Three 22" x 34" unmounted maps; 420 die-cut counters; 28-page rule book; one off-board movement display, two cardstock charts; boxed. Clash of Arms Games, The Byrne Building #205, Lincoln & Morgan Streets, Phoenixville, PA 19460.
Last winter, I was enjoying an extended holiday leave from Real Life. One of the projects I had planned to embark on during my vacation was Ed Wimble's follow-on to L'Armée du Nord, Jena. I had mixed feelings about the LAdN system. RHB had raked LAdN over the proverbial coals for much of its system. Among other transgressions he had noted with his usual, light-hearted approach, RHB had decried the rules for cavalry charges, by which it was possible for a few girlie hussars to drive a manly brigade of infantry out of a fortified position like Hougoumont. But Ed had written a well-argued article in the Clash of Arms newsletter, The Art of War, which explained his reasoning behind that and many other elements of the system. I was persuaded enough to go out and buy both games (LAdN and its son, Jena).
So it was that a cold January's morning found me setting up Jena's smallest scenario, the Battle of Auerstadt. Now, Auerstadt has always been one of my favorite battles, the battle that convinced me (as well as Napoleon himself) that Marshal Davout was one of the greatest commanders of the century. Most of you know the story. Davout and his III Corps of La Grande Armée single-handedly defeated and put to rout the greater portion of the entire Prussian army in a single afternoon, while Napoleon was using the bulk of his army to defeat the badly outnumbered Prussian rear guard a few miles away at Jena.
I positioned the relative handful of counters on the map: Davout's headquarters, his three infantry divisions, a cavalry division, and a battalion of artillery were all the French forces available. Facing them was a large Prussian force, spread out on the roads between Jena and Auerstadt. The French goal was to push past the Prussians to occupy a position deep in their rear.
In my first play through, I sought to recreate the historical action. And I immediately ran into difficulty. I could set up the initial fighting quite well, but there seemed to be no way I could ever replicate Davout's success. For one thing, the combat system was very attritional. I could inflict losses on the Prussians only by accepting almost equal losses for the attacking French infantry. Even worse, the Prussians could easily block the defile leading to the French objective. And the time available for the French to achieve that objective was quite short. It was impossible!
And I said so. Loudly. On-line on AOL. I asked questions. I debated the answers. "This system is screwy," said I. "We need to make some fixes. Change this rule, change that rule. Add this modifier, and subtract that one. Then, maybe, it might actually work." I got Ed W's dander up. And then I got The Challenge.
Tired, no doubt, of my carping in cyberspace, Ed offered to make the three-hour drive from Philadelphia, PA to Alexandria, VA and demonstrate for me, in person, how screwed up I, and not his game, truly was. How could I do anything but accept?
And so it was that while Bill Clinton was taking his solemn oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States for another four years, Ed Wimble and your humble reviewer "clashed" over the game board. And what an interesting experience it proved to be. Ed is a man of strong convictions and definite ideas. But he also proved to be charming, informative and open-minded. We didn't agree on everything, but we ended up much closer in our ideas than we had been when we started.
First we played the Auerstadt scenario. I had the distinct pleasure of demonstrating for Ed the virtual impossibility of winning the scenario as the French. I also had the pleasure of discussing with him why this was the case, and how, in fact, the game could recreate the historical events, just not in the way I had imagined them.
The key to understanding the combat system lies in understanding what it means in real terms for a combat unit to lose a step in the game. As usual, a step loss does not mean that the unit has lost the hundreds of guys the step represents. But what does it mean? Ed didn't tell me this, but here is how I interpret it. If you think of each step as representing about one battalion of infantry, losing a step means you have "used up" a battalion's worth of your strength for that day. Indeed, once a battalion was committed to the fight and engaged heavily for a period of hours, it became virtually hors de combat for an extended period of time, while the wounded were carried to the rear, the slackers rounded up, and the whole force regrouped and reorganized. If the division was fighting only sporadically, it would commit only a few battalions, which would soon be able to regroup after any serious fight. But if the division were heavily engaged for an extended period, more and more of its battalions would be fed into the line, and fewer and fewer of them would have the chance to reform. Over the course of a hard day's combat, even strong divisions would be reduced to a handful of effective battalions left at the end of the day. A large fraction of the men might still be with the colors, but even they would be exhausted, low on ammunition, and unlikely to be effective at pushing an attack or holding the line against fresh opposition.
