A game on the Forty-five, ah but what a topic my children. Heroic murdering bastards (Ed: Surely brave clansmen defending their way of life) under a Wrong but Wromantic leader nearly overtip the stolid German (boo yiss yah) government of the Hanoverians but just fall short when they lose their bottle at Derby (not the easiest of places to lose a bottle it must be said). You have all the great Highland names so redolent of his history: Roderick Chishom, the McNeil, the red Foppington, sundry MacDonalds (I'll have a Big Mac myself), Angus Og and down beyond the Great Glen to the lands of the Gordons and the Frasers and into the Borders.
If this does stir you then you are either a stranger to these shores or dead. Mr Geddes is a claret swilling Jacobite who sees History through a whiskey glass but he articulates his pride of race well. Indeed he celebrates four of ancestors who were with the Pretender (three are the same age and surname, clearly polyandrous behaviour was prevalent when no sheep were available). But even the narsty Government troops have names replete with history. Rather than just the 58th Foot they are Foppington's 58th Foot (or Siggins Light Internet Surfers) and there are the varied English militia units and the Scots Government troops especially the Campbells (of whom God Preserve of Utrecht).
Ah but all this is for naught my gentle readers because while the game is both good and original the parts that are original are not good etc etc. Mr Geddes has produced the sort of sad ranting Scots apology that simply renders his topic laughable. The Jacobite army of 5,000 to 7,000 appears as at least 50 SPs if big units are used. Whereas the large armies of Wade (20,000?) appear as 30+ SPs. Not unsurprisingly when the Jacobites come calling there is nobody here but us chickens. The singular skill of the Scots under Lord George Murray is subsumed into a clash of ubermench and untermensch. Standing at Derby the Prince has Wade with 39 SPs in the north, Hawley with 9 SPs at Stafford, Cumberland about to retire to guard the coasts and the silly beggars still retreated!!!!!
Am I alone in suspecting that the Jacobite leaders without over-valuing their enemies realised they were not three times better than veteran English foot? But with this major skewing the history is badly affected. American readers may care to speculate on the Confederacy with three times the population. Yes, it makes a difference doesn't it. (That's Mr Davis to you Abe).
Not Finished?
I believe, misplaced racism aside, Mr Geddes has simply stopped short of finishing his game. The victory conditions were the easiest rules to write comments our faux naïf. He has done good work on a number of features. His naval system is excellent. The map is clear. The counters are ugly and fiddly but show a true regard for the period but a "Maps and Orders of Battle" design needs some historical armature to anchor the problems, and rules that confront the realities. Some of the things you can do in this game make Third Reich look reasonable. If Geoff had but used a longer development process I believe a number of weaknesses could have been removed and some of the alternative policies examined.
The game works on the basis (for the Jacobites) of occupying London. Given their strength and the sloth of the Hanoverians I would be surprised if any other result would occur. This would be true with or without a French landing. The reality is that the Jacobite commanders regarded the failure of an English rising (typically the odd men out with those rascals from Manchester - ever a hot-bed of sauce) as a good indication that they only had the choice of occupying Scotland. A French invasion was a possibility although waiting for one of those is not the most believable policy. Finally there was the possibility of 1688 in reverse, with the Protestant Ascendancy "looking the other way". The political, military and diplomatic interplay is fascinating but not in this game. You take London, you hold it, you win.
Let's start with the good stuff. The map is very neat indeed. This is what I would have preferred for The King's War, but since when do you produce maps to please the designer?
The units are named for flavour, rather than a load of homogenous kilties one has Oliphant of Gask's regiment, Angus Og MacDonell, Red Foppington of the Battles and facing them the Georgian Rangers, the Yorkshire Blues, Barrell's 4th and Pulteney's 13th. It is all so atmospheric my dears. In order to get as many units on show as possible Geoff Geddes has used the "revolve the counter to show the strength" mechanism, (he recruits in the same way) which slows the game.
So if the 4th, 5th and 6th Foot suffer 33% losses they each lose a point rather than ditching one whole unit. Geoff's method is more accurate but terribly time consuming. It is not too overpowering in the scenarios but gets pretty rough in the campaign. Sadly the counters are truly dreary with NATO symbols, those sprites that appear are clearly refugees from 1700 and must wonder why they are appearing in the wrong uniform in the wrong game. M. Monnier seems to have missed this point in his eulogy while abusing Nice Mr Berg.
Naval System
The naval system works well with a number of sea areas each of which has three boxes: Transit, Battle and Patrol. Ship units on Patrol get a better chance of spotting intruders, give them enough squadrons and it become automatic. Infuriatingly the naughty Jacobites have privateers and can slip round the flank of the big squadrons, but a French invasion is going to face a lot of aggression. (I am reminded of the old Admiral in the Napoleonic period who said that he did not claim the French could not invade Britain, merely that they could not do it by sea!). The Royal Navy is important in keeping the Hebridean tribes out of the war as well.
The sequence is short, sweet, Igo Hugo, but frequent. Reinforcements appear (usually units for recruiting or forces returning from the Pragmatic Army); naval activity is concluded, all units move, then they fight and then they attrit. Recruiting involves turning the counters over, turning them round and using arms to equip them. It is an accurate enough system, but in my view way too complex for the scale. I should note a Good Wheeze. Arms counters can be used to double up recruitment. Every time you have a Rout the fleeing forces abandon arms which you can use to recruit. The Government trick is to take but not use Arms counters (because they are a strict counter limit) and send them to sea so that the Jacobites can never use them. A well know ruse de guerre this.
