Bonaparte in Italy Final Playtests (posted on Consimworld) Since b&w components can be printed and delivered in 3 days, I have been holding up the printing of rules and displays. We took advantage of the delay to tweak the victory conditions. I played a test of the Bassano scenario with John Prados here in Baltimore. John made quite a few very valuable contributions. He even talked me into making a die-roll modifier for artillery firing from hills up into mountains. (Yes, he had Massena two hexes north of Rivoli, and I had the Austrians down across the Adige firing up at him.) I made this mod even for artillery *in* mountains firing into mountains, because of the foldedness of the terrain. The battle scenario victory conditions require the Austrians to meet three requirements: (1) get a named leader into besieged Mantova, (2) establish a LOC along primary and secondary roads, 28 MPs from their Supply Source, and (3) either hex of Mantua must be non-besieged. This will be pretty tough for the Austrians, but a draw is achieved if the Austrians get any two of the above. (1) you can probably slip a force past Bonaparte, (3) The besieged forces are stronger than their besiegers (who, even though they are treated as entrenched and get "Affecting" terrain, can be knocked aside by the garrison); but (2) is another story. I guess if you get a draw in the Castiglone scenario, you then have to play (without changing sides), the Bassano Scenario. And if still a tie, then comes Arcola. Certainly then your Austrian will have only one more try, for the Rivoli Scenario starting January 7th. Of course, there is the 93-turn campaign game, which also adds foraging, Admin Points, Vedettes, etc., not to mention the options, some of which are avowedly not tested, but try them and let us know. The rules mix you want is a matter of personal taste. For instance, if you want to add the Vedette rules to the battle scenarios, they would work well. I really like the battle scenarios and their quick flow of play: you have no APs to deal with, just an assigned level of Movement Commands per turn, which varies by the scenario being played. Also, let us note, the force levels and force structure varies widely from one scenario to the next. The French are particularly week in the Bassano Scenario, so Prados had his hands full, but finally began to use Bonaparte as the fire brigade. Strategically, I made the mistake of trying for a passage at Arcola. But this was a feint. Instead I crossed the river and took Legnago (as it is correctly spelled, and not Legnano as on many English language maps ... as I just learned!) 'Legnano is a small town placed to the North-West of Milano, much famous for the Lega Lombarda's victory (namely Lombard League) on Friedrich II Rottenbart in 1176. I beg your pardon for pointing you out this detail, but I love History as the same as you and I don't want Italian wargamers to mock your hard work!!!' (thanks to: Alessandro Fontana) Speaking of spelling, the original map had over 95% of the towns misspelled, some of them following English tradition (giving us "Leghorn" instead of Livorno!. This time, however, we had help from Italy, particularly Nicola Prandoni, of Milano, who revised the maps and provided an electronic file of all the town names which was conveyed to Joe Youst, the graphic designer). Also, friends in Mantova and San Bonifacio looked at jpegs of their area and critiqued what they saw. I was there once, in '92, and I have a good impression of the important points, but no recollection of specifics of the foothills north of Arcola. Nicola's notes on his map research will be printed as part of the Game Notes. If you compare the new map with the 1st edition, you will see a much more closely-modelled terrain. Joe has used photoshop textures for the slope contours of these glacially-formed mountains that once crashed from out of the Alps to the north. I like the way Joe has rendered the mountains, by the way. Back to OSG News March 2000 Table of Contents Back to OSG News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Operational Studies Group. 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