Highway to the Kremlin is the latest offering from Kevin Zucker’s long line of Napoleonic campaign games, and covers Napoleon’s attempt to invade Holy Russia in 1812. This is an exceptionally well known campaign and contained some of the most memorable and harrowing images of Napoleonic warfare. This is a very difficult campaign to recreate, how can one give the French a chance to win and under correct conditions? So how does Mr. Zucker do in his effort? I will endeavour to answer that question in this short review.
To start things off the map is excellent, quite one of the best I have ever seen of Russia, or anywhere else for that matter. It stretches from Tilsit in the west to Moscow in the East, and Riga in the North to Kiev in the South, with a few hexes extra in every direction, each hex is 10 miles across. So it is a big area, and once you start playing you may see yourself marvelling at how Napoleon’s army made it to Moscow at all. The map is 43” east-west and 34” north-south, and it also includes all the tracks you need during play. So whilst a big campaign the board itself isn’t massive and will fit on most tables, one would also need to find space for the two A4 size Organisation Displays. The counters are also of very good quality, the French in light blue, allies in various other colours and the Russians are in a very nice brown. There are units counters corps, some divisions, vedettes; and leaders counters. Both leader and vedettes have their national flag on the back to allow confusion to reign. All in all the physical aspect of the game is very well done. Each hex is 10 miles across and easy identified as to which terrain is in it, rivers are all on hexsides.
The rules come in two booklets, the first is the Standard rules the second not surprisingly the Exclusive rules. As many of you will be aware this series of games has been around for a long time and that each game tends to evolve the system slightly. The change this time is quite drastic and is that basically everything has been multiplied by 5, this is to facilitate the size of the campaign, so now each SP is 5,000 men, each hex is 10 miles, but really not much else has changed. In fact the system moves over quite well, apparently the intention is to use this scale for a Peninsular campaign. Unfortunately in my opinion the rules books are the weak point in the package. Whilst not hard to read and easy to understand, many of the rules are spread around the booklets and until familiar with the rules a lot of pages flipping will be in order. Please do not let me overstate this, the game is actually fairly easy to play and once familiar with the mechanics the game will flow very smoothly. Please note also that there are some important errata to the rules that should to be used, more about this later.
Central to this as to the whole series of games, is the idea of the Administration Point (AP). Basically the function of APs is to decide the level at which one works out attrition, and also to allow a force to move without relying on Initiative. Each side gains APs if in a LOC is in operation between Supply Source the Centre of Operations, the maximum is 4 APs received and the minimum none. The idea of the AP covers many things and can be slight disconcerting as to what they are. But I see them as being the officers that make the supply line function better and also carry out the orders to move, so the more you have of them the better.
Movement and manoeuvre are central to Napoleonic warfare and the attraction of the whole series to many is the movement of the armies to gain that key position of strength to defeat the enemy. As can be expected in Russia they is a lot of room to move, but not always that much to manoeuvre, a lot of the action takes place on the Kovna, Smolensk and Moscow road, although one can’t ignore the action on the flanks. Only forces and vedettes can move in HTTK, and only by two ways; by being given a Movement Commands which costs an AP, or by initiative which is obviously more risky. You have to use Initiative if in ZOC of enemy forces, out of command ranges or if one wants to conduct a Forced March during the opponents phase
As seems quite right for any game of Napoleonic wargame and especially one dealing with Russia attrition is central to the game. Whether it moves or not a force is liable to suffer losses, but if it moves it is almost certain to begin to lose men rather quickly, especially if a long way from its Supply Source or in bad weather. Of course units have to move rather quickly especially the French and they suffer accordingly. Attrition is worked out as units move or at the end of movement for none moving units. The supply level is worked out using the Administrative Point level at the time, but the length of the supply line also comes into account here, which really hurts the French as they advance deep into Russia. Let me give you a few examples here. Let’s say both main armies are moving around Smolensk, the French are advancing and the Russians are awaiting them there, and the weather is clear.
