Stripped Down for Parts: La Bataille de Hanau (Vive l’Empereur series)

 

 

The last fortnight or so has been a perfect storm of arrivals. Seven games arriving this quarter, and two more in transit, and we’re not half-way through August. But right now, I want to focus on one of these, because it’s something I’ve been anticipating grabbing for a while, and when the opportunity arose, I couldn’t not get it.

Legion Wargames had a sale recently, with a number of excellent titles being offered for significant discounts. I would have liked to take the opportunity to fill a couple of perceived gaps in my collection – Dien Bien Phu: the Final Gamble (Legion Wargames, 2016) and Nemesis: Burma, 1944 (Legion Wargames, 2018), among others – but alas, the budget would only stretch to a single game this time, so it had to be La Bataille de Hanau (Legion Wargames, 2021), the tenth and most recent addition to Didier Rouy’s Vive l’Empereur! series.*

Like a lot of the Legion games I already own, La Bataille de Hanau comes in a light but well-constructed box. Light is good, because it meant the postage cost to Australia was only US$20.00, which matched the (discounted) cost of the game. In all, game and freight set me back a shade over A$60.00, which is about half of what I'd expect to be paying at a FLGS, assuming I could even find a copy. One happy customer.

The cover features a painting, Charge of the Grenadiers-à-Cheval of the Imperial Guard, battle of Hanau,1813 by Richard Knötel, a German artist best known for his Uniformenkunde, an exhaustive visual study of European military uniforms over three centuries to 1914, but who was also an accomplished painter of military scenes.

Box back

The box back presents most of the map, along with a brief historical consideration of the situation presented and a visual guide to how the unit and leader counters function in game.  The Vive l’Empereur! series presents a smaller formation focus than many Napoleonic systems, with the Regiment being the essential building block of the game. Each strength point represents around 300 men, and the map-scale is 250 meters to a hex (so roughly 6 ½ hexes make up a mile). Turns represent 30 minutes, and we are warned that the game can take between two and eight hours to play through to completion.

The play guide suggests the game's complexity is about Medium, and sets the Solitaire Suitability at Medium-High. I think I'd agree with both of these appraisals. While I think the Vive l'Empereur! rules make for a better two-player experience, I can't see anybody experiencing particular difficulties double-handing the game, especially with the reduced scope of the Hanau situation.

The Rulebook. Napoleon salutes you, brave soldier.

The Vive l’Empereur series rules are printed in full colour on a medium-weight, low-gloss paper stock, and runs to forty pages. Of these, the front and back covers are illustrated with extracts from the left (front) and right (back) of the painting, Napoleon saluting the 12th Cuirassier regiment, by Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891).

Rulebook - sample spread.

The rules have been honed over the nine previous publications, and the current configuration presented here is version 3.3 (June 2020). The booklet is set out in a readable is divided into Standard and Advanced rules. The Standard Rules run to roughly 23 pages (a column on the first page offers a clear Table of Contents, and the rules are sensibly set out and quite navigable). The designer recommends mastering the Standard rules before embarking on incorporating the any or all of the Advanced rules. The Advanced rules are designed to introduce more “realism” into the action, with rules for the stratification of command and control, strategic deployment, and the introduction of time limits (with penalties for tardiness).

The four-page Special Rules brochure.

The Special Rules included for Hanau are more of a brochure, a mere four pages long; in reality, just two and a half pages pertaining to game play. Two scenarios are on offer; the initial action on October 30^th, and Wrede’s follow-up attack on the 31^st. The special rules amount to barely a page and a half, to there is very little extra load to bring to the essential game rules. Rules-wise, Hanau should run as a fairly clean game, though if history is anything to go by, the play will undoubtedly become heated.

The map of Hanau and its environs.

The game map is a standard 22" by 34"  in size, printed on a a descent weight of gloss paper, and is truly a thing of beauty. This is a feature of all the Legion-released Vive l’Empereur games, which are all rendered by one of my favourite game artists, Charlie Kibler. The colour-palette is subdued, cast in autumnal tones appropriate for an October battle. Features are clear without being obtrusive, and the overall appearance highlights the units in play. But the detail I really love it that every feature is presented in a perspective view oriented toward the bottom of the map-sheet. Each tree, bridge and building appears to possess height. While the roads, rivers and creeks appear flat, this is relieved by the aligning trees dotted along the banks and roadsides. It’s conceit that fits well with the subject and the era.

