Wheels and Wargames II - A Kind Gesture

Just a brief addendum to a post I made a week or two ago about my longstanding fascination with public transport and my perceived overlap of this fascination with an interest in things military.

On reading my post a friend made an extraordinarily kind gesture and gave me his collection of 1/76 scale buses, a collection he had been accumulating for some years but had never seen the light of day. He thought the buses deserved a measure of love and admiration that he felt unable to provide, and I was happy to be able to assure him with the utmost confidence that they would receive this chez moi. They are now indeed occupying a shelf with pride of place in my lounge, although for the moment they are having to share it with some incongruities. That Pharoah’s head will have to go elsewhere I think, and ditto those protective dragons from Hong Kong, although I fear the consequences of invoking their ire by anything that might be seen as a demotion.

There were no fewer than sixteen vehicles in the collection but I have included only a sample of them in the photographs I have inserted here; those uninterested in such things would hardly want more, while those who do share that passion…well, I wouldn’t want to set too many hearts a flutter.

The buses will make me a collector again in a small way. I plan to expand their number, and, again with a nod to the donor, the plan is to acquire vehicles from fleets that represent places in which I have spent time of some significance, whether in the UK or abroad. I rather like the idea of a memoir written in buses. New acquisitions will almost certainly find their way into a blog post from time to time, quite possibly along with some very self-indulgent description of their significance, so you have been warned.

So, many thanks again to the donor if he is reading; it only goes to show what thoroughly kind and thoughtful people one meets among the wargaming community.

Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre

 So, Friday Night was Vassal Night. (Yes, this is a very delayed entry I’m afraid, blame my ever-hectic social schedule. Actually, don’t)

I have always been a bit ambivalent about Vassal. It’s a boon to those gamers lacking real life opponents and pretty much a Godsend during the Covid lockdowns, and some of its modules – presumably those that model the more popular games – work extremely well. In fact, in a real-time game, I have found that most of the modules I have tried have been reasonably clear and intuitive. I always found the PBEM version much less satisfying – having to step through an opponent’s log file and watch their moves and hope they didn’t make any mistakes before starting your own log file and hoping you don’t make any mistakes just felt like a chore. This was amplified to the nth power for multiplayer games…all of a sudden you had three or four other player turns to step through to get round to your own and the whole thing became an almighty pain…

Anyhoo. It was nice just to be doing a bit of real-time gaming online or otherwise. Our Vassal game on this occasion was another stab, after some years, at Compass Games’ No Peace Without Spain!, one of those games with an exclamation mark in the title (The only other example in my collection being the WWII ETO game Unconditional Surrender!)! As the title indicates the game is all about the War of the Spanish Succession with one player as the Bourbons (France, Spain, Bavaria and, initially, Savoy) and the other as the anti_Bourbon Alliance (Britain, the United Provinces, the Empire, latterly Savoy, Portugal and potentially Hapsburg Spain).

Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre-ing. That's never a real horse.

The game is card-driven; after an initial drawing of Event cards that introduce random events that can benefit either party, the meat of the game is the alternate play of cards with numerical values of 1-3. The values represent points that can be used to activate armies to move or make siege attempts, to rally troops demoralised by earlier defeat or to bring up to full strength corps that have suffered losses. Battles are pretty much uncomplicated dice-fests: half a die for each half-strength corps, one die for each full-strength corps and a number of dice for each engaged general equal to their Tactical Rating, with each die hitting on a roll of 5 or 6.

The stately pace of early eighteenth century warfare is enforced by a very simple rule. No army can move into an enemy-controlled space unless they are moving out of a friendly-controlled one. The only way to control a fortress space is to capture the fortress; so, as every space in the UP and Spanish Netherlands is a fortress space, the only way one of the armies can move forward is by taking in siege every space along the way. A turn represents a year and each side has only five cards to play during that time, so given the strength of the fortresses it is unlikely that more than one major fortress will fall to either side during the course of a year.

