Battleground 6: Napoleon in Russia, covering the battle of Borodino, is Talonsoft's second Napoleonic game in their hugely popular series of tactical computer wargames. I guess we will start with the title-- Napoleon in Russia, a bit vague ain't it ? Sadly, this reflects the reality of marketing computer games here in the States, where most folks have not heard of Borodino but sure know who Napoleon and Russia are (stop sniggering y'all in the old country, Shiloh and Antietam were two major battles of American history but how many of you have heard of them, eh, eh !!?). (CHV: poppycock sirrah, all ACW battles are the same, one Peach Orchard, one terrain feature with the word "bloody", a lot of trees and a surfeit of beards).
The cover art is disappointing, too, rather than go with, say, part of the Borodino panorama they stuck on a modern picture of some Russian grenadiers en avant that looks like it was painted by numbers. With all the money the folks at Talonsoft are making you'd think they'd spring for some decent artwork.
But, discouraging package aside, this is a fine game and a strong improvement over BG: Waterloo. Some of the irregularities have been cleaned up, the visuals are MUCH better, and frankly I think Borodino is a better battle, too. Why ? Because after Gettysburg, Waterloo is the one battle that I have gamed the most and I'm just tired of it. Besides, Borodino is so huge (there's 250,000 muskets out there !) with so much wide open territory available for grand flanking movements or head-down frontal assaults. And the variety of units! Polish Lancers, Moscow Militia, Italian Guards, Saxon Cuirassiers, Don Cossacks, Wurttemberg Jaegers, The Vistula Legion. My mouth waters just thinking about it.
The tech stuff first. As the Battleground system becomes more advanced it requires much more of your computer-- NIR takes up 170 meg (!!!) of hard disk space, with corresponding demands on your operating system. Despite what the box may say, I would not even attempt to play it on anything less than a Pentium with 16 RAM and a gigabyte hard drive; for all those 486's out there, as games get louder and more elaborate you may be stuck playing Pong for the rest of your lives. Upgrade, gentlemen, upgrade. But if you do have one of those super NASA space shuttle types of computers, this game should zoom right along.
I will not go in depth about the game system (see the review of BG: Waterloo in PA 93 for that), save to say that it is about midway between Wellington's Victory and La Bataille, infantry battalion/cavalry regiment/artillery battery level with 20-minute turns and very few command restrictions. Leaders serve only to provide morale bonuses for shock and rally-- you can wander away from your C.O. as far as you'd like, although your men will start to get grumpy if the boss is too distant. The emphasis is on formation- line, column, skirmish, square, and so on, with line finally carrying the disadvantages it deserves-- try to move your battalion in line through woods or across a stream and see how long their well-dressed formation lasts.
Combat is in the normal quartet of defensive fire/offensive fire/cavalry charge/shock. In other words, standard battalion stuff with an eye towards the computer wargame newcomer once he gets tired of blasting all the slimy ooga-booga's in Quake.
One of the areas where Talonsoft really shines is the breadth of scenario they commonly offer in their games, and NIR does not disappoint. You can fight your battle in Redoubt/Fleche/Utitsa sized chunks or you can toil through the whole damn show, with plenty of variants for releasing the Imperial Guard or the Russian Reserve Artillery or for Napoleon bringing up some of the troops he had hanging around that did not quite make the historical battle. The game even offers a hypothetical scenario where Napoleon's rearguard, retreating from a smouldering Moscow, is caught on the battlefield by the pursuing Cossacks. I've always wondered what would have happened had Napoleon allowed Davout to attempt his envelopment around Utitsa on the Russian left flank-- NIR covers that too, and it was a dark day for the beastly Russians as my Poles contemptuously overthrew the Moscow militia and bore into the Russian rear.
NIR order of battle seems to be taken from Duffy with ratings from La Bataille de Moskowa. Duffy's info looks outdated, however, as fiendish Americans like Riehn and Nafziger have questioned whether certain units he listed, like the Dutch Lancers and the Portuguese Line, were really there. (CHV: The Rule is: Nafziger proposes but Duffy disposes).
And some of the unit ratings really trouble me. The ubiquitous swarms of Russians Cossacks, while of historically dubious battlefield worth, appear in the game as quite serviceable light cavalry. And did you know that the Provisional Croat regiment was an elite outfit ? Or that the Westphalian conscripts were better than the French regulars ? Or the Russian grenadiers, who were essentially plain old line infantry in funny hats, were superior to both ? Neither did I. If I were playing a boardgame I'd just change the counters; sadly, in NIR I can only sigh and soldier onward.
But I did say that NIR was an improvement, did not I? A number of optional rules have been added to mend hiccups that appeared in BG: Waterloo. No longer will a division of troops run away when a company of skirmishers routs through their ranks, cavalry can now counter-charge, and an Extreme Fog of War feature stops you from peeking at the signboards enemy units carry over their heads-- " 2nd Battalion, Moscow Grenadiers, Good Morale and 450... ouch, make that 420 Men."
