4 22"x33" maps; 560 counters; 2 Rules Books; 2 Player Aid Cards; boxed. from Clash of Arms, Phoenixville PA. $50+ The Exhibition Hall at Origins opened at 2 PM sharp, and I flew like a shot to the Clash of Arms booth. Before my eyes there lay a great stack of blue and cream Leuthen boxes; with the speed of a starving man I seized one, thrust my cash into Charlie Spiegal's amazed hand and dashed back to the open gaming room (this was before we were overrun and driven out by a horde of D&Ders the next day). Oh joy, oh bliss ! Such a beautiful game, four lovely maps, counters in blue, scarlet, and white, dice in the Ohio State colors of red and gray. My ecstasy knew no bounds. Like playing a game on Austerlitz or Gazala, there is a certain thrill to taking the place of one of the great captains of history in his finest victory, to discover if you can duplicate his success or, as his opponent, do something -anything- to stem the historical disaster. Leuthen was the peak of Frederick's tactical experience, the battle where everything went right. Mesmerizing the Austrians with a show of force to their front, Frederick sashayed around them to fall upon the Bavarian and Wurttemberger 90-pound weaklings holding their left flank, chased them away with contemptuous ease, then chewed up the Austrians as they scrambled to form a new line at right angles to their original. Leuthen, of course, uses Paul Dangel's "Battles of the Age of Reason" system first seen in Kolin. It has been somewhat revised since then, but the basic platform remains the same. The BAR series is a spin-off of La Bataille, so it's battalion-level with 100-yard hexes and 20 minute turns. Leuthen's graphics need little introduction: a nice piece of cover art by Carl Rochling of the Prussian Guards storming the Leuthen churchyard; Rick Barber's spare map with muted browns on a light cream-colored mapsheet gives a good wintry feel to the scenery; and the counters by Paul Dangel, as usual, reproduce the units' actual uniform colors. Top-notch, all the way around. Mr. Dangel's primary goal with the BAR system is to show just how difficult it was to maneuver the armies of the period in their awkward formations. Before Frederick came along, armies of the Age of Reason were still clunking around the battlefield in the long, ungainly lines that would have been familiar to the Duke of Marlborough 50 years earlier. Frederick's genius lay in his efforts to translate march columns, previously only used to get to the battlefield, to tactical maneuver on the battlefield. This allowed his army to gain the enemy's flank before shifting back to the traditional line formation for launching an enfilade attack. Sometimes it worked (Rossbach, Leuthen) and sometimes it didn't (Kolin, Zorndorf), but in Frederick's ideas we see the beginnings of the grand tactical system that Napoleon would later sharpen to perfection. So, the game focuses on lots of formations (eight of them, to be exact) including line, skirmish, and three types of column. All of these different formations have their positives and negatives, and the trick to mastering BAR is to learn which formations work best in which situations. And if that isn't enough, the opposing armies use the formations with varied efficiency— if the Prussians are like ballerinas, whirling and spinning about the map, the Austrians are Country Line dancers, scrambling to keep up. The Russians? They're the overweight uncle planted next to the buffet table. Heart The activation system is the heart of the game. It's a descendent of the Richard Berg TCT; initiative is determined by both overall commanders making activation die rolls, the winner kicking a brigade into gear, and if his die-roll doubles his opponents, an entire wing (usually 3 or 4 brigades). There are only a limited number of activations per turn, the total steadily decreasing as the day goes on to simulate the growing effect of fatigue. Frederick gets a hefty + 4 bonus to his activation rolls vis à vis the inept Prince Charles , which just about guarantees that he will be getting 3-4 times as many activations as the Austrians. Realistic, yes, as the Austrians weren't exactly known for their sense of initiative, yet, as Richard Berg pointed out in his review of Kolin, it's mathematically possible that the Austrians may never get to move during a game. Also, once you've activated everybody you must pass to your opponent, so if you are able to activate several wings (as the Prussians will normally do) you leave your enemy with a bunch of freebie moves before the turn ends. So moving by Wings with clockwork Prussian efficiency leaves the bad guys a chance to react, while if you shuffle each brigade around individually you use up the entire turn and leave your opponent locked in immobility... What ? Methinks I see Game Balance at work here. While I applaud the activation system's randomness, I criticize its lack of chaos. The historical battles of Kolin and Zorndorf both turned on critical Prussian command breakdowns, when wings of the Prussian army lurched out of Frederick's control and were swept off the field. Not so here; the worst that can happen to a commander is the blowing of an activation die-roll and being frozen for a turn with no other ill effects. Some sort of Command Chaos rule is needed to give the Austrians at least a slight chance that the inexorable Prussian advance will stumble. If this sounds like a lot of detail to learn, you're right, but this is partially ameliorated by the size of the armies. This is still the era of the small, professional army, before the national mobilizations of Napoleon's day; Frederick's armies rarely held more than 40,000 men, and his enemies were usually only slightly larger. At Leuthen, 40,000 Prussians squared off against 60,000 Austrians and sundry allies; so what we have is a big map with a relatively minimal number of counters. There is lots of space for maneuver and sweeping flank marches, and considering that Leuthen involves one of the most sweeping of all flank marches, that's just dandy. The game begins at 1:00 PM , with Frederick just completing his right oblique and reforming his lines to pile into the Bavarians and Wurttembergers holding the Austrian left flank. Meanwhile, the Austrian commander, Prince Charles of Lorraine, the product of many generations of Habsburg in-breeding , sat in blissful ignorance of the Prussian hammer about to bash his army. The game immediately turns into a Chinese fire drill for the Austrian player as he tries to re-deploy his troops, racing against the Prussian Pac Man chewing along his line of unsuspecting battalions. Bad news, indeed, but at least he won't be bored. The Prussian player's job is certainly easier, but still tricky. The Austrians do outnumber him 3-2 and Frederick can't afford to suffer too many losses among his precious fusilier battalions. The town of Leuthen will normally be the rallying point for the Austrians, and it can be a tough nut to crack. The excellent Prussian cavalry must carry the day, sweeping around the Austrian flank to hammer their disorganized brigades before they can put together a new line. For an aggressive soul like me, this is sheer bliss. As you can see, Leuthen may not be one of the best "games" to appear in 1997, as it falls way short in the Competition and balance categories, but it is certainly the best "Simulation" of the year. Within it you see the BAR system sharpened to a fine edge, a system that requires effort from players to learn its complex mechanics but rewards them with a detailed understanding of the elements of Frederickian warfare. Some tactical games - Fateful Lightning and Advanced Squad Leader spring to mind - you play and ask yourself, were Gettysburg and Stalingrad really like this ? But of Leuthen you have no such doubts. You learn how Frederick won such an outstanding victory, and why. Coupled with Rick Barber at his graphical best, you can understand my joy when I first opened the box back in July. CAPSULE COMMENTS Graphic Presentation: Outstanding. Barber and Clash at their best. Playability: A complex game with good rules. Smaller scenarios help teach parts of the game system. Replayability: You can safely bet your savings on the Prussians. Some sort of command rule is needed to give the Austrians a ghost of a chance. The upside is that it makes for a good solitaire game. Creativity: La Bataille taken to a much higher level. Historicity: A veritable cardboard thesis on Frederickian tactics. Wristage: Lots. You name it and there's probably a die-roll for it. Comparisons: The only other Frederickian tactical games that I know of are the old GDW's from the 70's, Torgau, Lobositz, and Prague. Leuthen stands high above them. Overall: If what you want from a game is historical insight into the "whys and wherefores", this is the Best Game of 1997. Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. 2 #27 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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