From: Christopher Salander <salander@cadence.com>
Subject: Montcalm & Wolfe board game review

Montcalm & Wolfe  from Markham Designs

Review by Chris Salander

   It has been a long time since I have tried a
board game and found it to be plainly broken.  Unfortunately,
that is the case with the desktop published (DTP)
game _Montcalm and Wolfe_.  I like DTP games, and have
been buying and playing a lot of them lately.  They
are cheaper, easier and faster to play, and take up
less space.  And M&W is exceptional in that it has die cut
counters.  But the mechanisms should work, and in this
case, allow players to refight the French & Indian War.

Attrition
The first major flaw is attrition.  Any stack of units
that is in any hex that does not have a settlement or
fort must roll for attrition *every* turn.  The odds are
that you will lose *30%* of each force in one turn (one month).  This
is unrealistic and devastating.  Apparently the playtesters
brought this up to the designer, because he mentions it
in his notes, but he is defensive and takes the attitude
that he is correct and you just have to live with it.

If you follow the designer's advice and confine your activities
to routes where attrition will not come into effect, then
except for a British amphibious assault on Quebec, the only
places the French and British can come to grips are in the
Mohawk and Hudson river valleys.  Send your troops anywhere
else and they will disappear.  This renders most of the
full color map useless.  Then the game becomes a contest between
two pistons - who can push the most troops up the same route.

Finally, even if you are careful and avoid attrition by
keeping to settlements and forts, if you lose a battle and
get thrown out of a hex, the odds are that your force is going to 
start the next turn on an undeveloped square and lose 30% more
troops to attrition.

Suggested fix: 1) Use attrition only in the winter, and on
stacks with 6 or more units. 2) Limit the warm weather turn losses to 
one unit per stack per turn, removing the first unit to fail its roll.

Units are regiments.

Indians
The second major flaw is how the Indians are handled.  They
never get into the fight.  Why?  First, you can only roll for
the alliance of one tribe/counter each turn, with only about a 30%
chance of success.  So the Indians enter the game very infrequently.
Second, after each winter the Indians go home and act as if
they don't know you come next Spring.  Third, although an Indian
unit gets a free move the first time it arrives on the board,
most of the Indian entry points are more than one move away
from French and British settlements and forts.

As a result, unless a player moves a leader to go pick up the
Indian unit (which requires a hard-to-get initiative point) or
spends an initiative point to move the unit by itself, the Indian unit
sits there and rots for the rest of the year, until it dies from
attrition. [All units need leaders or initiative points to move,
not just Indians.]

Suggested fix: 1) Roll for the alliance of *all* tribes during the
Strategic Interphase before the new year.  2) All allied tribes
appear on the May turn in the fort or settlement closest to their
entry point.  3) The French do not roll for the alliance of the
Iroquois. 4) Counters that were killed or ran off in a previous year are
not available for alliance for the rest of the game.  5) Tribes
/counters that allied with you before are +2 on the alliance
roll for the next year.

Unless you fix these two areas, the game is unplayable.  Units die
in droves and the later game turns are fought with only reinforcements,
giving the British a massive advantage.

General comments
Leaders are critical to this game, with their varying abilities
to pick up and move units and to modify the fighting abilities of
their units in combat.  The French have an advantage here, with
more better leaders sooner.  (Leaders arrive as blindly chosen
reinforcements.)  At first the French can use their better
leadership to offset the greater British reinforcement rate.
However, you must use an initiative point to move a leader (or an
isolated unit), and you have two choices here: use a guaranteed
one point per turn, or roll on a table, which could produce 0 to 3
points, and possibly give your opponent a free move.  This is a
very interesting twist, but a little too random.  In one game it
just fell out that one side got multiple points all year and the
other side just bombed out.  The designer says that good players
don't need to roll on the table and can conquer the continent with
only one leader moving each month.  Good grief.
[Suggested fix: use table only for both sides, with 0 = 1 point.]

There are ambush rules for Indians and Rangers, but single counter
combats off in the woods have little effect on the game.  You
have to grab forts and cities to win.  (And key towns.)

The French strategy is much like that of the CSA in a strategic
ACW game.  They must strike quickly to try and gain an advantage
at the beginning, then go on the defensive as the British (Union)
onslaught begins.  Also, the arrival of leaders is similar, in
that players hope that their starting poor quality generals die off to
make room for Montcalm and Wolfe. (Like trying to roll up U. S. Grant, 
or in the Punic Wars, Scipio).

Counters are rectangular, with combat and movement factors.  All
key troops types are represented, including regulars, militia,
Indians, Rangers, and Couriers de Bois.  Travel by water is modelled.
The rectangular counters leave room for commander's names, and
their four factors - rank, # of units they can command, offense
bonus, defense bonus.  There is a chart with holding boxes for
each leader's forces, so that you can put just his counter on the map.

Combat is: line 'em up and try to roll below your combat number
for each unit on a d10.  Defender chooses the victim.  Units must
take 2 hits to be eliminated.  Militia have a very high chance
of routing. (If any one gets hit, they all might leave.)  Indians
will often leave pitched battles too.

I bought this game because there is so little available on the French
and Indian War.  (Remember _Mohawk_ by Aulic Council?)  Don't buy
this game unless you want to redesign it.