Death Ride: Mars-La-Tour 1870 is this year's much anticipated DTP game output from the workshop of Our Own Editor, Charles Vasey. I expect this family connection is well known to all but the newest of PA readers and such old ones as forgot to read the My Back Pages section for last three years. The Battle of Mars-La-Tour -- or "Vionville" as the Germans index it, or "Rezonville" as every Frenchmen prefers, except the unfortunate Marshal Bazaine who insisted on calling it "the defence of Metz" at his court-martial -- was arguably the decisive engagement of the Franco-Prussian War. One who makes this argument is David Ascoli, whose lucid and often gripping book on the subject (A Day of Battle; Harrap, 1987) is cited by CV as the inspiration for the game. However, making a case either for or against Mars-La-Tour attaining Creasy-hood isn't an issue in the design. (I only mention it for the benefit of those who won't glance at a battle game unless the battle itself is deemed Very Important). The game is wholly focused on modelling Mars-La-Tour for its own sake. And a very peculiar battle it was, one that on its face seems an unpromising candidate for translation into a board game. Decisive or not, the course of events at Mars-La-Tour may not be widely known, but Death Ride's ample designers notes provide enough background to put the player in the picture (a necessary precaution on behalf of nervous types who play the German side and discover their set up chores are complete after deploying only three cavalry, one artillery piece and a pair of leaders while their French counterpart goes on to lay out almost the entire Armee du Rhin): Marshal Bazaine has reluctantly begun to execute Nappy III's orders to retire from the Metz area and "put the Armee du Rhin on the route to Verdun." The torpor and lack of elementary reconnaissance with which this manoeuvre is performed reads like a strained skit from a service farce ("Carry On, Bazaine"). As a result, 16 August, 1870, the day of battle, would dawn with a German cavalry division, Rheinbaben's 5th from the German 2nd Army, sitting undetected, unmolested and astride the Bazaine's line of march. As the French struggled to prepare breakfast, Rheinbaben struggled to convince German 2nd Army, manifest on the spot as Colonel Caprivi, X Corps' chief of staff, that his cavalry were facing the whole French army, and not its rearguard as was assumed. But some hours would pass before 2nd Army was convinced that the French had somehow contrived to move so slowly that Bazaine's army had not, incredibly, made good its escape the day before. For its part, Armee du Rhin -- tented, fed and told by Bazaine to expect to be attacked -- was quickly convinced once Rheinbaben's horse artillery opened its 9am bombardment that it faced a full German Army on the attack. This was an illusion that both commanders of the first two German corps (III and X) to arrive that day would fiercely maintain with the most brazen of tactics, twice resorting to desperate cavalry actions that give the game its title. So the task was to make a game of an utterly lopsided meeting engagement that arose and persisted thanks to an astonishing failure of intelligence and nerve on the part of the superior force. Basics The basic instrument CV chose to simulate the battle is an evolution of Peter Perla's Bloodiest Day [BD] Antietam game, itself an evolution of Courtney Allen's Storm Over Arnhem [SOA], the paterfamilias of "impulse" games. Perla's very clever stroke in BD was devising a command mechanism that seamlessly merged with SOA's sturdy impulse structure instead of floating inertly on top of it in a disconnected layer of Idiot Rules. The impulse system runs a game turn as a series of alternating player impulses. During each of his own impulses, a player can activate (direct) a limited number of his units to perform a game action. Each unit can be activated only once per turn. The number of impulses in each turn is variable, subject to a suddenly-it's-over die roll. Perla's command system would add Leaders (HQs) to the orbats and use them as required conduits to transmit activation "orders" to their subordinate combat units. Further, Leaders themselves might be active (able to "send") or inactive (in need of a wake-up call from a higher HQ), so precious impulses sometimes had to be consumed "shaping up" the leadership instead of getting the fighting formations stuck in. The foregoing then are the essential elements that Death Ride uses to mould a credible "psychological" facsimile of the two opposing armies. All French Leaders begin the game inactive and (except for Bazaine) in bivouac (a functionally deeper stupor than merely inactive), as do all deployed units of the Armee du Rhin. Although shooting at bivouacked units under his command might rouse (activate) a French Leader, it's more likely the French will spend their first impulse to activate Bazaine, who must then spend impulses to raise the alarm, one Leader at a time. The Germans, by contrast, start the game with the take-charge Caprivi (who can activate any units from any one Corps each impulse) already alert and in the field and every reinforcing German Leader enters the map activated. Further, the Germans always get the first impulse of each turn and the onus of making the turn-ending die roll is on the French (who are unlikely to see many turns run their full course of eight possible impulses). A fundamental change CV would ultimately make to established impulse procedure