From: Christopher Salander Subject: Montcalm & Wolfe board game review Montcalm & Wolfe from Markham Designs Review by Chris Salander It has been a long time since I have tried a board game and found it to be plainly broken. Unfortunately, that is the case with the desktop published (DTP) game _Montcalm and Wolfe_. I like DTP games, and have been buying and playing a lot of them lately. They are cheaper, easier and faster to play, and take up less space. And M&W is exceptional in that it has die cut counters. But the mechanisms should work, and in this case, allow players to refight the French & Indian War. Attrition The first major flaw is attrition. Any stack of units that is in any hex that does not have a settlement or fort must roll for attrition *every* turn. The odds are that you will lose *30%* of each force in one turn (one month). This is unrealistic and devastating. Apparently the playtesters brought this up to the designer, because he mentions it in his notes, but he is defensive and takes the attitude that he is correct and you just have to live with it. If you follow the designer's advice and confine your activities to routes where attrition will not come into effect, then except for a British amphibious assault on Quebec, the only places the French and British can come to grips are in the Mohawk and Hudson river valleys. Send your troops anywhere else and they will disappear. This renders most of the full color map useless. Then the game becomes a contest between two pistons - who can push the most troops up the same route. Finally, even if you are careful and avoid attrition by keeping to settlements and forts, if you lose a battle and get thrown out of a hex, the odds are that your force is going to start the next turn on an undeveloped square and lose 30% more troops to attrition. Suggested fix: 1) Use attrition only in the winter, and on stacks with 6 or more units. 2) Limit the warm weather turn losses to one unit per stack per turn, removing the first unit to fail its roll. Units are regiments. Indians The second major flaw is how the Indians are handled. They never get into the fight. Why? First, you can only roll for the alliance of one tribe/counter each turn, with only about a 30% chance of success. So the Indians enter the game very infrequently. Second, after each winter the Indians go home and act as if they don't know you come next Spring. Third, although an Indian unit gets a free move the first time it arrives on the board, most of the Indian entry points are more than one move away from French and British settlements and forts. As a result, unless a player moves a leader to go pick up the Indian unit (which requires a hard-to-get initiative point) or spends an initiative point to move the unit by itself, the Indian unit sits there and rots for the rest of the year, until it dies from attrition. [All units need leaders or initiative points to move, not just Indians.] Suggested fix: 1) Roll for the alliance of *all* tribes during the Strategic Interphase before the new year. 2) All allied tribes appear on the May turn in the fort or settlement closest to their entry point. 3) The French do not roll for the alliance of the Iroquois. 4) Counters that were killed or ran off in a previous year are not available for alliance for the rest of the game. 5) Tribes /counters that allied with you before are +2 on the alliance roll for the next year. Unless you fix these two areas, the game is unplayable. Units die in droves and the later game turns are fought with only reinforcements, giving the British a massive advantage. General comments Leaders are critical to this game, with their varying abilities to pick up and move units and to modify the fighting abilities of their units in combat. The French have an advantage here, with more better leaders sooner. (Leaders arrive as blindly chosen reinforcements.) At first the French can use their better leadership to offset the greater British reinforcement rate. However, you must use an initiative point to move a leader (or an isolated unit), and you have two choices here: use a guaranteed one point per turn, or roll on a table, which could produce 0 to 3 points, and possibly give your opponent a free move. This is a very interesting twist, but a little too random. In one game it just fell out that one side got multiple points all year and the other side just bombed out. The designer says that good players don't need to roll on the table and can conquer the continent with only one leader moving each month. Good grief. [Suggested fix: use table only for both sides, with 0 = 1 point.] There are ambush rules for Indians and Rangers, but single counter combats off in the woods have little effect on the game. You have to grab forts and cities to win. (And key towns.) The French strategy is much like that of the CSA in a strategic ACW game. They must strike quickly to try and gain an advantage at the beginning, then go on the defensive as the British (Union) onslaught begins. Also, the arrival of leaders is similar, in that players hope that their starting poor quality generals die off to make room for Montcalm and Wolfe. (Like trying to roll up U. S. Grant, or in the Punic Wars, Scipio). Counters are rectangular, with combat and movement factors. All key troops types are represented, including regulars, militia, Indians, Rangers, and Couriers de Bois. Travel by water is modelled. The rectangular counters leave room for commander's names, and their four factors - rank, # of units they can command, offense bonus, defense bonus. There is a chart with holding boxes for each leader's forces, so that you can put just his counter on the map. Combat is: line 'em up and try to roll below your combat number for each unit on a d10. Defender chooses the victim. Units must take 2 hits to be eliminated. Militia have a very high chance of routing. (If any one gets hit, they all might leave.) Indians will often leave pitched battles too. I bought this game because there is so little available on the French and Indian War. (Remember _Mohawk_ by Aulic Council?) Don't buy this game unless you want to redesign it.