We've reached 200 orders and moving ahead. Please help us keep this title on track! WE STILL NEED 40 PRE-ORDERS on our way to 250 before we can publish! If you have been meaning to send in your order for Bonaparte, or any of the other pre-advanced games, please send your order now and take advantage of the 25% Discount! Go right to ... (Your credit card will *not* be debited until the product is at the printer.) The counters require the longest lead time and are about to go off to the artist. This involved creating new-style Leader Ratings. We asked for house rules and suggestions for the new edition, and the following is a selection of comments we received, which are of certain value. Steve Groves suggested incorporating hospital rules a la 1807 into the game. This idea has possibilities. The recovery rate would be far lower for the French than in 1807, but it could be a useful addition. Steve also reminded us, "The French maintained a flotilla of armed galleys or gunboats on Lake Garda and apparently moved Guieu's brigade (2,700 men) by boat between SALO and TORBOLE on or about 2nd September 1796." Simply put, we could allow the French to move up to 3 SPs between any two ports on Garda that they control. We will bring in the embarkation/debarkation rules from 1807: The Eagles Turn East. Nicola Prandoni made the following observations: I think there is a problem in almost all the games of this series: the strongest army starts pursuing the weaker one, in an endless run! That's because both armies really march pretty concentrated, and so the strength doesn't change much just by running, as APs and attrition are the same for both, and both need to move their Center of Ops. Only NAB is different, because the coalition army tends to move in a lot of small columns because of attrition problems; so retreating really strengthen the allies by concentrating the army, and pursuing a retreating French is really stretching the coalition army so much to really change the strength ratio (at the forefront) in French favor. What I believe is that even the much more free French army had a huge "tail" to protect the communications, and that meant that every so many miles a garrison had to be left behind, thus weakening the pursuer and, vice-versa, strengthening the retreating army through regrouping those garrisons in the main army. This is partly what the Attrition rules are supposed to show. What we need to solve this is a bit higher attrition for the French. I understand you're much more synthetic than me (very mechanicistic - can you say that?), but I think just elevating the attrition/replacement ratio, isn't enough to recreate the sort of energy than ebbs and flows into an army like his own breath of life, like a flooding tide or a biorithm. "Synthetic" and "mechanistic" are two very good words. I like your idea of the ebb and flow, and this effect is exactly what I was *trying* to achieve with the first edition. I think you should, at least, ask to pay two APs every time the Center of Ops moves away from the supply source (or the supply source distance is getting more distant for whatever reason), and recovering those two APs every time the Center of Ops moves closer a full move to the supply source. Is it unreasonable? Nicola made great contributions to 1807, and has many good ideas for Bonaparte. From Dave Schubert, developer: Observations from a recent playtest: Our Baltimore playtests use the new 'standard' rules with the original BiI exclusive rules (Dispatch distance, 200s, etc.) Forage rules directly imported from 1807 don't work in BiI. The nature of the two campaigns is very different: Northern Italy had an abundance of food, Poland was barren. Our current line of thought is to go back to a modified version of the original forage rules: Austrians are not allowed to forage, they must use accumulated Admin Pts for march attrition. If outside of dispatch distance, they must roll for attrition on the "No LOC" column of the attrition table. French use accumulated Admin Pts only if they are issued a command point. If moving by initiative, or not moving at all, they must forage. The French must be in Forage Mode to forage. If they are not in Forage Mode, they roll attrition on the "No LOC" column on the attrition table. The movement point cost to change modes is a bit different than stated in the draft exclusive rules version 1.0. Cost is now as follows: zero MPs to enter forage mode and 2 MPs to leave Forage Mode (the change in MPs to leave forage mode reflects the fact that troops did not have to search as wide an area of land to acquire supplies as they did in the Poland campaign). Observations from Mark Owens (responses provided by Dave Schubert): Distance to the distant base of operations for the FR: Perhaps, with the single map, the primary road hexes to the west