Imagic This game is a sort of bastard offspring of the Mark Herman Richard Berg Great Bores of History series where people who enjoy computer looping go to loop. The computer comes along to rescue us from tedious stacking and counters that consist of a small icon cowering behind a stack of boxes with factors in them. Here the little figures come in units of eight or ten wee men, and the men vanish as Cohesion Hits are suffered. [Of course being a Berg game they can come back if you give them a bit of drill, no one ever dies in these games, they are just life-challenged]. The wee icons move and fight in a rather jolly fashion and look very smart. The Romans (who are Republican Romans) have nice horsehair helmets and sturdy pila. The Germans or Gauls look sufficiently wild and there are many other exotic races (we meet the Pontic armies for Chaeronea). You need a very powerful machine to get even reasonable speed out of this game though. I used a Pentium 450 with 256 MB of RAM and it still thought about it occasionally. With much of the old gaming tosh dealt with for us by the computer one has more time to watch the fighting and do some thinking. Essentially you move your units (perhaps instructing them to shoot or fight) or you rally them or improve Cohesion ("steady there steady"). When you get to do this and how often are determined by the computer (there is no GboH trumping). The more your leader activates the better your chance to fight, cohere (or whatever the verb is) and fight again. You do get penalised for a unit activating more than once a turn. However, most leaders use the megaphone method of command. They can only command a few of their units and the rest have never heard of moving so as to maintain station, so multiple activations just spread activity throughout the unit. Great Battles of Caesar improves on its Alexandrine cousin by having a "Group Move" facility that permits lines or legions to move in formation. Unfortunately the Group Move provided in the system demonstrates the US Marine Corps ("Only two kinds from Flatulatum, steers and queers which are you"), trained the legions. This is shown by their use of "Hey Diddle Diddle Straight Up the Middle"(you can swerve a bit left or right). There is no concept of pivots to moves to flank, unless of course the machine is playing the Romans, then just watch them at the Horse Guards. Army leaders may be assigned no units but can act over a larger area than (say) a Tribune of a legion. This renders Julius Caesar a sort of Jolly Uncle who goes around brightening up the troops, or occasionally taking command of a task force (he can command multiples of the units that a Tribune can). Combat consists of lots of moaning and groaning and losses being suffered. Heaps of dead amass (which fortunately the computer permits you to clear) where a unit routs the wee men turn around and do a runner, in a terminal rout they drop their weapons so that the sight of a phalanx breaking is quite spectacular. Missile fire is pretty ineffective, and skirmishers hang around to fight rather than acting as a delaying factor that leads to their loss. The naughty artist has portrayed the Romans cutting rather than stabbing, but the Gauls wave their swords most atmospherically. The Romans do not seem to throw their pila before attacking, only defending (but this may be because they have thrown them already, yes looks like its first attack only – how neat). The missile rules between skirmishers favour range (it seems from play) - archers shoot down javelins and slings. But confronted by swords the archers still hang around to get stabbed at! The chief problem of systems which use a single currency for combat (losses, Cohesion Points, or whatever) is that it over simplifies matters. Cavalry-versus-Cavalry, Skirmisher-versus-Infantry, Cavalry-versus-Infantry all these get the same treatment whereas they had, in reality, different drivers. The sight of Roman cohortes surrounding Numidian light horse is one of the more foolish moments that result. Aligning of combat can also be rather strange, you need to point out the flank hex and then make the combat "click". Merely pointing at a unit and clicking will result in our dozy chums trying to stack so as to attack that unit and the one next to it. ("Quick sir, this hex looks particularly stupid from our point of view, let's occupy it"). Victory is determined by who breaks first using a Rout points system. The more important a unit the more its loss will damage you. However, en route to collapse there are no morale effects whatsoever, everyone keeps fighting and suddenly "phfitt" that's yer lot matey. As you might expect the Romans have a heap of Rout Points. You really have to kill them in droves in most scenarios. The importance of Rout is such that you need to stop units running off the field (not merely routing). Now you might have thought the latter (being visible to the others) is more important than the latter (which happens on the base line) but that is not how the silly boardgame does it, and neither is it how we are going to do it! This being so officers are frequently seen galloping to the rear calling "Stop!". It also means that morale is a downward path, units are never elated by victory they just keep losing Cohesion points or getting them back. It is like getting a calorie counter to act as a restaurant reviewer – deeply unemotional. The real bummer though, apart from the usual repetition that these games can reduce but not replace, is the Artificial Intelligence. The Computer quite simply cheats it moves multiples of units bigger than you with all sorts of jolly manoeuvres (half the units pivot right and march in line ahead, the rest sweep round your flanks). So dorky does this become that I find it difficult to stomach the game for long. You can, of course, play the game over the e-mail with another humanoid life form to avoid this silly behaviour. This PBEM option seems very popular. A Few Battles Vercellae: Those two masters of the Roman world Sulla and Marius face a horde of Cimbri (almost 200,000 strong gasp the breathless box notes). The Cimbri usually break after you have cut into the second row. Bibracte: Caesar faces a horde of horrid Helvetians. Our pre-Swiss are in fetching but appallingly uniform horned helmets or hop-knots and few clothes. The Gallic cavalry is numerous in support of Caesar but not too good. The Romans have the edge on chewing up the Helvetians and a big lead in Rout points. The Boii and Tulingi pop up on the Roman flank to stir things up a bit. Helvetian Victory depending on lasting to the end of Turn 6, thus encouraging the Romans to attack rather than keep their lines tidy. Ruspina A Numidian light and cavalry force shows you how to surround an infantry force. The AI's cheating is particularly noticeable here, play it once as Caesarian then swap sides and see how you do. Back to Perfidious Albion #98 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 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