Despite my continual
efforts to maintain focus on a small number of manageable projects, over the
past few months I have be drawn into a new (old) world of 18th Century
wargaming. My seducer is the 315 year-old bastard of August the Strong, King of
Poland, the Marshal of France, Maurice de Saxe.
I am a long-term fan of
Sam Mustafa's rule systems. While some are definitely better than others, Sam
always delivers fun games with interesting game mechanics, and Maurice has the
potential to be the best yet.
Beyond the AWI I have
little knowledge of 18th warfare, or of wargaming the period making Maurice a
slight adventure into the unknown for me history wise. What makes Maurice new
from a gaming experience is the use of "Action Cards", what I would
normally term strategy cards, for both a command and control (C&C) system
and random events.
When I first heard that
cards would be used for the game I was skeptical. I have played a number of
wargames that use basic cards for C&C, and the best board games I have
played use strategy cards, but I worried that the idea of using the latter to
govern a wargame would take too much away from the players and there is always
the risk of the uber card.
Seeing the cards in
action immediately alleviated all concerns. Cards are used in Maurice for
multiple purposes: issuing orders; modifying combat (both musketry and melee);
moving the general; and, for random events. In addition to the Action Cards,
there are different types of cards for setting up games including National
Advantages, Notables, and Terrain generation.
Before the game, assuming
it’s not a scenario, players
select their army using the specified points system. The points system works in
a way that artillery and elite troops get progressively more expensive the more
you have, encouraging players to maintain more balanced armies. A basic game
has both players selecting a 100 point army, about a dozen units depending on
troop quality and they can then choose national advantages give their army a
specialism by making it better at artillery, musketry, combat, etc. The system
restricts the amount of points that can be allocated to National Advantages to
prevent an army be good at everything.
Each player starts with a
hand of cards, normally 8 for the attacker and 5 for the defender. Turns
alternate between attacker and defender. Each player’s turn consists of a
musketry phase, followed by the option to issue an order or to play an event
card. Finally, the player has the option to move their general. The more things
a player wishes to do the more cards they need to play.
For example, I begin my
turn with musketry and play a card to gain an advantage. I then play a card to
order a force to charge the enemy. In the ensuing combat I play another card to
gain an advantage, and finally I play a card to move my general closer to the
force I plan to give an order to next turn. I have therefore expended 4 cards
in the turn and could expend more to influence my opponent’s turn.
Players draw from 0 to 3
cards a turn depending on the order they chose to issue but if in any order
phase they have no cards, or insufficient cards to issue orders they must pass.
The building and using of
a players hand creates natural pauses in the play as the action speeds up and
slows down as well as creating an element of chance outside the players
control. Players are only able to issue one order to one force in their turn
requiring a player to continuously decide what their current priority is. It is
very easy to get sucked into one part of the battlefield and exhaust all of
your efforts there. This can leave that force isolated and you without any
cards to influence proceedings.
As always with a Sam
Mustafa game there are rules to create unknowns for a general to deal with. For
example, the game length is set by running the Action Card deck a maximum of
three times, i.e. it gets reshuffled twice, but the timing of the second
reshuffle is determined by when the reshuffle card is drawn and is therefore
unknown to the players. The game length also varies by how quickly, and for
what, players use their cards. This all means that when planning your strategy
you cannot rely on having a set number of turns or a set timeframe to initiate
it.
Army morale also varies. It
is set initially by the number of units in the army and then decreases by
between 0 and 3 determined by a dice roll as each unit is lost.
I'll stop now before this
becomes a never-ending description of all the game mechanics. The mechanics for
movement, shooting and combat are all seem good so far. The rulebook also contains
a campaign system to link battles around “Wars of Succession” which looks fun but I
have yet to try.
There are only two slight
negatives so far. The first is that while the rulebook contains three historic
scenarios, it does not provide a guide to creating your own scenarios like the
one in Grande Armee. Nor does it contain suggestions on historic army lists.
Being new to the period this would be a useful aid and thankfully there are
already some guides on the Honour forum.
The card system also
limits how the rules will work for multi players. This is discussed in the
rulebook and some suggestions offered but none of them sound convincing.
To date I have played
three and they have all been excellent. Some players have raised concerns that
the card system, and nature of the period, will lead to repetitive games but
having played a number of board games based on strategy cards this was not been
too big a problem for them.
At present I am
completely sold and took the opportunity to pick up some 10mm Seven Years War
French from Pendraken at Triples as my first army.
