Zuckerpalooza 2003

By Alan Campbell (unapologetic Francophilophobe) [Picture] - [Email]

Saturday and Sunday December 13-14 saw a play through of the Spring 1813 campaign scenario of Struggle of Nations using a full-sized map (scanned and blown up) and my own counters to replace the little oblong "packages" of the Avalon Hill original. For the Allies we had the Baltimoreans - Kevin Zucker himself, Jason ??? (didn't catch the last name), Dave Schubert (who looks much younger in real life than his CSW photo), Leigh Toms, and a fellow named "Chuck" who was primarily used to chuck the dice for the Allies. La Belle France was represented by Team Brooklyn - Adam Starkweather, Lou Manios, and your humble correspondent.

One of the basic concepts in the Campaigns of Napoleon series is the Line of Communications, which stretches from the Supply Source (on the edge of the map) to the Center of Operations, a counter which represents a kind of command / logistical hub. The longer this LOC tether is, the fewer "Administration Points" (APs) you get for your operations, and the worse your attrition becomes. For this playing, Kevin defined any town with three or more primary roads intersecting as a Depot; each Depot extended the LOC by 10 hexes - a system introduced in Highway to the Kremlin. The AP table was adjusted to match the distances for Sun of Austerlitz, 40 primary road hexes being the maximum (not including Depot extensions). The French and Allied players put their Center of Operations in the usual places - the French C/O near Weissenfels, the Allied on the Leipzig - Dresden road near Oschatz. This meant that the French could get maximum APs while thrusting forward quickly, and the Allies would be near the end of their tether, with fewer APs received, but could still keep their main forces in command. Fog of War was enhanced by using counter sleds, which kept the players guessing about the identity of the enemy forces and about whether we were playing a genuine wargame or some bizarre variant of Scrabble. Vedettes were used, but the Allies got 2 per force, the French 1 per force to simulate the French lack of cavalry in the Spring campaign (most of their horseflesh - and gooseflesh-was lost in Russia).

Pictures
	It snowed on Sunday. Heres a lovely winter scene from the back of Kevin's house.
	The first go around is ready to begin. Team Brooklyn (Adam, Alan, and Lou) vs. Team Baltimore (Kevin, Jason, and Dave).
	Team Baltimore (from l. to r.) Kevin, Jason, Dave, and Chuck.
	Team Brooklyn (from l. to r.) Alan, Adam, Leigh, and Lou.
	Close-up of Alan's blown up map.
	"Serious" Lou ponders his next move.
	An "unhappy" Saddam ponders his fate.

The situation, beginning on the April 25-6 turn, is that the Allies have just swept across central Europe, recapturing Berlin, Dresden, and Leipzig, and blockading Napoleon's fortresses on the Oder and Elbe, but now the French are coming on with massive reinforcements for a counterattack. Historically the French won a battle at Lutzen May 1-2, retook Dresden 10 days (5 turns) later, and pursued the Allies onto the Eastern map before the Armistice.

In our first playing, Lou's northern French forces (Reynier, MacDonald, and Eugene) marched up to Magdeburg, defeated the Russian besieging force, and pursued them for several turns, winning a Critical Battle in the process. The French were then able to push on to Brandenburg, using Magdeburg as a depot to cut down on attrition losses - MacDonald's star also helped with the attrition roles, and his "4" initiative helped keep the attack moving. NOTE: all forces on the northern sector, Allied and French, were beyond the 18 MP Dispatch Distance and were thus ineligible for Command Points; this meant that all of the leaders had to move by their own Initiative ratings, good for Reynier and MacDonald, bad for the Allies. When we called it a night, the Allies in the north (Dave) were sending more troops up the Wittenberg - Potsdam road to save Berlin. Given French attrition and the appearance of 20,000 Prussian troops to defend Berlin, it would have been a "near - run thing," French command superiority - those high initiatives - would probably have made the difference.