Davout’s corps is 9 strength points (45,000 men) and he is attempting to move up to engage Bagration’s Second Army of 8 strength points, Bagration isn’t too keen on this and will attempt to move away. Davout manages to move 5 movement points to contact Bagration and must now throw for attrition. French AP level is 12, but such is the length of the supply line(attenuation) for this force this is reduced to 6. Davout throws a 5, reduced to 4 due to his leadership ability, this causes him to lose 1 strength point (5,000 men). Bagration wants to retreat away, so attempts initiative in the Forced March Phase, he makes it despite the presence of Davout and moves 3 movement points away. The Russian AP level is 17, but due to length of supply this is reduced to 13, he throws 4 increased to 6 (+3 per MP in Forced March, -1 leadership), this gives him no loss and he happily retreats.
Let’s move this forward and date it in early October. It is now the turn of the French to be moving away and this gets very interesting now. We will have to change things around a bit, first Bagration died at Borodino, although no reason why he still won’t be still be around but let’s keep it realistic, and of course French strength isn’t what it was. So it is Doctorov attempting to hold up Davout, but as before Davout wants to move away; Doctorov has 7 SP’s, Davout 5. The weather has changed. It is now snow, but as Smolensk is in the Severe Weather Area it counts as Severe, +3 to attrition. French AP level is 7– 6 for attenuation, Russian AP level is 8 - 4 for attenuation.
Here goes then. Doctorov moves 4 movement points, he throws a 4 for attrition, +3 for Severe gives a result of 7 and that means he will lose 1 SP, but he has caught Davout. Davout now attempts to force march away, he throws low enough and decides to march 4 MPs away, he throws 4, -1 leadership, + 3 Severe and finally + 4 amount of force march = 10 which means he will lose 2 SPs.
As can be seen attrition can be very deadly, and it is very possible to march oneself to death. It is good to see that both sides do suffer from this and not just the French, although the Russians do roll on a better column everything else being equal. Note also that it is possible at the worst reaches of the attrition table to literally wipe forces out in one march. Those +3 and force marches do lose you men, which is as it should be.
There is a big difference with the new 5x rules in that ZOC only occurs around the edge of the hex, and the moving force only goes into this ZOC if it wants to. But once in the normal rules apply, namely it costs extra to withdraw and more importantly forces can only move by Initiative, which is affected by the opposing force leader.
Leaders have 3 factors these are initiative, how many units they can command, and how awkward they themselves are to command. Initiative is by far the most important and is used to ascertain if a force can move, and if in pursuit or withdrawal to help one’s force. On average the French have better initiative, but not all of them. It would be quite easy here to give averages of leader initiative and prove my point, but I play games for fun and not as some mathematical science! Down boy! To move by initiative throw a dice; less than initiative move up to full (5 for infantry); equal one less than full; greater by one or two than 1 MP can only be moved. So if your leader is a four then his force will always move at least one in open movement. Continually throughout the game you will have to decide whether to spend that 1 AP or risk the dice, it can be annoying when the “dead cert” Davout rolls a six.
Of course if one is Schwarzenberg in the deep south with an initiative of two, well the less said the better! If in ZOC with another force one can only move by initiative and the initiative roll is effected by the opposing force’s leader. A five leader always adds two to the initiative roll, whereas a one leader does not affect any rolls at all. This dice roll is also affected by the weather and if one side has a significant advantage in cavalry. What this means is that it is can be very difficult to force a good leader into a fight, this is not a game of battles every turn. Obviously mishaps occur, but overall the defender is able to withdraw and pick his spot to turn and fight.
Combat is probably the weakest part of the game, say suffices in its job. There is an inherent problem with battles in this period in that it was not normally the case that one force out numbered the other by much, especially not the 3:1 seemingly so beloved by boardgamers, but one has to cater for the brilliant victories that did most certainly occur. The system used here does not really allow one to accomplish these at all, which in one way is good but not always. “Let’s have another example you all cry”; oh go on then.
Davout again (yes I admit he’s my favourite Napoleonic Marshal), against Bagration, both have amassed a considerable force at this point. Davout has 13 infantry, and 2 cavalry, in all 75,000 men, Bagration on the other hand has 12 infantry, and 5 cavalry, 85,000 men. By the way the Russians do seem to have a lot of cavalry and strangely the French are always heavily outnumbered. So we are ready for action, we have around the same number of men per side as at Austerlitz and both commanders are better than average and should be able to see that moment in a battle when one push will defeat the enemy. Before each round each commander decides if he will commit his forces to a pursuit (he will retreat if beaten) or a Pitched battle. Davout is the attacker so rolls the dice on the 1:2 column, the best he can get is a 1 att 2 defender loss, and the worst due to his –1 attack advantage (which Bagration also gains), is 2-0. He throws a 4 modified to 3; 1-1 but he has lost.
