The videos he posts of them at his YouTube site make great viewing, and there is no doubt his skill in creating the AI for his battles has increased by leaps and bounds.
In the early books the AI's forces are largely static, basically reacting to the human player's moves, rather than making moves of their own.
That worked pretty well for trench warfare in WW1, and for the D-Day landings in WW2 - engagements where static defence in dug-in positions was the norm.
It was less successful, in my view, and in the comments I have seen of others, in Battles Of Medieval Britain.
The first Lambo book I bought was Battles Of The English Civil War, in which the AI took a giant step forward.
Gone is static defence - instead the AI, whether commanding Parliamentarians or Royalists - tends to play aggressively, and shifts its troops about to try to foil the human's plans.
But is has to be said the battles cannot be thought of as being even close to a simulation.
It is not just that pikemen and musketeers act as separate units (one can rationalise this to an extent), but usually the human's victory condition requires the elimination or demoralisation of every enemy unit.
Nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed playing the battles in the book before their increasing difficulty made it next-to-impossible, in my opinion, for the human to win.
All of which is a preamble for saying I am very excited about Lambo's latest book, Battles Of Napoleonic Europe.
True, the price has gone up quite considerably, but the value of the content has risen, it seems to me, considerably more.
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| Mike Lambo's best yet? |
Examples of the improved content include the introduction of relatively sophisticated rules for line-of-sight, together with improvements in rules for the effects of terrain.
Despite the book's generalised title, it is only about the Peninsular War, and only includes battles from 1808-11 (I suspect it is the first in a projected series on Napoleonic warfare).
There are 20 battles in all, or rather 10, but each is to be fought from both sides, making 20 scenarios.
For example, the first scenario is part one of the Battle of Roliça, with the human taking on the persona of Sir Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington), leading his Anglo-Portuguese army against the French.
In the second scenario the human leads Henri-François Delaborde's outnumbered French forces as they try to hold off the allies.
The book comes with coloured counters, which I cut out and glued to 15mm-square steel bases from Products For Wargamers.
As can be seen in the photo below, I made a bit of a sloppy job of this - I took a lot more care with the ECW counters.
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| Left-to-right are a three-strength allied infantry counter, two-strength allied infantry, one-strength French infantry, one-strength allied cavalry, two-strength allied cavalry, three-strength French cavalry, one-strength French artillery, a French commander and an allied commander |
I would strongly recommend keeping the commanders, the artillery and the turn marker in a separate container from the remaining counters as otherwise they are the Devil's own job to find.
I will not go into the detail of the rules here as I hope my refight of the first scenario from the book will give a good idea of how the game is played.
But suffice it to say for now that the three main arms - infantry, cavalry and artillery - seem to act in realistic ways, with the infantry even being able to form square when threatened by enemy horse.
But perhaps the best way to pick up the majority of the rules is to watch the author's instructional playthrough at his YouTube page.
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