Marengo is one of the four battles in the recently released deluxe boardgame version of ‘Napoleon at War’ by Decision Games.
The original Napoleon at War ‘quad’ was published in 1975 by SPI. It presented the battles of Marengo, Jena-Auerstadt, Wagram and Leipzig. Each with their own map and having less than 100 game counters.
A seven page rule book services all four battles, with each battle then having some historically based special rules. This is driven by a system that is at the very low end of complexity.
Marengo is the smallest affair of the four battles and also described as the simplest and so becomes a good place for us to start.
The original games had single sided counters with their backs blank. Here the counter rears are used to show which hex the unit sets up in, which battle the counter belongs to and whether the unit enters as a reinforcement. This is a great help in setting up the game and faster than using the supplied rosters.
Above - Here is our Marengo map with units in their starting positions. The Austrians (yellow) can be thought of as having just advanced onto the board, passing through Alessandria and advancing across constricted terrain with the intention of capturing the villages where the two dice are shown and going on to destroy the French Army.
The villages of Pietrabona (white die) and Marengo (red die) are victory locations. The very pale blue waterway is impassable river (except at bridges) the darker blue is the Fontanone Stream. It is crossable along its length, but being a sort of steep sided ditch, it is defensible to the defender and expensive to cross in terms of movement points.
The ditch offers a good defensive line and the Austrians will need to get across this if they are going to contest Marengo beyond it.
Historically the outnumbered French did a good job at holding on, but eventually they were pushed out of Marengo, falling back onto that high ground in the middle of the map with the Austrians in Pursuit. At this point the Austrians were pretty sure that they had won a victory …. But! A significant French counter-attack then pushed the Austrians all the way back to their starting positions. Napoleon is popularly quoted as saying “I lost the Battle of Marengo at 5 O’ Clock and won it back at 7”. This may not have fallen from Napoleon’s lips, but it nicely summarises the day.
Important stuff - The system scale is 400 - 800 metres to the hex. The Marengo map says it is using 400 metres to the hex. Units represent brigades and demi-brigades (though in Leipzig units are divisions with their artillery absorbed into the divisional counter). Zones of Control are what are commonly termed ‘sticky’, so that once units engage, they will only disengage following a combat result. This greatly matters because combat between adjacent units is mandatory, so units that get locked together with opponents are forced to fight.
There is some scripting going on in the game. On turn 1, the French can’t move more than half their movement allowance and cannot enter an Austrian Zone of Control. From turn 9 onwards the French can announce their main counter-attack. For three consecutive turns, all French attacks will be enhanced to double strength (defence remains normal).
The victory conditions look at the proximity of friendly units to the villages of Pietrabona and Marengo, together with casualty rates. To win, the French need only control Marengo and the area around it, while the Austrians need to control both villages.
This is a 14 turn game and the general rules say that a game turn represents between 1 - 2 hours, so since the numbered game track does not include the time, I am going to assume, for the sake of narrative, that in the Marengo battle, 1 turn is 1 hour and that this is a full days fighting (which it was).
Playing the game.
I was not to know it yet, but success for the Austrians in the early turns is essential for them. On Turn 1 (shall we call it 8 AM) the lead Austrian units make contact with the French, just outside Pietrabona, but they are repulsed!
Turn 2 (9 AM) - The next set of Austrian attacks are also repulsed. The French stay on the defence and simply choose to develop their line, while some reinforcements move across the hill to occupy Castel Ceriolo village on the western slopes.
Turn 3 (10 AM) - The initial Austrian failures means that they are becoming rather bottled up against a firm defence and they do not have the space to adequately deploy against the French in a decisive way.
[Historical notes - The French did a good job at holding the Austrians back, but by 10 AM the Austrians had taken Pietrabona and were attacking across the Fontanone Stream].
Turn 4 (11 AM) - Above - The French still hold a firm line, but the Austrians have given themselves a little more room to breathe. That Austrian strength 7 counter (Latterman’s Brigade) is making space, but is now very vulnerable to counter-attack!
Turn 5 (12 noon) How is it possible to roll so many sixes! (Bad).
Turns 6 - 8 (1 - 3 PM) The Austrians finally take Pietrabona! The French re-take it. The Austrians capture it again ….. and the French retake it!
[Historical notes - by now, the French are over the Fontanone and they have taken Marengo].
