State of Play: Mars La-Tour

 

 

Mars La-Tour. This is a Ziploc bag game, so the rules double as a cover.

From the get-go, Mars La-Tour (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2020) describes itself as an introductory-level wargame. Designer Ray Weiss took the system Mark Herman devised for his Gettysburg (RBM Studio, 2018) game, which featured C3i Magazine, No 32, and reprised with Waterloo Campaign 1815 (RBM Studio, 2019), which appeared in the following issue of C3i. Designer Ray Weiss mentions in his design notes and elsewhere in the rules that he has made some changes to better reflect the 1870 battle, including the use of a d10 instead of a d6 in opposed combat rolls for a more dynamic range of combat results (it must make sense, because Mr Herman has made the same change with the latest implementation of the system, Rebel Fury: Battles of the American Civil War (GMT Games, 2024; if you’re interested, you can read my unboxing post here).

Small map, big battle.

I’ve never played Mr Herman’s Gettysburg, but I do have a couple of games of Rebel Fury under my belt now, so I had some familiarity with what will likely become know system. What attracted me to Mars La Tour was the discrete nature of the treatment; just twenty-five unit and administrative counters combined, and the game plays out in just six turns on a 11” by 17” map.  This, I thought, will be a good way to introduce new people to the system’s features and concepts which, by no means difficult to comprehend, do run counter to how things are normally managed in a board wargame. My first test subject was my regular Monday game foil, my brother-in-law, T.

T played the Prussians, I took the French; I figured they would be the harder side to play, at least in part because of the black-on-navy print is a nightmare (they bring to mind the original counters from Par le feu, le fer et la foi (Hexasim, 2014) – to the publisher’s credit, my copy came with a replacement set of Catholics). The victory conditions are simple: the French player needs to get four infantry units off the board via two road exits marked with the letters E and F (other lettered points around the board mark the entry points for Prussian and French reinforcements). As the French, it’s possible to get a couple of units off the board in the first turn or two, but that’s going to leave you short-handed for the fighting retreat against the Prussians. This was something I should have realised sooner.

Units battle on the edges of Mars la-Tour. The play area is part of a map from the
time of the campaign with a hex-grid and some other markings superimposed
(about 0.5km to a hex). It's really quite beautiful, and nice to play on.

I always try to give an outline of the essential rules for a new game at the outset, then qualify these or explain the exceptions as we go, but T was keen to jump straight in. To his credit, he grokked the non-traditional movement rules and their ramifications really quickly, much quicker than I did initially with Rebel Fury. The beauty of what will probably come to be known as the Heritage system* is the emphasis it places on manoeuvre. The units have two sides, a March (manoeuvre) face and a Battle face. All infantry can move four hexes in March mode, cavalry can move six (these are doubled if the movement is conducted exclusively on roads). Players take turns moving one unit than another, or the same one again. You read that right; you can keep moving a unit right up until it finds itself in an enemy Zone of Influence (the ring of hexes circling the enemy unit’s Zone of Control or EZOC, so a radius of two hexes from the unit), then you flip to Battle status. You can even move out of a EZOI and revert to March mode if your first hex move takes you out of the EZOI. But if you find yourself adjacent to an enemy unit, you’re both anchored there until the end of the Movement Phase, when Combat is addressed.

Another feature of the system is the presence of a HQ marker that establishes a greater zone of influence. It’s not a HQ as such, but a kind of centre of operational gravity. Units within the range of the HQ may move freely inside of that radius, but friendly units beginning outside of it must always move toward their HQ. In Mars La-Tour, this provides a generous (though historically accurate) advantage to the Prussians, who enjoy a command range of 8 to the French headquarters’ 5 hex sphere of influence.

We were both a little hesitant with our movement in the first turn. Map provides an interesting field of battle, with a network of roads – these mark the entry points for subsequent arrivals and facilitate good map coverage if you play it thoughtfully, though trying to stick to the roads can prove hazardous for the French.

Early action. I swear, the blue pieces have come up way brighter and much easier to
read in the photos than they were on the table. No, I hadn't been drinking.

Combat is delightfully swift and simple, with sometimes terrible results. When a unit declares action against an adjacent unit, each player rolls a ten-sided die and adds or subtracts any applied die-roll modifiers (DRM). For example, defensive terrain will  offer the defender a DRM of+2 to their defence roll, while the presence of one o two stars on the counter (representing superior troop quality or élan) will provide another point or two advantage to the owner’s roll. Artillery is abstracted to a DRM of +2 at the cost of an ammunition point, a scarce resource for both sides. If both sides choose to apply artillery, an artillery duel is undertaken; each player rolls a d6 and the player with the higher result gets to apply the modifier to their roll, but on ties, nobody gets to use it (though the ammunition point cost still applies).

The difference in totals establishes both the winning side (the higher score) and the fate of the losing unit. A differential of 1-2 will force a retreat, 3-4 and the unit is “blown” (the unit is taken from the board and placed two turns ahead on the turn track; they will return as a reinforcement on that turn), 5 or higher, and the losing unit is eliminated. Swift, simple and potentially bloody.

The Turn Track (with scheduled reinforcements) above, and Ammunition Track (below).
A lot can happen in just six turns.

Looking back on how the game played out, I realise I hadn’t spent enough time looking at the map before we began. The French need to play a fighting retreat, the same way as they did historically, although there’s nothing there to recommend the tactic. Taking units off the board too early in the game just left me with fewer manoeuvre options. I hate to admit it, but I think T noticed this before I did. By the fifth turn I was using the defensive terrain to my advantage, but early on T recognised where my late arrivals would be entering from and the trajectory they would have to take to meet my HQ, and manoeuvred two of his newly arrived troops to hamper their progress. By the third turn, I had three units off the board, but with a couple of unsuccessful battles leading to the loss of troops, and the eastern-most Prussians stalling the advance of my remaining infantry, there was no way to cover the distance necessary of a chance of a fourth exited French infantry unit. I conceded before the Combat phase of the sixth turn. I don’t think Mars La-Tour is an unbalanced game, but I was caught off-balance playing it this first time.

Mars La-Tour was part of a delivery of a handful of games from CSL. Another that arrived was Königgrätz, 3 July 1866 (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2023), which also uses this system as well. That promises to be an interesting match; where Mars La-Tour represents the decisive action of the Franco-Prussian War, the Battle of Königgrätz was where the Austrian Empire had its hat handed to it by the Kingdom of Prussia. But that’s a game for another night.

 

* Rebel Fury is the first volume of Mr Herman’s Civil War Heritage Series, with the second volume, Army of the Potomac (GMT Games, ~2025) already doing well on preorders, and reportedly a third volume currently in development.