From: Roberto Chiavini Subject: one review Las Bataillas de los Gringos (BSO Games) Third product from Richard Berg's own DTP company, this is a quadrigame on four battles from the Mexican War of mid-Nineteenth century, that signs another step in the development of the same system, first used in Kingdom for an Horse and then in Devil's Horsemen. As such, part of this review would be centered only on the new aspects of the game, while if you want to read more on the basic system you may read my two previous reviews. Graphics is similar to the precedent offers, good for a DTP, but not astonishingly so (especially the maps). Base of the system is still the continous play, without turn alternation, but simply based on a d10 roll on initiative for each commander in play, so that in practice, the US player normally moves 3/4 times more than the Mexican. New to these battles are artillery, small arms fire, disorder and a rally procedure, that was absent in the previous two designs: here, if you are at least 2 hexes away from the enemy and adjacent to a leader, you may try to rally such a unit, recovering from disorder (an effect normally suffered through artillery fire) or recovering one hit (as in Devil's Horsemen, most combat effect are hits; when the total hits suffered is greater than the unit morale, the unit is eliminated). Another variation is stacking, as you may have up to three units from the same formation and of the same type in the same hex, or any artillery battery plus one unit. Units are really colorful, with a plethora of amateurs in between the leaders and the troops, with rules for wagon (Rio Sacramento, for example, is a strange little battle fought almost totally for defending a long line of US wagons from the attack of a bunch of not really convinced Mexican infantry and cavalry units (most of them are rabble worst than bandits). The limit of the system, other than in KfH, that remains my favorite for its good balance of playability and easiness of approach, is when, as in this case, there is a distinct superiority in initiative of one player on the other: the continous turn (one of the mark of Berg's designs since his TCT of the second generation of GBACW, like Tupelo and the various SDI designs) is interesting if both players have a good chance to alternate movement and combat, and to react accordingly: but in this case, for the Mexican player to have any input on the game is almost an accident. To be honest, I have played only Rio Sacramento, the smallest battle of the lot, and it's possible that this battle is more unbalanced than the two greater ones (Resaca e Palo Alto), but I haven't any fun in playing it: after the first free activation, in fact, the Mexican player didn't have any chance to move his units from eight consecutive US activations, making his reactions limited and in practice giving victory to the US before taking any real movement. And this seems a shame, as for the rest the system is taking steps in the right directions for combat, rally and so on. As it stands, from my experience, I cannot give high marks to this game, as the activation system appears flawed, and so I rate it 6 in a 1-10 scale (but it's possible that the two major battles could get a 6 1/2 or even a 7).