Turn 9 (4 PM) - Unsupported Weidenfeld’s Brigade has by-passed Pietrabona and taken Stortingliona a little further south. This is stretching the French line. from this turn onwards the French can announced their 3 turn counter-attack, but at the moment, they don’t have enough troops in the right places to make it worthwhile, so it is delayed. ABOVE photo - Never-the-less their attacks are going well and things are turning in their favour. In the north Murat has just arrived with his cavalry and he is pressing the Austrian left.
[Historical Note - French Consular Guard are destroyed and the Austrians pursue the French towards the higher ground].
Turn 10 (5 PM) the French clear the Austrian threat at Storingliona by destroying Weidenfeld’s Brigade and so now have the spare capacity to launch their three turn counter-attack. They will be doubled in strength on the attack.
Turns 11 & 12 (6 PM - 8 PM) - The French slowly push the Austrians back towards their starting positions, but their extra efforts has seen them suffer heavy casualties and they leave the way open for the Austrians to once again strike at and capture Pietrabona!
[Historical note - at 6 PM the French counter-attacked].
Turn 13 (9 PM) - the fighting is starting to die down, with both sides concentrating their efforts around Pietrabona.
Turn 14 (10 PM) The French ‘mop up’ in the north. At Pietrabona they put in a 2:1 attack against the village which has a 66% chance of ejecting the Austrians ….. but fail. The game ends with the Austrians controlling Pietrabona, but getting no where near Marengo!
Above - final positions.
Victory - Neither side eliminated the number of enemy strength points needed to raise them a victory, so it just goes by holding objective conditions. The French only need to hold the area around Marengo with at least 10 strength points, which they did, while Austrians need to hold both of the Pietrabona AND Marengo village hexes, which they didn’t! So the game declares a French victory, which seems about right as the French certainly had the better game.
Conclusion
The game was enjoyable to play and kept both sides continuously engaged throughout. Those early persistent Austrian failures seem to have pretty much cost them the game. They were generally attacks that had a 50 / 50 chance of pushing the French back and giving themselves room to expand, but the dice were cruel and so on another day, perhaps an Austrian success might show its hand. However today, with so many sixes rolled early on, it was not good for the Austrians and after that, they just couldn’t hope to keep up with the historical timetable.
Containing the Austrians meant that the fight was pretty much kept to the upper left quarter of the map. The terrain here is fairly restricted and troublesome if trying to move or attack into.
An interesting dynamic is that Austrian infantry generally have a movement allowance of 3 (French generally 4), this starts to matter in the dense terrain as a bad terrain hex costs 2 movement points to move through, so the Austrians are disadvantaged in terms of manoeuvre, often moving at just 1 hex at a time - they need to break out into the open ground.
Early on the French took a decision to defend ‘forwards’ around Peitrabona rather than sitting back behind the defensible Fontanone Stream and I think that worked well for them as it left the Austrians with little space to manoeuvre amongst that constricted terrain and it kept them away from the Fontanone.
Because the system is simple, I had decided to play with the one page of optional rules, but I missed the artillery rule that states that if they move their full movement rate, then they are marked with a ‘limbered’ counter as a reminder that they cannot fire that turn. This of course adds more grief to the Austrian side, as they need to work hard to bring up their guns to support those early attacks.
Even though the Austrians today were banging their head against a brick wall, (we might well call it Peitabona’s Wall!) it was still fun to play them and it gave a good game, but I would like to see a game that opened things up to be a bit closer to the historical narrative, simply because I want to see that range of results demonstrated and to know that the historical is possible. I would happily play the scenario again.
It is the case that the game is putting playability above simulation and so you may not find the Marengo that ‘you’ are looking for here. If you think of it as a themed game in which a correct order of battle and terrain are largely informing play and that some things happen that are typically guarded against in more sophisticated designs such as cavalry not being able to attack villages / towns or artillery being restricted when moving in some types of terrain etc.
The engine is so solid that if these things mattered too much, you could easily introduced them as house rules, but overall one has to balance these things against getting a game that is highly playable.
EDIT - I have just played a second game and though I got another French victory, it played differently.
The Austrians were able to fight their way into Marengo, but with tremendous losses and so when the French counter-attack came, it overpowered the reduced Austrian army and pushed them back across the Fontanone - though they kept hold of Peitrabona.
