Stripped Down for Parts: The Battle of Blenheim, 1704 (Legion Wargames catch-up order, Part 1)

 

Long-time readers will know I’m a fan of Legion Wargames. I made a point of grabbing All Are Brothers: Solferino, 1859 (Legion Wargames, 2025) when it came out because I was worried about the title selling out quickly. I don’t think I’d ordered anything directly from the publisher since Aces of Valor (Legion Wargames, 2022). Legion produces interesting games with thoughtful design elements, often covering more obscure aspects of history.  

I try to support publishers directly where I can, and Legion has a CPO (Customer Pre-Order) section on their website that lists their proposed and in-development games. Customers can indicate their intention to buy a copy of a game on publication, which gives the publisher an indication of a title’s popularity and a guide for its print run. The CPO is based on the honour system; no payment details are collected, but Legion will send you an email when the game is available for order.

I’ve been feeling guilty for some time about not following through on my own CPO order of A Glorious Chance: The Naval Struggle for Lake Ontario in the War of 1812 (Legion Wargames, 2023) when it became available about two years ago, due to financial constraints. So, when I managed to sell some old RPG books, I suddenly had some “found money” to put toward A Glorious Chance and two other titles I’ve been interested in a while. So, here is the first of a three-part unboxing of my Legion Wargames catch-up order. I’ll cover them in release order, so we’re starting with The Battle of Blenheim, 1704 (Legion Wargames, 2018). Next, we’ll take a look at Fire on the Mountain: Battle of South Mountain September 14, 1862 (Legion Wargames, 2022), and we’ll close it out with A Glorious Chance. I may not get to these until the new year, so you’ll just have to be patient.

Box cover.

The cover image on the Battle of Blenheim, 1704 is an extract from a classic Baroque battle portrait of “The Duke of Marlborough and the Earl of Cadogan at the Battle of Blenheim,” by Pieter van Bloemen. Well, this painting was by van Bloemen, but it is actually a copy rendered by the artist of a collaborative work that he was invited to assist with (van Bloemen was, in his day, a renowned painter of horses). The painting, primarily by Balthasar van den Bossche, was presented to Marlborough on a visit to Antwerp after his success at the Battle of Ramillies, two years after Blenheim. The original work is no longer extant, but we still have this credible, acknowledged copy by one of the original participating artists. This work now resides in at Marlborough House in London, as part of the national collection administered by the Commonwealth Secretariat.

The cover also mentions that Battle of Blenheim is the first volume of a series called the Seven Hex System. It’s this system that intrigued me about the game. Justin Fassino, on his Justegarde YouTube channel, did a great two-part play-through of the game and the intricacies of the system that together make for a better introduction to the game than I could offer here.

There are two more volumes in development using the Seven Hex System. The second volume will offer two battles from Napoleon’s Russian campaign, The Battles of Borodino & Polotsk 1812 (Legion Wargames, ~2026), and third, two battles of the Great Northern War, The Battles of Kliszow 1702 and Fraustadt 1706 (Legion Wargames, ~2026). Mr Fassino mentioned in his video that he’d heard the series was unlikely to continue, so I contacted Randy Lein, publisher at Legion Wargames. Mr Lein said that the current plan was to release the next two volumes in zip-loc bags, and that we should see them in some time in 2026.

Box-back.

For readers unfamiliar with the Battle of Blenheim, here’s a link to the Wikipedia article for some context. Blenheim (pronounced Blen’m by the English and referred to by the French as la Bataille de Höchstädt), has been described as “the battle that saved Europe.” It was one of the most important battles of the War of Spanish Succession and built Marlborough’s reputation as the greatest soldier of his era (this was further secured by his victory at Battle of Ramillies twenty-one months later). The box back offers a paragraph of context for the battle, followed by a brief explanation of the Seven Hex System (which we’ll spend a little time on when we get to the map). Also displayed is a picture of the game-map in its entirety, as well as a sampling of unit and administrative counters (at actual size).

The game components are listed (but we’ll be getting to all of them in the course of this post), and the credits are prominently featured. Steve Pole is the game’s designer and developer of the Seven Hex System, and he was assisted in the development by two Legion alumni, Andy Loakes (Toulon, 1793: Napoleon’s First Great Victory (Legion Games, 2014), and the late Godfrey Bailey (Hill of Doves: The First Anglo-Boer War (Legion Wargames, 2013), with map and counter art by Knut Grünitz (with an assist on the map-art by Mr Lein); a veritable team of champions.

The units are battalions or cavalry squadrons, and scale of the game is 500 yards to a three-hex wide manoeuvre hex, with turns representing about twenty minutes, with the whole game playable in inside of three hours. Another thing I like about Legion games is the standardised Game Meter, which for Blenheim tell us the game is suitable for one or two players, of Medium-Low complexity (two out of five), and the Solitaire Suitability is Medium-High (four out of five).

The Battle of Blenheim Rules of Play. Greater than the sum of its parts.

The rulebook is a 24-page booklet printed on a heavier weight, high-gloss paper-stock. Some might experience issues with glare (such as the slight flaring in my photos) but depending on your lighting situation, this should be negligible. Legion rulebooks have a particular layout style that I find makes the rules a breeze to read and to refer back to at the table. I’m sure some people won’t like them, but the style is consistent over all the games I own, and it works for me personally.

Rulebook sample page. I really appreciate the clean and simple layout of Legion
rulebooks in general. The Blenheim rules are a good example of the house style.

