From: Roberto Chiavini Subject: Today's review Alesia (Vae Victis) Siege is always been one of the weak points of wargaming design, as it's normally really a boring situation (if played historically), with really long pauses between a few burst of action. This Alesia recreation by Frederic By and the people of Vae Victis tries, without much success, to give the players an intense emotion in fighting among ramparts and siege towers, with the likes of Julius Caesar and Vercingetorix. As usual in a VV game, you get a really stunning parade of counters and a very nice map: the game is probably worth the set up only to see these really beautiful counters put on the map. And this is especially real if you are playing solitaire, as the game itself is definitely not very well suited for solo play. In fact, the heart of the system is the strategical phase, where both sides move around their leaders, taking most of their units hidden from the perfect sight of the enemy (there are also two dummy counters for each army to complicate the investigation of the enemy movement), until the Gaul player is ready to try the attack against the Roman fortification, while the Gaul inside Alesia may try their luck in escaping to safety (or die trying). How this system works in the field is not for me to talk about, as I've played the game only solitaire: in practice, having roll for initiative, both sides alternate in moving their hidden leaders, until one or more of them comes into a 4 hexes range by an enemy unit and are spotted. When this happens you pass to the tactical phase, where involved units are deployed on the map (up to twelve stacking points for each hex, with a Roman legion worth 10, while the greater Gaul units are 6 at maximum; but the Roman legions may be divided in two smaller units, to have more tactical flexibility in deployment) and then move and have combat, till the Gaulish player, normally, retreat them out of sight to reorganize them. As the game lasts a maximum of 20 turns (or until Vercingetorix reaches safety or die on the field of battle), you may have this situation repeating a number of times, especially if the Gaulish player tries a few feint attacks, before risking the sortie with the Alesia garrison. But I think that it's a really risky situation, as the field advantage is all for the Roman and making this kind of tactic could be detrimental for the Gaulish sorts in this game. Combat it's very involved, as all the Roman camps and fortifications have an intrinsic fire value that use to try to disorganize the Gaulish units that come adjacent to them. And as each Roman such hexside has a fire value, the Roman player rolls tons of dice against the assaulters. Field combat is adding up the total value of the attacking and the defending units, adding or subtracting a plethora of modifiers and a couple of column shifts. Both players roll separately on two different CRTs, one for each army and reading the result. Until the Gaul doesn't penetrate the Roman fortification, his army is destinied to suffer terrible losses, but if obtain a breach he may make the day harder for the Roman defender (and that is the time to try the Alesia garrison sortie). But I think that it's not easy for the Gaul to obtain a victory, if the Roman player is ready to react to all the possible attack and it's not totally deceived in the strategical phase. As I said earlier, the game doesn't seem playable solitaire: I've tried, but only to try the combat system (that seems a little tedious with an infinite number of die rolls for a little gain). So, my review has to be read as an impression, not for a real in deep review. The impression is not positive, at least for my tastes, as the game seems too long and too boring. I rate the game 6 in a 1-10 scale (more for the splendid graphics than for the choice of the subject - seeing this game I've understood probably the reason why GMT is waiting since a few years in making its game on Alesia).