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I have been playing a little of the Les Grognards demo II. Currently, it comes with pre-ordering. It should be available to everyone by the end of this month, when the full game is released for download. Yes, THIS month, so sometime at the end of THIS week.
You should find it is almost bug-free after a lot of playtesting by a crowd of enthusiasts.
When you download it and play, you'll find it a little disorientating at first. Work your way steadily through the three tutorials. They'll show you how to move about the interface, which takes a little patience to master as does anything new. One tends to zoom about in the 3D world until you settle down to new habits with the mouse. You'll also learn the very basics of cav, inf and arty.
Tutorial 2 gives you a mixed division or so of troops. You can scout, march, maneuver and attack a straw man opponent. You will likely find it quite strange not ordering each action but watching the Div CO organise an attack you have ordered. You might wonder why troops are acting in this or that way. Why are they suddenly in square? Who are the guns firing at? What the hell is that major doing with my valuable cavalry!? Generally you'll find that if you look around, somewhere there is cavalry lurking; you'll locate the explosion of howitzer shells and see the impacts of cannonballs; you'll learn that bloody cavalrymen are nuts who loose their heads at the gallop!
Tutorial 3 is Ney leading a corps of 2 inf and 1 cav division against 3 enemy divisions. By this point, you'll have a hang of the fact that it's a command game rather than a move every skirmisher coy/battalion game. You can order regiments to achieve mission or just the 'corps/divisions'.
When you get to the solo battles, you'll find 3 available. 'Austerlitz', 'Montebello' (not the historical one but a tutorial prepared by a player of that name!) and 'Grand Champs'. When you've the time, a good exercise is to choose 'command both sides' and move all troops back near the map edge excepting one corps/division of each side. Attack one with the other, or send them up against each other, then use the F3 (3D view) to watch as the battle develops. It's a good exercise is seeing how long a division lasts in battle, how long it takes to cover distances, how to support and coordinate your efforts. You might start to order in other units one by one to create an ebb and flow. It really works well and rewards some time spent observing how the AIs function. You can surf about in the world or attach yourself to units as they charge or suffer under bombardments. It's worth sitting behind a battery and watch the animation through. Sit behind their target and see the impact, the falling soldiers and learn to the read the signs of their morale and cohesion failing before they run.
Also check out the feature that you can load the video of the battle after you've finished playing it and watch it all again with the option of 2D or various 3D views. You can check out the development of the cavalry charge that forced things into square at the wrong moment, or the collapse of a flank you missed when commanding elsewhere.
You can also try the demo battles with various grades of Fog of War and difficulty. You can command either or both sides and test out Austerlitz, for example, with orginal orders or a new idea. You can have the 'eye in the sky' or pin yourself to the commander's POV and rely try and time being in the right places at the right times.
Whether or not you are interested in buying HistWar's Les Grognards doesn't matter. I think you'll enjoy the demo. As you can mix and match the OoBs from the three solo battles, you effective get six battles on top of the 3 tutorials. Good fun!!
If you do decide to get a copy, remember that I have a challenge for a PBEM game over in the challenge forum! It takes 4 files to do an hour of game (15 min turns) so a small battle of say 4 hours might be do in 16 days with daily swaps!
Podporuchik HarryInkski,
Lithuanian Uhlans
14th Brigade, IV Cav Corps,
2nd Army of the West
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