Of those 24 pages, the rules take up barely ten pages of the overall count. The front page offers an Introduction and Table of Contents, and the rules are followed by three pages of design notes on the Seven Hex System (and a column-length bibliography covering the battle and the War of Spanish Succession more broadly), four pages of illustrated combat examples, and a five-page military history of the battle covering the two sides’ battle plans, a timeline of the battle, and its broader outcomes. Basically, there’s nothing here you’ll want to skip over – it’s all gravy.

The game-map. Once again, apologies for the poor lighting and photographic work
that fail to do justice to the fine work here.

The maps a standard 22” by 34” sheet printed on a nice weight (I’d guess about 110 gsm paper-stock) and flattens out reasonably well with some encouragement. I’ll be honest; the map is a little jarring at first blush – not so much the enlarged and subdivided large hexes called Areas (creating a twelve by sixteen area hex-grid), but the smaller hexes they’re made up of all tilting about fifteen degrees off-kilter. Initially, this for me was the visual equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard. When you get past that, though, the battle area is nicely presented, with clearly readable terrain and the centre (manoeuvre) hexes of each greater hex numbered. When the phasing player conducts movement, units move from one numbered hex to another, adjacent numbered hex. This is called Strategic movement and is conducted in the first phase of the turn. Each unit has an Occupancy Factor number in a black box in the top-right corner, usually a 3 (artillery batteries have a weight of 0), and units adding up to no higher than six can occupy a greater hex at a time, so as an average two units can remain in the same hex after movement, plus a battery.

Map detail. Normally I resent the use of caltrop corner markings for indicating hex
boundaries, but in context hexes within the larger Strategic hexes, I think
it makes perfect sense.

Getting back to the map, the representation of the terrain and features is clear and not at all distracting from the activity of the game. I particularly like the representation of the marshy lowland areas lining the Nobèlbach River, which meanders diagonally through the map, west to east, before joining the Danube. The map-sheet also features a Terrain legend, Turn Track, and an Order Modifier track. I’ll expand on the use of the Order Modifier track in our first game AAR.

The game's single counter-sheet. The colours chosen for the two factions contrast 
well against the battle map, highlighting the action.

Blenheim comes with a single sheet of 5/8” counters, half of which is comprised of units. The other half is a set of administrative order-markers for units, Ranged Fire markers, and Turn and modifier markers. The counters are printed on decent-weight white-core cardstock and look like they should punch out and clip up cleanly.

The game has a low counter density, with just forty-seven French/Bavarian and forty Allied unit counters, plus three and two leader counters respectively. The units are nicely presented, illustrated a with single soldiers, mounted cavalrymen, or a cannon representing Infantry or Cavalry units or batteries respectively. Each unit is named for their regimental commander, which helps with the setting up of the game, as we’ll see. The background colours for the two sides – royal blue for the French and a dark mustard for the Allies – offer clear differentiation between the factions, and both will stans out well against the muted greens of the battle map, and the digits on the counters are large enough for me to make out without resorting to reading glasses.

Player Aid Card 1, which deals with the Movement, positioning and Cannon fire.

The charts for the game appear on two single sided Player Aid Cards (PACs), and there are two each of these in the game. Like their rulebooks. Legion has a particular style of formatting for their games’ PACs that is clear and functional and immediately recognisable. The title boxes for each table is colour-coded, with related tables sharing the same banner colour, and more loosely related ones exhibiting similar colours in different shades. This approach isn’t exclusive to Legion games, but with the otherwise austere presentation of the charts and tables, it is for my money one of its best implementations.

Player Aid Card 2, dealing with Combat (Attack and Defence). The cards aren't actually
numbered, but this PAC references rules that appear later in the rulebook.

The first PAC presents a Unit Occupancy Table, Command Association Table for the five leaders represented in the game, Strategic Movement (articulating three types of movement permitted within this phase), a Ranged Fire Hit Table all ranged fire is executed before the Orders, Tactical Movement and Combat phase) and short tables dealing with asymmetric Order Values, Morale Adjustment and Attrition value Modifiers. The second PAC brings the necessary tables for Defending and Attacking in combat.

Blenheim's Set-up Guide, colour-coded and leader-referenced.

The game also comes with a 11” by 17” set-up chart, printed on the same cardstock as the PACs. This sets out the starting locations of each unit. This is why the leaders of each regiment appear on the unit counters – Their names correspond to the various units’ starting positions on the set-up guide.

Personally, I really appreciate this kind of visual guide. I can cope with a typed list of unit names and numbered hex positions, but a set-up map like this just speeds up the pre-game prep significantly.  

Dice and baggies.

To wrap up, the game comes with some zip-loc baggies for sorting and storing the counters, and two dice, one white and one red, for reasons that I’ll get into in the AAR. I should have mentioned that, like most Legion games, the box ix on the lighter side compared to those used many larger publishers. That’s not to say it isn’t up to the task; so long as you don’t go sitting on them or leaving them in the rain, they’re certainly solid enough, and lighter for shipping.

------

So, that’s The Battle of Blenheim, 1704. I’m looking forward to getting this to the table, which is something I say a lot, but in this case the subject is right in my wheelhouse – my Honours thesis dealt with early Eighteenth-Century history and literature. With Christmas and the end of the year bearing down, I’m planning on playing through a handful of games, nearly all playing against myself, and Blenheim might just get pushed up to first off the rank for its clear ease of two-handed play. An After-Action Report will follow.