He chose Pitched Battle so he does not retreat, losses are taken, It is now French 70,000 and Russians 80,000. Bagration attacks on the 1-1 column, throws 3 –1 to 2, 1-1 again but this time the attacker wins, Davout again chose Pitched, but he has revealed this twice so he can now only chose pursuit. Davout attacks again throws 2 –1 gets a victory and causes two losses to one , Bagration also chose Pitched. Strengths are now Davout 60,000 and Russians 65,000, Bagration attacks. A four is thrown down to 3, 1-1 attacker victory, Davout retreats one (the number of his losses this turn), Bagration’s cavalry commander successfully pursues causing a loss of one to Davout. So for the loss of 20,000 French and 25,000 Russians this has caused Davout to retreat one hex, may cause a VP loss but unlikely, needs a 1 to be thrown (the loser lost more than 3 and the difference between winner/loses losses is the chance). Please note that there is no leader losses either, so Bagration will not meet his Borodino!
Hardly stirring stuff, but for this campaign (if not all it does seem to work). Losses are numerous for minimal gain, so whilst the combat system does work for Borodino it won’t work as well for Austerlitz. There has been a lot of discussion about this on the Internet, and some people have come up with some suggestions. Personally I feel that the combat rules do work most of the time, and that it would be very difficult to make a better system. It would be immensely annoying to have Borodino decided on one dice roll; French win on one, Russians on six!
Extras there are plenty of these. Vedettes, the weather, terrain, foraging, negotiations, fires in cities, destroying and repairing bridges, and partisans; they are all in here and all add something to the feel of the game. The one gripe I do have with the rules is that forces attacking into woods are halved, which means that the best defensive tactic is to sit all your forces in woods and there are a lot of woods on the map. Not very Napoleonic to me, I disregard this rule when I play.
The City Fires rule is very interesting and integral to the victory conditions and also to Russian strategy. Basically whenever the French take Riga, Smolensk or Moscow a dice is thrown to decide if the city is burnt down. In effect this means that half of the time the French will not get anything from taking one of the victory point town. Normally with standard luck the French will take all three, Macdonald will take Riga, if the French can’t take Smolensk they may as well turn round and retreat now, Moscow isn’t always that easy but needs to be taken to have any real chance of winning. The problem is that these three dice rolls take an immense importance within the game, if the French roll 4 or more each time they take a City, and I’ve done it twice, they get nothing at all for taking all of Russia. But if you do manage to roll low, then the chances are that you will probably win.
Winning the game can be done in three ways. The French roll successfully on the Negotiation Table, conversely the Russians throw the Negotiations out. The Paris morale goes off the scale to the advantage of either side. Finally at the end of the 34 turns whoever has the advantage wins. There is also the very interesting extra game in that if the French lose on the Negotiation Table they have lost, but have still to get their army back home to Poland, whoever has the most men in Poland at the end wins. This is a very interesting part of the game and allows the Russian player to do some attacking, well worth playing.
Victory points are gained for capturing the major cities above, Critical Battles (losers loses more than three SPs and the dice is equal or less than the difference between the winning and losers losses), Old Guard attack defeated and losses of Leaders. Of these the capture of cities is the most important, the Old Guard rule is seldom used, Leaders very rarely are captured and Critical Battles are rare things in this game. The normal way for the French to win is to storm to Moscow and open negotiations, depending on their success then they may have a more that even chance of winning. This even point to have the Paris Morale on is probably +2, because although the chances of the Russians throwing out the negotiations and the French gaining them is equal on the zero columns the Russians only have to throw them out once whereas the French have to gain them twice. One point here is that once negotiation are started both sides go into Quarters and nobody moves, but obviously time goes on, a few neutral throws may stall the French enough that the snows appear and you can guess what that means. This is a very interesting mechanism, and really does work very well.
