INTRODUCTION
This is a review/explanation of the Blucher basic game which was just published by Sam Mustafa in February , 2015.
I have played the starter scenario which pits four corps of Austrians against an equal sized force of French somewhere along the Danube river in 1809.
Note this is just a review of the basic game. There are advanced rules and a pre-battle campaign system that I haven't played and so won't comment on.
RULES DESCRIPTION
The scale of the game is "grand tactical." Each unit on the table is the equivalent of around a brigade of troops.
All units are composed of one base and are on the same size base regardless of type (infantry, cavalry, artillery) and regardless of strength. The game leaves it to you to choose the base size you'd like to use, although 3" wide is the default (no default depth is specified).
All distances in the game are expressed in base widths (BW). So, the larger the base width you use, the larger the space you'll need – and vice versa.
The number of miniatures or scale of miniatures on the base is entirely irrelevant. Use a many or few as you like. In fact, you could play without miniatures entirely just by using unit cards which are available for purchase (cards for the Waterloo campaign are currently available) or which you can easily make yourself.
There are no formations (column, line, square) as you may be used to in other Napoleonic games. Decisions as to what formation to adopt, location of individual battalions, squadrons, etc. is deemed to take place at a level of command below.
Units can have special characteristics. Some might have particularly effective skirmishers, some might be better when initiating close combat, etc. Special characteristics are denoted by an icon on the unit card.
Each infantry or cavalry unit is rated for "Elan" (i.e. strength points or hits). A typical infantry unit will have 6 Elan. Grenadiers have 7. A unit can take "fatigues" (hits) from firing or close combat. These hits reduce the Elan rating . Once a unit's Elan rating reaches 0, it's broken and removed from the table. There are boxes on the bottom of a unit's card to track its Elan rating. Just cross off the boxes as it takes hits (you could also use other method of tracking it of course).
Artillery is different. It doesn't have Elan, it has shots. (5 seems to be the usual number). Each time an Artillery shoots or fights in close combat it loses one shot. Once it's out of shots, it retires from the field (you just remove it from the table).
Units also have a movement rating. Infantry and foot artillery normally move 2 BW if in the open, cavalry 4 BW. If moving through difficult terrain or making what's called a "Difficult Move" (explained below), they move 1 BW and 2 BW respectively.
The basic game consists of 30 turns-15 for each side. You win by breaking the enemy army's morale. Army Morale is equal to 1/3 of its units. If 1/3 of the units break, the Army breaks. If that doesn't happen by the time the battle ends, the winner is the side that holds the objectives. The objectives are placed by the player and/or dictated by the scenario. If neither side has the objectives, it's a draw.
One interesting feature is that you can order units to Retire. If a unit is far away enough from the enemy you can just remove it from the table. It's deemed to have retreated out of the battle. This is useful when you have a unit with one or two Elan left and you want to prevent it from breaking and going against your Army Morale.
Turns are divided into a number of phases, played in order. It's IGO/UGO—i.e side A plays its turn, then Side B plays its turn, etc. When it's side A's turn, side A is the active player and side B is the passive player, and vice versa.
The first phase is called the "Information Phase." In this phase the active player can discover concealed enemy units that are visible and close enough (4 BW).
All units start the game "concealed". A unit that is "concealed" is denoted by keeping its card face down so the enemy can't see what type/strength it is. There are two advantages to being concealed. First, it's harder to hit a concealed unit when shooting at it. Second, a unit that is concealed can use Reserve Movement. Reserve Movement allows a unit to move up to 12 BW in any direction or combination of directions as long as the unit stays out of sight of the enemy or at least 4 BW from the enemy at all times. A unit is automatically revealed when it does this (or when it fires or is otherwise activated to act) so it only gets to use Reserve Movement once (once revealed, units stay revealed—they can't become concealed again).
The second phase is the Movement Phase. This is where the Command and Control rules come in. In Blucher you use a supply of Momentum (MO) to activate you units and have them move. The MO point pool is randomly generated each turn by rolling 3D6.
The twist is that it's your opponent that rolls the dice and he doesn't tell you how many points you've got to work with. So, you have to play a guessing game and prioritize your actions. You never know when you'll run out of MO. When your activation costs equal or exceed your MO pool, your movement is over for the turn.
There are three ways to activate your units. This rule is fairly similar to DBA or DBM, so if you've played them you'll have some idea how this works.
First, you can activate units by Corps. Doing this you select a number of units from the same Corps and that are all within 1 BW of another unit in the "Force" (you don't have to move the whole Corps-just the units from that Corps you want to be in the "Force". These units can them be moved at the cost of 1 MO each. So, a "Force" is an ad hoc group that can change from turn to turn. Second, you can activate unit's individually. Doing this costs 2 MO each. Finally, you can activate units using your Commander. You put your Commander marker almost anywhere you like and any of your units within 2 BW of that marker can activate. Doing it this way also immediately ends your movement, so you use this only when you think you'll soon be out of MO.
Note that these rules are different from the norm in that none of this requires that units start within the command radius of a commander, or stay within the radius of a commander (commander aren't even represented by figures-cards in the game) or that units do the same thing, end up within 1 BW of units in the Force after moving, etc.
Once you've activated a unit you can move it. Movement is pretty restrictive. A unit can either pivot any direction and then move in a straight line –called a Simple Move- or can pivot at the beginning or end of its move, but still move in a straight line (called a Difficult Move). A Difficult Move is at a reduced rate (e.g. Infantry doing a Simple Move go 2 BW, doing a Difficult Move they go 1 BW). Aside from the pivots, there's no deviation from straight line (no oblique, wheeling, etc.).
