Blood & Iron is a computerised wargame management system by English Computer Wargames covering warfare in the Age of Real Politik 1830-1904. It is available on diskette for Ataris, Commodore Amiga, and IBM-compatible PC's and retails for 29.95 pounds. The copy I was supplied with was version 3.0 for the IBM which is character-based and runs in DOS medium or high-resolution mode with unspecified memory requirements. I ran it on what was effectively a 4Mb 386 DX2/40 machine with no system-related problems, but the documentation supplied did indicate that the program was incompatible with a module called SHARE.EXE which is commonly loaded on start-up by machines using Microsoft Windows. This could be a nuisance on a more modern configuration. {You can substitute VSHARE.386 inside MS Windows and remove SHARE.EXE from your AUTOEXEC.BAT which resolves this problem-GE}.

I have always been somewhat sceptical of "moderator" programs such as this, suspecting them of being slow and inconvenient to use (is your PC in the wargames room?). I decided on two solo games to try it out, a simulation of the ACW battle of New Market in 1864, and a fictional encounter between two 1850's Chinese armies in the Taiping Revolt. The product amply repaid me for using it, and was full of good ideas. At the end of my time with it, though, minor operational problems and the price left me in two minds about recommending it.

The product comes reasonably packaged with a brief but quite effective printed manual. It comprises two distinct programs which have a measure of interaction after the event. Firstly there is the Campaign Program. This allows you to input and store the details of armies for use in your games and handles the aftermath of a battle should it take place as part of a campaign. Armies are organised into Divisions and Brigades under appropriate officers, and the strength, armament and characteristics of each unit are minutely defined. Most of these factors can be computer-generated, and are automatically randomised within limits before being offered for manual review by the player. The quality of historical research backing this module is very high, and there are some nice touches, such as allowing mixed weapons in a unit and supplying a name generator for the various officers involved if you are not using historical characters.

Overall, though, the input was quite time consuming, taking me fifteen minutes a brigade while trying to get the historical detail for New Market right, and not dropping much below seven minutes a brigade even when the computer was doing most of the work on the Chinese armies. This was a consequence of the exclusively question-and-answer nature of the input process, which gave the program a very dated feel, belying the fact that at least some of the code was less than five years old. It would be nice to be able to do one set of armies and then create similar ones just by copying and changing the resulting data files with faster tools outside the package, but neither the file suffix nor the documentation reveals the format of these files. I also encountered a fair number of bugs and quirks, even managing to crash the program with a particularly silly mistake, all of which made getting to the end of the data input quite a relief.

The variable-scale Game Program has an identical feel. At the start of the game and each subsequent move, you are invited to define or change the formations and terrain of the various units and issue orders to the various officers. This input is then interpreted by the computer into a somewhat randomised set of movement instructions, generally giving each unit a range of possible actions such as "Hold 2cm forward to 2cm rearward". You then decide the actual move on the table within these limits.

All firing and melee is resolved by the computer from a question-and-answer session in which you specify the attacking and defending units and the range (where applicable), the computer recording the results. This made for a fascinating solo game, as you only had very generalised orders to give before you could mentally drop into "umpire mode" and concentrate on giving the units' detailed actions a realistic historical feel. The results of these actions was heavily dominated by a feel of confusion between the units, and the sensation that the staff officers needed to be everywhere at once to sort out the mess but couldn't be.

In both actions I fought, the victorious side ended up in almost as bad a state as the losers, effectively precluding the kind of relentless pursuit to the last man which is common in wargames fouLght with conventional rules. I have to say though, that the Chinese game took me almost two hours and New Market nearer four to play through, and that's with nobody to argue!

For clashes with two and three/four brigades a side respectively, I wouldn't call this fast, although there is a fast play option in the rules which I didn't explore. Again, it was the relentless question-and-answer format that was tbe villain, and I experienced the same kind of quirks and bugs as I found in the Campaign Program, including three program crashes in five hours play.

All in all, I was left with the impression of a product good in conception but somewhat flawed in execution. With a better user interface and more access to the system's files and routines it could be a truly excellent toolkit. I suspect, however, that the average wargamer would find it unfriendly and overpriced as is. As a system developer myself, I know how trite it sounds to say that the user expects better code at a lower price, but that's life.

Response to Review of B&I

Other Computer Game Reviews:

• War CD-ROM Power Pack
• Battleground Ardennes
• Battleground Ardennes and Battleground Gettysburg
• Caesar II
• Operation Crusader
• The Last Blitzkrieg
• Great Battles of Alexander
• Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat
• Command & Conquer: The Covert Operations
• Harpoon Classic

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