From: Roberto Chiavini <mumaye@mail.dada.it>
Subject: Two reviews

The Black Prince (3W)

This is a quadrigame on four medieval battles, taken by the first phase of the 
Hundred Years War, one of the several design by Rob Markham for the Californian 
company, one of his several quad games on medieval and musket & pike periods, 
offering lot of variety, but with a system which could work better and faster 
with a better melee combat resolution system.

The four battles reproduced in this game are Crecy, Poitiers, Navarette and 
Vernueil. All the battles have less than 100 counters for both armies and are 
played on a 11" x 17" map (or even smaller in the case of Crecy).

The graphics are not particularly inspired for a game of the early Nineties and 
do not add visual pleasure to the game.

Each combat unit is rated for combat (an asterisk next to the number is for the 
unit missile fire capability), movement and morale (the latter based on a d10). 
Leaders have a command value (used to change the order to their subordinate 
units - overall leader doesn't have this value, as may automatically change 
their order status), a command span (the radius for commanding their units) and 
a combat bonus (a die modifier for the melee resolution table).

The sequence of play start with the English long bow phase (English longbowmen 
may fire their missile up to three hexes away - to use this rule you have to 
check for ammunition depletion for all the English longbowmen), then there is 
the French/Spanish Command phase (there are six different command for each 
leader -Attack, Advance and Stand that permit melee combat, possibly with an 
attacking or defending bonus, and Retreat, Reserve and Muster, when you are in a 
dire situation), the French/Spanish movement phase, the Combat phase (with 
defensive fire, attacking fire, possibly melee), then English Rally phase that 
start the English phase of the turn, with the same phases than the 

French/Spanish to the last phase of each turn, the French/Spanish Rally Phase.
Victory is based on the demoralization of the enemy army, or the accumulation of 
victory points, for eliminating/reducing the enemy units.

There are rules for facing (units face a vertex and have two front hexes - to 
direct movement and combat - and two flank and two rear hexes - attacking the 
enemy flank or rear gains a bonus for the attacker), for stakes (used as an 
anticavalry fixed defense by the English bowmen), for skirmishers, but the most 
important rules of the system are the ones regarding combat (particularly melee 
combat) and morale, strictly related and based on dozens and dozens of dice 
rolls.

This is the most important aspect of the game and probably the poorer one: if 
the Fire CRT could be considered valid for most of the gamers (the usual results 
are nothing, melee checks and step losses; each roll has no more than 50% 
chances to obtain something), the melee resolution table is too slow and 
normally you have to roll to many dice to get any interesting results: you have 
to check morale first with the attackers, than with the defenders; if the 
latters fails, they make a rout move and the attacker may advance; otherwise, 
both the contending units roll a die (with a few modifiers) on the column based 
on their combat strength. Normally you roll on one of the first three column on 
the table and so you don't have many chances to get a step loss result, and most 
of the morale check have 50% or better chances to leave the unit unharmed. So 
you need a very long time and, most of all, dozens and dozens of dice rolls to 
move a static situation.

I don't know if this could be considered realistic. Certainly, it is very 
boring, especially if you play solitaire.

Anyway, if you like to roll many dice, you probably could get the most fun from 
this quadrigame, that for all the players like me, who love to get simple, clear 
results in a small time, is too time consuming and too boring to be played over 
and over again. And this is a real misfortune, as I really am interested in the 
period and I will love a game on this subject with a better combat system.

I rate this game 6 out of 10.