One nice touch is that a sufficiently overwhelming victory results in a Famous Victory marker being placed in the space, and this has beneficial results for the siege die rolls of the victorious player in adjacent spaces for the rest of the year. They say it was a shocking sight, and all that.

The game mostly does the job. There is a strong element of luck in the sense that if one side happens to draw a hand of 3-strength cards while the other has all 1-strength the former is going to have many more actions available and therefore a very strong advantage, while the absence of die-roll modifiers means that the results of most battles tend to be largely fortuitous – having Marlborough and Eugene in the lineup is a significant advantage but not one that cannot be overturned just by having a slightly larger French army.

We managed to play the years 1702 and 1703, during which, as the Allies, I managed to defeat the French outside Antwerp and reduce the city, at some loss. This gain was balanced in Germany by the loss of Coblenz to superior French forces and the fall of Linz to the Bavarians, posing a direct threat to Vienna, the fall of which would end the game with an automatic Bourbon Victory. At this point I am not sure how likely it is that I will be able to reproduce Marlborough’s famous march to the Danube, and of course even if I do it will be obvious to the Bourbon player so unlikely to have quite the same impact it did in real life. And of course if I get a load of 1-strength cards and the Bourbons get a stack of 3’s Vienna is probably toast.

Marlborough looking good in Antwerp.

Vienna not looking very safe though.

One thing that soured me slightly against Compass Games was their follow-up game of the Nine Years War (what at school we used to call the War of the League of Augsburg, 1688-1697, a dress rehearsal for the WSS). It’s good for such a little-covered war to get any outing at all, but the game was published with a virtually identical system, and a virtually identical map, to this one. I have never played it but I feel instinctively that it might have been a scenario in this one as opposed to a separate game, so I doubt it is a game I will ever feel the need to own.

The decision to play the game led me to some idle reading around the period, which led me to reading about the folk song referenced in the title. Apparently it was a tune that had its origin in a false report of the death of Marlborough at the bloody Battle of Malplaquet in 1709 and I was vaguely aware from my Napoleonic readings that Le Petit Caporal was fond of humming it. I never knew it provided the tune for ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’, so you learn something new every day.

Wheels and Wargames; Converging Passions

I’m pretty sure I am not imagining this – there is a definite correlation between an interest in military history and a fascination for public transport and I have often puzzled over why this is so.

My own interest in buses, trams and trains, I think, preceded my obsession with things military by about a year. Beginning some time in about 1975 my best mate Carl – similarly obsessed – and I used to get up on a Saturday morning and immediately after breakfast we would take the bus into the Pier Head on the Liverpool waterfront for a day of bus spotting.

Buses at the Pier Head in the 1970s; hideous building, but you know I quite miss it

There were several angles to our bus passion. Like most spotters we had a thing for the livery and model of the bus itself. That racing green that the MPTE* used on its buses - or oftentimes a lighter green with a yellow stripe running along the middle – was a thing handsome enough; but when there was a change in the livery due to promotion or advertisement, well, that was enough to excite us beyond measure. One of these promotions I remember particularly well - the Old Higsonians series which was run alongside adverts in the Liverpool Echo and even (I think) on Granada TV for the watery local brew, Higsons, and featuring legendary Merseysiders like Ann Field, Doc Road, Phil O’Monic, Rock Ferry, Count Erode and of course Pierre Head. You had to be there…

Some of the Old Higsonians; how we laughed.

If changes in livery left us entranced, changes in model left us scarcely coherent. At times of heavy usage the MPTE would blow the dust off some of its older stock and instead of the usual 1970s workhorse the Atlantean we would suddenly get an old open-platformed Routemaster roll into view as we waited at the bus stop. The other kids probably watched us with a mixture of amusement and pity as we jabbered excitedly over this unexpected treat. Thankfully Carl was hard enough to deter most physical manifestations of our peers’ amusement; on my own I would probably have been bounced off said bus repeatedly until a Dave-shaped dent gave it an additional rarity value.