If interpreted this way, the combat system of Jena makes much more sense. I had expected to see Davout's boys drive the Prussians back with hardly a hair mussed. Obviously that could not have been the case in reality. Auerstadt was a hard fought affair, and it was a tired and battered III Corps that ended the day proud of its achievement, but still licking its wounds. Rather than my vision of a nearly full-strength corps pouring through a broken Prussian line, the best the system might let me do was to slide one division, possibly down to its last strength point, past the shattered Prussian forces as they fled to the north.
Against a half-way competent Prussian player, I still believe that the French stand no chance of victory in the Auerstadt scenario, even with miraculous die rolls. But Ed did convince me that the reason the French did win in reality was not only because the Prussian high command was riddled by casualties at critical moments (and may have been a bit less than minimally competent at that), but because the strategic and operational situation they found themselves in pressured them into taking what proved to be, in the end, fatal chances. And it is at the task of creating complex and challenging strategic and operational situations that Jena truly shines.
After playing the bandbox Auerstadt scenario, Ed persuaded me to set up the full campaign. Using all three maps, laid out with their long sides adjoining, the game took on a whole new feel. And new life.
It begins with a scattering of Prussian units on the map and the rest on an effective off-map display, representing the road network surrounding the map itself. The opening moves see the columns of the French spearheads marching north through the forest defiles as the Prussians scramble to recover from a thorough humbugging. With the Grande Armée descending on what was the Prussian right flank and rear, disaster is in the air for the heirs of Frederick the Great.
I looked at the set up, pondered the situation, and, playing the Prussians, asked Ed, without really expecting an answer, "What the hell do I do now?" And suddenly the game had disappeared. I was there with the Duke of Brunswick in October 1806. My questions had far less to do with game mechanics and victory conditions than with maneuvering an army and surviving the onslaught of the Master himself (Napoleon, not Ed).
Where should I concentrate? To what towns should I order the various divisions and corps of the army? The game's mechanics do not allow the Prussians complete freedom of movement, instead forcing them to order formations to certain towns by placing Command Assembly Markers on the map. Formations ordered to a town must move toward that town by the shortest route, if they move at all. With opportunities to change such orders arising only twice a day, foresight and planning is at a premium. Although there is a provision for leader initiative to allow a force to divert from this path, the Prussian leadership is notoriously low on initiative. The French rely on a more mundane system of command. Army leaders such as Nappy and Murat are always in command and can place corps leaders in command if within their range. Outside that range, corps leaders and detached divisions must roll against their initiative to move. This gives the French an advantage in flexibility, but puts them more at the mercy of the initiative of individual commanders.
Another nice - and in some ways surprising - effect the system has is giving cavalry its historical roles of reconnaissance, probing, and screening without a lot of rigmarole. Except for artillery in fortified towns, cavalry are the only units to exert a ZOC (or, in Ed's terminology, a Zone of Influence). And what a ZOC. Enemy units are pinned in a friendly ZOC and can only move by removing the ZOC through combat or departure of the exerting unit. And unless an attack contains enemy cavalry, friendly horse may retreat before combat. Even better, the attackers may not advance into the vacated hex. Thus, a single brigade of cavalry, judiciously employed on a road through a defile, can hold up an entire corps for hours. The best way to avoid this? Push your own cavalry out ahead to preempt the critical positions or to tie up the enemy horse so your infantry and guns can join in a combined attack to destroy them.
