Wherein you can read of some of the more recent offerings from the Captive Audience Crowd. (usual components) Attila, Scourge of God, is a game portraying the Huns' invasion of Western Europe in 451-452. The game is a spin-off of the earlier Alexandros and I Am Spartacus games published in Command and uses the same area-movement maps and design mechanics. The Igo-Hugo sequence of play consists of diplomacy, movement and combat phases. Diplomacy is used to enlist the aid of Gallic tribes and both sides can attempt to gain allies in this manner. The counters sport icons of the respective forces and leaders. The Hun counters look more like Parthians (Ed. possibly because rhe icon was borrowed from a rendition of a Parthian in Warry's "War in the Classical World) and what's more, they are all mounted. I'm no expert on the period, but I've read that the Huns were largely dismounted during this invasion. Europe at that time was too densely forested to provide fodder for an enormous cavalry force used to the open grasslands of Ukraine and Central Asia. And then there's that Saint Genevieve counter, a beaming young adolescent who resembles less a saint and more a Melrose Place babe. The map is divided into areas breaking the Late Roman dioceses into subareas a force could move through in a month's campaigning. There isn't any terrain except mountains that may cause attrition to the force crossing them and cities, which provide victory points. The map background is a monotonous tan color with little panache and less visceral impact. The game starts with Attila and Friends (mostly Huns with some German allies) poised on the Rhine, ready for the Big Show. The Roman army, under Aetius, is in Northern Italy, and waiting in the wings is a Byzantine relief army that may or may not appear. The Imperial diocese are held by Roman limitanei units. The Huns' objective is to gain victory points by taking cities in Gaul and Italy. Other events, such as Valentinian leaving Rome for Ravenna, or Pope Leo leaving Rome may add to the VP total, as do certain random events. The random events themselves include the cheery little St. Genevieve - who aids cities under Hunnish siege - barbarian deser- tions, Roman disunity, bad weather, raids by North African Vandals, plague. Byzantine intervention and the Holy Relic. Quite a line up. The Hun wins by seizing enough cities to satisfy the VP tally. This is where it gets tricky, because to accomplish this in about 18 months, he has to spread out and besiege a number of cities, all the while looking over his back at Aetius and his army. The other method is to go directly into Italy, defeat Aetius and then go about subjugating the provinces. The play problem is that this produces lots of annoyingly time consuming sieges. The limitanei can stay in the field and fight (and almost certainly be wiped out), or they can withdraw into cities. Once they are under siege, a single counter can, like Leonidas and the 300 Spartans, tie up large Hunnish forces that are forced to attack the garrison one-by-one. Field battles are fought by lining up units toe-to-toe off map and then duking it out with endless die rolls, one for each unit for its fire, charge and melee factors, with the Hun cavalry getting major advantages (that it did not have historically) for its mounted status. Combat results are taken in step losses, with two steps per unit. Since the armies are arranged in lines, an eliminated unit creates an opening for the attacker to advance and then get off a "flanking attack" at adjacent units in that line. I didn't find this type of battle much fun nor very evocative of anything other than bursitis. AttLb has generated a fair amount of traffic among Command aficionados, most of it favorable. I am in the minority opinion here because of its glaring disrespect for history and its limited strategic options. I found the game to be dull and repetitive. Joe Miranda does this sort of thing a bit better. Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. 2 #28 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. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com