The purpose of this post is to delve into an introductory scenario / package and give a first impression from a new player’s perspective.
The Battle of Fismes 4th March 1814, appears together with other battles in the Napoleon Retreats module (1814). The system is designed by Kevin Zucher and published by his company, Operational Studies Group (OSG). Fismes is a hypothetical situation. It takes its setting from Napoleon’s intention to corner Blücher as he was crossing the river Vesle - something that didn’t actually happen because of other factors.
The game is part of a big series known as ‘The Library of Napoleonic Battles’ and in OSG wanting to put out an introductory package for new players, they decided to borrow the Fismes game from the module and present it as a stand alone game at a lower cost.
In the intro package you get 1 counter sheet and the map from the mother module, plus a full set of rules and some play aids. There are a further 8 documents needed that you download as PDF’s. This balance between physical and download results in the introductory game being available in the UK (I bought mine from Second Chance Games) for £25.
Further, the system has an optional use of cards (not a card driven game), which are not included - which makes sense. Recommendations for first play is in any case not to use Fog of War or Vedettes rules or the cards.
The Map - a lovely 4 panel 17” x 22” professional map from the mother module.
Above - the important bridge crossing at Fismes.
The Counters - 1 counter sheet from the mother module that has the needed order-of-battle plus unit counters that the scenario doesn’t use. The sheet has a good selection of markers, but not all that are needed. I managed with the limited supply, by using some counters as proxy (fire markers for damaged bridges) and just remembering some other things. I could of course have borrowed markers from my other wargames.
The rules - 20 pages, clearly presented and illustrated in 2 column print. I found these a tight and easy read set, without any obvious questions popping up along the way. Nice job. There is a good index and the rules themselves have plenty of cross indexing in the text. I found this a real bonus in my opening turns of learning.
The downloads - All useful and none are ink heavy (link available from the OSG site). I like the two visual unit rosters, it makes set up rather easy. One document is the same 20 page Study Folder that comes with the mother game, but really, you can just view this on the computer and not print it off …. though I sent my PDF to a print on demand company, just to get a nice looking study folder.
Full disclosure - I am not a total newbie, I have been playing boardgames for decades, but I have not played a ‘Library of Napoleonic Battles’ game before, though I have recently played the old Napoleon’s Last Battles, which is a close relative of this game. I have also bought three other full games in this series, but not looked at them, so this post about first exposure to an introductory game is about as honest as I can make it.
Setting up - very straight forward, but for starting actual play, I didn’t feel it was all that clear as to what was expected of the Coalition. I had thought that they were to march in a north to south direction and hopefully meet up with potential reinforcements. However, I asked the question at ConsimWorld and was very promptly answered by the designer and it turns out I was wrong, the coalition actually march south to north to escape Napoleon across the river. I really did search for an answer before asking the question, so either I missed the point or the scenario needs a bit more guidance. As a result, I changed the position of Coalition baggage and pontoon counters from that shown in the photo.
After action report - this is a veteran system, with many many thousands of words and much e-ink spilled about it over the decades, so rather than explain a system that is well known, here I will just look at play experience to the newly exposed!
Firstly I read all the rules once from cover to cover. The rules are a very easy read, they are well explained. So a relatively easy game, but there is a lot here and retaining all of that in a first read is unlikely to happen.
I very much like that the rules follow the sequence of play, so that helped a lot, as I played through the first turn, I was in effect reading all of the relevant rule sections again as they cropped up. Further, some things like demoralisation generally happen later in the game, so re-exposing myself to those rules happened later, which helped spread the learning load. It took around three turns for me to pick up speed and reference the rules less. Soon I was remembering such things like artillery firepower is halved when both attacking woods or defending it woods etc. The various play aids are well done and also help.
Opening plans - For the Coalition, at the outset I visualised this scenario as one of escape and rearguard actions. They will make best efforts to get across the River Vesle and then put a rearguard on the Fismes bridge to block the French and defend the river line. The bad weather (frost and fog) means that they cannot deploy a pontoon bridge, so Blücher must keep the Fismes bridges open at both ends for as long as possible to allow as many to escape as can.
For the French, they will initially engage with as many Coalition units as they can to pin them, preventing their escape across the river, while they push to capture the Fismes bridge and cut off the escaping troops. This does hinge on inflicting more casualties than they receive to get the win.
Opening Moves - Conditions frost. The forces start far enough apart that it takes the French a couple of turns to start the process of meaningful engagement. As the command system in practice becomes more obvious, the Coalition feel the pain of those far flung units being out of command and out of supply. There is a scramble for the Coalition to get into better positions below Fismes to defend the bridge and keep it open for as long as possible. They have started to bring some guns up to line the banks of the River Vesle and have discovered a nice little chateau that has the potential to form a cornerstone for the mid game defence.
The French have their own problems with command out on their far right flank. However, the Initiative rating of Nansouty is good and his cavalry is active most of the time ….. except of course on that moment when it really mattered and he failed his Initiative roll :-) - nice!
The weather changes and we now have fog as well. The main effects are that artillery cannot fire at range (bombard) and all units lose one movement point.
Mid Game - I was starting to get a bit slicker with the rules and when there was a question I was finding the reference paragraph very quickly. I was now aware of how much system there is. It goes back to my comment that this is easy stuff, but there is quite a bit of it, but I was getting better at picking it up, just by reading a couple of paragraphs at a time and adding that to the growing understanding of the rules. The rule layout really does help this ‘pick it up as you go along’ method of embedding the system to memory. I don’t think I made any big bloopers! (Perhaps I wouldn’t know :-) ).