Above - Marengo is in the hex under the blue die. The top end of the map generated a lot of tense play. The French pushed into that wing but suddenly found themselves facing potentially surround attacks. The Austrian attack that really mattered could only fail on a ‘6’ ….. so of course that is what they rolled! Within a turn or two, the tables had turned and the French destroyed the Austrian left, capturing the bridge leading to Alessandria. Strategically this would have cut the Austrian retreat route and so our French victory today is all the more total for that ….. but my point is, had the Austrians won that elusive attack, it would have turned the tables on the French and so I still have hope that the Austrians can win in this game!
Historically, the Austrians contested Marengo and then had enough steam to pursue the French back to the higher ground and after a couple of games, I am not seeing that, though the designer notes give the impression that it is a potential outcome, but they also suggest that the French should not be drawn into playing a ‘forward’ defence, while my limited play experience leaves me feeling that they should.
I am playing face to face on Friday evening, so there is another opportunity to explore all of this.
Further EDIT - The face to face has been played and another French victory, again the Austrians suffered high losses and didn’t get across the Fontanone Stream and consequently did not reach Marengo.
We both felt that either the French 3 turn counter-attack at double attacking strength felt misplaced OR that the Austrian can’t really match the historical timetable in the morning by getting to Marengo by 10 AM (around turns 3-4) ….. or even at all, if the French defend forwards and keep the Austrians contained.
For now, I will park it and move onto the other scenarios, just so the entire package can be explored, but I would like to come back to Marengo. Once again the rules stayed in the box (good), it met our short play goal (good), we enjoyed the play (good) …. but, a Marengo without a Marengo, that’s not so good. I will start to read through CSW and BGG for posts on the original print and see if I can pick up any tips there.
Final Edit - I have played the scenario a fourth time, but made an adjustment to the rules. For the French, their turn 1 movement restrictions are now also imposed on turn 2. For the Austrians, on their first two turns, they have their attack (only) strength doubled. This is not as drastic as it sounds as they Austrians have few attack opportunities on the first few turns and it just helps ensure that DR happens more than AR.
Both tweaks are already present in the scenario, so it is not introducing something too new, rather it is just expanding the designers thoughts of 50 years ago.
Together, the tweaks serve to ensure that during the morning, the French are encouraged to develop their defences on ‘their’ side of the Fontenone Stream, giving the Austrians a timely jump off point to assault Marengo, while still ensuring that there is plenty of fight and contest going on before Marengo falls.
My game did give me that, but the French hung on and took heavy casualties. In this system, once one side ‘thins’ the other side has more opportunity to overwhelm, break through or turn flanks and start to cut the enemy retreat and this is what happened here.
In the end the French were desperate for their reinforcements just to hold the line, rather than going on the counter-attack and re-taking Marengo. So we end with a very clear Austrian victory.
The scenario was more fun to play than the previous ones of a ‘contained’ Austrian force, but it would need to be played a few more times to make sure that there is also the chance of a French victory. The teaks may have given us the right opening and a good contest for Marengo, but if they fail to show the French counter-attack in all of its glory, then we still have a problem.
For the next play, I may remove Austrian double strength attacks for turns 1 & 2 and just stick with the French movement restrictions for turns 1 & 2 and see how that goes. Regardless, four enjoyable games of Marengo in just a couple of weeks without the rulebook being used is its own minor victory.
Complexity - The box rear scores this 1 out of 5 (Minimal Complexity) and it is absolutely right. I looked at the rules once during play! The rules are very close to the Blue & Gray rules. This is reinforced when I set up and played the second and third game without using the rule book at all.
Size - The maps are bigger than the originals due to bigger hexes being employed, but still only come in at 22” x 25½”, so the map and a play aid card don’t take up much room. The hexes are at a comfortable size. This is a quick play game, so the family dining table can be hijacked without disturbing meals etc.
Solitaire - This is a two player game, that plays fine solo. I played this game (and the second game) solo and had no trouble what-so-ever.
Time - The box describes these games as playable in 1 - 2 hours. One might assume that with Marengo being the easiest of the four battles, that it would be coming in nearer the 1 hour mark, but both my games came in at a tad over 2 hours each, while the third came in at 1 hour 45 mins of actual play, but we ended that game 4 turns early because the Austrian situation was untenable.
Resource Section.
My sister webspace ‘COMMANDERS’ showcases the various figure and boardgame systems that I am enjoying and gives a flavour of where current projects are up to. Link.
https://commanders.simdif.com
