From: Chuck Lietz Subject: La Revolution Francaise Jon et al, I just picked up La Revolution Francaise by Azure Wish and have some initial thoughts to share. If anyone else has it and has played it though feel free to join in. COMPONENTS The game components are what has become the fairly standard high quality affairs that anyone who has purchased a product from AWE will be familiar with. The box is kind of odd shaped and is somewhere between a book-case and a gamette but has some nice "heroic" period paintaings on the front that seem quite appropriate. It comes with three countersheets with oversized counters but herein is my first rub. First some of my counters on sheet one are mis-printed so that some of the verbage is cut off if I punch them. Not the end of the world but still midly annoying. The bigger problems though are that while the counters are very physically appealing, they have some annoying functionality problems. Some of the fonts chosen are REALLY tiny and make it tough to read without picking the coutners up for a close inspection. Some of the color choices were well, intriguing and I still can't read the red on purple counters in particular. Overall though, the counters superior artistic quality is so overwhelming that I can look past the flaws from above. Some examples of what I mean are nice period portraits of the counters of major political figures and some great mini-paintings complete with nationalist flags for some of the foreign army markers. The map is a nicely done period map of France overlaid with provincial boundaries in a dark brown for the area movement that the system uses. Overall, it works well I think and seems appropriate for the period as I can with little imagination see the major players peering over a map very much like the one you are presented with to access the military positions of this time. There are also the necessary tracks and some other nice sketches and drawings for some of the other places such as Paris, Prison, and Madame Guillotine although I would have liked some of the other game tables on the map but all in all, good marks on the map as well. The rules and tables are functional and while an improvement over Rossynia and EU as far as translation skills are concerned, still leave no small amount of ambiguity in areas. While I don't pretend to be an expert on this game by any stretch, they certainly could have went for some more examples and less period quotes (although they were fun to read, they occasionally make the rules portion hard to pick up as they come up pretty frequently). I also think this game would have been very well served if a sample game or at least a couple of turns would have been included as in my first and only playing, we all felt like we didn't really have much clue as to where to even get started. GAMEPLAY Well, we only got to start one game and after a couple hours which included one false start when we noticed we were reading the alliance charts backwards (gulp!), the gameplay and system is well, different. The system calls for 4-6 players although I think it would play best with 6 with each player representing a "political current". They are Royalist, Feuillants (constitutional monarchy, strong middle class), Marais (Somewhere in the middle between monarchists and republicans), Gironde (middle class Republicans), Montagne (Strong democrats), and Sans-Cullottes (Yah know, Les Mis and that bunch? Blue collar worker types). Game turns are divided into 6 month turns with a historical and open scenario. Each current has certain assets that are used to further enter their agenda; personalities, national assembly deputies, regional controls, armies, and assignats (money). The game system itself is divided into eight game turns each with many phases under it. Most of these play fairly quickly and like most diplomatic games like Republic of Rome, Pax Brittanica, Diplomacy, etc., it really depends on how well the players interact to determine how long things take. I don't have time to go into too much more depth and will leave that to someone who has played more than I but overall, the game has quite a bit of potential. The system I think has a big plus in that most of the currents usually have a natural ally and enemy with the others who can sometimes be trusted to work together. The way the game plays though forces all players to consider making strange alliances depending upon the variety of current events and the acts of those in power much more so that any of the aforementioned games. However, maybe it is just me but the game seems to have a bit of a learning curve that will take some time to get used to. If you like diplomatically based games or ones like them, LRF is pretty close to a must have if you have enough players who are interested. If you're on the fence, it is a nice change of pace and while I haven't played it nearly enough to give a wholly unqualified opinion, it seems like it has quite a bit of potential and is very phyically impressive. If anyone has tried this PBEM let me know as I'd like to see how well/easy it was to adapt to this format. Chuck Lietz >Also saw "La Revolution Francaise" by a European maker. Anyone know anything >about this? Is it different than the (TimJim???) product I saw demo'ing at >a convention last year? > >Jon.