There can be nothing more difficult to get right than operational combat in an era where very few armies were fielded. This is additionally a very long era. Most states before the massed armies of (say) Louis XIV fielded a couple of field armies at the most, either by reason of army size or because the ruler wished to keep them under his eye and that of one trusted liegeman (often a relative). Even the Sun King tended to field one main army per theatre. Come the massed army eras one begins to have fronts and the game mechanism can begin to move towards a ZOC-driven system. But in the Middle Ages we are undoubtedly in the era of few armies. In this game the Crusaders usually consist of the small mesnies of the Prince of Antioch and Count of Tripoli, and a couple of major forces in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In both scenarios King Guy has a good army, supported in the first by Latin nobles under Balian of Ibelin. In the second one can have the luxury of two additional armies, one under Philippe Augustus, and the other under Coeur de Lion. Similarly, the Saracens have a number of small armies representing the Ayyubid rulers of major cities, together with a large force under Saladin and one in Egypt under whoever is current ruler. A game in which two stacks stalk two stacks is a difficult one to pull off without some care. If combat is too easily achieved then the game can in a few turns lose both major armies of one side. This is the nature of combat in that period, especially combat against a light cavalry army such as that fielded by Saladin. However, unless the two players can do something to improve their position, to get the edge, they are left with the choice of staring glumly at each other or engaging in indirect castle sieging behind the cover of the main army. In the historical campaigns each day and each move was undertaken with the aim of improving the position. Supply features (far too minor for the game's scale - a spring for example) were skirmished over, in the hope of instigating a foolish attack. And if this minor feature was lost the entire army might choose to withdraw a hex or so and begin the process again. Both sides might raid each other to try to sting the other, or simply to get supplies. Reading the articles by John Gillingham on William the Bastard, Coeur de Lion, and William Marshal, le meilleur chevalier du monde the plan seems clear cut but heavy with nuance. If your enemy is moving forward into your territory he will want to spread out to draw supply (and destroy your countryside), your presence in a concentration will leave him open to a formed counter-attack. Simple really, except that you also need to draw supply so that you too are open to the need to disperse. Who will be the one to win this battle of wits and belts, will a strategically placed magazine or river give you the supply edge? Before attacking your castles the enemy (if Philip of Flanders is to be believed in Jordan Fantosme) seek to ravage the surrounding territory making it difficult for your castles and relief armies to be supplied. Except of course that the besieger will also be unsupplied from those directions and will eventually push into a zone of castles cut off from supply by his own foragers. A frequent defensive response was to ravage ones' own lands to engender besieger supply problems, yet was not that exactly the besieger's Cunning Plan? So the same solutions apply to both sides and each strength is a weakness, it ain't what you do, its the way that you do it! The difference between two sides are thus to be judged in the micro-details, something far detached from the ten mile hex situation. Can all this be rolled up into the combat dice? Not really, because both sides would know just how well they were doing in the micro-war (mostly from the morale of their own men) and in many cases would withdraw from battle or avoid it. Indeed, many medieval kings regarded running away as an entirely sensible course. So combat is the exception rather than the rule and cannot therefore encapsulate the nuances of manoeuvring. The interception dice might be a better way, but the factors involved frequently come down to Leadership Ratings and a die-roll. I think we may need some card/chit systems whereby each side has some advance knowledge of the issues in question. All of which is an awfully long way to point out the problems inherent in this game. Essentially one takes a risk on battle (of which more later) where neither side has any advantage (despite the fact that a prepared position was usually the stronger one, see Kelly de Vries' book) or nibbles away at towns and castles daring your opponent to attack (and knowing, if he does, that some of your troops will be too busy watching the walls to fight). It is a bit too bald for its own good. The map is (unlike Belisare its forerunner) hex based and I do not think this an improvement. It is very clear with the fertile coastal littoral, the drier lands and hills up to the Jordan and then over. The cities are not marked for either faction and you will need a few markers to keep track of who owns what. Apart from the coastal towns and the great Arab cities of the inner plain (Damascus, Homs etc.) there are a few castles, Tiberius and Jerusalem. Counters The counters are splendid, each leader has a "bust" plus coat of arms. The Ayyubid arms are (I assume) made up but splendid for all that. Those of les croises are remarkable (only the French Royal colours having a problem at the printers). The leaders are rated for strategic and tactical value. In the latter only Coeur de Lion and Philip of Flanders have any strength, together with Saladin. The units have spectacular little icons. Each counter has three bits of information: strength, missile capability, and morale class. Crusader units tend to a bit smaller than the Ayyubids, and the latter have more missile units but usually lower morale. The atmosphere is excellent. Unfortunately the organisation sheet has the names of the commander inside his box, so covered by his troops, Messer Theophile have that man mutilated. Events in the game