Expansion review — C&C: Napoleonics - General, Marshals, Tacticians

It's a New Day on the Battlefield

(Originally published on December 23, 2015)

Designer: Richard Borg

Player count: 2

Publisher: GMT Games

It’s always when you think your world is fine and stable that something comes along to rock the boat. So there I was, happily breezing through scenario after scenario of Commands & Colors: Napoleonics, and GMT decides to throw a monkey in the wrench. Not just another expansion with additional blocks and a generous helping of new battles, but something more akin to a revolution.

So the boat rocks and rocks and—to my surprise—comes out the other side a better, even more fascinating vessel.

Expansion #5: Generals, Marshals & Tacticians has arrived.

The thing is, it comes in a standard C&C expansion box, so the deception works like a charm. You expect a chopped up tree in a shiny new color, stickers depicting foreign, exotic new units, and orders of battle galore.

Well—surprise!

NEW UNITS

Sure, you get new units. But just a few, and they are sprinkled over the whole system.

So there is a handful of French blocks, notably a brand new Guard Horse Artillery unit—essentially a Horse Artillery that can ignore two flags. The British get a chunk of additional Light Cavalry and Line Infantry units (you always need more canon fodder), but the shiny new toy for Britain is the Rocket Battery—the portable mortar of the era. It doesn’t need line of sight to fire, attacks with two dice, but requires two icons of the target unit to inflict a hit. The good news? Rocket Battery flags cannot be ignored. The bad news? The thingamabob can explode in your face: if you roll two saber icons, the Rocket Battery itself takes a hit!

The Portuguese get one more Light Infantry unit and one more Line Infantry Unit—plus an additional Leader—while the Prussians receive a single Cuirassier Heavy Cavalry unit to add to their forces. Last but not least, the Russians benefit from the most new toys: in addition to some backups for already existing units, the green guys can now field a Light Lancer cavalry unit and two Militia Lancer cavalry units, both of which can reroll flags when they attack (even with First Strike). But the Militia, of course, needs to retreat three hexes per flag rolled against it. Ah, the bane of the unwashed, untrained masses. 

NEW RULES

There are very few of those. Garrison Markers now make it possible to leave a single block behind when an infantry unit leaves a city hex. The little guy will give it his all, and won’t count as a victory banner when he finally bites the dust. Then there’s the Grand Battery rule, which allows two or more adjacent artillery units to fire together in one devastating blast. Oh, and lone leaders can now be attacked at long range.

But the real beast hidden in the booklet is the couple of pages that detail the workings of the two new decks. Not one—two.

Okay, so the first one is a revised Command Deck. Now standing at 90 cards, it towers over the original 70-card Command Deck. For the most part it’s the same deck, except for the new Take Command cards, virtually identical to the Inspired Leadership cards in C&C Ancients: order a leader and up to three adjacent, linked units.

Some of the other cards now sport three stars (put there for upcoming La Grande Bataille scenarios), while others have a brand new sentence in bold at the very bottom: Draw 1 Tactician card at the end of the turn.

And here’s where the second deck comes into play, with 50 cards that seriously alter the face of C&C: Napoleonics.

So what are they? Each Tactician card basically allows you to break a rule. First Strike, for instance, has been moved to the Tactician Deck (where it thrives alongside a few variations on the same theme); Short Supply is another card that’s been relocated to the Tactician Deck. The rest of the cards offer new capabilities, such as Hold the Line Leader, which allows an attacked unit adjacent or attached to a leader to ignore all flags, or Superb Infantry Training, with which a moving infantry unit conduct ranged combat at full force. Some of my favorites include Artillery Reposition (move an artillery unit 3 hexes, or move it 2 hexes after it battles), Charge if Charged (if a cavalry unit attacks another cavalry in melee, both units roll their dice at the same time), and Call Forward Reserves (which is really a reversed Short Supply: take a friendly unit from your baseline and move it to any hex occupied by or adjacent to a friendly leader within the same battlefield section).

Players start each battle with an opening hand of Tactician cards, typically between two and five. On your turn, you play a Command Card as always, but you can supplement it with a Tactician card—each Tactician card specifies when it can be played, and how.

But be careful! Those are only replenished with the play of a Command Card that states so. Use them wisely.

FUN FACTOR

The rulebook clocks in at 28 pages, but that’s mostly scenarios and reference material. The actual rules for all that new, good stuff take up all but two pages. TWO PAGES.

That’s an incredibly light overhead for a module that operates such profound changes. (My wife was apprehensive when I took out the new card decks, and I could see she was bracing herself for the rules onslaught she was sure was coming—only to ask “Is that it?” after just two minutes of explanations.)

All in all, there’s practically nothing new to learn: the cards do all the work. This allows players to get into the swing of things almost immediately.

And what a swing it is! I feared the new Tactician cards might detract too much from my beloved C&C: Napoleonics, but after a single engagement, I couldn’t imagine playing the game without them. They enhance the role of leaders on the battlefield, provide a thrilling tactical flexibility, and keep things fresh, battle after battle.

The Tactician cards also provide a sense of your commander’s capabilities. It’s all good and well to read that Napoleon was in charge of a particular battle, but you don’t quite feel it until you start the game with six Tactician cards whereas your opponent gets only three (poor Blücher).

PARTING SHOTS

Some might consider a 90-card Command Deck to be too swingy and random, so GMT provides a deck list that pares the whole thing down to 75 cards. (My recommendation? Play with the tall stack and don’t look back.)

There’s also the concern that you might get stuck with a Tactician card that, for instance, enhances cavalry action when you have no cavalry on the board. Take heart: you can always use a Tactician card to move one of your leaders up to three hexes at the end of your turn. (Which, in turn, helps alleviate the occasional “no card for the correct battlefield section” problem.)

Frankly, I’m loving this. Nothing quite like receiving your initial hand of Command Cards and thinking, “Okay, nice, now let’s see what the Tactician Deck gives me.”

And grinning from ear to ear.

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