From: kzucker@charm.net (Kevin Zucker)
Subject: 1807

Mister Poulter,

I am attaching an article which I wrote for and which was published in
Paper Wars 25 - a reply to a review of 1807 by Mr. George Pearson.  Though
my text here was published verbatim, it was preceeded by a short editor's
introduction and followed by a reply by Mr. Pearson; but of course those
parts of the published article are not on my disk.  

Grazia mille, Alan

1807: The Eagles Turn East
Reply to George Pearson's Paper Wars Review
by Kevin Zucker

Mr. Pearson's review is well-written, well-reasoned and gives specifics. 
He begins by spending two out of three pages commending The Eagles Turn
East:
*Well organized, clear and functional layout that helps make the system
easier to learn.
*Something for everyone in the selection of battle, campaign, and Grand
scenarios.
*Subtle blending of familiar elements into a unique and distinctive whole.
*Replicates the tempo of Napoleonic campaigning, where corps moved slowly
but steadily forward, then rushed into battle.  
*Avoids straight-jacket rules by rewarding historical play and chastising
the cheap and "gamey."
*Integrating Command, Supply, Attrition and Intelligence, plays like a
campaign narrative reads.  
And so on.  Then we come to page three, which may have scared off some
gamers, ending with a "very disappointing."  How does he get there? 
Because of a single rule, involving the Coalition Player's ability to, as
he puts it, "Bug Out."
Some background is in order.  The victory conditions are very simply based
on the position of the Morale Marker.  The side with better morale wins. 
There are seven spaces possible for the Morale Marker, labeled "A" through
"G."  The game may end when the Morale Marker moves off the track:  off the
"A" end, Coalition wins; off the "G" end, French Player wins.  If this does
not happen, the track space determines victory: A-D = Coalition Operational
Victory; E-G = French Operational Victory.  
The marker begins the Grand Scenario in the "D" space.  The Coalition can
easily gain two morale spaces by exiting to Thorn in the first few turns. 
Of course, those exited forces include a superb leader, General Anton
Wilhelm L'Estocq, and the best of the small Prussian corps, without which
the whole of East Prussia lies open to an onslaught of Marshals Ney and
Bernadotte, arriving on the 6th and 10th turn, respectively.  [These forces
and exit options are not included in the corresponding Campaign Scenario.]
Pearson: Because the Russian army can "bug out" off-map at any time, and
(originally) was the only side that could declare the Fortnight sequence,
it was difficult, perhaps impossible, for the French to keep Ivan from
avoiding combat and exiting off the map into the Thorn box.
Answer:  The Coalition Player gets to roll on the Siege Duration Table once
each for exits toward Thorn or (after 15 March) toward Danzig.  As
originally published, if he rolls "one" through "five" and he exits 16
Strength Points each time, he receives two favorable morale shifts for each
exit.  The Coalition could exit toward Thorn unopposed and then, abandoning
Warsaw and its environs (causing one shift in French favor), withdraw most
of his army into Cantonment.  Since he has to leave at least some forces on
map, the Coalition Player will not "bug out" until he can declare Fortnight
Sequence, halting operations, on the 14th turn.
This gave the French one morale shift for Warsaw and 2 for Königsberg.  If
the Russian player then rolled 1-5, they got 2 shifts and won the game.  
Answer: For the sake of argument, assume that, by game's end, the French
have taken Königsberg (two shifts in French favor) but are unable to find
and defeat the force of 7 or more Strength Points that the Coalition Player
is required to have on the map always.  The total of morale shifts is four
for the Coalition (two for Thorn, two for Danzig) and three French.  Net
result: one space in Coalition favor, marker moves to space "C," and
Coalition Player does, in fact, win the game.
Happily, Zucker addressed this in errata, making some major changes in the game.
Answer:  If a game needs errata, it makes sense to get the word out
immediately so that players can have the best product possible.  Mr.
Pearson omits to mention that this problem was solved, if not brought to
his attention, by the errata in his hands when he wrote the review.  The
errata appeared in March of 1995.   
But despite the errata, it appears that the Russians can bug out, winning
on a die roll of 1-3, a passable 50-50 shot.
Answer:  The errata adds a die roll modifier of "+2" for an early exit
toward Thorn, meaning a "one" becomes a "three," a "three" becomes "five,"
and a "four" through a "six" would result in a shift of only one space. 
Pearson errs in calling this a "win," for by that errata published a year
ago, "C" or "D" Morale is no longer a Coalition Victory, merely a draw. 
The Coalition would have to fight and win some Pitched Battles to move the
Morale Marker to the "A" space at least.  To have any chance of winning
these battles, he must delay retiring into Cantonment. 
The errata lessens the likelihood of a Russian victory, but makes a French
win virtually impossible.  The only way for the French to win now is to
push the Morale Marker to the extreme edge of the T rack.  Now, should the
Russians become hard pressed, they can "bug out" off the east map edge and
secure a draw.
Answer:  If the Coalition Player "bugs out," even in the original rules, he
has to leave 7 Strength Points on the map.  If he does not, he loses.  He
can spread out his forces in remote areas (if not in supply they succumb to
attrition), but the French Player has at least 15 turns in June to finish
them off.  If he succeeds in reducing all Coalition Forces to fewer than
seven Strength Points, or if he gains three or four Critical Battles and/or
