Any of you out there ever play SPI's War Of The Ring? I sure did - and still have a photo of my 14-year old self on Christmas Day, grinning like a pumpkin amongst my loot with War Of The Ring held up as my prize gift--and loved it. What did I love about it? Well, that's hard to explain. It looked great, of course, but the rules were pretty fuzzy, the combat system didn't make complete sense, and the Good Guys won 9 times out of 10. I'd have to say that War Of The Ring's whole greatly exceeded the sum of its parts, that it did such a great job of recreating the flavour of the novels that I came back to it again and again. And that pretty much describes how I feel about the La Bataille series in general and Lutzen in particular. Lutzen 's graphic artistry speaks for itself. With Rick Barber's time taken up by Summer Storm, the graphic duties were split between Rick on the map and Terry Leads on the box cover and counters-- the box is particularly striking, with a Rochling painting of the Prussian Guards attacking Gross Gorschen. The counters, of course, feature La Bataille's familiar exotic artistic style with a wide mixture of uniform colours and type fonts that goes so far towards giving the series its historical flavour. But then you must open the rulebook... Lutzen introduces the second rules revision of La Bataille in the past two years; 1997 saw the release of "Regulations of the Year XXII", Lutzen's rules are a simplified version of these. First, let's have the good news. Both revisions are a HUGE improvement over the old rulebook that the series had been labouring under for 20 years (finally dispatched after 1995's Corunna), with its scatterbrained rules and often-impenetrable writing. Designed by Monte Mattson, Lutzen maintains the well-known rules structure that has shaped every tactical musket-era game since La Bataille De La Moskowa while taking some half-hearted steps towards bringing in 90's system concepts. And that's the problem; while La Bataille has soldiered valiantly over the years, the rules system is far behind wargaming state of the art, even after the revisions. For example, Lutzen replaces the old Igo/Hugo turn structure with a chit-draw system, which is a great idea but very clunky in execution. Players designate and receive chits for Maneuver Units (MU's), a generic operational group that can range in size from a brigade to a corps, depending on what type of command points a player has to spend-- I guess. The rules are not very clear about just how MU's are generated and on what level, and it required several messages on the La Bataille topic on www.consimworld.com before I could take a stab at it. But in the early hours of Lutzen, without a corps or army commander on the field, the French don't generate ANY Maneuver Units. And without a MU, units are, of course, frozen. Ignore the fact that at Lutzen historically the French defenders of quadrangle of villages manoeuvred and counterattacked very aggressively, in Lutzen they are nailed to the floor. Well not really, cuz a rules loophole allows what players call "kedging." The MU chits include a Leader Movement chit (where all leaders move) and a Regroup Action chit (which allows all out of command units to move within range of their leader). You "kedge" MU-less units by moving their commander under the Leader Movement chit until he's out of range, then under the Regroup Action chit hustle his units back within range like a line of duck chicks following their mother. This is an absolutely ludicrous sight to see, yet the rules don't prohibit it and Ed Wimble, on Consimworld, condones it with a chuckle for the foibles of wargamers. You've got to be kidding me. We have here a completely inaccurate situation. Combat units are frozen because Napoleon isn't on the map. Which can only to be remedied by a goofy rules loophole. The easiest solution is to allow a MU-less movement phase (say half MA, can't move within 2 hexes of enemy, units already adjacent to enemy can shock) after all chits have been drawn. Which is what I do. Making up house rules to fill in the gaps is familiar ground for La Bataille veterans, but why am I still doing it after two rules revisions? [CHV: The sad truth, David, is that Ed Wimble is not capable of completing the long and technical redrafting process, it is not his forte. He needs a non-creative type with an eye for detail, but in this Hobby everyone thinks they are the creatives.] If you have Internet access and log onto Consimworld (a very rewarding experience, by the way) you'll see that many other of Lutzen 's foibles- the fire CRT, stacking rules, artillery ammo, map scale- have been dissected, castigated, and defended, often with great emotion. The above MU questions are just a sample of what is in store if you care to go into the message archives. My feeling is that for all the time spent on revising the rules- and Ed Wimble invested a lot of time- there are still far too many gaps to be filled, too many rules which require designer explanation or player guesswork. And yet, why is Lutzen worth all the players' extra effort (which it is)? The historical situation is very dramatic-- the Russo-Prussian Allied army have caught Napoleon by surprise, falling on an exposed division of Ney's around the village quadrangle of Rahna, Gross Gorschen, Kaja, and Klein Gorschen. These poor saps (nailed to the ground by the command rules, remember) must hold on desperately until Napoleon comes down from the north, Marmont sweeps in from the west and MacDonald from the east (got a nice double envelopment going here, you'll notice), to turn the tables on the Allies. The French still have not recovered from the ravages of the 1812 Russian campaign, and players used to superior French armies will be surprised to see the French conscripts, Marines, and mobilized police with their lowish ratings and positively flabbergasted by the lack of French cavalry. La Bataille, of course, is still without peer in recreating the combined-arms tactics of the Napoleonic battlefield (until GMT publishes Austerlitz, heh heh heh) [CHV: you're fired] with its bloody stand-up infantry fighting and thundering cavalry charges. Lutzen follows SimTac's lead in replacing infantry melee with fire & morale check contests, a very accurate and extremely welcome change. I don't know if we will ever see a completely satisfactory revision of La Bataille, one that can be played without requiring player guesswork and loophole-filling. Clash of Arms has built a very loyal and devoted following for the series (which must include me, in all honesty) and Ed Wimble probably correctly feels that such a change is unnecessary, for this audience anyway. Lutzen is what it is, a very attractive game that veterans can pick up quickly but doesn't go very far to bring in newcomers. And like War Of The Ring, I'll probably still be playing it in 20 years. Back to Perfidious Albion #99 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