by Empire Interactive. List price £30. (Shop around--I saw it for under £10) Minimum system required is Windows 95/98 a P166 and 32mb ram. Recommended system P-11-266 and 64mb ram. The game installation is straight forward, with windows CD- autorun or if like me you have that switched off, use Windows "run" and then click setup-exe (just follow the instructions on page three of the manual). The game also appears in the windows add/remove program under wargamer so is also easy to uninstall. "Napoleon 1813 combines a map based strategic system and a terrain based battle system. The default start up level is "normal" and you have the choice of "novice" or "expert". Six campaigns are offered, The Grand Campaign, The Grand Campaign 2, Spring 1813, Napoleon Against Europe, Autumn 1813 and Roads to Leipzig together with nine pre-setup battles. During the campaign small battles are dealt with automatically. Larger battles are controlled by the player at divisional level. I did find the computer (sorry enemy commander) very slow to react at times but when he did you could be in for some nasty surprises. We all get so used to seeing the enemy laid out before us on the table with our all-seeing helicopter view. The "fog of war" game feature works quite well. Left and right button mouse clicks give various pop up menus and choices. Information given in the pop-up boxes is very limited in both battle and map mode. The graphics are generally poor and remind one of early DOS games. The number of soldiers shown in the battle mode does not give an impression of the large numbers actually involved. You will also see some strange features, for instance cavalry cannot charge other cavalry from the flank or rear. If you try, nothing happens. Nor can they fire their carbines. Commanders in Chief cannot be captured. Other "bugs" are listed in the 96 page manual which seems quite good, however it only has a content page and no index. This can slow things up at times. When my concentration lapsed I was brought smartly back from my daydreams by the background music. The sudden rat tat tat tat of a military drum and the 1812 overture stirs the soul but beware the music has no 'off' switch so I hope you like it as much as I did. No internet-multiplayer option is available. The Napoleonic period is my own favourite but I struggled to keep interested in "Napoleon 1813" Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #131 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Solo Wargamers Association. 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