Speaking of cavalry, what of the criticism that cavalry charges are too effective in this system? Indeed, it is possible for a cavalry "charge" to drive a strong infantry force from a Hougoumont-like position in defiance of all logic and apparently contrary to history. Ed's argument on this point is that an effective "charge" as he is defining it here (more of a coup de main than a hell-bent-for-leather, saber-swinging free-for-all) might force the bulk of a unit — which is deployed outside the fortified position — to pull back and so cause the fort's garrison to abandon the position. Although it may have some validity in some cases, it does not ring true, even in the context of the system as it stands. Perhaps the addition of a garrison marker into which a unit may deposit SPs and which is immune from such charges may make sense. But I must admit that after my first surge of interest in "fixing" the system with a series of such "minor" changes, I have become far less sanguine about it. In Jena, at least, the effects of the rules seem too well integrated and too effective to justify such cavalier editing without good and sufficient reasons.
And that, dear reader, is where I will leave you. There are, of course, many other interesting aspects of the game and the system. The Prussian off-map movement chart was mentioned earlier, and it adds a small but challenging element to the Prussian's strategic maneuvering. There are special rules for the Prussian leadership structure, even one restricting the activities of one of the two Prussian Army commanders (Brunswick and Hohenlohe) if there is only a single Prussian player. (Although I have not tried it, the three player version of the game, it's recommended format, seems like the best way to play.) There are special rules for the French pontoon train, and optional rules for hidden units (units are back-printed with army symbols).
Ultimately, Jena (and particularly its progenitor, L'Armée du Nord) suffer in the minds of some players, if not actually in play, from appearing to be neither fish nor fowl. There is a strange compulsion for first-time players to treat them as more tactical than they are. I can't explain it beyond the vague surface similarity they bear to earlier games, like Kevin Zucker's Napoleon's Last Battles. Turns cover two to four hours, and most of Jena's units are divisions. Yet, the combat system — with its cavalry charges and artillery bombardments — seems more suited to battle games.
Yet in its heart and soul, Jena shines as an operational study, an OCS-lite for the Napoleonic wars. The small battle scenarios help you get a feel for simple movement and combat mechanics, but fail to let you see the true operational sweep of the game. I have had few more pleasant experiences in gaming than that first, "What do I do now?" reaction to the campaign scenario.
If, like me, you are an inveterate tinkerer, you may be overwhelmed with the urge to start "fixing" the system from the very beginning. But don't. Give it a chance. You may not have the luxury of a personalized tutorial by the game's designer to explain the rationales behind some of the rules, but if you open your mind, and give up all the preconceived notions about how Napoleonic combat should be represented in a game, you will find a challenging, workmanlike, and in many ways elegant design. And a fun game. And that, after all, is the highest recommendation I can give you.
Graphic Presentation: Top notch. The three Rick Barber maps are colorful and, for the most part, clear. They have a nice period feel and the autumn colors of the woods set the tone nicely. This game really looks good in play. Paul Dangel's combat units do not go to the excesses of some of the La Bataille work, but create the same overall period effect.
CAPSULE COMMENTS
Playability: Very good, with a few twists and turns in the rules that may catch you off guard.
Replayability: The Saalfeld and Auerstadt scenarios are more for study than gaming. The game really shines in the Big Campaign, which has enormous potential for replay.
Wristage: Lightweight.
Creativity: Ed has taken a mixture of tried and true and innovative techniques and created something with a unique perspective. It is subtle, and may be difficult to appreciate, but once you get it, it rewards you with its elegance. Vivaldi, not Beethoven.
Historicity: At the operational level, its real focus, near the top of the heap. On the battlefield, many may quibble with the details.
Comparison: Close in scope and scale to Zucker's Napoleon at Bay stuff, but far less fiddly. And more pure fun.
Overall: A definite winner. Fun to play but still challenging. I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone with an interest in the kind of game that makes you ask yourself "What the hell do I do now?" and like it!
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© Copyright 1997 by Richard Berg
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