captured Major Personalities, the Coalition Player loses.  "Securing a
draw" is not as simple as the review implies.  On the contrary, the
Coalition Player takes a great gamble when he moves most of his strength
off the map.  
Who was responsible for development over the last five years?  The Game
Credits list no one as Developer, a silence which speaks volumes.
Answer: Kevin Zucker was the developer.  The designer bears ultimate
responsibility for the final shape of any game.  I stand behind my work. 
If a player discovers a flaw, I will devise the best possible solution.
But then, what were the playtesters doing?  Granted, it's difficult to see
all the permutations of a situation as complex as that in TETE.
Answer:  A designer may never argue that his own creation is "too
complicated" for him to see all of its "permutations."  If this were true,
then obviously that designer overreached and ought to limit himself to
slightly less complicated designs.  A designer needs to be able to see the
impact of any change anywhere in the game.
That the Russians were headed for Thorn in the Eylau campaign is something 
none of the English writers on this campaign had noted.  
[Petre does mention Thorn in a footnote on page 135, but without fully 
realizing that Thorn was the lynch-pin of the campaign:
If Bennigsen, unaware of his impending fate, should push on south-westwards
in pursuit of Bernadotte, ... he would find Lefebvre entrenched in Thorn.  
If Petre saw the true importance of Thorn as the ultimate goal of
Bennigsen's strategy, he never mentioned it.] 
I added the possibility for Coalition exit at Thorn as soon as I saw how
important Thorn was, historically.  Unfortunately this development came
only after all the components were in production.  You will note that the
rules do not mention the possibility of exiting toward Thorn, but only the
Charts & Tables.  Some will argue, with perfect hindsight, that publication
should have been delayed while we tested the final version of this rule.  
 I hope and believe the playtesters who devoted their free time to The
Eagles Turn East were having too much fun to think of "bugging out."   They
are probably like most players.  Of course, there will be those who take
advantage of loopholes to gain a cheap "win."  Knowing this, I immediately
pointed out the loophole and its solution. 
The designer has something of a reputation for putting out games with good
scenarios but problematic campaigns.
Answer: That's news to me.  Creating a campaign that can link several
separate scenarios is always a challenge, not that all designers try. 
After all, the Pultusk Campaign ended in late December, and the Eylau
Campaign did not begin until a month later.  Both sides then spent three
and a half months in quarters, only emerging in June.
The individual scenarios of Napoleon's Last Battles, a Zucker design for
SPI, were well tested.  But late in development, so the story goes, someone
came up with the notion of stitching together Wavre, La Belle Alliance,
Quatre Bras, and Ligny to make a campaign game.  Playtesting on this
Frankenstein was minimal, and it showed.
Answer: There are not many games as popular as NLB.  More than one player
has told me he wore out his game-in 100+ playings-and had to buy a new
copy.  I doubt if Pearson can find very many to agree with him.  
For the record, Napoleon's Last Battles  never existed as four separate
games.  I read the text of the feedback question for a Waterloo Quad, and
immediately took down the Esposito-Elting Atlas.  After an hour of
scribbling I had determined the final map configuration, and that was the
very first design work on that game.
Even worse was Leipzig, an OSG game using the same system.  Our group
played the Campaign Scenario several times, and each time the French wiped
the Allies off the map with ease.  Puzzled, we added up the total strength
points for both sides, and discovered that the Allies have only about 20
SPs more than the French.
This bean-counting technique is not on target for analyzing play-balance in
my games.  The quality of Leadership determines how many troops can be
effectively handled.  The side with the true numerical superiority is the
one with the better and more numerous commanders.  I cannot say whether the
figures cited are accurate, but if they are, it was no conscious decision
on my part.  Unlike 1807, the manpower of different armies was evaluated on
a sliding scale of about 350 men per SP for the old Guard to nearly 1,000
men for the worst Prussian Landwehr, the same as in Napoleon's Last
Battles.  Since the manpower of all the units is listed in the Study
Folder, you can check my methodology; to date, no one has quibbled with any
particular unit's evaluation. 
Like the Emperor's later campaigns, TETE is conceptually flawed; the game
tends to break down.
Answer:  In no sense are Mr. Pearson's criticisms just a smear; on the
other hand, a single flaw should not be allowed to discourage players from
finding out whether a game really is for them.  One flaw does not make a
game "conceptually flawed."
In the Study, Zucker compares the task of the designer to that of a
jeweler, examining every facet of a particular stone.  Rather a bold
analogy, comparing one's game to a jewel.  However, it ain't braggin if
it's true, and The Eagles Turn East truly is a gem.
Answer:  "What the designer does, is to look at the proposed rule from
every angle, just as a jeweler might examine every facet of a cut stone." 
If I had said "prism" might I have been more easily understood?
The errata should help, though it will take some playing to find out for
certain.
Answer:  Some would argue that Mr. Pearson ought to have tried out the
published errata in his hands when he wrote this. 
The game will stand or fall on its own merits.  I believe it will stand.

Kevin Zucker
Designer/Writer/Composer/Teacher
Time/Space/Energy/Weight/Plasticity in a Gravity Field
kzucker@charm.net