Tuesday night we finally got Clash of Monarchs on the table. I've been looking forward to this ever since I read Bob's designer notes. We took a crack at the 1759 start date since that had all four seats engaged from the get-go. As Austria, I opened with a Daun-led relief of Dresden, assiduously leaving a trail of 1SP breadcrumbs to guard against panty raids on my supply line. Scott had Henry stand and fight. With a +7 DRM, I needed an eight or better on 2d6 to rout the Prussians but I came up a pip short. Henry was merely demoralized and all I managed to do was attract the attention of some guy named Frederick.

In the west, Campoverdi's French sparred with Natus' Anglo-Allied troops in and around Münster, with Ferdinand eventually driving the French back. Meanwhile, the Russian behemoth slowly gathered momentum as it rumbled through East Prussia. That's a 30+ SP juggernaut without much of a target in the early days of this particular scenario.

In the south, Scott had Freddie swing around to slap Henry's force into shape (a larger good order force hooking up with a smaller demoralized force makes the combined force good order) and threaten my position in Dresden. Freddie was positioned to cut my supply line, and a subsequent Fortunes of War chit pull knocked Daun into a Short Supply state. I took advantage of a voluntary Retrograde Movement to fall back through Pirna toward a friendly depot. Scott responded by burning a few barns in Moravia, but my plucky grenzers in the theater box picked off one Prussian light unit, saving the region from complete devastation.

I then upgraded Loudon to his full starry army-leader persona and moved to liberate Silesia from beneath the boot of Prussian autocracy. Okay, I was only offering them Austrian autocracy in return, but it's the thought that counts. The game concluded with a battle between Loudon and Zieten, who tried and failed to evade. Zieten was routed and we called it a night.

After a few hours with this game, I have to say I found it pretty heavy sledding. The discrete elements each work fine in isolation but taken as a whole it feels klunky and procedurally intense. What saves it is the sound intuition beneath each major mechanic - the components all make sense in their structure and application. Unfortunately the integration of those mechanics is less than smooth. The rich nougaty goodness of the ops engine is the reward for all the hard procedural work, and to be fair I think some of that process is its own reward as well (the Kleine Krieg, the economic and political metagames). I love the heart of the game, with the tension between the relative mobility of the field forces and the ponderous, precarious nature of supply. I personally feel the work necessary to reach that heart is worth the effort, but around the table views were decidely mixed on that point.

I'd peg CoM as a couple clicks up the complexity scale from For The People, maybe up in Empires in Arms territory. In a surprisingly crowded field (Frederick the Great, Friedrich, Prussia's Defiant Stand, Seven Years World War) this game stands out as the 'heavy' option. I was looking for chrome, and boy have I found it. History-wise, it feels okay so far with the caveat that field forces feel awfully zippy. The mechanics all work to the extent we tested them. Whether it's *too* heavy will be a matter of personal taste. I'm willing to give it another go, perhaps two-player with an early war start. Bob and Chris invested a lot of effort in this and demand the same from the player - I'm still optimistic the gameplay reward justifies the investment.

Dutch Raspler, who observed a bit of our game, read the above and asked:

Briefly, how do the new mechanics simulate the 7YW? Maybe it would be simplest to ask how it differs from TNW...

Supply dominates operations, particularly offensive operations. You need to trace back to a Major Depot (MD), either directly or via Forward Depots (FDs). During each turn, you first check the supply status of your forces. If they are in a Short or Critical Supply State, they may either voluntarily fall back on their supply lines (a Retrograde Movement), or attempt to roll against their initiative to remain beyond the pale. Should they fail this roll, they have to make the Retro Move anyway. The supply throw is four MPs from the MDs, three from the FDs, while the pokiest leader moves five MPs and the better leaders seven or so. Thus you see you easily get way out in front of your supply. Pity the poor Russian juggernaut, rumbling out of the east with but a single FD to trace all the way back to Mother Russia.

Scott chose to use Freddie to snip my supply line, but he could also have conducted a Kleine Krieg supply raid to disrupt my supply state. You tote up your light troops in the theater box (an offmap display), compare it to the enemy's, have a little light-vs-light tussle, and then resolve on-map effects. These can include burning crops (incrementing the 'forage points' in a region with the ultimate goal of Devastation), disrupting an FD (so it's no longer a valid source) or dinging the supply state of a field force. Short and Critical Supply states damage your speed and ability to fight effectively, and leave you vulnerable to attrition.

