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.

  

  

Stripped Down for Parts: Rebel Fury: Battles of the American Civil War

 

 

So, I got mail on Friday. Two much-anticipated games that seem to have been on GMT’s P500 list for longer than I can recall, the reprint/revision of Mark Simonitch’s France ’40, 2nd Edition (GMT Games, 2024) and Mark Herman’s Rebel Fury: Battles of the American Civil War, Vol. 1 (GMT Games, 2024). While I’ve been looking forward to both for some time, France ’40 - as I understand it - is essentially a reprint with some new shine, while Rebel Fury is all new, sort of. I will get to France ’40, I promise, but lately I’ve been on a bit of a American Civil War kick, so today I want to talk about Rebel Fury, and there’s a lot to talk about.

Rebel Fury had its origin in Gettysburg, which first appeared in issue 32 of Roger McGowan’s C3I Magazine. Having never played Gettysburg, I can’t say with any authority what has changed or remained from the original game.

Simply put, the cover art for Rebel Fury is great. It’s clear and compelling, announcing the subject of the contents both verbally and visually. The three pairs of battles are each represented by three separate illustrations depicting an event from one of the battles.

The three pictures used on the cover are all lithographs produced by a company called Kurz and Allison, which specialised in sentimental, patriotic battle scene prints (among others) from the mid-1880s and into the early part of the next century. Frames lithographs were a popular wall adornment at the turn of the century in households that couldn’t affords paintings. The representations aren’t the most accurate of depictions of Civil War scenes and events, but Louis Kurz’s illustrations illicit a sense of heroism and triumph in the face of adversity, tinged with a little jingoistic pomp. Kurz, though Austrian by birth, was himself a veteran of the Union Army; perhaps he chose to highlight the positive aspects of the events portrayed because he didn’t want to expose an ignorant public to the true brutality of war, even forty years later. Or perhaps he just wanted to sell more lithographs.

The cover also announces that Rebel Fury is the first volume of a planned series, The Civil War Heritage Series. From what I've seen so far, the response to Volume 1 has been pretty positive, so I think we can count on at least a second set of battles to hit the P500 list before too long.

The box back offers details of the scope and style of play of the game, outlines some of the features of play and the battles covered, and states parameters of play; the game is firmly a two-player game (though special rules are included for playing the Battle of Fredericksburg as a single player introductory game) and that it is recommended to players 14 years and older. The unit scale in Rebel Fury is division/brigade scale with regimental detachments, The map is a half-mile to a hex, and turns represent half a day. The difficulty for the game is rated 3 out of 9, and I think going over the rules that I’d concur with this evaluation. I don’t think I’d meet with too many problems teaching Rebel Fury to an inexperienced gamer. The Solitaire rating is listed as 5 out of 9; apart from the introductory rules for Fredericksburg, there are no explicit solo rules or Rebel Fury, but I think an experienced lone player will have no issues double-handing this game.

Mark Herman is one of the most careful writers of rules I’ve experienced. Every sentence is crafted to deliver a point or to elucidate a possible point of confusion. If something is repeated, you know its important to the game, or more accurately, to the way in which the game is played. I think some designers slip into a little shorthand sometimes without realising it, and experienced gamers don’t see a problem in this because, well, we know what so-and -so means in this part. Somebody on YouTube – I forget who (maybe Ardwulf) – quipped that Herman’s response to nearly every rules-query on BGG regarding Pacific War, Second Edition (GMT Games, 2022), was “Go back and read the rules; it’s in there.”

I’m still on my first read-through of the rules for Rebel Fury; I’m in the habit of reading the rules to a new game twice through before popping some counters out and pushing them around on the board. The rulebook is not long, but I’m finding myself referring back constantly to the glossary of terms used in the game, which I had read already, but they warrant harking back to for clarification. The glossary (2.5 Definitions) does a lot of the heavy lifting in explaining a given term or notion in context of rule functions.

Rulebook sample page (extended movement example).

I’m making it sound like the rules are hard to read. They’re not. They are, as I’ve already suggested, clear and concise, and there is no trimmable fat here. It’s the concepts that are new (to me, at least). The booklet is twenty-four pages in length, but the actual rules come to a mere fifteen pages when you take out the four pages of extensive movement and combat examples, the comprehensive index, production credits, cover page and end-page with a handy Sequence of Play an Attack Resolution tables. The rules are presented in a familiar serif font at about 9-point at a guess; I find it easy enough to read without glasses. Both the Rulebook and playbook are printed in the heavy-ish weight matt-finish paper that will be familiar to fans of the GBACW or BoAR series games.