What I think distinguished us from other spotters though was the sense of the exotic with which we regarded those buses on a Saturday morning. Taking up position right at the top of Water Street, where the street opened up onto the broad space in front of the river, we would watch the buses debouch from the narrow street like an invading army (you see what I did there?). Water Street was the only inbound route for buses to the Pier Head and at the time there were well in excess of 100 routes terminating there, which meant that there was a constant flow of buses to be seen coming up in that green and yellow stream, from all over the city. Some of the route numbers I remember even now, over 40 years later – 72 from Hunts Cross, 78 from Halewood, 17C from Fazakerley. Despite the fact that none of these places must have been more than a few miles from where we lived, the lack of any reason – or any easy route – to get there made them seem places far distant; so limited were our horizons that Speke or Garston might as well have been on the moon.

Bizarrely, we always romanticised one route in particular – the 12C to Cantril Farm. Cantril Farm sounded to us like some untouched bucolic quarter of Liverpool, silent but for the birdsong and the lowing of cattle and the occasional rumble of the 12C bus. It wasn’t until later that I discovered it was a recent overspill development that in the decade or so since its creation in the 1960s had already become a byword for inner city decline – it was interesting and instructive to read Red Dwarf’s Craig Charles’ memories of growing up there.

The 12C; they must have just finished cleaning the straw off it.

From hanging around the hideously ugly 1970’s Pier Head bus terminus lusting over the buses we graduated to hunting down books about trams and trains and – for my wealthier mate Carl at least – acquiring gorgeous Hornby train sets that he would set up in his grandad’s old shop. As always the key was in part the visual kick – I defy anyone to set eyes on a 1930’s period Liverpool Corporation Streamliner tram and not lose their heart completely to its luscious curves - and that always faintly exotic sense of the far-flung routes along which these lovely creatures actually ran. There’s something about a bus or train ride for me even now that will always carry some echo of the starry-eyed trips of my boyhood.

A 1930’s period Liverpool Corporation Streamliner tram...Mmmmm...

The thing is though that I thought this transport/war thing was just us, and I don’t think it is really. As I grew older I became used to seeing military and transport on neighbouring shelves not only in budget book shops but in W H Smiths. And there are also bookshops that cater explicitly to that happy mix of interests – for example the Ian Allan Book and Model shop in London’s Waterloo, where basically half of the shop is books about buses, trams and trains and the other is military books and models. The Pen and Sword publisher list also shows a very pointed blend of military and transport, only more recently branching out into other historical themes.

I guess the clue might be in the word ‘model’. Most of us wargamers will at least go through a phase where we are as concerned with modelling as with gaming, whether it’s gently removing the decals for our dogfight doubles in that little bowl of warm water, or producing the gorgeously detailed armies I see so often in the wargame blogs I follow (there but for a shakey hand and dodgy eyesight…) Similarly public transport is a mecca for the modeller, from those big elaborate Hornby train sets to the stunning – and correspondingly expensive – new tram model kits available from the Spanish company Occre. But still, not all bus- or train- enthusiasts are modellers, and nor are all military history enthusiasts.

Is it just about the passion for detail? Is it the same impulse for correct detail that makes someone wary of identifying the wrong tank on a Normandy battlefield or the wrong regiment on a Peninsula one, that potentially makes them also keen to understand the differences between an Altona and a Ringbahn single deck Liverpool tram?

What am I missing? Or am I missing anything – maybe this military-transport overlap is something I have made up and similar links can just as easily be found to other interests. I would be interested in anyone else’s thoughts.

 

*The Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive set up at the end of the 1960’s to replace the Liverpool Corporation Passenger Transport – the ‘Corpy’.

Kriegspiel; Le Vol de l'Aigle - I

So, this time last week I was deep into a solitaire Napoleonic game and thinking generally about playing wargames solo (see previous post). This week I am thinking about what must count as the polar opposite of that, wargaming in teams, with an umpire. 