3D Visuals
The 3D visuals have been upgraded to really set this Napoleonic game apart from its American Civil War brethren. The terrain is drawn with a period artistry, like from a good Reichling or Phillipoteaux painting, while the uniforms sport much more detail in their facings and shako colours. The result of both is much more of a panoramic feel with the colourful uniforms contrasting nicely with the bare Russian autumn countryside.
The strongest part of any tactical computer wargame is the true sense of fog of war that you experience. No more fiddly "?" counters to pile on top of your stacks, nor referees to move your forces around a hidden game map and get your positions all wrong. The Battleground games are full of surprises, like at Waterloo when the Imperial Guard finally tops the ridge to find a battery of Royal Artillery waiting for them crammed to the gills with grapeshot, or when my Polish Lancers chased the Russian Guard Jaegers into a ravine where three regiments of Russian Dragoons sat waiting for them. (CHV: a 21st Lancers man I see). Now you begin to see why skirmishers were so useful for developing the enemy's position and screening your own, and at Borodino keeping fresh reserves is very important, especially against the Russians who are seemingly always producing fresh Corps like rabbits from a magician's hat.
Battleground's mechanics remain the same, however, which means that you are in for a long time commitment. Even with the shorter scenarios you are dealing with scores of units per side, all Igo'ing, Hugo'ing, and Firing at will. The Napoleonic games in the Battleground series add counter-charges and formation changes to the defensive fire phase, so even when its not the computer's turn to move you are still looking at long, 10-minute+ pauses while the computer ponders the situation, more if you have a slower computer. This is not an unimportant consideration if you do not want to give up 170 megs on your hard drive for a couple of weeks. The good news about NIR is that you are only using up hard drive space, not three card tables stacked high with a few thousand counters.
Sadly, Battleground's main weakness, from a historical perspective, remains its command rules. By using Terrible Swift Sword and Wellington's Victory as their models, and not developing a new game system of their own, designers Jim Rose, Joseph Hummel, and John Tiller have fastened themselves to an Igo/Hugo situation. But battlefield command means a lot more than just urging your men to perform feats of bravery, it means bungled orders, missed opportunities, and acts of folly. You do not get that in Battleground, and with Igo/Hugo the battles will usually descend into attritional slugfests where the advantage always lies with the larger side.
For this reason, the great victories of Austerlitz and Auerstadt would be hard to recreate because of the disparity in numbers. Talonsoft does attempt to solve this by freezing some units, like the Imperial Guard, the Russian Artillery Reserve, and Osterman-Tolstoi's IV Corps until their historical moment of "release." But this is also unsatisfying; are you telling me that even in the event of a Russian breakthrough the Old Guard remains immobile because it is not 4:00 yet? As I said, in a boardgame you just cry "Hogwash !" and make up your own rules. Unless you know C++, you are at the mercy of the computer.
Fixing?
To fix this I think it would be easy for the designers to add some sort of command activation system. At the beginning of every hour, say, you as commander-in-chief have a varying number of activation points which you can distribute amongst your corps as you see fit, the computer checking to see if the corps commander accepts your order-- with the Davouts and Bluchers it would be near automatic, while duffers like Bernadotte or Ostermann will probably just ignore you anyway. (CHV: I am not sure this demonstrates they are duffers). Then, an activated corps has full movement and shock/charge capability, while and inactivated one does not. Simple, eh ? And the computer is already checking every leader at the beginning of every turn to see if he is in his superior's command range, so the mechanics for doing this are already written into the program.
Most of my criticisms of the Battleground series stem from its relatively unsophisticated tactical model vs. the battalion-level designs of today, as represented by Clash of Arms and SimTac, much like comparing Wellington's Victory to Los Arapiles. As I said in my review of BG: Waterloo, Talonsoft is in the position of SPI in the 70's, breaking new ground in the computer wargames market and learning as they go along. I am sure that many of the series' shortcomings will be corrected in future games. Already the Battleground games have come a long way from early volumes like the much cruder BG: Gettysburg, while Talonsoft's publication of Age of Sail and the planned titles Eastfront and Nam, squad-level games with a campaign story line similar in form to Victory's Ambush series, show them expanding the range of their game line. Nam is worthy of comment in itself-- a proposed squad level Vietnam game is a very ambitious undertaking given the political and cultural status of the Vietnam War in the US. For our purposes, the next Napoleon game scheduled is the Prelude to Waterloo package of Ligny and Quatre Bras; can Austerlitz be far behind? (CHV: We can but pray that it is very far behind).
So there you have the good and the bad. Intended as it is for a broader market without much knowledge of the subject, I'm afraid that historical inadequacies are inevitable-- boardgame designers have been working on them for years and they haven't found all the answers, either. But the advantages- the wealth of available scenarios, the impressive graphic detail , and the size and sweep of the battle - are just too much for me to pass up. To a committed Napoleonic tactical nut like myself, purchasing NIR is a foregone conclusion. I might as well just give Talonsoft direct access to my checking account.
(CHV: I mention elsewhere my reaction to the Talonsoft Waterloo game. On the whole I found them unattractively long, but I shall be interested to test the new Vae Victis clone magazine which has a Waterloo scenario for Age of Rifles).
Back to Perfidious Albion #95 Table of Contents
Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1997 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