This review first appeared in IPW, the newsletter for all discount games club members. Contact colin@allusedgames.demon.co.uk for details. Morgan’s Rifles (Mayfair) Morgans Rifles is a small boxed game, produced in 1981 on the bicentennial anniversary of the Battle of Cowpens, which it simulates. Historically it was fought as a result of American light troops harassing British flanks dunng their Campaigns in the South whilst fighting the American revolution. Anxious to destroy all opposition, an elite flying corps was created under the command of the hot headed and cruel Banastre Tarleton. The corps won several victories and Tarieton was confident of repeating his earlier triumphs at Cowpens. The American troops, however, were under the command of Daniel Morgan, an outstand- ingly able commander. Afraid that retreat would lead to his militia's collapse, but combat to their destruction, he nevertheless won the battle so convincingly as to destroy Tarleton's command. Although the Battle of Cowpens was a minor battle, only one other had as many medals awarded during the Revolution. Your first opinion of Morgans Rifles is likely to be a negative one. The state of the art has moved on a lot since this game was published, though I doubt that this was 'state of the art' even then. The map is a morass of different shades of green. The lighter the shade, the higher the terrain. This is the opposite of how I would have interpreted it so its worth knowing. Unit counters are average but acceptable except that a couple of mine have been poorly die cut. The result is that one or two units look rather wide, whilst their neighbours look comparatively thin. This does not, however, prevent one from playing the game. The rule book is fairly short and well laid out, but, very annoyingly, uses the word counter to refer to an individual unit, and unit to mean, in fact, all the units that comprise a formation. This makes a simple game much more difficult to learn, because you have to think really hard about what you have just read to grasp its intent. Overall, this is like a GDW series 120 game in size, but with components of an inferior quality. A game turn commences with both players placing reinforcements at the games map edge. Each player only receives such units once during the game so I shall move swiftly on. Next the phasing player (British first) attempts to rally any routed units. Now, by units I am actually refering to whole formations (told you the rule book was annoying) and will therefore refer to them as formations for the remainder of this review. For clarity, when I refer to units I shall mean individual unit counters. By the games rules, all units comprising a formation are either in order or routed. If routed, and provided a leader unit is either stacked with or adjacent to a unit from the formation, a rally may be attempted. One simply rolls a die on the morale table and modifies the result by the leader's morale rating. The formation either rallies, stays routed or may, given a bad roll, disintegrate and be removed from the game. These units are considered to have surrendered and this is unlikely to happen unless the units that make up the formation have suffered heavy losses, a lesson there for all potential players. Units that comprise a formation may also trade losses between one another in order to bring some units up to full strength whilst those reduced to zero are removed from play. This prohibits movement in the next movement phase. Formations that sucessfully rally have to reform in this manner. Movement follows and is based on units having a number of points that can be spent each movement phase. All hexes are clear, costing just one movement point each. The different terrain levels serve only to block line of sight for fire combat, not to affect movement. One assumes these are gentle slopes. Units belonging to the same formation must remain adjacent to one another. There are no zones of control so solid lines of units are required to prevent the enemy infiltrating although fire combat also helps to prevent this. Units that wish to melee must charge, which doubles their movement allowance but means they must end their move in (not adjacent to) an enemy hex. To enter, however, they first suffer the ravages of enemy defensive fire. During this phase routed units automatically move towards a friendly map edge. Units can earn an extra movement point by using the road printed on the map. Movement allowances are actually quite low as each game turn represents little more than a minute. As you may have guessed, this is a tactical game, but, oddly for a game set during this period and at this scale, has no rules for facing. Combat follows and is split between fire and melee types. Fire combat is resolved first with each individual unit rolling a die and adding the range, in hexes to its target, to the die result. Some American units have rifles, allowing them to fire at units at a greater range than the remaining musket armed units, though the two Bntish artillery units have the greatest range of all. The result is cross referenced with the units strength to show how many strength points are lost by the target unit. Each unit fires individually, though a target unit may be fired on several times during a phase. All fire combat is considered to be simultaneous with losses recorded after all fire combat has been resolved. Losses are shown either by a strength marker or by a unit being flipped to its rear, showing it at half strength. Some weaker units have only one side. Die modifiers apply for cavalry units firing or if your target is a skirmisher or unstacked leader unit. Melee is resolved by each unit cross referencing a die roll with its unit strength. The results are again given as losses with die modifiers for Cavalry, Skirmishers, rifles and charging. There are no retreat results on either the fire or melee CRT. The die rolls help show the strengths and weakness of both Cavalry and the Skirmish formation. To conclude the phasing players turn both players check each formation to see whether its component units have suffered enough losses in total for a morale check. If so a die is rolled which a leader may modify if present. There are never enough leaders to go round and some leaders are more useful than others. Morale checks can lead to rout or complete disintegration and removal if you are unlucky or just damm reckless, as was Tarleton. Each fommation has three levels at which point it takes a morale check, but the third level is universally fatal. Once done the non phasing player repeats the above sequence to complete a turn. Victory is earned by inflicting losses and leads to a very bloody little game with plenty of acfion. However, this game takes a staggering forty turns to simulale an hour of battle. It therefore takes considerably longer to play than the events it represents. There is an awful lot of die rolling which tends to grate on one's nerves long before the game reaches its climax. I feel this battle is a difficult one to make an engaging game out of, but this was a brave effort to do so. Alan Sharif