Of course most wargamers don’t need telling that this umpired team model was the essence of those original kriegspiele fought by be-picklehaube’d (there must be a German adjective for that) Prussian staff officers in the nineteenth century that purportedly won the Franco-Prussian War before the first needle gun was fired. But while the success of the Prussian model made the team wargame a standard planning tool of army/navy general staff the world over, it is very much a niche activity within the wargaming hobby, presumably because of the numbers, time and commitment required to game a full campaign in that manner. 

A pickelhaube. Not very relevant, but a blog post has to have some pictures.

Like solitaire gaming, PBEM team gaming is something that I would imagine has found countless new adherents as a result of the unending COVID lockdowns and the impossibility of the face to face encounters so many of us enjoyed in the past. Certainly it is something I have only just started to explore (with the exception of a PBEM game of Diplomacy some years back which is probably best forgotten, not that I’m bitter; traitors…one day, one day I will have my revenge…) 

 

My first PBEM game since that Diplomacy debacle has been the quite fascinating Battle of Rivoli refight that Jonathan Freitag of the Palouse Wargaming Journal has been hosting. He will I’m sure have a great deal to say about that on his blog after the guns fall silent so I shall not steal any of his thunder here. I will only say how much I have enjoyed not only the playing but practicing my Napoleonic declamations. I suspect I would have been a very poor Napoleonic general, but I like to think that I can at any rate talk the talk; although promising at one point to fight to the last cartridge was a tad embarrassing. I must have been thinking of the Franco-Prussian War at that moment. 

I now find myself on the roster for a game of Didier Rouy’s Vol de l’Aigle, to which I am looking forward immensely. I understand the scenario will be the opening phase of the 1809 Campaign in Germany, the perfidious Austrians pouncing on Bavaria while Napoleon is still in Paris and some of his best troops still chasing the Spanish around the Peninsula. 

I bought a copy of this game some years ago thinking very naively that it would be a pleasing distraction to set up a game between two other players with myself acting as umpire, but looking at the conversations and planning around the proposed game it looks like it is a much more serious beast than that. 

Like the old kriegspiele, Vol de l’Aigle involves two teams, one team for each of the two opposing armies, each team comprising a commander in chief and a number of subordinates representing Corps or Division commanders. Each team is given a map of the campaign theatre - the maps that come with the game are apparently those from Adolphe Thiers’ Atlas De l’Histoire Du Consulat Et De l’Empire and very handsome things they are too. The notes remind us that this is more than was normally available to the actual commanders, who would be working with maps that were wholly unreliable or non-existent. 

Thiers' map of the campaign of April 1809

Teams are also given data sheets for their army, initial deployment details and order templates – this latter presumably means I will no longer be able to just declaim at length and issue an order as an afterthought, chiz.

After an initial team meeting to discuss strategy, subordinate commanders are sent to join their units. Subsequently, unless commanders are within 20 kilometers of each other, in which case they can ride over to each others’ HQ for a quick chat and hopefully a glass of brandy, communications are sent via messengers who travel on the campaign map at an average of 10 kilometers an hour. Assuming they don’t get lost or otherwise delayed/eliminated along the way. 

Each commander receives orders from his superior and issues orders to his subordinates accordingly. His command will move at a certain speed given the terrain or roads available and will occupy a certain length of road space depending upon troop types and march formation (as an example an Austrian division of 6,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry is estimated to occupy a road space of 7.5 kilometres, or 3.5 hours march, from the head of the commander’s horse to the rump of the last of the cavalry mounts). He will have to work out his fatigue ratings, number of units lost to straggling, he will have to decide where in his column of march he will position his supply wagons and his guns. 

What happens subsequently is mostly worked out by the umpire, who determines whether and when orders are received and collects and collates all the orders from both teams to establish if and where two opposing formations clash and a battle is likely to occur. 

Having mostly fought wargames where the commander has pretty much a God’s eye view of the field of play – he knows where and how strong his own units are, he knows where and for the most part (despite the use of various Fog of War mechanisms) roughly how strong the enemy’s units are, he can issue orders and see them executed instantly and can just as instantly see his enemy’s orders as they are executed – the situation of being mostly in the dark will be an interesting one. I suspect as an initial observation it will produce a good deal of caution, as opposed to the relatively gung-ho strategy you feel you can get away with when you have much more information about enemy positions, strengths and likelihood of reinforcement. 

