jon@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Jonathan Gingerich) (12/12/85)
a "Wellington's Victory" has been re-released. The other SPI game refered to was, I believe, "Ney vs. Wellington". There are two tactical games formally from Martial Enterprises? now from Clash of Arms? on the battles of Auederstadt and Pressich-Eylau. All of these are very detailed. I have seen rather tepid reviews of the latter two, mostly complaining of an opacity of details and a suspect philosophy (i.e. that exhortations to "lead" rather than bean count have more to do with the French bias than the rule mechanisms). WV is a detailed moster but fairly orthogonal, similar to the Civil War monsters. I have seen a good review of a Historical Concepts? game called Marengo 1800? (also Napoleon in Spain, but it is strategic). A game I have very high hopes for is the S&T magazine game "Thunder at Luetzen". The game is based on the two days before and during the battle. The French army enters piecemeal, while the Allies may choose where and when to enter. The object is to demoralize the enemy (or capture a bridge on the other side of the map) and army lose moral when they suffer casualties, or when they move, and regain it when they rest. Allied entry greatly speeds up the arrival of the French. The Allies can choose to either jump the French immediately then try to hold out, wait until the first night, when the French are under special restrictions, and move into position, or hope to bluff the French into expending too much moral on staying active and beat them in a defense of the bridge. The tactics are unusual as well. There is no stacking, units are of similar real size and differ in terms of quality, and each unit moves and attacks in turn. The CRT is retreat heavy so the tactics are those of surround, eliminate. This makes for some odd tactics. A double or even single, spaced line is far stronger than a solid line, and a quality unit can stave off many attacks while a weak unit represents more of a threat to its neighbors than to itself, but all this can probably be interpreted as reflecting reality (i.e. value of reserves, dangers of dense formations, etc.) Each unit is has 2 steps, and because the French may retreat rather than lose a step, they have a tremendous advantage. They also have a lot of good artillery, which can be devestating. Anyway it looks very promising, simple and clever, but though I've pulled it out several times, I haven't got going since proper play depends so much on balancing response to a number of threats I haven't weighted because I haven't played it yet! Fire and Movement also gave it a bit of a panning, but it was a shallow review where the reviewer had clearly misunderstood an extremely important rule (the first night French restrictions) and I suspect, engaged in a certain amount of SPI-bashing. Are there any miniture enthusiasts out on the net?