This is a DTP game on the second Boer War. It covers the war, from the opening ‘conventional’ campaigns to the longer mobile guerilla war. A difficult mix to recreate. Based on a favourable review I bought it recently. The designer has some good ideas and knows the subject but it is hard to grasp some of the rules at first, partly because the style is so casual. For example individual Boers units have trouble making coordinated attacks but they can be grouped into one of two Armies which avoid the coordination problem. The trouble is these armies have to be handled with care and it will become a great juggling act for the Boers as to when they should disband the armies. If forced to retreat all the component units are destroyed. However, if the units are not grouped into the Army then the units can retreat and survive. Now, from my knowledge of the Boer War this is a fairly accurate system for portraying the fragile nature of the Boer Armies. I’m not entirely sure some players will understand the rule or even realise its there. They really could do with some explanations as to the reason behind the rules in general. It is always a problem trying to handle the two types of warfare in the one game, particularly of the opening months. My recollection is that there was considerable fighting on the borders with the British underestimating their opponents and being fairly aggressive. Once they got pushed back the war fell into a bit of a stalemate with the Boers occupying some territory in the western Cape and northern Natal and the sieges of Ladysmith etc were not pursued with any great vigor. One thing that struck me in the review was the suggestion that the Boers have a slim chance of a political victory early in the game. My assessment of the game was that the chance of such a victory are very slim but the Boers may as well try it. To do so results in a game where the opening moves are far removed from historical events. To win early the Boers have to drive British morale down to zero. There are only two real ways they can do this; By having besieged towns surrender. By capturing towns and rolling a dice to see if they drive British morale down. The British have a limited ability to avoid combat if they are attacked in a town. They can declare a siege, in which case the Boers must mask the defending troops with a similar number of strength points. There are however only five siege markers. The Boers then simply sit on top of the besieged. There is only one way the besieged can be defeated and that is if they fail a morale test on turns 3, 6, 9 etc.. Combat odds, duration of the siege, size of the besieged force etc, none of this matter, its all down to morale. Historically the Boers besieged Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberly but did not make a great effort so this has a certain degree of logic. Now, British morale starts at 7 so it has to come down to 5 before there is any chance of a besieged town failing a morale test. With every town that surrenders the morale will drop further so it can start a cascade effect. A bit unlikely I thought and I can’t really see morale in Mafeking being affected that greatly because Ladysmith surrendered. Thus it is essential to get the British morale down to 5 by turn three to stand a chance. By turn 6 the British will have too many units on the board for the Boers to stand much chance. An aggressive or historically minded British player can do things to lower their morale but one thing is for sure, none of my opponents are daft enough to do anything that silly. Far from being aggressive the British probably need to fall back into a defensive posture until turn 3, when their first reinforcements arrive. So, the only likely way the Boers can get the British morale down to 5 is to capture empty towns in the British areas. They roll 3 dice at the end of each turn and if the result is lower than the number of towns captured then British morale goes down one level. There are 22 towns according to my count. Most of the town are grouped in the Eastern Cape. It is here that the Boers will have to spread out forces to capture towns. Of the towns the Boers can probably get to about 12 in the first turn. Of these, 5 can be besieged so they will not count, meaning the Boers have to achieve a dice roll of 6 (with 3 dice). By turn two the Boers can probably control at best 12 towns. The chances of lowering the British morale by two levels in those first two turns are thus extremely slim. Even then they still have to roll a six on a siege roll to force surrender. By turn 3 the British reinforcements have arrived to defend or take back some of the minor towns lost. The British can make it even tougher for the Boers. There is absolutely no need to keep their small cavalry units locked up in Natal. Spread them around the towns just for their nuisance value. Bring some of them back to Durban on turn one and ship them into the Eastern Cape on turn two. Using sea, rail and land movement the British can put a cavalry unit in virtually every town they can control. It forces the Boers to use up War Commitment Points, they have to screen the towns and may suffer an attacker retreat. These small British units are automatically replaced after a number of turns, so they can be used as cannon fodder. There is no political or military advantage in holding any particular town. I would have thought that at least Kimberley should have had some kind of value in view of the diamond fields. So, the British may as well evacuate forward garrisons such as Mafeking, Kimberly. Pull the units back to the Cape where sieges can be relieved more easily. The Ladysmith garrison can fall back to Colenso. On either side of this area there are native areas and Boer units cannot end their turn in such areas. Thus the flanking native areas make an effective obstacle to hamper Boer movement. Put a cavalry unit in them and they become an even bigger obstacle to the Boers as they can’t move through them (unless they use De la Rey) or even attack the British forces in them! It then becomes difficult for the Boers to get past Colenso etc. Defensive play? Perhaps, but there is no point in the British doing anything else. Attacking is the worst thing they can do and the Boers are so powerful they can basically do whatever they want in the first three turns. The absence of any terrain effects was a big disappointment. Buller spent months trying to batter his way through the rugged terrain along the Tugela River, probably the best known battle of the war was Spion Kop. Yet none of this comes over in the game. The sea and rail movement I found suspect as well. They seem far too generous and I can only assume the motivation was simplicity. Sure, we are dealing with month turns here but unlimited sea and rail movement is excessive for the era and facilities. The British certainly had good sea movement capacity but there should be some limitation. Cape Town was a decent port but Durban, Port Elizabeth were minor facilities with little capacity to handle landing major forces. East London and Port Alfred had even less capacity I should think. It was not just the capacity of the ports it was the availability of coastal shipping to do the moves. Rail movement is far worse. These are single track railways with limited rolling stock. Yet a player, even the Boers, can move tens of thousands of men over huge distances in a month and then still do a normal move. Ports and rail lines surely should have some kind of capacity on them. Plus there could be some limitation on combining different types of movement. Having gone through this analysis, a friend (a very experienced player) and I sat down to play it. Carefully explained the various rules and my ideas to him and we started off. By turn five we were engaged in a mobile war for the Eastern Cape, the British had abandoned Ladysmith and were holding Estcourt with major forces, daring the Republican Natal army to come and attack them and all 5 sieges were holding out. British morale was still 7. Hordes of British reinforcements were about to descend. His comment was a disgusted ‘this isn’t the Boer War, It is a joke’ and we abandoned the game. Sent two lots of queries via Consim to Microgames on this. Unfortunately I never got a reply, which is disappointing. The response from a few other players was that they had found much the same problems with the opening game. Perhaps we were too pessimistic or hasty but we both lost interest in the game. Nicked off the Internet: Review: Bittereinder (Boer War) [PA 103] Back to Perfidious Albion #104 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 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