I like maps. I like to look at them, I like to draw them and I think they are one of the key "visceral impact" components of a game, both in terms of buying and playing. Even when there are few terrain features - cf. Cannae in SPQR, The Gamers' Afrika, et al. - the skill of the graphic artist can be used to augment the wishes and artistic intent of the designer. Some maps are so well done - Rick Barbour's spectacular maps for L'Armιe du Nord come to mind - that they can carry a game far beyond its play worth. Then there is the other end of the Bell Curve, which brings us to the subject at hand, the latest Joe Miranda oeuvre for Decision, the Empires at War Quad a relatively harmless and not totally unenjoyable exercise in 19th century simplicity which contains two maps that truly boggle the mind. To wit, the map for Solferino, the massive, 1859 battle that was the watermark for the Italian Risorgimento. If the Solferino map in EmpWar is an even remotely accurate recreation of the terrain in northern Italy over which the battle was fought, then I'll buy 500 shares in 3W. What you get is a map so devoid of features - the fellow I played it with said it looked more like El Alemain - and so wrong in what is both there and not there, it becomes a Travesty of Terrain. To wit: Solferino, itself. This sleepy village was the focal point of the battle because, atop a steep, rocky hill that dominated the countryside and overlooked the town, stood two, huge fortress-like buildings - a turreted castle and a church - that provided one of the best defensive positions in the area. In the game, Solferino is a two-hex village in the middle of nowhere. Not a hill in sight. Most of the battlefield was broken, rather difficult countryside, none of which appears anywhere herein nor does the road network that both armies used to channel their attacks. Also gone is the series of canals that ran south through Medole, plus a considerable grove of trees west of the village, both of which made the approach of the French III and IV corps somewhat difficult. The uncrossable Mincio River has been reduced to a stream, and the rather large, walled-fortress city of Peschiera at the northern mouth of the river has been reduced to village status. It's blander than a train full of accountants. Then there's the map for Inkerman, the Crimean War debacle. In the words of yet another playtester - I actually tried this game out on several unsuspecting worthies - " are you sh...ing me?!" Any game that looks like it has more counters than hexes - the 7"x7" playing surface actually outnumbers the combat units by 2-1, but just barely - invariably brings up the question, "Why bother?" All designers, including myself, have "blind" spots, parts of games and the design process in which they have little interest. For me, it's victory conditions. (You play for 47 hours, who cares who wins?) For Joe, it appears to be maps. It first surfaced with his glaucomatic view of the Mediterranean in The Roman Civil Wars, or the Mediterranean Through a Ptolemy Darkly. Then, in Napoleon's First Battles his topography actually drew the (well-earned) ire of one of gaming's least irascible people, Ed Wimble. Here, with EmpWars, he shows, once again, that as long as it has hexes it matters little what's in them. The Inkerman map appears to be a Reductio ad Absurdum shrinkage version of the rather colorful one in the old SPI Quadder, The Crimean War. As for Solferino, I haven't a clue as to why Joe hasn't a clue; the source appears to be the World Book Encyclopedia. There have already been two games on this battle (one reviewed in BROG); both contain good detail. It is obvious Joe consulted neither. Store owners, upon being handed the cash for the game, should be required, by law, to give you gaming's equivalent of your "Miranda Warnings", as the review title suggests. That said, Miranda's Empires at War, a division-level quad (at 500 meters per) covering four of the battles of the Napoleon III-dominated "Belle Epoch" is, with blandishments, a somewhat expanded recycling of the system Joe M used for Napoleon's First Battles (for which, see BROG #x). The game is pleasant enough to look at - other than the two items, above - with a somewhat bleh boxcover (Decision's trademark, it appears), the Patented Pavek Popsicle-colored counters, which are clear and serviceable, and a clear set of rules and two solid Player Aid Cards. On the other hand, the cards are printed on both sides, which creates some playing problems if you use the optional "Screen" rules. You