One thing that I did find was a good level of enjoyment as to what was going on down at the individual hex, between the nuance of the terrain and the type and size of the units present. I did get caught out a few times when it came to identifying slopes, but that starts to become second nature to the eye.
Leaders can build up stacks and as units started to get closer together as everything was making for the bridge, I found tweezers were fairly essential to manage the counters.
Above - views of the French right (Nansouty) starting to roll up the line and the problems that the French are having in making progress towards Fismes.
Late Game - From a systems points of view, the turns by now were really going quite quickly, even though the amount or work and what was going on in each of those turns was similar to the previous turns, so the learning curve was clearly bottoming out in this eight turn game.
There was also a lot of excitement at the end of play. The French had come close enough to the bridge that the Coalition had to just move to hunker down behind the river and bridge. They had brought some powerful units up from II Prussian Corps to defend the bridge. On the French side of the bridge there was just carnage and the French were getting a lot of positional advantage against Coalition units and taking them out …… but! one Coalition stack got a ‘retreat 2 hexes’ result, they retreated over the bridge and DISPLACED the very strong garrison that I had placed there, the bridge position was now much weaker.
Victor (French) then came up, assaulted the weaker units now protecting the bridge and won, pushing his way to the other side and into the hex that gives 5 Victory Points. This was the last French die roll of the game. Now in the very final part of the game, the Coalition counter-attacked and they pushed Victor back over the bridge - a true nail biter ending, going down to the last couple of die rolls, so this holds a lot of potential to entertain as an introductory scenario.
I must say by this point, I was in full swing of understand who could do what and where. I was finding the Demoralisation / Reorganising rules the one area that I needed to sit down again with and read through, but then that all clicked in place.
My only two sticking points have been 1) after set-up, not understanding what the scenario actually wanted the Coalition to do. Part of the problem was that the text suggested that Blücher was able to meet up with Winzingerode, who is a reinforcement that arrives on the south side of the river, so I assumed Blücher should have been marching towards him. But in fact that was the historical outcome, our ‘hypothetical’ situation was requiring him to march the other way.
2) I couldn’t find any proper reference to the weather for the 4th March and just assumed that the numbers on the weather chart required me to dice for weather - when in fact there is errata on BoardGameGeek that explains that the weather track for 6th March should be used.
On oversight on my part was that I had failed to grasp that the Coalition calling for a General Retreat would have generated victory points for units exiting the map. Anyway I calculated that the French had won a Strategic Victory (there were a goodly amount of destroyed Coalition units), but had I utilised a General Retreat, it would likely have brought that down to a French Tactical Victory.
For years and without proper insight, I have always thought of the ‘Library of Napoleonic Battles’ series as being little more than an expanded Napoleon’s Last Battles system (old SPI game, redone in 2016 by Decision Games), but having recently played NLB, I think that characterisation is just too simple, rather, this feels like NLB on steroids! I hugely enjoyed it and there were plenty of moments when it felt like I was immersed in a book in a narrative sort of way. I think my first game just scratched the surface and that a second go of Fismes would significantly firm everything up and deliver more to me.
Deficiencies as an introductory package for a new player - There is a shortage of game markers supplied to meet all of the functions of the game, but it is not enough to stop play, you just have to proxy some markers, for example using fire markers for the destroyed bridges and I have a lot of other games that I can borrow from, which is what I should have done instead of moaning about it! There can also be a bit of early confusion as one breaks into the scenario and it would have helped if there had been a single side of notes (A4 or letter type of thing) and advice that specifically speaks to the new player as …. well … a new player. There is a sort of ‘hello’ sheet, that comes with the game, but it doesn’t go far enough and that would be a good place to expand things, though it could easily become an additional download.
Neutral aspects - At heart this is a relatively easy game and being a series game, all investment in learning will be well rewarded with a lot of future playing. On first contact with the game, there can seem a lot to learn i.e. it is all easy, but there is a lot of it, so not everything clicks straight away, but a single re-visit to the various rule sections is enough to ‘get it’ for the most part and there is something about getting slowly drawn into that and play that brings its own pleasure. I.e. any work actually feels rewarding, though this I feel has more to do with WANTING to get into it.
Good aspects as an introductory package - You pretty much get full immersion into a full and proper scenario that over the course of play pretty much draws on most areas of the rules to help embed the rules through play experience. The rule book is very good. It is easy to read and absorb and there is a very effective system of internal cross indexing, so to learn, I just went through the sequence of play stage by stage, which took me off to the relevant rule sections. I didn’t come across any questions or rules ambiguity. The size of the game is compact, so that even with the charts, this is a kitchen table game. I was conscious of those areas of system that were only superficially in my memory, so I kept pausing and going off for a read to absorb them and everything was instantly clear and importantly those bits were easy to find and digest. I found that by the end of play I pretty much had a full grasp and wanted to play the scenario again - which tells its own story!
Does Fismes work as an introductory package to the system? - yes.
Relevant Errata - The casualty and weather charts use the 6th March information.
As an aside - the three modules that I have just invested in are Napoleon’s Last Gamble, Napoleon’s Wheel and Napoleon Against Russia, so plenty to get my journey going.
There will be more about this system posted on my COMMANDERS site at:
https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html
