From: Markus Stumptner Subject: [consim-l] Arcola replay Finally played a game of _Battle for Italy_ (the Avalon Hill version of OSG's _Arcola_ minigame) this weekend at John Nebauer's place, more than ten years after getting my copy. Very enjoyable - fairly intriguing decisions in the smallest space and with the fewest number of moving counters possible. (We did place the map atop the OSG _Bonaparte in Italy_ map, to provide some context to the surroundings. It does help the sense of history if one sees Mantua hanging those few hexes off-map.) The Austrian victory conditions are to either send 10 strength points off the southern map edge to relieve Mantua or take Verona. We did get something wrong in that we did not treat hills as affecting terrain in the initial two turns, but it might not have made much of a difference as Davidovich (propelled,as throughout much of the game, by the single Austrian movement order) rolled very good when he slammed into Bonaparte's army and Bonaparte rolled very badly. By effectively losing the battle of Rivoli, Bonaparte had to open the map to Davidovich. He sent Augereau to fetch the garrison of Peschiera (where Augereau then passively hung around for several turns) and withdrew towards Verona, but another counterattack finally bloodied Davidovich to the degree that he fell back towards Rivoli. Meanwhile, after a slow start, Alvinczy's major force had approached to within one turn's move of Verona. On turn 3 however, instead of marching closer, he detached Provera's force which moved southwards towards Mantua across the fields, trying to get onto the road running southwestwards from Verona, while Alvinczy absorbed Mitkovich's reinforcements into the force of Quasdanovich, which remained with him. At this point Kilmaine (a reinforcement) came marching north from Mantua to block Provera. However, in the Austrian movement phase of turn 4, Provera neatly sidestepped Kilmaine and now was within a single move of the map edge, the Austrian player sensing victory ahead. Instead, Bonaparte marched his army from Verona and hit Provera hard (2/5). Even then, the Austrian player was unconcerned, because Provera's force was 14 SP strong, and it was unlikely that the pursuit would stretch the full distance - but it did. A 5-hex pursuit meant 5 step losses. Provera was not disorganized but with 9 SP was no longer sufficient to win (quite apart from the effect that his retreat had carried him halfway back to Arcola). Unfortunately Bonaparte's march north had enabled Alvinczy to slip past Mantua and reconnect to Davidovich's LOC, mounting a combined attack with Davidovich's and Quasdanovich's troops against Augereau in Verona from the southwest (27:18). The assault narrowly failed (2/2), sending Alvinczy and Davidovich back to the west, disorganized. Bonaparte marched back towards Verona with Provera marching parallel but more slowly some distance to the east. On turn 6, Alvinczy still sat, reorganizing, and Bonaparte, combined with Augereau (? I forget where Massena was at the time) tried to strike Davidovich's wing from the northeast. The attack failed, sending Bonaparte reeling back towards Peschiera. This was the moment when Alvinczy managed to reorganize his army, obviously buoyed by its defensive victory, and, again in dispatch distance because Napoleon had had to retreat away from the Austrian LOC, began marching off towards Mantua reaching the excellent road running southwest from Verona with Quasdanovich's force, leaving Davidovich's depleted force behind as a rearguard. At this critical juncture, Bonaparte, for the first time in the game, missed his initiative! (His army was not disorganized but perhaps he was personally fatigued.) As he would not be able to reach Alvinczy in time, the only question remaining was whether the Austrian would manage to Force March (50% chance) with the last dieroll of the game, and he did, exiting with the last movement point in the last movement phase of the game. Ironically I think that by the letter of the rules it was an Austrian defeat since the rules don't specify that you have to end up on the road to Mantua (which is what Alvinczy did) but from which hex you have to exit onto it (and he came from the wrong side), but I guess it wouldn't have mattered to the besieged units in Mantua once Alvinczy relieved them. Very nice game and fit within a single hour. Markus Last 3 games played: Solomon Sea, Asian Crossroads, Arcola --------------- http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/user/mst/games/ --------------- "Bakayaro! Bakayaro!" ("Stupid Bastards! Stupid Bastards!") -- Admiral Aritomo Goto's last words to his staff, October 11, 1942