edge of the map could be printed on the 'overlapped' section of the map such that it would be easier to trace the 150 maximum hexes for the FR LOC. If not there, then perhaps those values could be moved to the Admin/LOC section of the player's aides. I found the 'old' location somewhat clumsy to find and use. Centers of Operation: Perhaps my aging eyes are deceiving me, but I couldn't find the setup location for the 'Centers of Operation' for both the FR and AUS. Where are these setups located? Can they be anywhere? The centers of operation can be set up anywhere. We'll add scenario info to the next BiI exclusive rules update. I'm toying with the idea of including "suggested" CoO locations--more as a way to ease beginners into the system. "Beginners" meaning folks who may have years of wargame experience but never played a CoN game. There are so many concepts in this system not found in other games, it can be overwhelming--even for experienced gamers. A suggested position which might be the 'presumed' historical location would be a grand idea, even for experienced players! It would add to any 'study' getting done with the scenarios. Looking over the Castiglione scenario, it looks like historically the main action was over in four turns (July 29-30, July 31-Aug 1, Aug 2-Aug.3, Aug 4-Aug 5), with the Austrians retreating back to Trent in the remainder of the time, though the FR were exhausted and unable/unwilling to pursue aggressively. With the Center of Operations placed at the crossroad with the Primary road, Quosdanovich can reach Salo (and a little beyond) while still tracing to the CoO (28 MPs). If FR forces are interposed between Marshall Q. and Wuermser, then I don't think we can completely forbid foraging for the Austrians as Q. did advance beyond the limits indicated above (though not very successfully). Perhaps the Austrians could use a 'concentrated' mode foraging like I was proposing for the FR forces, where the force could draw forage from only the hex it occupies? With a more severe attrition effect for Austrians with an inadequate line on the march attrition chart, the Austrians would be discouraged from moving very far, very fast in this situation and certainly wouldn't want to be disconnected from the LOC for very long, but would not prevent moving off the end of the LOC for short term gain such as attacking the rear of FR forces defending against Wuermser. The values for initiative, command, and subordination should be stated and printed precisely rather than the 'old' method of looking at the rank of the officers. I remember now how clumsy that was originally. Since 1800 has a completely different set of counters, it wouldn't hurt to print the values on the commanders/leaders. At least, I don't think it would affect things! The leader ratings will be listed on the counters. I like the idea of an indicator on units that don't exert a ZOC (vedettes, forage mode, demoralized, etc). The text on Austrian Army Condition and Vienna Morale could be stated a bit more simply. Comments from Dick Vohlers: My biggest question has to do with the fact that the revised edition will contain only the East map. I believe Kevin said something about an expansion kit that would contain the other two maps. But what about the 1800-specific rules, and the rules that apply to areas on the other two maps? Should those rules be in the BiI rules as published? Or will players get another rule book with the expansion? That would mean players would have 3 booklets (Standard, Exclusive, and Expansion) that they'd have to cross-reference. Could be rather confusing. The answer here would be to publish a "complete" exclusive rules folder for 1800, recapitulating everything that applies from the "Quadrilateral" Exclusive rules that we are working on now, as Mark Owens explains: Those are very good points. Now that I've begun to dig into the game again, I'm envsioning OSG highlighting the 1800 scenario as the centerpiece for the 'expansion' because I had previously quite forgotten that the 1800 scenario centers on the W & C maps. If this is the case (Kevin? David?), then I think a case could be made for a) a separate 'exclusive' rules set for the 1800 (Marengo) scenario(s). b) concentrating the 1796-97 rules in the 'eastern' current project. So, the enclosures might be : BiI: 'The Quadrilateral' Siege of Mantua Operations (current project): Standard Rules BiI Exclusive Rules Scenario Book, scenarios IV-VII BiI: 'In Search of a Reputation' Marengo Campaign (PLUS 1796) Standard Rules BiI Exclusive Rules Scenario Book, scenarios 1-III, and 1800 Back to OSG News August 1999 Table of Contents Back to OSG News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Operational Studies Group. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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