Bluecher, Sam Mustafa’s new game, is out now, and after a short test game, I thought I’d give my opinion of these grand scale Napoleonic rules. First of all, some background: I first bought Sam’s Grand Armee not too long after it came out, and was suitably impressed; so much so that when he released Lasalle, I bought it on the day of release, sight unseen, and have done so for Maurice and Longstreet too (as well as belatedly buying Might and Reason). I’m an unashamed fan of Sam’s rules; they have just the right mix of period flavour and simplicity of design that I like, and can guarantee a game within an evening’s play.
Bluecher has arrived!
Having read and digested the rules, and played a short game to test out some of the mechanics, I’ve (unsurprisingly) found them to be broadly along similar lines to Sam’s other rules. Eschewing the card-driven mechanic of Maurice and Longstreet, Bluecher reminds me mostly of a scaled up Lasalle informed by Grand Armee‘s rules aesthetic – a lot of the lower scale goings-on are abstracted, so there’s no forming column, line or square, which is assumed to be occurring at the appropriate level. This is a game of generals, not of captains.
For those concerned about such things, there is no fixed ground scale (everything is, as usual with Sam’s games, measured in base widths) or figure scale. Some pedantic wargamers overly concerned with such matters might baulk at this, but then those types of gamers tend to find something that disagrees with them about just about anything, and are probably set in their ways playing their favourite, almost certainly incorrectly labeled ‘historically accurate’ game anyway and will undoubtedly cock a snook at any other rules system, so their opinions can be ignored as far as I’m concerned. Basing is one base per unit (which is most often a brigade, but in smaller battles could be a couple of battalions, while in much larger games, could be a division), and there are few markers needed. Units are either Infantry, Cavalry or Artillery (in the form of massed artillery), though small artillery batteries are subsumed within Infantry brigades, and some Infantry brigades may be Mixed Brigades with the addition of a small cavalry unit or two. Sam also offers a card set covering the Hundred Days Campaign, and these cards can be used in place of bases of figures (or, as we shall see later in this review, alongside bases of figures). The C in C of the army can be portrayed with a small stand of a couple of figures or so, and subordinates (which aren’t required but which can add a small bonus to the units they’re attached to) can be modelled similarly if you wish.
Some way of measuring casualties (actual casualty figures, small dice, etc) can be used, though the cards supplied in the Hundred Days pack have a track that can be marked off (if using card protectors and dry erase markers if you prefer that. An army roster to keep track of unit strengths could also be used, and one is available for download from Sam’s site (as are many other handouts and helpful documents). The other markers required are Prepared tokens (for when an infantry unit has readied its defences in anticipation of receiving a charge), objective markers (which could be anything from a small tableau to a counter bearing the word ‘objective’), and possibly some markers for entrenched units (though these are likely to be rare unless one has a Spanish army). The usual accoutrements for wargaming are also required – some form of measuring device, a handful of six sided dice and a handkerchief to wipe away your tears as my army destroys you utterly – and a small dice cup or similar is needed for your opponent’s MO dice.
What are MO dice? At the end of your turn (the game uses an I go – You go mechanic), you roll several dice (usually 3) and hide the result from your opponent by covering them with the cup or whatever you choose to use (a period shako would be perfect if you have one). When ordering his troops in his turn, your opponent will then use up Momentum; ordering a corps at a time, an individual unit at a time, or an ad-hoc grouping centred on the C in C, costs momentum – and you don’t know how much you will have, since your opponent rolls the dice for you and keeps the result hidden. The costs in momentum add up, and eventually will go higher than the total rolled, at which point the cup is lifted, the dice revealed, and that player’s phase is over. This is somewhat reminiscent of the chit mechanic from Grand Armee, but with a hidden aspect that you can’t be sure of.
The turn sequence itself is nothing revolutionary – player A first sees if any hidden enemy units can be espied, then expends momentum in moving, until he runs out of momentum, following which shooting occurs, followed by hand to hand combat, and then in the final phase of the turn, things like army morale and reinforcements are checked for. Play then goes to Player B, who follows the same sequence.
Anyone familiar with Lasalle or any of Sam’s other recent games will recognise the combat mechanics for shooting and hand to hand combat – for shooting, a number of dice equal to the unit’s current elan (strength, amount of casualties they can take, etc, all rolled into one stat) are thrown, with 6s being hits, and with a small assortment of the usual type of factors affecting the totals (if a unit has the skimisher or volley trait, for example, to reflect their generally better skill at such things compared to other troops), as well as a few other factors such as cover. If any adverse factors afffect shooting, then generally the number of dice you roll are halved. For hand to hand combat, the principle is roughly the same, though other factors add or remove dice rather than halve them, a 4+ is generally required for a hit, and the number of hits is compared to see what the result of combat is – both sides tend to gain fatigue (which lowers their elan) in combat, though one unit will often lose more than the other and be forced to retreat, or if elan is lowered to zero as a result, it will break and be removed from the table. These mechanics are, as is the usual case with Sam’s games, simple but effective, and don’t require a mass of charts or going through a huge list of possible adverse or bonus factors.
