From: Roberto Chiavini Subject: Two reviews The Black Prince (3W) This is a quadrigame on four medieval battles, taken by the first phase of the Hundred Years War, one of the several design by Rob Markham for the Californian company, one of his several quad games on medieval and musket & pike periods, offering lot of variety, but with a system which could work better and faster with a better melee combat resolution system. The four battles reproduced in this game are Crecy, Poitiers, Navarette and Vernueil. All the battles have less than 100 counters for both armies and are played on a 11" x 17" map (or even smaller in the case of Crecy). The graphics are not particularly inspired for a game of the early Nineties and do not add visual pleasure to the game. Each combat unit is rated for combat (an asterisk next to the number is for the unit missile fire capability), movement and morale (the latter based on a d10). Leaders have a command value (used to change the order to their subordinate units - overall leader doesn't have this value, as may automatically change their order status), a command span (the radius for commanding their units) and a combat bonus (a die modifier for the melee resolution table). The sequence of play start with the English long bow phase (English longbowmen may fire their missile up to three hexes away - to use this rule you have to check for ammunition depletion for all the English longbowmen), then there is the French/Spanish Command phase (there are six different command for each leader -Attack, Advance and Stand that permit melee combat, possibly with an attacking or defending bonus, and Retreat, Reserve and Muster, when you are in a dire situation), the French/Spanish movement phase, the Combat phase (with defensive fire, attacking fire, possibly melee), then English Rally phase that start the English phase of the turn, with the same phases than the French/Spanish to the last phase of each turn, the French/Spanish Rally Phase. Victory is based on the demoralization of the enemy army, or the accumulation of victory points, for eliminating/reducing the enemy units. There are rules for facing (units face a vertex and have two front hexes - to direct movement and combat - and two flank and two rear hexes - attacking the enemy flank or rear gains a bonus for the attacker), for stakes (used as an anticavalry fixed defense by the English bowmen), for skirmishers, but the most important rules of the system are the ones regarding combat (particularly melee combat) and morale, strictly related and based on dozens and dozens of dice rolls. This is the most important aspect of the game and probably the poorer one: if the Fire CRT could be considered valid for most of the gamers (the usual results are nothing, melee checks and step losses; each roll has no more than 50% chances to obtain something), the melee resolution table is too slow and normally you have to roll to many dice to get any interesting results: you have to check morale first with the attackers, than with the defenders; if the latters fails, they make a rout move and the attacker may advance; otherwise, both the contending units roll a die (with a few modifiers) on the column based on their combat strength. Normally you roll on one of the first three column on the table and so you don't have many chances to get a step loss result, and most of the morale check have 50% or better chances to leave the unit unharmed. So you need a very long time and, most of all, dozens and dozens of dice rolls to move a static situation. I don't know if this could be considered realistic. Certainly, it is very boring, especially if you play solitaire. Anyway, if you like to roll many dice, you probably could get the most fun from this quadrigame, that for all the players like me, who love to get simple, clear results in a small time, is too time consuming and too boring to be played over and over again. And this is a real misfortune, as I really am interested in the period and I will love a game on this subject with a better combat system. I rate this game 6 out of 10.