The major Jacobite accretions of strength occur when the Standard (wrong artwork you dickless cretins) is raised north of the Great Glen, then when they enter North Eastern Scotland, into the Borders and South. I found this a little muddling but it got there. If some clans refused to follow the Prince they turn up later as Government militias (in red coats tsk tsk). There is a rule to stop you siphoning detachments via other regiments which is unbelievably boring. The Jacobites real recruiting problem is (quite rightly) that they need to go home to the right glen and a'butt and ben (if I may lapse into the argot). Units march along at speeds of 4 MPs for the Kilties and 3 MPs for the Godly. Since the latter slow down in the mountains the Jacobites look positively turbo-charged. I am not saying this is wrong but I wonder about it once outside of the Scots mountains. I mean the Pennines can be rough but the Cairngorms or the Trossachs they are not (have you ever been kicked in the Trossachs missus? Brings tears to your eyes).
So as our hairy SuperJocks sweep south (looking strangely more powerful than their Campbell cousins) sprinting past the lardbutts of the Government they can fall on these sluggards and give them a good bashing. The said Hanoverians cannot avoid these unwanted attentions other than by running away (and they need a bit of a lead here) or hiding in fortresses (which seem very stormable to me - I do not believe Edinburgh Castle triples the occupants, thirty times strength maybe, on the whole short of a sneak attack my money is on the Fiesler Storch as the only solution), or going to sea.
If the horrid kilties get hold of them we use a differential chart (yes a differential chart quelle cretin) and the Jockolinos should manage +12. Without a modifier the losses are 5Sps for the attacker, and just under 4 for the defender but with deserters and other factors the smaller force is going to die (old man). With Lord George Murray leading his Highland Boys its curtains big time for the British line.
Now is this reasonable? Outside of their own stamping grounds did the Jocks have a speed advantage. In battle did they really slug it out at three times more value? I think not. Lord George was a good general who (like Wellington) played to his troops' strength. The Highland Charge is as effective against the British Line as the British Line's Fire and Charge tactic against Napoleon sixty years later. One might argue that it would not always succeed but if it did you have a Jacobite victory. Every battle became a gamble, if the Jacobites did nothing else they brought the decisive battle back to Europe. In my Flodden game the Scots have a much less effective tactic (a pike charge) but if it succeeds it will break the English. Knowing it will not always succeed makes it no less worrying. Geoff seems to have gone about it the wrong way. His Jacobites are always effective and the Highland Charge is a paltry +1. It should be the other way about to generate the concern felt by the Jacobite leaders.
Overrun rules ensure that too much English recruitment can be dealt with by rambling your Jockonaut round the shires scrunching militia regiments.
Concerns
I had some concerns about the scenario victory conditions and whether the scenarios joined up. For Charles to get from Derby to Falkirk for the next scenario implies he would have force marched for no reason. The 30,000 English troops closing in on the Pretender's 5,000 are, in the game, more likely to be shaking in their boots. The victory conditions are often very untesting. Scenario One requires the Highlands be occupied and I cannot see how the Government can prevent this.
Scenario Two requires Scotland remain held (there are enough units for this), two regions be entered by the Pretender and his father declared James III (which he can do with ease) and a fortified box held at the end of the Turn. The Prince marches into England, does his declarations, moves back to Carlisle takes it and sits there (immune from attrition). If the English are daft enough to attack him it will probably be with Wade who moves only one third of the time! Chance would be a fine thing. Sadly the developer checks on the scenarios seem to have missed a number of units which do not turn up (or which are mis-named). A degree of sloppiness which adds concerns as to what else has been missed.
The French appear based on their Intervention Level. This has six levels. The first involves only Jacobite units leaving ports, up to level six with real French forces and Swedish units sailing. What determines the Intervention Level is the Prince's activities and if he end runs through Scotland and England (and with the Mega-kilties he will, my dear, he will) this is enough. At this point faithful to their word their French will slip their anchors and go in (something the crapauds have not done successfully since King Louis of England (un roi francais meconnu et un roi anglais inconnu)). Now this is Hamlet without the Prince, the real matter was not some Scots who look like refugees from a shortbread tin but those doughty Hearts of Oak the Royal Navy (writes Sir Buffy Vasey). You can declare James III King in Banbury for all I care mon petit chou, but I am not getting sunk at sea by the Royal Navy.
The best I can say about The '45 is that it means well and it has solid successes at the micro-historical level. But when we come to the macro-level it begins to go to hell in a hand-cart. The whole game needs tidying up and each current strategy considered from the point of historical possibility. After correcting the grosser errors one might have a good game, but I suspect it would look more like We The People than A House Divided. (See the comments of noble friend Lord Drury of Weybridge later in this august organ).
The game will interest (but not satisfy) those with a keen interest in the period, and it may fool a few Romantics into thinking this is how it was. In the hands of a good gamer it will come apart fast, and by its grosser distortions it fails to pay due respect to the topic that inspired it - the devotion of some clans to a mad idea. I appreciate this is a topic which has a wide range of opinions, I just feel that The '45 will fail to satisfy anyone other than third generation American-Scot who reveres a clan chief who sent his ancestors into exile. But then I am English from a nation that knew no chieftains for many years, I put not my trust in Princes, I might be expected not to be persuaded. I cannot recommend this game.
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© Copyright 1996 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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