One thing that is certainly different from Sam’s previous games is that of concealed units, and this is where the cards will come in handy even if (like me) you prefer to use figures rather than just use the cards. If a unit is outside of LOS and outside of 4 base widths, it can’t be identified unless it moves or shoots or does something else to give it away. If it is concealed, then a card showing simply the nation’s flag is used. Units tend not to stay concealed for too long, but keeping a reserve hidden from your opponent is easy to do using this method, and concealed units can take advantage of a reserve move, haring across the battlefield before being revealed, as long as they don’t come within identification distance of the enemy. I like this in play – are those 4 concealed cards the Old Guard and Guard Cavalry, or are they just some conscripts hiding at the back?
The basic rules are rounded off with some notes on urban areas and rivers crossings (which give a more nuanced version than those found in Maurice – battles over bridges are now properly possible, which they weren’t in Maurice, for example), as well as covering the end game – whether one side fails its morale or night falls, in which case the player most in control of the table’s objectives wins. As such the basic rules aren’t a devastating change from Sam’s previous games. Sure, they’re slightly different, but the ethos behind the design of the game retains Sam’s trademark style. The advanced section and on is where Bluecher starts to depart from the pack, and where it really shines, in my opinion.
Alongside the usual kind of rules for weather, reinforcements, multi-player games etc, the advanced rules section also brings in understrength and overstrength units and commander personalities. The latter are akin to Maurice‘s Notables, though C in C’s can also be granted extra abilities. There are no national advantage cards as in Maurice, but individual units do have several traits available to them that grant bonuses (the aforementioned skirmisher and volley traits, for example, though there are others too). I prefer this, despite really liking the national advantages of Maurice. We did find in our Maurice campaign that some advantages were more advantageous than others, especially when combined with others – Lethal Volleys and Rally to the Colours are more responsible for my string of victories, I think, than any tactical genius on my part. By allowing individual units to have similar traits rather than the entire army, a more nuanced force can be developed.
The army builder is relatively straightforward, and everything is transparent, so if you wish to create a super unit of Marlenedietrichsteiner Imperial Guard with every trait known to man available to them, you can do so. This aids nicely in creating Napoleonic Imagi-Nations, should you wish to do so. There are general army lists for the usual nations (France, Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Ottomans, Spanish). Depending on the points total agreed upon for pick up games, you’ll generally be fielding a force of between 12 and 24 units. There’s a nice section on historical battles which will help nicely for those wishing to depict a particular battle (and equal points be damned), but where these rules really excel is in the Scharnhorst section, which introduces a mini campaign type setting.
A small campaign map is chosen and a mini-game is played in which you assign units to columns and move those columns on the map until one player decides to launch into battle, when the units within the sphere of battle are then moved to the table (or for neighbouring units, placed in the reinforcement pile). This is an immensely fun part of the game, and one that I highly recommend, both in the parcelling out of units to columns (which remain hidden from your opponent), and in the race to secure Victory Points on the map (if a game ends at nightfall, these VPs will crown the victor). The mad dash to get your remaining columns either on or near the battlefield once a battle has been declared is the highlight for me though. While both players may be able to get all of their troops to the table (either initially or as reinforcements), it is also quite likely that at least one player will not be able to get everyone into battle range, leading to an unequal points match up in the battle itself.
It is this final section which really sells me on the game, and which sets Bluecher apart from Sam’s other games. In a test game, not every unit made it to the battlefield, and several units on both sides came on as reinforcements later in the game. This lent a realistic feel to the game, created a nice tension for the arrival of expected reinforcements, and led to an uneven points match up that did not feel arbitrary or forced. The game itself ran seamlessly, with very little looking up of information or checking on rules thanks to the myriad at-a-glance handouts covering each section of the rules (and which we didn’t need to refer to after a few turns). The game was quick and fun, and will spur me on to finish painting up my 6mm Napoleonic French (and probably lead me to get yet more 6mm Austrians to face them) so I can play more games soon.
A final word on the look of the game: As with all of Sam’s recent games, Bluecher is well laid out, the pdf version in particular being ink-friendly, with clear examples for each mechanic presented, a good FAQ at the end and rules design notes throughout explaining why certain choices were made, and others rejected. The writing is clear, the sections of the book follow on naturally from each other, and pertinent information that is important to retain is repeated in summary and highlighted so that it can be found on a quick flick through if you can’t be bothered turning to the index or know roughly where to find the information you seek. This game is sure to be a hit amongst my friends (my only sadness is that Markus isn’t around Toronto to watch the French (under my generalship) actually win something for a change), and I look forward to many more games in the future, which I will be documenting as AARs on this blog.
