I was rather skeptical about tackling Marengo, The Gamers’ second installment in their “Napoleonic Brigade Series.“ I was never that thrilled with Austerlitz, nor did I feel that the transmigration of a basically ACW system back 50 or so years was workable. There are just too many differences in the armies and tactics. Fortunately, Dave Powell had the same reaction I did and set about to rework some of his original thinking. The Gamers have done quite a bit of work to improve the NBS, taking the rather bland Austerlitz mechanics and turning them into something that really “feels” Napoleonic. The ubiquitous Gamers’ signature command rules - written orders - are still there, creating all the right confusion, headaches and surprises. What has changed most are the mechanic aspects of the design. To begin with, the skirmisher rules are newly revised. Skirmishers now block line of sight, and they can retreat before combat to slow down an attacking column. Place them in protective terrain in front of your own line and your enemy is forced to deploy his own skirmish line to flush them out. Like pawns in the opening moves of a chess game, the skirmishers can be real pests, best countered by other skirmishers. Also revamped was Fire combat. From a Fire CRT lifted almost verbatim from the CWB series, we now have a CRT whose results include morale checks, losses, stragglers and retreats … all in one dieroll, greatly reducing wristage and play time. Cavalry rules were also boiled down from their previously arcane formulations to a simpler, and more effective, charge and countercharge sequence, in which good cavalry can also be recalled. A very nice touch of the old combined arms comes when infantry forms square against cavalry: artillery within three hexes now get to “opportunity fire” on the poor sods as they form up. If the guns do not shred the square, you can now move up with your infantry and blast away. Cavalry can also reaction charge units moving from one hex to another, within a three hex reaction range. The very presence of cavalry, whether it charges or not, puts enemy infantry in a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” situation. Of course, if you do charge, the cavalry ends up “blown” and, if the charge fails, expect heavy losses. All told, how you deploy and use your three arms can create game-killing blunders or masterstrokes. Another feature with much period flavor is the differentiation between French and non-French formation capabilities. French skirmisher and mixed columns (the latter not available to the Austrians) have greater fire values than their opponents. The French also receive advantages to their column attacks (reflecting their ordre mixte tactics), so that a lot of tactical and doctrinal differences make themselves felt in combat, without too many bothersome rules. Only one aspect of the design gave me pause; infantry, unlike artillery and cavalry, cannot react in any way to enemy movements in adjacent hexes. True, muskets or that era were woefully short-ranged and inaccurate, especially at the game’s scale (200 yards), which would make true zones of control unrealistic. The problem is that you can move adjacent to enemy infantry and, as long as your opponent doesn’t have any artillery around, you can maneuver, change formation, parade around, or even give them the old Braveheart Moon, with impunity. Seems to me doing that sort of thing with a large bunch of meanies only a few hundred yards away is an open invitation to a bayonet charge. To make the player even happier, the Marengo situation is a highly interesting one, somewhat reminiscent of that for the ACW’s South Mountain. A heavily outnumbered French force has to hold out long enough to be reinforced and then, hopefully, counterattack. At the start of the battle, the French have the advantage of terrain. They are deployed behind a steeply banked stream, in the walled farm of Marengo. The only way the Austrians can get at them is with a frontal assault to grab bridges. With some luck, a slow-moving column (Ott’s wing) that cross the stream far off the French right will arrive in time to turn the French line. The French have meager reserves a good distance from the front, and Bonaparte is nowhere around. While the French are defending an excellent position, the Austrians have considerable numerical advantage … more, and larger, units plus lots of artillery. In a straight-pout, attrition battle, the Austrians can win, and if Ott can arrive in time, it could become a French disaster. What makes the battle interesting for the French is in trying to decide just how long to fight, when to retreat, where to retreat to, how to time it all so that it coincides with the arrival of Napoleon and Desaix, and, above all, how to save enough strength from the defensive battle to mount a strong counterattack. The Austrians, though, if they can keep their army moving in a coordinated manner - hard to do with their usual crowd of overstuffed, Hapsburg court furniture in command - might just sweep the field. A few minor quibbles about the map. Both Marengo and Castel Ceriolo are presented as multi-hex villages. And acquaintance of mine, quite familiar with the period, passed through Marengo a short time ago, stopping to have lunch in Castel Ceriolo. (He had the Beef Wellington.) He says that both locales are not villages at all, but walled farms, much like Hougomont or l’Haye Sainte. He also opined that the two extra “village” hexes of Marengo should actually be orchards. Other than that, the game graphics sport the usual top-level Gamers approach. My editor thinks the map looks more like the floor of a Rastifarian barbershop than anything else, but what does he know? Most likely the glare from the white trees in 3DoG have affected his vision. I thought so much of Marengo that I played it four times. [Ed. That has more to do with Carl’s social life than anything else.] The series revisions work so well that I might even see if playing Austerlitz is now worth a shot. And that is not faint praise. CAPSULE COMMENTS Graphic Presentation: Usual top-level Gamers production. Playability: Big improvement over Austerlitz. This is a small battle that can be played in a day. Solitaire is not a strength. Replayability: Good period detail and some nice player choices possible make this an area of strength. Wristage: Fairly high Creativity: Usual Dave Powell goodies. Historicity: Given the brigade level, lots of details provide a good period with much color. Comparisons: Of all the brigade-level series out there, the 2nd edition of NBS is the one I like the best. Berg’s Loo may have more sizzle, but it lacks clarity and elegance. The faux-Zucker NES games are like white bread, and I still can’t figure out where GamesUSA is going with their odd little system. Overall: A great, fun simulation, unfailingly tense and surprising. from THE GAMERS One 22” x 34” map; 280 counters; Series and Game Rules; charts; boxed. The Gamers 500 W.4th St., Homer ILL 61849. $3x. Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. II # 20 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1994 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com