Playbook sample page (Battle of Chattanooga scenario brief).

The playbook also comes to a total of twenty-four pages. The first two pages cover some extra details concerning the scenarios generally (Setup conditions, Reinforcement, scenario-specific Victory Conditions, etc.), and the last couple of pages are given over to some in-depth designer notes about how and why Mr Herman put the game together the way he did. The rest is given over the scenarios (or, more accurately, Battles), of which, as mentioned previously, there are six. These each run from two to four pages, covering special rules and victory conditions, and set-up tables for each side, helpfully colour-coded.

There is an absence of historical prefacing to the scenarios. Some commentators have expressed their profound disappointment at this. I think it’s probably part of an effort to keep the page-count down, which in turn helps keep down the price of the finished product. Being a keen reader, I am more disappointed in the lack of a bibliography. I’m sure over the course of his career, Mr Herman has gathered a wealth of head-knowledge regarding many aspects of the American Civil War and the particular battles covered in this volume, but I’m almost as sure that the designer would have had at least a couple of historical treatments to hand for reference inn the construction of the scenarios. With any luck, maybe we’ll see an Inside GMT article offering some recommended reading covering the campaigns featured in Rebel Fury, and in particular, which books he kept in reach during the design process.

The scenarios are presented in a uniform format. Each begins with the name and date of the battle, notes on the battle-length in game turns and Artillery Points for each side, applicable Special Rules, and Victory Conditions for that scenario, and a set-up table for each side. Set-up has been made significantly easier by the inclusion of a separate set of troop counters for each battle – no having to sort through all the CSA counters for Early’s or Anderson’s brigades.

Both the Rulebook and Playbook are peppered with Design Notes. I’d encourage anyone taking the time to learn Rebel Fury to read through these. Mark Herman has taken efforts to make the game appealing to as broad a range of players as possible. The three pages of Designer’s Notes and the box-text throughout the shed some light on why certain decisions were made in the construction of the game experience. And, really, anything Herman has to say is worth noting.

Maps (good things come in threes).

Rebel Fury comes with three 22” x34” maps. Each map accommodates two battles; the first covers the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the second, Chickamauga and Chattanooga, and the third. Battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania.

Chickamauga-Chattanooga Map (apologies for the quality -
here's a close up so you can see some of the detail).

 

The lighting in the pictures don't to the maps justice, but you get the idea.

The maps are really quite lovely in their own right, and I fear my poor photography doesn’t do them, justice. The styling is reminiscent of civil and military maps from the period. The colour palette for the maps are soft greens and browns for the terrain, something close to an Aegean blue for the rivers and streams, and black for the roads, trails, railway lines and towns, all against pastel cream base which brings out the depth of the other colours.

The maps, along with all the counter art, are the work of Charlie Kibbler. Research for the maps was prepared by Kibler and the late Rick Barber, working closely with the designer. There is a touching tribute from Mark Herman to his colleague and friend on the last page of the Playbook.

Off-Map Display.

A map extension is included for the Battle of Fredericksburg scenario. The rules regarding this are covered in 6.4 Entering Off-Map Units, on page 9 of the Rulebook. I’ll probably talk more about this in the review, so for now I’ll just say that is looks interesting and it must add something to the game, or it wouldn’t be here.

Player's Aid Card (front and back).

The Player’s Aid Cards (the game comes with a duplicate pair) are single panels, double-sided, and contain all the charts and tables necessary for play on the front side, including an abbreviated Sequence of Play, Battle Rating Summary, HQ Removal Check Table, and the Tactical Position Determination and Attack Results Tables. The reverse side offers the game’s Terrain Effects Chart. Terrain can impact on a unit’s formation (compelling it to shift (flip) from Maneuver to Battle formation, disrupt a units Zones of Control/Influence, or offer a bonus in defence. That’s as deep into the tall grass as I’m going to get here; I’ll pick over the niceties more in the forthcoming review.

Combined Turn Track and Moves/Attacks display.

