Apart from the mint, a glorious touch of flavour was added to the terrain by placing a peeled onion on top of the church tower in Borodino village, to make it look really Russian. This eventually caught fire -- the church, not the onion, but it was never quite resolved as to whether the rules said that the French should evacuate the church or would they have been drawn back by the smell of the cooking onion. A scale of one figure to every five-hundred - no, its not a misprint -- was used and we were all most cheered when 500 Generals fell leading a massive French cavalry charge. (This was when we promoted our stout friend). By the end of the game the French had lost 100 points (50,000 men) whilst the Russians had lost 73 (36,000). (Real battle -- French 30,000; Russians 44,000). The Russians still held their entire front, Napoleon still held his stomach, the stout fellow still held his one-sided dice and I held that it had been a tremendous weekend. The last I saw of Don he had his back to a wall, with a young enthusiast asking him for rules for Samurai! Again, this has nothing to do with 1812, but when wargamers gather, all history is their oyster. Thank you Tolstoi, thank you David Chandler and team for a job well done. The first part of the text was unscannable, and so presented as an image.--RL Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 133 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1973 by Donald Featherstone. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com