was evident from his review of Perla's game in PA #91. The Antietam game retained the simple bipolar conditions of "Fresh" and "Spent" for combat units that dated all the way back to SOA. Fresh units were those available for activation. These show their mobile, full strength face to the world. Once activated (or nicked in defensive combat) a Fresh unit became Spent and was inverted to reveal an immobile, half-strength shadow of its former self. It made no difference if the unit had simply marched along a covered route or launched an assault -- activated was activated, spent was spent; half-strength was half-strength. In the review, CV argued the inadequacy of this simplification. As a result, Death Ride eliminates movement as a cause for a unit becoming Spent altogether. Units can only become Spent as a result of combat. In a day-long battle (eight 90-minute turns) where the most vigorous side (the German) is never outnumbered less than 5 to 2, this makes a difference. It also makes a difference in the ease with which one can rationalise what's going on in the cardboard model of real-world events. The cost of this needed refinement is negligible: the addition of some "activated" markers as aides memoire for units who have done their thing for the turn. Here, these take the form of small flag markers that only serve to enhance the game's visual appeal. The full menu of choices a player has during his impulse is: pass activate one Inactive Leader activate any or all Fresh Unactivated units in one area within range of their active Leader. use one active Leader to restore two Spent units (or all units of one division) back to Fresh. German leadership advantages further extend to two of the cases above: when performing (2), any German Leader can self-activate, while French Leaders must be prodded awake by Bazaine, who himself has to be active. In (3), German Leaders have a command range of two areas while the range of French Leaders extends only to an adjacent area. The operational heart of the game gets its exercise when case (3) is the selected activity. The complete flexibility with which the player can sequence his activated units and their actions is what gives Death Ride the richness of choice and pressure to decide on a course of action ("it seemed like a good idea at the time" is a frequent epilogue to many plans). Owing to increased weapons ranges, the reciprocal, inverse quality of each sides' small arms and artillery equipment, and the presence of true battlefield cavalry, combat in Death Ride has a much different feel than that in Bloodiest Day. Combat Combat comes in five types: Bombardment, Rifle Fire, Chassepot Volley, Move and Assault (cavalry vs. cavalry), and Move and Assault (against infantry and artillery). It is worth noting that ALL forms of combat are resolved using an identical procedure whose roots are in SOA: the attacking unit(s) generate a score that's compared to the score generated by the target unit(s). What makes each type of combat distinct is simply the identity and degree of particular elements that influence the scores and the effects combat can have on the winner and loser. These differences and all relevant info needed to calculate the scores are very clearly presented on the excellent Combat Charts each player is supplied with. This is clean, evocative design at its best...detail and difference that's almost effortless to implement. To account for the extra caution all that flying lead encourages, Death Ride gives all Fresh Unactivated infantry and artillery units a beaten zone that slows enemy movement and can affect enemy assaults. Artillery units (of both sides) exert a beaten zone out to two clear areas, as does each pair of French infantry. The beaten zones of paired German infantry extend only one area. This range difference is only one of three functional advantages the game uses to portray the superiority of the French Chassepot rifle over its German counterpart, the Dreyse "needle-gun." The second is that basic rifle fire uses different die roll modifiers for each side, +4 French vs +2 German, and combat values have no effect on rifle fire. The third is that French infantry divisions can lay down a "Chassepot Fire Zone" in an area adjacent to at least two units of the division en lieu of exerting a normal beaten zone. Each French infantry division has a marker to denote that such a field of fire has been established. German units attempting to exit such zones either to assault or simply join friends in an already contested area are vulnerable to repulse or withering stop-'em-in-their-tracks Chassepot Volleys. Redressing the French superiority in small arms is German superiority in artillery. German artillery is not only more numerous and provided with higher combat values than its French counterparts, but German artillery can lead assaults. In short, German artillery in Death Ride is well equipped to perform its historical role at Mars-La-Tour: "...like almost no other battle, it was dominated, sustained and won by an artillery which though outnumbered by at least 2-1 demonstrated the simple equation that quantity is no substitute for quality, and that energy is no answer to expertise." -- Ascoli The new kid on the impulse block is true battlefield cavalry. Here it's handled with flair and a handful of intuitive rules that simply and cleanly model cavalry's range of dispositions and functions in the battle line. In addition to serving this game well, the cavalry rules strike me as offering