Movement itself is usually via card-driven activation to fire up a leader with an initiative equal or lower than the card value (1-3). Some card events are effectively activations, like Major Campaign (two or three activations, I think) and the more restrictive Converging Attack, where activated forces have to hit the same target. Once activated, forces move up to the leader's MP value, which can be affected by size of the force, presence of artillery, and possible Forced Marching. Forces may be intercepted like in other CDGs. Once entering an enemy space, the opposing force may attempt to withdraw. Interestingly, if they fail to do so, combat is *not* mandatory. The better-initiative force has the option to attack, and if he declines, then the other force may attack; if neither attacks, nothing happens.

In addition to the standard activation, you can move a small force (four or five SPs) without a card, and if you play no card at all, you may move any one leader and his troops on a four MP 'Admin March' which doesn't allow combat but gives you some options if you are out of cards.

Mixed up in all this are sieges - they may only be initiated by an activated force that did not fight this particular turn, so it takes some doing to set them up. So, even though I chest-bumped Henry off Dresden, Daun couldn't set siege until the following turn. Once a siege is established, you get one crack a turn, but activated forces can burn some supply to get two rolls a turn. It seems many of the campaigns will turn on fortresses, as they did historically, so this is a section worth a careful read.

Why does this feel Seven Years' War-ish? I think the supply/operation interaction gives it that 18th century Enlightenment vibe, along with the positional nature of maneuvering around and between fortresses. The Kleine Krieg is an important part of the flavor as well, but suffers somewhat in that KK actions come at the expense of field ops. I won't get into the econ and political stuff here, but suffice to say it's more involved than TNW.

This might stretch your patience for 'brief' descriptions, but I forgot to discuss combat. There are two CRTs, one for Intense battles and the other for Measured battles. Certain leaders have red combat values on attack or defense or both - if the red value corresponds to their 'side' in the battle, it is resolved on the Intense table. This basically means more casualties. The Intense table is 2d6 with up to +7 in DRMs. The Measured table is 1d6, with up to +5 in DRMs. DRMs are generated by the capabilities of the leaders (Freddie is a 4-3, attack-defense), Tactics chits, cavalry superiority/inferiority, artillery, supply state, presence of a fortress, and maybe a couple other things.

Each side rolls for its effect on the opposing force, with the result in the form of x D y[+][*], where x is the loss in SPs inflicted, y is the 'D' result for possible army Demoralization/Rout, '+' indicates loss of an artillery step, and '*' indicates a leader casualty. The D value is compared to an army's Endurance level; if it equals its level, the army is Demoralized, if it exceeds it, that army is Routed. Certain leaders enhance their forces Endurance in battle - Freddie for instance improves his army's Endurance on the attack, while Charles improves Austrians on defence. Demoralization is inconvenient but you can recover from it without much trouble, but a Rout affects Monarchical Will (think Strategic Will from FtP) and leaves you vulnerable to follow-on abuse.

This is all pretty involved, with a need to pick through the composition of respective forces for infantry, artillery and cav breakdowns. Ah, but not all cav counts! Light cav only counts as SPs, not for cav superiority! Unless of course it's a Hussar or Chevauleger, in which case it does count! The Tactics chits provide yet another little subgame to sort through, with some chits providing positive DRMs, others giving negative DRMs to the other side, some dependent on leadership die rolls, others just inert throwaways. Not quite La Guerre de L'Empereur 1st Edition, but quite a bit heavier than TNW.

For all that, I like the combat engine - the Intense/Measured split nicely reflects the varying character of the war across the different fronts. No French or Anglo-Allied leader has a red combat rating, so warfare along the Rhine tends to be a stately, civilized affair, at least until a barbaric Prussian leader with a thirst for blood arrives on the scene.

I feel I've just scratched the surface of this game. It will take a cycle or two just to burn in the basic mechanics, and then we can move on to grasping gameplay itself. A little grounding in the period certainly helps here; Scott DiBerardino (sdiberar) was great in providing the context for our game and I think it's worth anyone's while to read up a bit to get the most out of the presentation. The immediate options at scenario start are pretty clear but I look forward to formulating medium and long term plans, cooking up some classic forking dilemmas, and the like. There is a lot to digest here but as I've said a couple times above, I really think there is a substantial reward for the effort. I hope this write-up gives you at least a sense of the appeal, and encourage anyone with an interest in the game or the topic to check out Bob K.'s designer's notes:

http://www.gmtgames.com/t-CoMDesignNotes.aspx

See you on the fields of Silesia!

JR