I did it!! Finally, over a couple of evenings (and only a couple of hours total), after several false starts over the years, I've managed to set up and play a full turn of the first scenario of Clash of Arms' Campaigns of Robert E. Lee. And, as expected, it's pretty cool once it runs. I'm now embroiled in the First Manassas scenario. This one places a penalty on Union Army Commander McDowell if he doesn't bash the Confederates quickly, and also starts his troops frittering away from turn 3 when their enlistments expire. So McDowell, with the biggest force on the map, puts all his effort into winning the first bid, and leaps at Beauregard's Army of Northern Virginia at Manassas Junction. Unlike the historical thing, McDowell rolled a six, Beauregard (whose force is quite a bit weaker anyway) something lower, and while the Union only suffered some step losses, Beau had the choice of retreating or seeing his force's morale go down the drain. He retreated, which was probably a mistake since his morale was lower anyhow as a result of the defeat, just not quite as bad, and as a result of retreating he lost the Depot at Manassas. So the Union led 3 to 1 VPs and was across the river blocking the Manassas Gap railroad, and the Confederate supply structure in the Shenandoah was about to fall to pieces. Since I had bid high with the Confederates as well, I decided to have them gamble everything. Johnston moved down from the Valley (managing the 1/3 chance of getting enough MPs to get to Manassas without force marching which would have halved his troops' strength) and attacked in parallel with Beauregard who left his one broken brigade in his rear and counterattacked with the rest. Both managed to launch their assaults (by no means guaranteed) but were defeated, in particular Beauregard being tumbled even worse than in the first encounter with two step losses (another 6 rolled by the Union!). I later realised that I could have moved them together and merged their forces, which might have been more useful. However, the Union pays a price because the '6' rolled means 'possible leader hurt' and indeed McDowell bites the dust, the victim of his second ferocious attack. Suddenly we're at 6 to 5 VP instead of 6 to 2. The Union takes Franklin from the pool to replace McDowell. With both Johnston and Beauregard falling back southwards along their supply line, the Confederate position is still quite precarious though. Although not quite as adept in battle as McDowell, Franklin is close enough to possibly beat them up again next turn before he starts to roll for end of enlistment attrition, and his morale superiority is enshrined. Also, moving Johnston over left some units vulnerable in the Shenandoah; thankfully the Union troops there are led by some really sluggish fellows. Quite an interesting situation although there is no doubt that its first turn win gave the Union the edge. However, I spent a lot of time on the rules before I got there. I've always considered the rules to CoREL and its sequel, Army of the Heartland, to be one of the hardest to learn rulesets. (Which in the case of CoREL was not helped by the absence of page numbers; reading through this felt like going barefoot to a fancy restaurant.) They are long, massively redundant (*), and they are badly structured - despite being supposedly in "strict Sequence of Play order", we get 8 pages of basic concept explanations before we get to the Sequence of Play! By then one has forgotten most of the concepts again before one finds out where they fit. Lots of half-page advanced rules (in AotH) and special unit types (such as the naval stuff) are not in their separate sections so you can deal with them after you've figured out how to run the Army of the Potomac into the Army of Northern Virginia, but instead they bloat the normal rules and keep getting in the way. Whew. (*) Virtually every time the rules say that something requires issuing an order, they also state that an order costs 1 AP. There are two exceptions, for chrissake, just list the cost at the start, point the exceptions out where it counts, and let it be. So in the end I decided I'd do a condensed rule set for AotH and then try to retrofit the CoREL differences. Lo and behold, as it turned out the condensed non-advanced rules for AotH fit on a mere 9 pages, but there are some subtle differences (that of course are nowhere marked in the AotH rules). Incorporating CoREL adds a couple more since CoREL didn't separate out any Advanced rules as AotH did. Now, 9 pages is not *simple* (the condensed Advanced Rules for Tac Air take less than 4 pages), but it is far less than the level of monstrosity normally associated with the system. (For comparison, my condensed rules of GMT's Prussia's Glory are about 8 pages, not much shorter.) So with the fat removed, the system is in the "fiddly but not monstrous" section of the shelf. And it seems to play pretty well. The key sequence, bidding, and then alternating to move and fight, is natural as soon as one has played it through once. What's more, the things you do all make sense. Even the artillery ammo tracking, so frequently mentioned, is not particularly odious. Special cases do let one reference the rules frequently (my favorite are the supply rules, now there I am sure this could have been done simpler), but it's bearable and moves fairly quickly. Now, AotH is known to have some problems with scenario design, and I think someone once criticised two of the CoREL setups, but as I looked through my collected postings on it, I found that the most pronounced criticism was Brandon Einhorn's on the very scenario I'm playing, where he basically stated that the Confederates could win simply by falling back on Richmond and denying the Union a victory. Alas, that is an imperfect analysis. First, the Union has the burden of attack but can virtually guarantee moving first, and then has a 2/3 chance of launching the attack. Even if that didn't happen, moving the ANV back towards Richmond actually turns the scenario into McDowell's dream situation, since it means several slow-moving weaker Confederate forces (Johnston's force, an isolated detachment and a depot in the Shenandoah and a sole brigade near Harper's ferry) make wonderful cannon fodder once McDowell no longer has to worry about Beauregard sideslipping him and threatening Washington. So, the supposed problem doesn't exist. Add to that that many of the scenarios are nicely short (this one is 5 turns, most are 6 to 8 turns) and I think I want to return to this one. It seems like a cool way to get an overview over the ACW, with Rick Barber graphics, and in a fraction of the space (and cost!!) needed by the GCACW series. Summary: I like it, so far. Not sure how longer scenarios balance the situation and I think a certain degree of "let me just check that rule again" will never go away, but the feel is good. Markus Last 3 games played: Solomon Sea, Sun of Austerlitz, Campaigns of R.E.Lee --------------- http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/user/mst/games/ --------------- "The UN was not created to take the world to heaven but to save it from hell." -- Dag Hammarskjold