From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: Eagles Review and Replay I had a chance to play Eagles with my brother, Scott, yesterday; it was Greek Orthodox Easter, and our wives were willing to watch the kids between meals of roast lamb. What follows is scanty and based on one playing, but at least its about a game. Eagles is similar to the Dixie series of ACW card games. Units are represented by cards and face each other in left, center, and middle positions across a middle ground. Infantry and artillery move one, cavalry and generals two. Each card, depending on its Combat Value (CV) rolls a certain number of dice in combat, and scores hits depending on their Fire Power (F) and type of attack. Each card may target a particular other card. Units with hits roll to see if they rout at the beginning of their player turn (ie after your turn is completed). Each side is allowed four cards per position, not including generals. Terrain cards can modify the movement or combat parameters. One nice element of both games is that you can move and fire in whatever order you like, allowing you to immediately follow up artillery success with an advance, etc. Both games have very nicely made cards. Each card is a unique drawing with authentic uniforms. "Premium Stock" actually means something in this case, and the design is classy, uncluttered, and attractive. Another nice touch - they give you two sets of rules. Every game should do this. Eagles is unlike Dixie in several ways. You typically have more cards in play at a time. There is a morale rating seperate from CV. There is no more melee, the card-killing close combat of Dixie; instead there is shock combat, a higher FP attack available to cavalry and infantry in column. Eagles includes horse artillery, which may move and fire in one turn and which is now the only artillery that can move across the middle ground. Except for Army Commanders, generals in Eagles can not apply their bonuses to just any units, but only to those in their own historical Corps. In Dixie terrain cards must be played during setup so that if you don't draw them at the beginning they just become duds that waste a turn's reinforcement draw. In Eagles terrain can be played any time. A very significant difference lies in the different infantry formations, line, square, and column. Line is the standard, square reduces offensive firepower and increases vulnerability to artillery, but prevents shock combat from enemy cavalry. Column allows infantry to use shock combat, though not against cavalry. Dixie requires you take two of the enemies three positions; Eagles requires only one position (this obviously obviates the enfilade rules). Finally, I believe the special event cards in Eagles are more useful/deadly than those in Dixie. I believe Eagles is an improvement over Dixie. The cards are generally more effective and there are more of them in play, thus you can form and execute a plan better. In Dixie you are more limited in your choices. I think the different formation of infantry and the option of shock combat also gives you more colors in your palette to paint your opponent into a corner with. Limits are often good things, but I think in Dixie the shortage of cards and their limited behaviour combined to increase the luck factor. A lot of games offer you many choices but they don't make a huge difference. Eagles gives you more functional decisions, and that puts more of your fate into your own hands. Either game has you rolling dice a lot, and that's a good thing; many rolls average out, and thus the final outcome is a result of player's decisions, not the die. In any game some rolls will be more important than others, increasing the luck factor, but in Eagles most of the rolls fall into a pretty narrow bell curve of importance, which I think is good and important. There is one special card that is a potential game winner - Panic. IIRC playing this card on a unit that has been hit in combat causes all the others to make morale checks if that unit routs. Play this card when you score a hit on a weak morale unit (say a "C", routs on 3-6) in a defensive position, and if it fails its roll (66% chance) all the other cards have to roll as well. Even if they're fair units (say "B") they each have a 50% chance of routing. If there are two Bs in there with the C, and even if they don't have hits of their own, that card gives you a 66% x (the odds of both B's routing) 25% = 16.5% chance of winning the game right there. Since this might be one weak card charging three moderate ones, that's better odds than you'd expect for a freak win. Each side has one of these, but of course it may not turn up. In any case the prevention is to not group low moral cards together, which you should probably avoid anyway. I always felt unit types in Dixie didn't act enough like their historical counterparts, you could have several artillery units charge across middle ground and attack an enemy position much more effectively than in real life, and cavalry couldn't make things happen quickly, which is what its *for* in real life. I've played Dixie only a couple of times, but in both cases I found that cavalry was weak and I couldn't use it, and artillery worked best on its own. One thing I have difficulty understanding is the degree to which I enjoyed Eagles more simply because I am more interested in the Napoleonic Wars than the ACW. Its not that I'm that informed about the many details of the Waterloo campaign that are portrayed so carefully in Eagles. Color, or flavor, is certainly important to ConSim. Someone tell me why - the game is the game whether they're spaceships or 12 pdrs represented by the pieces, and the game is a large part of why I play. So why should it matter whether its the Imperial Guard or the 1st New York that I'm firing? One of