Friendly units can freely interpenetrate friendly's with no move reduction or other penalty. Friendly's can never interpenetrate an enemy unit.
An activated infantry unit can also choose to become "Prepared" instead of moving . Being Prepared gives a unit a bonus in close combat against cavalry. It also makes the unit an easier target for artillery. A unit that becomes prepared can still fire (it doesn't count as moving) and its firepower isn't affected.
Also, once you get within 1 BW of an enemy unit's front your unit is Engaged. At that point is can either move so that it's no longer Engaged or Charge. If an enemy units gets very close to your front it can in essence lock your unit in place since your unit won't be able to turn around without interpenetrating the enemy. So the units have to either sit there facing each other or charge into contact.
Speaking of charges, these allow your unit to pivot up to 45 degrees and then move in a straight line to contact an enemy unit up to the unit's full movement allowance-terrain doesn't slow it down. Again, no change of direction, oblique etc. after the initial pivot. Also, your charging unit's center point has to be pointing at some portion of your charge target. So no voluntary "clipping" (although this can happen inadvertently). This can make it hard to get more than one attacking unit onto a defender.
The next phase is the Fire Phase. Units that moved can't fire. But there is no MO cost to fire. It's free. Range is up to 2 BW for infantry and up to 8 BW for artillery. Infantry fire at 1 BW is considered volleying, and is more effective, and artillery fire at 2 BW is close range which is more effective. There are target priority rules at close range-essentially shoot at the closest target.
The fire mechanism is simple. The firing unit rolls a D6 for each point of Elan it has left. If a firer has a penalty, you halve the number of dice. If the firer has a bonus, it gets to treat one 5 rolled as a hit whereas it normally requires a 6 to hit. Penalties and bonuses are assessed based on the situation and/or the firing units special attributes. For example, artillery shooting at close range gets a bonus. Infantry skirmishing fire gets a penalty. Another example is that all French infantry in the starter scenario have the "skirmisher" attribute which give them a bonus when the unit is using skirmish fire (between 1BW and 2 BW away).
Each hit causes an infantry or cavalry target to lose one Elan. Artillery is handled differently. Shooting at artillery will either cause it to retreat or if really bad retire from the field entirely.
Combat is also simple. Each side rolls a number of D6 equal to its current Elan number. The units' attributes and situation may give it extra dice or take away dice. Each 4+ rolled is a success. For example, a unit with the "shock" trait gets an extra dice. A unit that's in difficult terrain loses one dice. Compare the number of successes to see who won.
If the attacker's score is greater than the defender's, the attacker takes a hit, the defender takes a number of hits equal to the difference, and the defender retreats 2 BW facing away from the enemy. If the attacker loses he takes 2 hits and retreats 2 BW, but ends up facing the enemy. The defender takes 1 hit. As with firing, if a unit takes hits that reduce it zero Elan you just remove it from the table.
Note that there are different modifiers and results for cavalry v. infantry combats and for infantry/cavalry v. artillery combats. Also, where there are multiple units on one side with only one on the other, the single unit has to allocate its dice for purposes of determining which unit takes hits (the outcome of the combat is considered as a whole, however).
So, Close Combat is less risky for the attacker. The worst that will happen is that he'll end up taking 2 hits and will have retreated facing the enemy. By contrast, if the defender loses he'll take hits equal to the difference in scores and will retreat facing away from the enemy.
Note that units can retreat through friendlies, with no effect on the retreating unit or the unit retreated through. A retreating unit can't stop on top of a friendly though, so when troops are close you'll often find that your units have to retreat far more than just 2 BW.
The Combat Phase is followed by the Status Phase. In this phase you check your Army Morale to see if your army withdraws (explained before) and the other side rolls the MO dice for the next turn.
PURELY SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS
Blucher is well-written and clearly explained. All of the questions you're likely to have have been anticipated and are answered in the text.
I only have the pdf version, so I can't comment first hand on the production quality of the paper version, but I understand it's very nice. In sum, this is a professionally produced set of rules both in content and presentation.
I don't think there is very much new here. To me it seems to use concepts that I first encountered in DBA and Volley & Bayonet (for all I know those two rules used concepts that had appeared in rules published before them). This is an observation, not a criticism. That being said, there are some unusual twists that I think improve on the basic concepts from earlier rules.
It did feel to me that unit geometry was important. Since movement direction is fairly restrictive, and since when charging you've got to get your center point lined up with the target, you've got to line things up right a turn or two in advance. Also, the ability to lock units in place by getting very close to them so that they can only charge you or sit there felt a bit "gamey" to me. This dynamic again reminded me of DBA.
I think the most novel thing about the game is one I haven't tried yet. That's the pre-battle campaign game. This is a short pre-game game that's designed to generate a battle situation. The campaign ends when a battle is generated. It reminds me of the pre-game sequence that a lot of the Peter Pig rules have.
What it does is make it possible to have games that have uneven forces and where reinforcements can arrive. Briefly, you play out a short campaign on a map. You divide your army into columns, they're represented by counters on the map, and you maneuver until a battle is generated. Depending on how you've moved your columns about on the map you might end up outnumbered when the battle starts but may be reinforced in the course of the game by nearby columns. The rules promise the pre-game campaign aspect takes only 20-30 minutes, and from a read through at least, that seems plausible.