As for Highway, I still have to play front-to-front. As the other player did not know the system beforehand, we opted for a play of Napoleon at Bay, which seemed easier to deal with first (e.g. no depots). Since I played the first part of Highway solitaire and was as a French defeated by myself when the Grand Army arrived with not so many men in Smolensk with still valiant Russians. For NaB, we opted not for the campaign (time... lack of time!) but for a long scenario with some campaign rules, beginning just before the six days of glory. My opponent played the French, thus having for the first and second turn a sound plan to follow (the historical one). We ended the game after 8 turns. The brief summary of the game is the following. Olsufief was crushed by Napo on his way north. Then, swinging west in a historical way, he caught Osten-Sacken before Yorck could join. A successful force march allowed Yorck to join before combat and so be beaten with Osten-Sacken. Nothing new here! Afterwards the course of the game deviates from history. Bluecher failed to move east on the first 2 turns so I directly opted for a northern path over the Marne. Yorck moved directly north toward Troyes while Winzingerode coming as a reinforcement came from the opposite way. Osten-Sacken was a little late on his way to regroup with Bluecher. The Silesian army was not so active on turns 4 and 5 because a move of the center of operations was deeemed necessary. In the south, Schwarzenberg tried to advance, so slowly... The French had garrisons on the fords and an erratic initiave movement by the Bavarians shifted the center of gravity of the army east. So the crossing was made there. By the way, it seems to me that the optional Ney and Austrian staff rule would best be modified to impose a movement of 3 MPs (or 2.5) only. Now the attrition is really high for those unplanned moves - and it is this fact more than the erratic move which is penalizing... The reaction of the French was a surprise for me: Napoleon stayed north, and only minimal reinforcements made their way south. He lost some time to figure where each of the Prussians corps were exactly (a hord of vedettes was there). The result was that Osten-Sacken was destroyed, caught alone on the field. Bluecher and Yorck succeeded to help one another and were allowed to retreat in good shape. The army of Bohemiathen had a great day against Gerard and Victor, defeating their combined forces. But no exploitation could occur because the limit of the LoC range was reached. We stopped almost here. At last Napo was heading south, letting go the flying Prussians. The Bohemian army was in a stange position, trying to regroup and preparing to defend (or more certainly withdraw) with no good terrain to do this. My victory over two corps availed nothing because the ground was, I think, poorly chosen by me. The end of the (real) day ended the game. The important thing is that the other player liked the system and is ready to spend some time on a full scale campaign and on other games! So all this was to say that Highway is planned for another time. Back to OSG News February 2002 Table of Contents Back to OSG News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 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