Hanau comes with just a single counter sheet (165 counters in all). The units are split slightly in favour of the French (fifty units to forty Austrian units). Historically the battle of Hanau didn’t end well for Wrede the Austrians. Given the Austrians are on the defensive, this should be a fairly even match for two players at roughly the same level.

The counters are all elongated, 1” by 1/2”. So far as I’m aware, the Vive l’Empereur! games were the first to present their unit counters in Line on one side and in March Column on the other, with artillery batteries either limbered for movement or unlimbered for business (of course, this is getting a broader showing with Mark Herman’s Civil War Heritage series). The remainder of the counters represent Leaders, various administrative aids and mnemonic reminders of the status of affected units in play.

Unit Explainer and Terrain Key card.

Terrain Effects Chart.

The game comes with a selection of Player’s Aid Cards, each single sided. The first is a Key card; the top portion has a visual explainer of how to read the unit and Leader counters, the larger lower portion presents an enlarged Terrain Key demonstrating (and showing off) the various terrain features of the map. This is separate to the Terrain Effects Chart (the second chart), a matrix listing the varying terrain types by name and indicating their effects or limitations on in-game actions of units.

Aide de jeu pour le combat

There are two copies of the Combat Resolution PAC included in the game. These present the Fire and Melee Tables as well as a Formation Table. The Fire and Melee Tables are fairly self-explanatory; a Fire attack is based on a single die roll with modifiers (as applicable), against the Fire strength of the attacking unit. The success a Melee attack relies again on a modified die roll indexed to the ratio of Attacker to Defender melee points. Combat is potentially brutal, but, as in most things, fortune favours the well-prepared.

The Formation Table is a one-stop shop covering the basics of movement, manoeuvre, and combat for each kind of unit fielded in the game. Everything presented here will probably become second nature after a handful of games with the system, but it’s nice to see it easy to hand for newbies.

The crucial Formation Tables for tracking losses on each side's units, and a Turn Track at
the bottom. I think this card is dry-erasable, but I'd be inclined to either make copies
to use or to put the card in a stiff plastic slick and write on that instead. 

The last Player Aid Card is the most crucial, for this offers both the tracking of cohesion loss of the units, and the Turn Track for keeping track of how long you have before loss of light brings the bellicosity to a close. I like how points loss is tracked off map; Steve Ruwe offered this as an option in his game, The Late Unpleasantness: Two Campaigns to Take Richmond (Compass Games, 2019). Here it also serves as a handy reminder of which units fall under whose command. The only difficulty that might arise comes from having both armies on a single tracking sheet, but this may be a bonus for teaching new players the system; either the mentor can keep score for both, or guide the initiate in the practice. 

Box, dice and baggies.. And the ubiquitous blue paper sheet.

Finally, the game comes with two dice, one lobster red, one uniform bleu, and a couple of zip-loc bags with which to separate the warring formations. Also, Legion always – or nearly always – packs their games with a sheet of blue typewriter paper in the bottom of the box. I don’t know why. I suspect it may be to prevent wear from the map rubbing against the bottom of the box when in transit, but I can’t say with any certainty. If anyone does know, please leave a comment.

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Writing up this unboxing has reminded me that I never got around to posting an unboxing of my other Vive l'Empereur! volume, Quatre Batailles en Espagne (Legion Wargames, 2015). I'm pretty sure I still have all the component photographs filed somewhere from when the game first arrived, so I may have to do an exposition of that volume as well. 

I'm keen to get to playing Vive l’Empereur!, but I have been waiting for Hanau to have a more manageable starting point for introducing others to the game. I really think it offers that; not necessarily a short game, but one with less unwieldy forces and command structures, in a more constrained area.

 

* I had cause to correspond with M. Rouy recently, and he mentioned that Volume 11 in the series, La Bataille de Wargram (Legion Games, ~2026), should be released either this year or early in the next, which gives us all something else to look forward to.