Title: Napoleon's Leipzig Campaign
Designer: Don W. Alexander
Number of Players: 2 or more with solitaire possibilities
Playing Time: None noted. We finished a game in about 3 hours.
Complexity Level: None noted. It's a moderately complex wargame.
Packaging: Minimal. Folder Pack, loose, with no storage provided for counters
Map: The game map is 20" x 31" with grid boxes called districts. The districts are connected by communication lines. The district boxes and communication lines are superimposed over colored terrain.
Playing Pieces: The 400 colored, thin die-cut cardboard counters represent army headquarters, corps, detachments, fortress garrisons, logistic trains and depots. There are administrative markers for use with the separate status charts (terrain effects, command movement, and victory points) and the combat board. The game does not include the six-sided dice needed for play.
RuleBook(s): 28 Pages of rules plus 6 pages of detailed examples. There is also a 16 page reference guide and a detailed table of contents, but no index. There are no questions and answers nor Errata. The player's reference guide contains a glossary of terms and abbreviations.
Scenarios: There is a seven-turn introductory and a twenty-six turn campaign scenario. Each turn represents three days of the Autumn 1813 campaign in Saxony.
Historical Background: The game includes brief commentary on the Leipzig campaign and a short Bibliography.
Publisher: Omega Games
ISBN 1-8780002-11-2
List Price: $29.95
Summary: The game is a strategic simulation of the Leipzig campaign of 1813. Players are constrained by command-control and logistical limitations. Campaign attrition and morale are incorporated to simulate the restrictions imposed upon the leadership of the day. Mr. Alexander's goal is to "recreate the salient features of military operations in this period in an easy to learn, playable, challenging and evenly balanced simulation." Players assume the role of Napoleon or the Allied high command.

Napoleonic commanders functioned in a highly uncertain environment, fraught with major communication delays and order transmission difficulties. Thus, Mr. Alexander incorporates a game system that reflects some uncertainty in campaign movements. Each turn, players must juggle various considerations of logistics, terrain, weather, attrition and morale, in a system that cleverly handles these salient Napoleonic problems. The forage rules are simple and quite elegant.

Two features of this game stand out from conventional wargames. The first is the use of point-to-point movement system rather than a hex grid. Mr. Alexander argues (correctly in this reviewer's opinion) that Napoleonic armies were tethered to the road systems of the areas they were operating in, and thus shouldn't have the same range of options as, say, modern mechanized infantry. Also, there is a clever tactical combat board and battle system which captures the flavor of conducting a Napoleonic engagement. Thus, every unit has a campaign and battle board counter.

Needless to say, Mr. Alexander's game begs for an adaptation/interface for miniatures. (Although the game does not inherently provide for such a conversion, one can merely replace the game's battle board process with a miniatures battle.) Some imagination and access to Nafziger's 1813 Orders-of-Battle could provide most of the guidance necessary to carry out a miniatures' epic.

If you are willing to overlook the poor packaging, the substance of the game will provide the Napoleonic gamer with a rather innovative and historically illuminating look at the 1813 campaign.