As I write it looks like the number of people up for this game has passed 30 so it will probably split into two games, perhaps with differing time limits on the issuing of orders so there is a separate game for us plodders. The chap who sent out the original invitation on BoardGameGeek has been offered advice by a veteran, someone who has organised games more than once in the past, and it is his comments that have disabused me of my old notions of setting up a game as an idle distraction. Apparently umpiring a single campaign involved 10 hours of his time every week for 6 months. That is a part-time contract. However, in a review of the game he also described it as ‘one of the highlights of my 40 years in wargaming’. With an endorsement like that how could I possibly miss the chance taking part in a game of this? Kick off is in April (the 212th ainniversary of the actual kickoff would be appropriate if it could be managed) and I look forward to providing regular updates of the progress of the campaign here.

Napoleon Solo

(I have David in Suffolk, he of the Ragged Soldier blog, to thank for the excellent title to this post!)

One of the striking things about wargamers compared to other gamers is how many of us like to game solitaire, even when there is no shortage of potential opponents.

Numerous reasons are often given for gaming solo. A game might be approached as a puzzle to be solved rather than a combat to be modelled, and this is particularly the case with some of the many designed-for-solitaire games. The human player is attempting to outwit or outperform an AI whose behaviours are dictated by the rules. But many wargamers enjoy – in fact, would prefer - playing two- or multiple- player games solo, including many that on the face of it look like very poor candidates for solitaire play, typically because they include ‘fog of war’ features which are supposed to hide information from one’s opponent; you can’t very easily hide information from yourself after all.

(That said, I have heard elderly wargamers declare that after you get past a certain age that fog of war can be easily recreated by making sure you just leave a few hours between turns so you have forgotten what the other side had in their hand or printed on their blocks. Senescence can be your friend.)

But a wargame is to many of us something different from ‘just’ a game or a puzzle. We like to watch the events unfold before our eyes. Playing a wargame solo can be like writing a story; the narrative becomes key, and the moments of most interest often revolve around particular characters or units or subplots that can later be described at length in an engaging after action report, vivid enough for the reader to smell the gunpowder and hear the shouted orders.

At these times the presence of an opponent introduces an unwanted element of tension or pressure, the need to compete as opposed to the opportunity to observe at leisure. There are few experiences in wargaming, I find, to beat that pleasure of slowly sipping a glass of good wine over a board showing a campaign or battle finely poised, and just ruminating over what each side might do next, and how the situation before you contrasts with that of the actual conflict, and why that might be so.

I have several designed-for-solitaire games under my belt these days, and I plan to say something about all of them at some point in this blog. They are not normally my go-to games; if I am not playing an opponent I prefer to play a reasonably simple 2-player game as both players, just honestly trying my best for both sides and savouring my wine when the crisis of the battle approaches. But sometimes I will acquire a particular game out of curiosity, and the way in which the AI tries to model an actual opponent is always a matter of the keenest interest.

So my current game is a rather obscure one called N: The Napoleonic Wars, and oddly what first attracted me to it was how little it resembles your average wargame.

It’s quite a light-ish game, 12-pages of rules that are written with tongue frequently in cheek. Design notes include the following, on various events in the game that keep Napoleon busy:

Napoleon’s escapade in Egypt took him away from France for many long and critical months. His later escapades in the boudoir with Marie Louise, his Habsburg wife, did produce an heir to his throne, but also initiated him into the dubious joys of growing bald and pudgy and playing with the toddler while his Empire burned.

Boney busy in Egypt...

...and in the boudoir. Coo-er, missus.

Or, regarding the presence of the Josephine counter in a nation where a battle occurs:

The locals are in awe of her beauty, style and her legendary skills in the boudoir.

This jolly style might start to get irksome in a longer ruleset or a game that has pretensions to be a serious simulation, but in a light solitaire of this type it reads fine, and the rules are in fact admirably clear.