place your screened units in the boxes provided on the front of, say, card #1. Then, in determining what the turn's random event is - Joe calls this the Friction Table; Joe refuses to use any term used by any other designer - you flip over the chart, promptly spilling your "screens" onto the floor. How elegant. Another, albeit minor, yet irritating, point. In Solferino, both Emperors - Napoleon III and Franz Joseph - have their names on their Army HQ counter. Victor Emmanuel, King of Piedmont and future King of Italy, does not. (Unless the letter "P" is Risorgimento code for Vic, much like the composer Verdi's name was treated by Italians as an acronym for the king.) Why? And that ain't gonna make the Italians happy, Joe. Even with all of this visual hassle, EmpWars is kind of fun. There are four battles: Inkerman, Solferino, Konnigratz and Gravelotte a sort of Napoleon III Quad. (Well, Trio Plus One how's "The Worst Napoleon's Battles" sound?) It features a couple of very nice mechanics that make play quite challenging and entertaining. The key among these is the combination of Leadership Capability and Movement, a method we've seen before in some of Joe's games. We're basic Igo-Hugo here: Bombardment, Movement, Assault, Rally (plus some other stuff that doesn't much affect the 4 basics). What Joe has done is to rate each leader - and each unit!, for when it is out of Command - for the type of movement it can possibly undertake: Normal, Impetuous or not-at-all. The ratings run from Lethargic to Aggressive to Genius, et al. This entails a dieroll for each unit (or leader), but this somewhat excessive wristage produces some interesting effects in terms of keeping corps together and an inability to stop units from making dumb attacks. The end result is to produce effective player tension, as well as rendering many a player far more tentative then he would normally be. I, for one, opted far too often to not advance after a successful attack simply to allow most of my units to remain in command. The one problem is that use of the chain of command appears to be up to the player. If a bad army commander and a good division commander are available, the player will automatically jump rank and choose the latter. The game effect of this, say at Gravelotte, is to almost totally negate the depressing presence of Marshal Bazaine. Most results on the CRT's are Retreats cum Disruption (I think we can get beyond a single, six-sided die approach by this period in time, can't we?), which brings up one of those rules that lets you know that if anyone actually playtested this game they did so without reading the rules. All retreat results carry automatic Disruption with them. Units may retreat through enemy ZOC's must make a Morale Check in doing so, failure at which results in a Disruption. However, if a Disrupted unit suffers another Disrupted result it is treated as "no further effect". In other words, you have a series of rules which cancel each other out. Dumb stuff like this seems to be a feature of far too many of Joe's games, wherein some really good creativity in one or two areas is marred by slipshod work in a number of others. The very nice (but optional) Cavalry Pursuit rule is balanced by the fact that cavalry cannot retreat before assault, even slow-moving infantry divisions. The Bombardment Table also provides a rather nice quirk. "Possible" results are resolved not by the target's ratings but by the bombarding unit's rating! The better the artillerists, the more likely they are to inflict damage. Granted, some of these units can cause ferocious carnage, often more than the infantry. It doesn't take that much for one Prussian gun unit to wipe out an an entire French division in one "shot". It also doesn't help that the table appears to be misprinted. A 'D' is an automatic Disruption, a 'D?' is a Possible Disruption. Simple enough, Except that, in the scheme of things (higher dieroll) a D? is considered worse than a D. That old Decision Disease, "Proofreader's Dyslexia", one assumes. And as if the minimalist terrain was not enough (although the maps for Konnigratz and Gravelotte are nice), the effects of such terrain are often a cause for pate-scratching. There is no combat advantage for defending on a hilltop (tell that to the French soldiers who stumbled and stormed up the slopes leading to Solferino castle, only to die by the thousands); there is one for crossing streams. It also costs just as much to move down a hill as up, even though the hills don't appear to be high enough to overcome