On the central front, the French advanced rapidly, with oodles of big forces coming on-map from Erfurt (the French Source of Supply), Saalfeld, and Bayreuth. Napoleon-Complex (Adam S.) was careful to save up enough APs per turn to reach the magic number of 29, a breakpoint in the Attrition Table. This allows bigger forces to march farther with not so much strategic consumption. The main axis of advance was Weimar - Altenburg - Dresden, and by the end of play (May 5-6 turn) the French had come close to taking Dresden by a coup de main, Jason quickly managing to throw some troops in before the next turn would see the Guard Cavalry entering the city. No battles of any size were fought on this front, and despite the fact that the French advance bypassed / pocketed several of the Allied forces, none of them were destroyed or seriously attrited. I myself, roleplaying as Marshall Ney, advanced up the Weimar - Leipzig road, trying to coordinate between the northern and central forces; my initiative rolls and attrit rolls were pretty lousy and my progress was far below my usual brilliant standards (!). The Allies shifted back their Op Center once, the French moved theirs forward once during the game.

Projecting forward, it seemed to us that the French would take Dresden and probably Berlin before the Armistice happened, and that this would result in a French morale of -1, Allies +1. This would give Napoleon 2 chances at a favorable Armistice, DR=3 or higher, roughly 89%. The consensus was that, given the ability of the French to stockpile APs and given their advantage in numbers and leader init ratings, the scenario heavily favored the French. We then brainstormed for awhile Sat. night about how to fix this.

Kevin's first thought was to raise the Allied "1" and "2" leaders by +1-the "1"s become "2"s and so forth. Blucher, a "4", was fine as is. Since the French had "too many" APs, the scenario would start with 15 APs for each side. The Allies would also use the "Silesia / Autumn" row on the attrition table-an improvement for them.

Sunday morning, however, saw a radical shift in plans…a number of favorable Allied factors had been overlooked, to wit:

• The -1 Allied Morale at the scenario start should have given them -1 DRM to Initiative and Attrition rolls, This was already in the rules and should have been a huge benefit to the Allies.
event_zucker_00_box.jpgNapoleon had moved Soult/OG with no attrition rolls, thinking they were, in fact, Old Gd. (OGs-Original Gangstas). But they're not (they're YG: Youthful Greenhorns); thus they moved at top speed with no losses and should not have.
• The French had taken full advantage of their vedettes, breaking down forces to manufacture as many as possible, and scouting aggressively to identify enemy forces; the Allies, perhaps concerned about a lack of APs, had not broken down their forces, missing an opportunity to ID the French on a consistent basis and mask their own forces.
• The Critical Battle victory for the French in the north was an example of the "Flypaper Problem" noticed by numerous CoN afficianados-namely, that a beaten force can often be pursued and "locked" by the victor, often being forced to attack him in turn until the entire losing force is wiped out and providing the victor with a long, attrition-free Pursuit movement bonus. There are several ways to handle this, but unfortunately the Allied player picked an unlucky combination of Pitched and Pursuit battles, giving the French a Critical Battle and resultant Morale Track shift.
• Some of us also felt that the Allies hadn't booked quickly enough at the beginning of the game; they clearly were looking for chances to sting the French a bit before pulling back to the Elbe line. Jason said later that he had wanted to do this, but a combination of small forces and inability to coordinate them had made it all but impossible. The French had generally pressed hard, moving during Forced March as well as French Movement segments and accepting a higher level of attrition than the Allies. "What do the lives of a million men matter to me?" Napoleon was once quoted as saying.

The final decision was to re-start with the following changes:

• Play with Allied leader initiatives "as is" and adjusting them per the -1 Allied Morale shift.
• 15 APs for each side at start.
• LOC would have, as before, a maximum length of 40 hexes, but primary road hexes would count 1/2, and Depots would, as before, add +10 hexes to the LOC. Depots could be used to reduce the Attrition affects for forces beyond Dispatch Distance of the Op Center as in the SON rules.
• The Initiative of Reynier and MacDonald would be reduced to 3 (from 4).
• Instead of using the Reserve and Rearguard rules, a force could expend its own troops as a DRM for initiative rolls in order to escape from an EZOC. One SP gives -1 DRM, 2 SP=-2 DRM, and so on. This little item, we felt, would be a quick, historical, and dirty (thus even more historical) fix to the "Flypaper Problem." Courtesy of Lou Manios, who had never played the game before.