The first surprise to the game is that you, the player, are not Napoleon. You play his Coalition foes and the aim is to bring the Corsican Ogre down. This is unusual for a start – everyone always wants to be Napoleon, right?

The game board itself has a map of Napoleonic Europe in the background but that is pure decoration. The main feature consists of five appropriately positioned boxes representing nations where a battle may take place – France, Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain. Germany (as Prussia), Austria and Spain may also side with the Coalition and contribute their armies to the anti-French military alliance. The rest of the board is mostly a number of smaller boxes that either show information pertinent to the game (nations’ political status, current religious status of France, current status of Europe’s Jews to name but a few) or allow wars occurring outside of Europe in places as diverse as Egypt, Haiti, the Cape of Good Hope and Ireland, to be managed in an abstract way.

The board

An obvious omission is any box representing Russia, which initially seems very jarring. In fact this makes for another abstraction that fits in with the mechanics of the game very well. As the Coalition you have a good chance of bringing Russia onside as long as both Prussia and Austria are in the Coalition. If both of these nations are knocked out the Russians just decide to go home. A Napoleonic invasion of Russia itself is triggered when four specific minor wars have been fought, and this invasion is handled in a different way to the battles fought in the on-board nations.

The idea is to get Napoleon to abdicate by pushing the Napoleon Abdicate counter up from 0 to 16. The counter is pushed up mostly by winning battles – you have to win 3 battles per turn, which given the number of big beefy French Corps that get deployed each turn is a tall order. 

Those Coalition armies look awesome...

...until compared to this cup of bruisers.

You can also push the counter up by winning naval battles or key minor wars – the French hate to lose Haiti for example. Or, you can suffer a sudden defeat if the French win the Battle of Trafalgar and get to invade Blighty. The full game has 16 turns, running from 1794 until 1821 and if you fail to force Napoleon to abdicate by that time then the great man dies in his bed in the Tuileries and the nations of Europe settle down under the benign guidance of his son. Peace reigns and neither of the world wars ever happens. Hurrah! Oh, sorry, I mean, boo hiss!

The game is to an extent scripted, there are certain events that must happen every turn, Boney appearing in 1795 for example, but there is a lot of unpredictability also, unexpected accidents, variations as to what French forces are deployed and to where, and a High Politics chit pull mechanic that means you know there is a chance of a particular political event happening but no way of knowing exactly when. As might be expected, keeping the coalition going in the face of likely military defeats requires financial management and diplomatic success, as well as just plain luck. Getting an idea of the ebb and flow of the game is impossible without an example, so having played the first six turns I thought a brief after action report would be instructive and give an idea of what sort of history the game allows to play out. Here is the narrative of my game, to the end of 1805.

1792-1794

The First Coalition includes Britain, Austria and Prussia, with Sweden and Russia neutral.

There is fighting in South Africa which the Coalition wins, thanks mainly to British naval dominance.

Spain signs the Treaty of San Ildefonso with France and becomes a French ally.

French diplomats are active in Europe and the Allies find they have little spare cash for countermeasures.

Fighting occurs in three nations, Italy, Spain, and Germany. Italy sees a thumping French victory but in Spain and Germany the Coalition are victorious. The continuation of the Reign of Terror in France sees a slight shift in the Italians’ sympathies and they are not quite so enthusiastic about the Revolution.

1794 ends with a Naval Battle which the Brits win comfortably.

Summary: Everything seems to be going smoothly so far – most importantly the victory in Germany means Prussia are still onside.

1795-1796

Napoleon appears on the scene with his beautiful and fascinating Creole wife Josephine.

Minor wars in Switzerland and Haiti. Coalition manages to lose the Swiss War despite some considerable expenditure, but just scrapes a victory in Haiti which is a good one to win.

There are battles in Spain and Italy which both result in defeats for the Coalition. Germany once again gives us a victory however, aided by the fact that the main target (‘butt’) nation changes from Germany to France which means Napoleon goes off there with his army instead.

