If Hohenlinden is a forgotten French victory (a lack of Napoleon counts for a lot with most of us) then Bouvines is a very famous French victory. In 1214 Philip II Augustus campaigning in Flanders was attacked by the Emperor Otto, seconded by Renauld de Dammartin, Count of Boulogne, and Ferraud of Portugal, Count of Flanders (both titles held uxor) and English stipendiary knights led by the bastard half-brother of King John - William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury. In a classic medieval battle (see Verbruggen and Duby's "The Legend of Bouvines" a.k.a. La Dimanche de Bouvines) the Coalition was shattered, King John abandoned his Poitevin campaign, Otto lost his throne and the two counts their liberty (Ferraud did recover his at great damage to his county, but Renauld topped himself in the slammer). King Philip was nearly captured at one point but his mesnie held his enemies at bay. The two sides were fairly evenly balanced, but the result was so dramatic that it makes a natural subject for Championnat de France. Not only is Bouvines to be found in every French school-child's history book but it has been featured in a number of readily available English texts so that although it meets the Number One French Design Criteria (a French Victory) it is still accessible to those outwith France. The game is a standard Igo Hugo game, using no stacking and two blocks of troops facing each other. An odds based CRT gives the usual style of CRT, and (as with Hohenlinden) one is looking at a classic gamer's game. Once again with a lot of neat ideas tacked on. However, the usual reverse to this is also present - this is a computer-loopy game as both sides bash away trying to kill, or more likely disorganised and finally rout their enemies. You add up the odds, you dice, you test morale, you rally and so on. Having been there and got the T-Shirt with The Flowers of The Forest I think one needs quicker solutions to the dull bashing bit, but Bouvines is no worse than (say) Prestags and not as long as Yarmuk. My solution in The Flowers of The Forest was (effectively) to prevent units reforming once they had broken thus removing the many rally dicings. However The Flowers of The Forest had a different system whereby the units on the map represented a number of stacks in Bouvines and no-one actually decamped until the entire "battle" suffered from broken morale. Bouvines is a medium length game (two hours a game) about killing, and killing occupies most of it. The first observation is that unlike many American medieval games where the designer comes from another era and is using one source to produce a bastard offspring of Charles Oman from Mel Gibson these designers like and know their medieval troops. They have gone to a lot of effort to model the different style of troops. The two sides are massed in battles each led by a leader (Philip himself, Frere Guerin his fiery military monk, and Robert of Dreux, Comte of Beauvais for the Lillies; Otto IV, Renauld, Fearraud and Salisbury for the Coalition). Each leader has his mesnie of knights gathered about him. The two French flank battles, Beauvais and Guerin, are mostly crossbows, indifferent foot and mounted sergeants and minor nobles. The central French battle is mostly communard foot (visions of Jimmy Somerville in armour) backed with knights under Philip. Otto's battle is similarly lots of foot with mounted support. Salisbury fields some anachronistic longbows, and good foot and horse. Flanders has much the same but with short-bows. Boulogne is however hedged about by his ribauds and trained foot whose "square" stood the French off for much of the day. There is pretty much every kind of weapon present, apart from the Courtrai-style pike (although we do get the Flemish Bill or Goedendag).Finally the French baggage waits across the pont de Bouvines to tempt the Coalises, and in the midst of the Welf line stands a carocchio with a dragon emblem. [The dragon inspires its defenders but its loss will badly weaken Army Morale]. Avoiding lots of heraldry the style remains evocative and involving. It looks medieval without looking like Rodger MacGowan blew a ink-jet toner on it. To help with spotting who is in which battle different colours have been used for each, the French having the blue part of the spectrum and the Coalition the red-yellow bit. Map The map is nice and clean with the set-up printed on to it. It shows the plain of Cysoing, with the French backed up against the river covering (they hope) their escape route over the bridge to Bouvines. The first reaction to the counters is that (unless I've missed a trick) the French are very much in need of saintly intercession. They have less strong units, lower morale and poorer numbers especially in infantry (in cavalry it is not so bad). French leaders are however better than the other sundry rascals (Philip and Guerin anyway). An immediate point to mention is that the designers have been rather devious in their units. A combat point of communards is 125 men whereas knights can be as few as 12 to a Strength Point. So that the "weak" body of foot could be about 600 men facing less than 100 knights. The different types of armoured cavalry (from sergeants to full knights - banneret types) is similarly marked by a scale differential. A fully armoured and fully trained knight is a rare thing but a powerful one. He still has to kill those foot though! Units have Combat, Morale and Movement factors with Fire strength and range for archers/crossbowmen. To help in this killing things go beyond the mere odds calculation. Our 600 foot may be worth 5 CVs but they are likely to be Class D [the games uses a sort of social/experience scale from D (ghastly proles) to A (upper-class twits)] facing Class A knights (whose 100 men translates into 8 CVs). That difference in Combat Class gives the knights +2 in the attack which turns the 1:1 to (effectively) a 2:1. If