the interesting tactical considerations is that artillery can't fire into an engaged position - so once your infantry or cavalry advance the artillery behind them can't fire. I suppose it prevents a counter charge if your offensive is wiped out, but it also takes up space that could be used by troops prepared to advance, and while it stays there it slows the rate of reinforcing your success. Unfortunately artillery is weak, typically F1 at long range, so with a CV of 3 you're only scoring a hit every other turn, and most cards will survive that hit half the time. Thus artillery is only a big help in large numbers, say two or three cards. But then you don't have much to follow up with, since artillery cannot advance. You have to be clever to make an assault work. Since your opponent is getting reinforced two cards a turn just like you are there's not much hope of wearing him down. Enough rambling, here's what happened: We were both concerned that the small battles start with so few cards that a lucky draw and clever first move might end the game before much thought was involved, so we decided to go after Ligny, one of the larger battles, recognizing that we might not be able to finish. I played French. I drew what I felt was a slightly artillery-heavy had with some solid infantry, and no terrain (I believe the attacker never gets terrain cards in Eagles, only the defending side). I decided to attack on my right, so put two solid infantry there with my only two cavalry. I planned to put the infantry into column and charge across. In the center I put one artillery, one horse artillery and my two best infantry, intending to soften the postion with artillery and then charge with infantry and horse artillery. On the left I put two artillery and two infantry, neither anything special. The right side heated up immediately, there being no artillery to wait for. We each had four decent cards. My cavalry was blown after its first shock wo I withdrew it and replaced it with more infantry in column, and as the infantry got killed off I charged the cavalry in again. I worried that I ought to be timing all this carefully, but we were a little rushed. Pretty quickly I was down by three cards, he by only two. Scott charged me in the center with four good cards. I made some good rolls and got seven hits among his cards, and they all failed their moral checks. I guess that happens when you charge supported artillery. He reinforced, of course, but then I got a lucky artillery turn and followed it up with an advance in the center. This was an excellent place for my horse artillery to be. Since it can advance it can be part of the bombardment phase and the advance, making best use of one of those four spaces. We then began a slugging match. Many, many cards charged into my right where all the cavalry fighting was going on. pretty soon we had two good stacks of dead cards, his about twice as high as mine. We both reinforced the center, but more slowly, and the best cards always seemd to go to the right. Ultimately, though, I got four good cards in the center and got multiple hits on all three of his cards, and a bad set of moral rolls left the position empty, winning me the game. We weren't out of time, and certainly had not exhausted our will to fight, so we continued. He reinforced the center and we continued to shoot it out. The village of Ligny appeared out of no where and he put infantry in it which I never dislodged. On the left I decided to have some fun. I had three artillery and an infantry card there the whole game. I was hoping that one infantry would be enough to defend the artillery if it were charged, since anything that came into my reserve was pretty quickly allotted to the right or center. Having one the game I decided to withdraw the one infantry, I didn't figure Scott was going to be in a position to attack there, and put in a fourth artillery card. This and an artillery enhancing Grand Battery special card cleared out the position, but since artillery can't advance I had no way to follow up, and I was deprived of achieving victory a second time. Moral to this story: you need to mix force types not only for defense, but to allow you to follow up an advantage. One should always put oneself in a position to exploit an advantage that might crop up, because you're opponent won't leave it lying around. Anyway, Scott reinforced with some infantry unit in what looked like a church, and I bombarded it until it was time for dinner. So it turned out that my right had all the action, lots of rolls and a lot of dead cards, but the center (and the left if I didn't get silly) the left was where the victory opportunity was. As for authenticity I suppose I'd give it a moderate grade. I know a lot of people would give it a low grade since there's no maneuvering or flanking, no melee of lines, and you can't freely group your commanders with their units, but it felt pretty authentic. Thus, even though each brigade is represented by only a single batallion, the *effect* people talk about was there. Anyone else want to comment on the fun/authenticity of Eagles? I'd love to hear someone particularly knowledgeable in these wars discuss the unit type behaviours. Each of the times I've played I've been somewhat sloppy; there's always been the kids around, etc. I haven't played an intense, serious game, so I'm sure there are tactics I'm missing. Anyone have any tactical discussions/tips? In summary I think Eagles was a lot of fun, but its pretty pricey for a light duty game. $8 gets you a sixty card deck, though I don't understand how that's enough to play by itself. $39 buys the 300 card set. I definitely enjoyed it more than Dixie. I believe I'd choose one of the more involved card games given the choice, but when a simple game is all that will fit this is a good choice.