are driven by Action points, these useful military currency units can help you to move, fight, siege or build fieldworks. Usually the Saracens will have more such points and this can permit them to use their strength to pick off the Christian strongholds eventually forcing the main Crusader army to commit to the risk of combat. This is pretty much as it should be, although as neither side can recover destroyed units any major losses will hamstring any subsequent offences. All the more important then not to lose a battle, easier said than done I fear. <>Combat Combat occurs when units intercept, and a moving unit can try this a number of times in his turn, but only once on a particular target. Forces will encounter each other about 50% of the time, when faced by particularly good leaders they may even blunder into an ambush (from which they always retreat). Both sides may always agree to a battle. Once combat is triggered the forces line up, firstly both sides engage in missile combat. Typically, the Saracens will be able to put down a greater volume of fire (most of their foot and cavalry are armed with bows). The Crusaders have their crossbows, but the technological advantage of these weapons over the less penetrative Muslim weapons is not reflected. If there are five or more losses from missile fire there is a risk that the Crusader chevalier units will charge in disorder (in which case they fight the entire battle without support from their foot or sergeants). After losses are extracted (in terms of eliminated SPs at about a 6% rate at the heavy end of the chart although die modifiers can bulk that up spectacularly) and any discipline test is passed by the Crusader chevalier units there is another combat round (hand-to-hand) with all units participating, but multipliers for heavy foot and cavalry. These modifiers usually favour the Crusaders. Further losses are removed and one side may have to take a morale test. This latter point is an odd one, it is really closer to a fatigue test as the better the morale class (Knights of the Military Orders are A class, Muslim javelin men are D class) the better its chance of being disorganised. Exsqueeze me, better chance! Yes, my only rationalisation is that the designer regards the game as one in which the better units try hardest and weaken fastest. The natural result might be to compose your army of complete rabble because each point of peons is more likely to stay in combat than a point of elites. And once disorganised units are out of the wild hunt for the rest of the battle. Of course, the modifiers will still mean that Crusader chevalier units are worth three times (for example) their face value but since they may vanish on a score of 7 or more for standard knights whereas rabble hang around until an 9 is scored you can see the problem. Class A knights add to the dice modifiers (superior discipline) so making it more likely that their side wins and forces the other guy to dice. Whatever the basis once you start to lose your best troops are likely to ride off the field leaving the commons to be slaughtered. It feels odd, so odd that I keep wondering if I have mistranslated it, but it has certain logic and quite a lot of historical support. You can see the Christian commanders trying to hold their men in hand, if they can survive the arrows and unleash the charge on time they may cause the Ayyubids to weaken and collapse, but so too could be their fate. To lose before an Arab army is to suffer terrible losses amongst the foot. The feeling of always being on the back-foot is always with the Christians, not that the Muslims do not take a beating every so often, it is that they usually survive rather better. All this is a fine but bloody form of random combat. Big forces should wear down and destroy smaller ones, and the usual response of a Muslim army in the circumstances - avoid combat by running away - is not possible, however they may do this after one round of combat subject to pursuit losses. Crusader armies lacking mobility operated in tight formations akin to a marching square. They cannot retreat and because cavalry (especially light cavalry) is favoured in pursuit combat they will suffer more at the hands of the Muslims. However, both sides had adopted combat methods that gave the defender an edge (or so my reading of Smail and Marshal indicates) and I do not see this inherent in the game, but then as I noted at the beginning of this piece the micro-details of combat in a macro-level game are difficult to simulate. Hole in the Heart This hole in the heart of this game spoiled it for us, but its general structure is sensible with good siege, supply and naval rules. Towns will hold out a long time but you can build siege works and make assaults to speed things up. However, the losses in early assaults (without large siege modifiers) can be high so that you need time to winkle the opponent. As supply is derived from controlled towns within three hexes any siege campaign needs to unfold logically with a series of overlapping sieges pushing out a supply line. Where enough forces exist a pincer strategy will not only press the opponent back, but will mean that his supply options are weakened. I must confess I do not quite know how the combat detail could be handled to give a satisfactory effect. But then if Hannibal can be lauded for a system where Hannibal can frequently bring Fabius to battle then who am I to criticise Les Croisades for such minor failing? Faster than The Crusades by Richard Berg, with a certain simplicity in its strategic opportunities this is a game to get on with and play. It will be bloody and the gore will lead you to alternate between aggression and circumspect siege and cover strategies. The latter will be closer to the real thing. As ever its physical finish ravishes the senses. The tactical system has the feeling of those long battles fought under the sun, but the strategic feel is not all it might be. Well worth fiddling with though. I have translations if needed. 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. 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