the foot dare to attack the knights, their 1:2 becomes 1:4 after die adjustments. This means that foot have to tuck their heads down and hope they can last long enough for their own cavalry to use them as a base for their own attacks. The CRT has another twist; its results are suffered only by the defender - the attacker loses nothing. This means that we are not going to see Courtrai, the weaker foot will remain, like Homeric infantry, observers of the actions of their social superiors. How George Duby would have enjoyed this! Sequence The sequence starts runs French Rally, French Fire, French Movement (and Coalition Reaction Fire), and French Combat then the four phases repeated for the Coalition. This is standard stuff, since any French missile unit will have had to move into range it is likely to have been fired on in Reaction Fire before it can launch its own fire. The concept of Offensive Fire proceeding Defensive Fire is thus less concerning than it might have been. Stacking is a doddle, one unit per hex plus its Leader. However this means retreating units may have to barge through their supports setting up chains of morale tests (and occasionally bringing out a very satisfactory massed collapse). Infantry have facing whereas cavalry do not (being much more open order). All good stuff. Units progress to collapse through three morale stages. Firstly, organised units are face-up and in full strength. Disorganised units have no ZOC (which leaves them open to surrounding) may not attack or enter EZOCs, give there attackers +1 on the dice, and a further disorganisation will rout them. Routed units have one morale point less, no ZOC, give a +2/+3 to the attackers (infantry/cavalry) and try to run off the map. Morale is tested 2d6 lower than or equal to being successful. Morale is clearly important, Leaders can boost it, especially Philip and Guerin, as does the Imperial Dragon banner. Morale tests occur not only from fire and hand-to-hand combat, but where one tries to pivot a unit in an EZOC (for infantry), retreats through another unit and, of course, while trying to rally. Army Morale is tackled by Cohesion points, lose four of these and the army collapses (no matter how many of its enemy are dead). When a leader gets scragged he can be killed, captured or free having given his parôle (and the dice decide, not you). The death of Philip is worth three Cohesion Points to the Coalition, but captured only two and free nothing. Guerin, Beauvais, Ferrand, Renaud and Salisbury are worth one CP dead or captured. The Emperor Otto (for some reason) is worth less dead than captured. Clearly a heavy "snatch squad" grabbing the main enemy leader could do great damage. My French is not strong enough to be sure but I suspect you must stay with your battle and not run away! To complete the Cohesion Points the capture of the Dragon will yield the French one CP, and the Coalition gets points for Bouvines bridge and the French baggage. [The Bridge is on one of the French flanks making a good target for the English and routiers]. Movement includes pivoting to face enemy units; cavalry charges; forming hedgehogs (herisson is the French word) and evading combat. Cavalry charges against a higher morale enemy requires a successful morale test. Charges in general bring dice modifiers but advance after a charge is dice-driven so that you may go careering through the enemy lines to be surrounded and slaughtered. [Standard British cavalry tactics in the Napoleonic Wars]. Hedgehog formation are available only to infantry. They have no ZOCs but no flanks either (and flank attacks bring advantages that demonstrate the danger of the more mobile cavalry arm in this era). Interestingly the hedgehog formation benefits from a -1 against enemy fire, rather than suffering from being a massed stationery target, this is based on the shields and massed spears etc. deflecting arrows. One can also have skirmishing and the cavalry version of a hedgehog where a leader's mesnie form around him to fight off the "snatch squads". Finally in movement (oddly enough) the naughty Frenchies can set Bouvines ablaze to hold off the Coalition forces. Fire Fire (I should say shooting of course) uses an odds CRT but against the terrain strength rather than the strength values. There are special rules to simulate the slower loading speed of the crossbow over the long and short bows. The reaction fire is extensive and can be very useful in damaging attacks (especially with the one unit stacking rule). The results of fire are morale tests, retreats and morale tests and disruptions, but no eliminations. Melee does have the possibility of elimination and it appears to be voluntary. Shooting seemed to be too be a little too effective for the period, inching towards English Hundred Years War stuff. Victory arises from either shattering the opposition's Cohesion or by outpointing him in losses and captures. In reality the Coalition collapsed although I am not entirely sure the game would have made this happen. Bouvines was designed in 1983 to support a film that never got made, so its techniques are perhaps more traditional than we might expect. This is, however, balanced by the depth of knowledge its designers have. This means they have gone far beyond the usual Sir Lancelot de Chutney nonsense with which most games of the Middle Ages are saddled. The operational possibilities seem to come down to the German horse trying to smash through to Philip in short order (something which they are well capable of doing), while Geurin tries to smash Ferrand, and Salisbury and Renaud try to take the bridge. It remains true to its subject without entirely removing the possibility for some variety. It is however (as I said above) a game about biffing and bashing and of these there is a lot. Back to Perfidious Albion #97 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. 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