From: John Best <jlbest@TUSCOLA.NET>
Subject:      Re: Yaquinto's Borodino & G-Burg ?

Scott Goldsmith asked about:
>Yaquinto's Borodino & G-Burg ?
>
>comments, worth getting, complexity, what kind of C&C rules ?
>
I don't know anything about their G-Burg game--was that Pickett's Charge?
And I'm supposing that the Borodino game you're referring to was Great
Redoubt?  As I believe Lou C. stated, Great Redoubt was, no doubt, a nice
looking game.  It had those oversized hexes--really big ones (how big?--look
let me just get the thing out of the closet--it's like only 10 feet away).
Ok, the hexes are about 33 mm across.  In scale, you're looking at 30
min/turn, inf. regts, and, in what I think is a bad design move, 400
yards/hex.  (it's just that the hex scale seems out of synch with the other
scalar dimensions--200 yards/hex would have opened the game up a lot more).
The designer was S. Craig Taylor.  Among the playtesters, I thought I
recognized the name Scott Majeske as perhaps having been involved in other
products.  One of the playtesters was Steve Peek, and was he actually "Mr.
Yaquinto"?
     The counters are oversized too--and they come in several shapes.  There
are the standard .5 inch counters (a lot of the markers come in this shape),
along with .75" X .5" counters for the inf. regts. and some .75" X .75" to
show squares (it looks like).  It was published in 1979--we know a lot more
about Napoleonic battle now than we did then--as soon as I see a "melee"
phase in the turn sequence, I know we're dealing with an "ancients" view of
Napoleonics.  The rule book is 20 pages in all, but some of that consists of
optional rules.  As I recall, it wasn't a difficult game to learn, or to
play.  Borodino was a real attrition-fest historically, and this game
duplicates that.  Part of the problem stems from what I alluded to above,
the use of the oversized hexes means that the battlefield has really been
tightly cropped to fit on a standard size piece of paper, and the result is
really claustrophobic.  Neither side has any room to maneuver.  According to
my notes, I concluded a game on 6/8/87 with a French marginal victory, and I
see a notation that, in my judgment, this was the best the French could hope
to do in this game.  Let's sum up:
Comments:  I didn't mention this, but the game uses the roster sheets, and
that polarizes the opinion of almost any game.  I don't like them generally.
Worth getting?  Actually, I don't really think I would go far out of my way
to acquire a copy.  But I had some fun with it.  Of Yaq's two Nap. games, I
think this one is a far better depiction of Borodino than the inaccurately
named Thin Red Line is of Waterloo.
Complexity: Just a baby step above the good ole' Bataille series
Command and Control: There are leader counters, and units stacked with them
benefit in terms of movement rates and morale.  It's a rudimentary system,
and clearly just an overlay, that is, the C&C system doesn't feel at all
"organic" to the game (unlike the Gamer's NBS, where it is).  Hope this
helps; thanks for reading.
John Best
jlbest@tuscola.net