some very portable solutions to some very old riddles of how to get convincing mounted behaviour in a non-tactical game. I'll content myself with citing only a portion of one rule that elicited a "Cool! Retrofit! Retrofit!" reaction: "Where the attacking formations are Infantry and/or Artillery entering an Area containing Cavalry (only) the Cavalry must either attack them (using rule 7.5.2) or retreat....Note that where the Cavalry do choose to attack this occurs in the Area entered by the Infantry or Artillery, so they benefit from its Cover value. [Placing Cavalry in a town is thus not very clever]." "Death Ride" Rule As befits a game with the title Death Ride, there is an actual "Death Ride" rule. Its inclusion is more than mere chrome, given the fact that in the actual event the Germans were able to twice forestall collapse by sacrificing cavalry in such a manoeuvre. A successful "Death Ride" will stop the enemy move or assault that triggered it, as well as inactivate the enemy Leader who initiated it. Dead cavalrymen are not part of the "success" equation -- one Death-Riding cavalry unit is invariably eliminated over and above any other losses. The Advantage rule reprises its familiar role of allowing a momentary tweak of the standard rules. The German player starts with the Advantage. It can be lost by excessive casualties (losing four more units than your opponent in one turn) or by exercising it. The advantage can be exercised to do one of the following: activate two selected areas instead of one de-activate one French Corps Leader (costs the German 1 VP) re-roll any die roll (either player's) take an additional impulse following a friendly impulse. Victory in Death Ride is easy to assess and keep in focus during play. The closer Bazaine performs to the Emperor's expectations, the better the French will do. Casualties are irrelevant, which will usually come as a relief to the German player. Instead, victory is determined by VP the French earn from sole (or majority) occupation of a number of particular areas at the end of the day. These areas are obvious geographical features that shield or impede the Armee du Rhin's route to Verdun, or that are part of the route's actual road net. German use of the Advantage sleep spell on French Corps commanders also contributes to the total. I played all my games of Death Ride prior to reading Ascoli's book. Despite this hindsight acquisition of detail, I'm gratified to be able to faithfully report that most of my games seemed to develop along historical lines for historical reasons (though it took several games as the German to fully appreciate how aggressive 2nd Army must be to prevail). As a measure of how fine tuned Death Ride is to its subject, I note that CV has suggested NOT trying to directly port the rules to another Franco-Prussian battle. I've long been a fan of games using the impulse system and this one supplies all the strengths of its class (continuous player involvement; relentless decision-making; simple procedures) in addition to providing its well thought out innovations manage to carry considerable historicity in a simple framework. The components mark a high point in DTP graphics. Eschewing many established traditions of the American Garish School, the large counters sport delightful illustrations (line art by the estimable Mike Siggins and colour work by CV hisself) of representative cavalry troopers and infantrymen over light blue or red fountain-fill backgrounds. The units are large and allow very thorough unit designations, which I find more useful for identifying formations than the small colour-coded dot provided (it's right on the cusp of my eyeball resolution limit). The 1" square cavalry counters steal the show. They give me very nearly the same satisfaction as I get from a well-painted stand of 15mm horse. The 24x33 area map suggests a similar miniatures feel, with an 80's era mini's competition provenance that uses simple shapes and textures instead of the diorama effects en vogue today. It demonstrates CV's principle that the map should a subdued backdrop to the pieces and the action. If not beautiful in its own right, the map is certainly pleasant, functional, and unambiguous. On matters DTP, the 9-section map probably represents the heaviest assembly chore. It's not difficult, but care must be taken trimming a single edge at each section overlap. By comparison, assembling the unit and leader counters is a snap. Though double-sided, they're relatively few in number (about 60 per side) and they're large (1x1" cavalry, leader, and French arty pieces: 0.75x1" infantry and German arty). The small, one-sided markers -- approximately another 60 pieces -- will hardly slow you up. Rounding out the kit are two double-sided player reference cards (as mentioned above, these are excellent -- complete and clearly organised, they make teaching the game very easy); a single set up/reinforcement card, and the saddle-stapled rule book. Like the reference cards that summarise them, the rules are extremely clear and complete, with generous examples and design notes (for a couple of key rules that CV suspects might be misinterpreted, he takes the trouble to say so then reiterates his intent). I have no idea if there are any copies of Death Ride still available. If there aren't, you certainly should have bought one when you had the chance. Back to Perfidious Albion #100 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. 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