A shared display keeps track of the game turns elapsed in a give scenario, and remaining moves or attacks in a turn. Rebel Fury does a bunch of game functions in a simple but (to me at least) novel way. I don’t want to get too bogged down in the minutiae here – I’ll save that for the review – but suffice it to say, movement and combat actions get passed back and forth, starting with the player holding the initiative, until one player passes. At that point, the non-passing player can also pass, ending the phase, or they can establish a number of remaining actions based on the status of their forces and a die roll (with a ceiling of nineteen).

Two counter sheets (with full unit sets for each battle).

Rebel Fury has been specifically designed as a low counter-density game; the unit and distance scales helps in this regard. The game comes with two counter-sheets. These are mostly 9/16” counters representing units and HQs, fortifications and fieldworks. Then there are a small number of smaller, 1/2" counters. Mostly these represent smaller detached units (regiment-sized) as detailed in the scenario. As mentioned earlier, there are complete sets of Federal and CSA troop counters for each scenario in the game. As mentioned on the back of the box, it would feasibly be possible to play three separate games with five friends at the same time (though you might want to photocopy the turn track sheet so you’re not getting in each other’s way). This is of course, sheer fantasy; most gamers have enough trouble finding two players available at the same time for a game of Churchill (GMT Games, 2015), but it’s a nice idea.

Unit and HQ counters, Front (Maneuver Formation).

Unit and HQ counters, Back (Battle Formation - not the unmounted cavalry).

The counters are quite attractive. The Union is represented in a muted blue, the Confederates in a beige. In fact, the colour palette for the whole production is forgivingly downplayed. There’s enough differentiation between the forces that there is no danger of confusion, but you’re not getting slapped in the face by an onslaught of bright colours, which I garners my thankful appreciation.

The basic unit is the Division, and these have two states; Maneuver Formation and Battle Formation (see the close-up photos). When in Maneuver formation, a unit can move up to four hexes (double that in an activation if they continue on roads or rails), but some terrains and enemy Zones of Influence will stop a unit in its tracks and require it to change to Battle formation, ending its movement for that turn. Some terrains will stop a unit and switch it to Battle Formation as well. While in Battle formation a unit can only move one hex per activation, but they’re ready for battle, so there’s that.

Yes, there are spurs, but they're tiny.

On the subject of the counters, these little guys come out so cleanly – without even resorting to a craft knife – that I’m considering the wisdom corner-clipping. Who am I kidding; I’ll probably end up clipping them anyway, but I’m going to play a game or two unclipped first, just for the nostalgia value, if nothing else.

All in all, Rebel Fury promises to be a playable brigade-level game of broad scope, and simple enough to teach through play. One aspect of particular appeal to me was mentioned in the online description (but not on the box – though I can understand not wanting to commit too ardently to this), that at least some of the scenarios will play out in an hour or so. Regardless, this is a game that appeals to me in so many levels, not the least that it should play out quickly, one everyone involved has their heads around the rules and stick to the Sequence of Play. As always, the a PDF rules are available online on the Rebel Fury product page of the GMT website, so I’d encourage you to have a look at those. 

A review will be forthcoming (as usual, after I've managed to get this to the table three or four times). In the meantime, thanks for reading this far, and good gaming.

Erratum

After posting, I realised I'd neglected to mention a crucial component of the game (and one less crucial). But what could be more war-gamey than adding errata after publication?

Rebel Fury comes with two ten-sided dice, one blue, one grey, as befitting an ACW game. A roll of 0 is treated as a zero result, not a ten. The dice pack also includes a special red six-sided die, printed with explosions on three faces, and a weary or stumbling soldier silhouette adorning the other three. This is "used exclusively in retreat situations in certain terrain types". 

The game also comes with baggies enough to accommodate each force in each battle separately, and divide the marker counters up in a useful way. I've always wondered how companies come to the number of bags appropriate for a game, and how they ensure the right number goes into each box. Do they weigh them on extremely delicate scales? Do they get the work-experience kid to sit down and count fifteen and only fifteen bags out 3,000 times? 

It should be pointed out that Rebel Fury comes in a two-inch box, deep enough to accommodate all the materials and a couple of counter trays, if you're more a counter tray person than a baggie person. What surprised me a little was the game comes without an insert. These are added to games to keep the components from moving around too much in the box during shipping, which may cause some bruising. This is probably more of an issue with games incorporating mounted maps. My copy came all the way to Australia and arrived in perfect condition, so I don't think it's an issue in this case.