highlord up to kick your ass immediately. If the random numbers aren't on your side and you fail to make allies during your first few turns you can end up in a hopeless situation through no fault of your own. In fact it still seemed pretty hopeless even when I got a new ally every turn. I get that the game's all about hanging on and surviving long enough for your RPG heroes to give you the items you need to turn things around. But turn after turn of near-unbeatable Highlord dragons putting fear into the hearts of men and massacring my dudes got kind of demoralising! Especially as I didn't know what I could do about it. 

It's like when I tried Crusader Kings II for the first time and I was just staring at it, like a rabbit frozen in the headlights of an interdimensional space truck. I couldn't even comprehend what was coming to hit me. This is a proper strategy simulation by Strategic Simulations Inc. and I get the impression that they made it for their hardcore fans. The veterans who had started playing their 8-bit Apple II wargames a decade earlier, and knew this kind of game inside and out.

I'm definitely not the right person to be writing about it, as it reveals its deepest flaws only to the players who really understand it. Anyone can see that the interface is awkward, that everything takes one button press more than you want it to, and that it never gives you enough information. But things like the pathfinding issues take longer to spot. Plus I've heard that the game's deadline means that you barely get a chance to have fun with things like dragons before you run out of turns.

I don't know what percentage of the 15,255 people who originally bought the game stuck with it long enough to get $39.95's worth of entertainment from it, but it does have its fans. In fact it was fairly well regarded in its day, with Dragon Magazine giving it 4/5 stars. It's often considered to be the highlight of the Silver Box games, presumably because it's the most competently designed of them. Heroes of the Lance and Dragons of Flame were weird side-view action-adventure RPGs and that was a genre that no one had really mastered, especially not developer U.S. Gold. But SSI had already produced something like 40 strategy games and had some idea of what they were doing with this.

Personally though I'm eager to move on to the next Dungeons & Dragons game. Or any game really.

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Next time on Super Adventures, I've finally escaped the '80s! I've been stuck there since last November, but now I've reached the '90s where it's safe and I won't be going back. Not any time soon.

I don't have to think about War of the Lance any more, but if you've got anything you want to say about it then now's your chance. Maybe you're a big fan of the game. Maybe you've never heard of it. Either way you're welcome to leave a comment.