There are some errata available for the game, and whilst most are only clarifications a couple are very important and one especially is a game changer. If you play the game as bought it is impossible to ever reduce a siege, this is because a siege is won when the besieged force is reduced to a strength of one, but as the rules stand it is impossible to get a force down to one when they do not move. So the errata, adds a +5 (instead of +3) to the attrition and also gives the possibility of the forage level of the Citadel to be lowered. Each attrition turn the besieged force rolls a dice if this higher than the present forage level that level is lowered by one starting that turn, the initial forage level of a Citadel is four so this process still takes some time. The main point though is that eventually the food will run out and allow the force to be attritioned away. Two important errata rules are that the French gain 1VP when they capture a Capital City, and before they roll on the Fire Table, this was always implied but only seemed to apply to the Battle Rules. It is now a +1 on the Initiative Comparison Matrix to pursue in rain, which makes it harder to pursue in rain, which is how it should be.
So how does it play and is it a good approximation of the actual campaign? Well for such a big game it does play very well, whilst the forces are very large there aren’t that many actual counters on the map. There can be a significant number of vedettes darting around the map, but even these are not a problem. The attrition rules are very tight and can slow down the game somewhat, but with the numbers of forces on the table this isn’t too much of a problem. I found that with a fast player turns can be as short as twenty minutes, although slower players can extend this considerably. So in my opinion It is not an unplayable monster, although due to its 34 turns It is not one for an evening. I should note here that there are also five smaller scenarios to play namely Opening Moves, Smolensk, Borodino, Retreat and Berezina. You can also start the campaign at any date using a series of charts included. So if you want to play a portion of the game you can do this quite happily in an evening. Personally I have not done this so am unable to comment on them, although I have heard that these are also very good.
As far as history goes it plays very well. The timescale is just about correct, Smolensk is reached within a turn or two of the historical date, and if you do fight through to Moscow the date is pretty close also. The game normally follows history fairly well with the Russians retreating eastwards and sitting around Smolensk, sometimes all the Russians get there sometimes not. The Russians then have to decide whether or not to fight for Smolensk, in my games they normally have done, but sometimes they are too outnumbered and retreat towards Moscow rather quickly. Funnily enough there is always a battle before Moscow, often very close to Borodino. The Russians player never wants to give up Moscow without a fight, in fact in the six games I have played the Russians have won half of these “Battle of Borodino” and forced the French player to retreat. I must add that with repeated play the French are lately doing better, but with the battle rules as they are It is touch and go, normally one side will attack at 1-1 and the other at 1-2, so no major advantage will be claimed.
The other forces to the north and south of the main theatre are also very interesting. In the north the French have to take Riga whilst making sure that Wittgenstein is kept of the supply line. In the south things are also very hairy especially when the Army of the Danube arrives to reinforce Tormassov, Schwarzenberg and Reynier have their work cut out here, and It is sometimes necessary to reinforce these from the main force. One thing you can’t have happening as the French is have your long supply line cut, and that is easier said than done. Wittgenstein is only two or three marches away and must be closely guarded, and if Schwarzenberg is defeated then all of Poland is open.
In my games the French have only won one, this is due in two to the extreme bad luck in the Capture of the Cities and having all three burnt down; in two for not reaching Moscow; and in one for unluckily throwing double-one on the +3 line of the Negotiation Table. The one victory was well won and both Riga and Smolensk gave VPs and the Russians were unable to gain a victory in battle, so the Negotiation chart was easy for once. I tried once when I was stopped from reaching Moscow to hold Smolensk which was actually the best game of the lot. Unfortunately I only had one VP to play with and the Russians were able to attack me from various directions before I could place my forces were I needed them. I think that if I am in front the next time when I take Smolensk I may try for this type of victory, and place my forces better to facilitate this.
All in all if you are interested in Napoleonic warfare I can only recommend this game to you. The rules whilst detailed are not too complicated and are easy to get into. The game plays well with many different strategies for both sides and both sides are fun to play and have their own challenges. With the numerous scenarios it can also be played by the more time constricted player. If you want a good accessible game on this most interesting of campaigns I do not think that you could do better than this at present.
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© Copyright 2004 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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