Marengo

In this game, you will lead an army through a key historical battle in the musket era. Unlike most games, you won’t have God like knowledge and control of everything. Like real generals, you will often not know what the enemy has, where they will attack from, when they will move or even when your own troops will move.

How do you win?

You win by sacking one of the enemy’s baggage trains or by inflicting 50% losses on their army first.

How does it work?

As you fight, your units take hits, fall back and become ‘Spent’. Spent units are vulnerable and easy to kill. You can unpack a baggage train to rally them back to Fresh, but unpacked baggage trains can no longer move. If the enemy sacks one or your baggage trains, you lose!

What makes this fun and very tense, is that all the pieces remain hidden on upright blocks. You can’t be sure which ones are fresh or spent, elite or poor grade troops. Where are the baggage trains?

Each command moves in random order by chit pull. This is very chaotic, just like real war. Who will move first? You can use your HQs to try to jump ahead or delay your move. Is it better to move first or last? It depends. Do you need to plug critical holes in the line or seize key terrain before the enemy does? Do you want the enemy to go first so that you can fall back and delay their advance? Or do you want the enemy to attack first so that you know where to commit your reserves? All combat is saved till the end of the turn. So movement during the turn is very fluid and up for grabs. Timing is everything.

In this battle the Austrians launch a surprise attack in a desperate attempt to break out. Badly outnumbered, Napoleon fights to survive until reinforcements arrive.