David R. Moody - 10:37am Jun 26, 2001 PST (#6611 of 6666)
Currently playing: June 6th (GMT Games), ASL/DiF Grand Campaign
(currently fighting in Belgium), Advanced Civilization (AH computer
version), Spaceward Ho! (New World Computing), and Achtung Spitfire
(CoA--PBEM Campaign of the Battle of Britain).

To interrupt with an on-topic post:

Out of the Wrapper: Highway to the Kremlin, by Operational Studies
Group.

The latest installment of Kevin Zucker's long-running Campaigns of
Napoleon series has arrived. This one covers Napoleon's invasion of
Russia, capture of Moscow, and subsequent retreat from June to December
1812. The campaign was a massive undertaking, the largest military
campaign, I believe, in recorded history up to that time--Napoleon
invaded with almost half a million men.

The game, though, hardly looks to be an unplayable monster. Because of
the vast distances and numbers of troops involved, Kevin Zucker has
developed a "subseries" of the basic CoN/Napoleon at Bay system, called
the 5X system. Everything--turn scale, map scale, SP values--are 5X that
in the standard system. For example, turns are 5 days, an SP equals
5,000 rather than 1,000 men, etc. This allows the area from the eastern
border of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw to just beyond Moscow to be covered
in just two beautifully done Joe Youst maps. You also only get one
countersheet, as most units are corps-sized. Vedettes are present, as in
previous games, but these are division-sized units. Each corps also has
one "march division" available. There are indications in the designer's
notes that a game on the Peninsular War is in the offing using this
scale, and using it for a remake of Struggle of Nations (the previous
monster game in the series) would be interesting.

As I mentioned, the maps are simply gorgeous. Printed on thicker stock
than the Bonaparte in Italy maps, they appear to have none of the
terrain confusion seen on the older maps. The units on the one
countersheet are presented in a variety of colors--blue for French,
purple for the Old Guard, tan for the Young Guard, white for Austrian,
dark grey Prussians, red for Poles, plus Bavarians, Wuertemburgers (sp),
other Germans, and Italians. Curiously, the Russians are dark brown
rather than the traditional green. You also get two rulebooks--one
series, one game-specific (with the usual designers' notes and
historical commentary)--organization displays, unit and leader
manifests, and a March display (for the campaign game).

Scenarios cover the opening moves, the battles of Smolensk and Borodino,
and the crossing of the Berezina. The campaign game covers the whole
campaign, or you can use the march display to generate a later start.
Victory in the campaign game is determined by Paris Morale (a good
idea--Napoleon was far away from his capital and rightly feared a coup
in his absence--one almost succeeded). For those not familiar with this
series of games, each one has a morale track. Victories in critical
battles (battles of a given size with leaders like Napoleon present)
shift the morale marker one space in the victor's favor. When the marker
moves off one end of the track, the game is over and the side whose end
of the morale track the marker moved off wins. In addition to critical
battles, the marker can shift when the French take cities like Smolensk
and Moscow (if they don't burn them down, of course--there's a table to
see what happens when a city falls). Napoleon can also attempt to
negotiate an armistice with the Czar if he takes Moscow. The French
player also has an option to create the Kingdom of Poland once he takes
Vilnus--it doubles the number of Polish reinforcement points but risks
pushing Austria out of the war.

All in all, it looks like HttK is an excellent addition to what has so
far been a successful and acclaimed series. Now to get a chance to play
it.