the Line of Fire restrictions imposed by intervening trees. Slipshod stuff. Enough of this let's face it, this one of those games for people who couldn't care less what they are playing as long as they're playing something and it's fun. You want history, you want accuracy, you want a sense of reality somewhat above the level of the Itchy-and-Scratchy Show, this is NOT for you. On the other hand, EmpWars is, within its own, arglebargle universe, fun to play. Who cares if every infantry counter in the battle has the same strength - every Prussian infantry division at both Konnigratz and Gravelotte is either a '20' (G) or a '21' (K) - they're big bruisers, all. They don't produce too many results other than Disrupt-Back-one, but we all like those 21-pointers, don't we. Of course, at Gravelotte, all French divisions are 19's, which means that, on a pure 1-on-1 basis, Prussians will usually be attacking at 1-1, French at 1-2. If that sort of simplicity doesn't bother you, feel free to proceed. If you do, you'll find that, as pure competitive-style games, the battles provide some good, if elongated, fun. I say elongated, because, with the exception of Sawed-Off Inkerman, the games take some time to play to completion at least 6-8 hours. Solferino didn't resemble the actual battle overly much, mostly because of the terrain resembling northern Africa more than northern Italy. By turn two much of it looked like a quintessential WWI pushing-and-shoving match, but it was fun to see if you could attain a breakthrough somewhere. It also is pretty well balanced, probably far more than the real thing. (Rating Emperor Franz Joseph as a Standard-level Commander is akin to calling "Charles in Charge" an incisive view of a dysfunctional family.) Is it Solferino? Only vaguely. Gravelotte is somewhat more open; it's a bigger map, for one. It's also quite playable, even if the French have about as much chance of beating the Prussians as I have of modeling for Calvin Klein. This is actually a marvelous solitaire game, trying to figure out just how much devastation you can wreak on the French by moving around their left with two corps and then bringing in the X Corps on their right, from behind. The froggie stumbles all over the lot, like the proverbial Dutch boy, trying to plug ten holes with five fingers. His only hope is for the Prussians to run afoul of the occasional, bad leadership dieroll, and to bang around a few Teutonic divisions before Great Cooga-Mooga Time. The battle proceeds rather nicely, and it does have a good feel for the grand tactics of the period if you ignore the inability of cavalry to retreat before combat. Unfortunately, it's mostly "Auf Metz" for the Prussians, and "Sauve Qui Peut" for the French. The one battle I didn't play was Konnigratz, which is also a somewhat unbalanced situation (at least historically). I'd like to combine Miranda's Command-Movement rules with some of the mechanics Paul Dangel used for his Blood & Iron game, in Command #21. Inkerman? Forget it although this is the one game you can play while flying coach, at least until they put the fasten Seat Belts sign on and all your counters start doing the Hully Gully. Well, you've been issued your Miranda Warnings. Joe did the crime; it's up to you to see if you wanna do the time. Having been forewarned of the evidence accumulated against, it's still not a bad way to await your next appearance in court. Hire a good House Rules Lawyer and you may just get off as it were. CAPSULE COMMENTS Graphic Presentation: Professional, but bland. Ur-Decision stuff. Playability: Very good. System is fairly simple and makes lots of sense, for the most part. Plays well solitaire, if you ignore the Screen rules which I recommend even when playing face-to-face. Replayability: Only fair, even with 4 battles, as none are that "competitive". Creativity: Lots of good stuff, marred by drawing blanks in too many areas. Historicity: Aside from the dismal map work - it's Mapless Joe Jackson Time; " say it ain't so, Joe" - a good feel for the era in system terms. Attention to detail poor. Comparisons: Not much in this era. Most interesting and evocative command-control system at this level, though. Overall: Typical Miranda: flawed fun. More for histo-buffs than competitive play. from Decision Games Two 22" x 34" mapsheets; 400 counters, Rules booklet; Player Aid Cards. Boxed. From Decision Games, POB 4049, Lancaster CA 93539. $30 Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. II # 12 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com