Sunday's game began with a switch of teams: Adam and Lou played Central and northern Allies, respectively, Dave and myself playing northern and central French. Leigh, Jason and Chuck had gone home-a heavy snowstorm began the night before-and Kevin played the role of neutral observer. There was an extended discussion of politics-we had just heard about Saddam's capture-and numerous trips to the back porch for a ciggie break.

This time the game seemed much more balanced-no surprise, given the changes and overlooked rules from the day before. In the north, the Allies captured Magdeburg and Wittenburg in successive rounds of 2:1 combat. This forced the French to shift Reynier/Eugene/MacDonald southeast, looking for a crossing of the Elbe at some other point. I protested on historical grounds-only 1 of approx. 10 French fortresses fell during the entire 1813 campaign, none of them quickly-and we located a rule in the SON originals to back this up-a force in a citadel cannot be attacked, period, and must be starved out. This radically changed the picture in the north, making the advance on Berlin a very real possibility, though more difficult than in Saturday's play due to the other factors involved.

In the center, I threw the Op Center forward to around Weissenfels again, covering it with an extended march by one of Ney's big divisions (something we hadn't bothered to do on Saturday). Ney himself marched to within 2 MPs to support this. Blucher, with about 20 SPs attacked the Op Center on the first turn and drove it back, Ney missing on his Forced March init roll. Dave sent Eugene and the Old Guard division south to hook up eventually with Soult and give the French the Non-Attritable Panzer Stack (NAPS) which Napoleon craved. Despite Blucher's spoiling attack the French thrust along the Weimar-Altenburg and Saalfeld-Altenburg axes continued, though the greater flexibility of the Allies made this a lot tougher than the previous day. Play was stopped after the May 1-2 turn, because we Brooklynites had to get back to the land of Duke Snider and Jackie Robinson.

During the course of the two days, the whole subject of Pitched Battles and big battles came up; Adam and I both felt that the system needs a reason for big battles (a la Leipzig/Dresden) and tends, at least in our numerous playings, not to get them. Also, we felt that Pitched Battle is a chit which we almost never pick. The essential thing is that a big battle only happens when both sides think they can win-as at Lutzen, Bautzen, Dresden, and Leipzig. But in our play we almost never have this situation - we scout too much and are more confident of winning primarily by maneuver. Once again Lou came up with a solution: use the Sound of the Guns rule for both attacker AND defender; Adam suggested making Pitched / Pursuit dependant not on the loser's chit (as it is now), but on the Combat Results Table itself; a close result (2-2, for instance) would mean Pitched Battle, and forces within the Sound of the Guns (5 hexes if the wind is right) would be sucked in automatically. This creates a kind of self-perpetuating situation in which a big battle can develop in an organic way, even without the players intending it - a situation which happened at Lutzen, Friedland, and in numerous other instances. Kevin was intrigued by this, and the players all seemed eager to try it out. We Metro Wargamers of Brooklyn will give it a go soon and let you know how it works.

We all were happy with the results of the second playing, despite the inability to finish the game (gee, how unusual for a monster game!) and all agreed that Kevin is a great guy, he and his wife Sarah are great and generous hosts, and that we all want to do this a lot more; Lou bought his first CoN game and gave the system his hard-won thumbs up. On the ride home I discovered that my beloved '91 Camry, stolen on Friday, had been found and was in good shape. Toss in a captured dictator and it doesn't get any better than this!

[Ed. Note: Yes it does Alan, but it usually involves alot of hookers and booze ... ]