Among the random accidents this turn the Barbary Pirates lead the RN a merry dance which makes it more vulnerable to naval defeat, Yellow Fever in Spain denies the French use of their Spanish allies, the French attitude to religion mellows and the Italian scientist Alessandro Volta decides he has had quite enough of the French and throws his lot in with the Allies.

Summary: We are still unable to beat the French in three nations in one turn – that is going to be a major challenge – but another victory in Germany keeps Prussia in the field, which is key.

1797-1798

Russia abandons its neutrality but due to terrible diplomacy rolls the Allies are unable to entice her to join the Coalition. Meanwhile a war in Senegal goes badly despite the Allies throwing a good deal of money at it.

Much worse is to come.

There are battles in Italy, Austria and Germany. 

We might get something out of this one...

This one, not so much.

Italy yields a convincing Coalition victory but there are overwhelming defeats in Germany and Austria which knocks both of our German allies out of the war!

uh-oh...

Summary: A negative reaction in France to the ongoing Terror and another victory in a late naval battle is no consolation for the fact that Prussia and Austria have surrendered and the coalition has collapsed!

1799

A war in Egypt keeps Boney busy for the turn, and what’s more we win it. Ha ha, sucked in, Bonaparte.

We also manage to get Austria back into the fight with a bit of money and a bit of plain begging.

But the rot has set in now. The Coalition win a battle in Italy but the French effortlessly batter Austria into surrender again.

Meanwhile more disastrous die rolls mean we have been unable to bring the Prussians or Russians onside and the Barbary Pirates continue to distract the RN from its French enemies.

Summary: Bad times for the anti-French alliance, even without Napoleon being available to push us around in Europe. The die rolls are relentless. The same die that continually rolls 1s and 2s to enable French Cavalry Corps to move from nation to nation turns to rolling 5s and 6s when we are trying to oust French diplomats from Germany!

1800-1804

Britain concludes the Peace of Amiens with France so there is little fighting this turn. The perfidious Bavarians join the French alliance. Austria is game to have another go but with no other forces except the weak ‘Duchy’ units the result is predictable and the battles in Austria and Germany scarcely bother the French hegemony of Europe.

1805

Those French, they just can’t help themselves. With no other enemies on the European mainland they engineer a war in the Balkans between the Russians and the Ottomans that the Russians win, which is potentially good for the Allies in the long run.

More serious though is a battle fought at Cape Trafalgar which, contrary to all expectations, the RN narrowly loses! Lord Nelson is killed and the French immediately invade Britain. A victory would end the game immediately with a French win, but the British manage to inflict a costly defeat on the invaders, wiping out three corps. But the French Navy rules the waves and the situation is grim.

Better news in Germany with an unexpected victory over small French occupying forces and the prospect of Prussia rejoining the war. Late 1805 sees a naval victory that reverses some of the worst effects of Trafalgar and restores the RN to its former position of superiority.

Summary: Britain has survived an invasion attempt and an unexpected defeat at Trafalgar has been largely redeemed by two subsequent unexpected victories. But the Allies are on the ropes, not least due to some truly catastrophic die rolls.

And here, for now, the game ends. It’s a clever and enjoyable little game which to an extent captures the gist of the Napoleonic wars. To have a hope of beating Napoleon the British need to get Austrian, Prussian and Russian boots on the ground, which requires sound financial management, diplomatic success (which also costs money) and luck, and they also need to keep spending on the RN high enough to win any naval battles that might occur – losing the big one at Trafalgar particularly is a body blow. Land battles can seem pointless – the French can often pile in enough troops to make the result a foregone conclusion – or bizarre – the retreat/pursuit rules can lead to armies chasing each other from nation to nation around Europe – but where the forces are evenly matched it can be an interesting contest. The randomness is high enough that I suspect there is a good replayability factor, and I suspect also that if I stick to this game there will be future events that will likely turn the tide for the beleaguered Coalition. Not bad at all for a light solo gaming experience.