My first reading of this game's description on the GMT website and in
the GMT consimworld forum really left me doubting that it would be
something I would be interested in. In fact, I thought it would be
basically BattleCry meets Chess and Stratego. Boy, was I wrong!

I played Manouevre at the most recent meeting of The Random
Wargamers, in fact, I played it all day long, over and over again. I
found it to be a really neat little Napoleonic era battlefield
game. The game is played on a chess like grid with counters and card
decks for EIGHT different nations during this period. This makes for
some non-historical (ahistorical?) encounters, but every nation has
its strengths and weaknesses based on its deck or counters.

The grid is formed by choosing the four cards which then make up the
board. Each card has differing terrain and since the facing of the
cards can be in any direction, every game's terrain is going to be
different. (I also imagine we will see some amateur/unoffical terrain
designs popping up on Boardgamegeek.com as time goes on)

Examples of a power's strengths:

Americans have many units with a special ability to withdraw from
combat.

Ottoman Turks have very strong Cavalry.

Russians reduced sides are only slightly different than their full
strength side.

French have Napoleon card- very powerful leader, if used correctly.

The combat is interesting in that you must play a unit card matching
the attacking unit to play. Since these cards are limited (and your
handsize is only 5) it makes it important to get your attacking unit
to
the correct spot and hope to add a leader and support.

I found it difficult to actually eliminate enemy units. When
attacking
a full strength unit, the normal result is that it takes a "hit"
meaning it flips to its weaker side. There are two ways to actually
eliminate a full strength unit.. One- overwhelm it with firepower by
being able to add supporting units to the attack. (You final result
has to be greater than 4x the defending units defense value) and the
other is to force the unit to retreat where it has no retreat path.

Simple to learn, the rules are very clear, the cards are clear, and
thge player reference card is one of the best I have seen for any
game. Easy to teach and learn in less than five minutes.

As easy to play as BattleCry, but more decision making than Command
and
Colors.

And with eight nations to choose from and the mixable terrain cards,
the game has enough variety to avoid getting stale.

David "the preacher" Wilson