Review - Napoleon in Russia

Napoleon in Russia
Talonsoft

NiR is quite simply the best Play By Email (PBEM) game I have played. If you like your games sedate, this one is for you. Playing the full Borodino battle by email can take three months. Some of the movement phases can take the best part of an hour.

So does that make it a boring game? Not at all. Any game that can keep you hooked for three months of a single battle has to be pretty special!

The big battle, "Kutuzov turns to fight", involves the Russian army defending a strong prepared position west of Moscow. Their artillery sits in the Fleches and the Great Redoubt. Their skirmishers occupy Borodino village. Russian serf militias armed with pikes wait beyond the forests. And deep in the rear lie the Russian Imperial Guard. Unlike the French the Russians will rarely if ever retreat.

The French have the mobility and therefore the ability to concentrate their forces. A frontal attack may be suicide, but at some point the Redoubt must be taken. Will the French go for a quick strike in the hope that they can recover before they are counterattacked? Will their cavalry use the kilometres of open ground north of the river to try to find a lightly guarded ford in the Russian rear? Will they reinforce the Polish Corps with the Guard and put all their weight against the weak Russian left? It sounds possible, but they must still be in a condition to stop the Russian Imperial Guard once they arrive or all that ground is lost.

The game mechanics are simple. The game is divided into the following phases:

Movement
Defensive Fire
Offensive Fire
Charge
Melee

Then it is the other player's turn. Movement can be done hex by hex, or by dragging the unit. Orders can be given to each cavalry squadron or the whole brigade at once. Fire is simply a matter of selecting the firing units and then selecting the target.

It is the sign of a good game that the interface doesn't intrude. It allows the player to concentrate on his choices. Should the artillery battery fire or limber up to move? Should the cavalry charge those disordered French infantry or wait and continue to use the threat of the charge to slow the enemy advance?

Each commander has infantry regiments and skirmishers, heavy, medium and light cavalry, field and horse artillery. A battle like this will result in enormous casualties, typically 20-30,000 on each side. The challenge is to ensure that for every dead Grenadier and Cossack, something has been achieved.

The single player game is good for practice, but as one should expect in an immensely complex game of this kind - the AI is not up to the challenge of dealing with human opponents. It is as a PBEM game that NiR excels, and if anyone fancies a go, email me.