Borodino 20 (2008)

Designer Lance McMillan marches the Napoleonic 20 game system to the very outskirts of Moscow where a brutal campaign culminates in a titanic battle between the exhausted French Grande Armée and the entrenched Russian Army whose divided and bickering leadership has led them to this fateful moment. In Borodino 20, players can recreate the historical battle and the human foibles of the commanders fighting it. In addition, they can experiment with scenarios presuming a faster Russian response to the French threat, or Napoleon heeding the advice of his “Iron Marshal,” Davout, to try a daring flanking maneuver.

Featuring only modest complexity and a focused scope employing low unit density on the map (20 pieces or less) and dramatic, fast playing turns, it is the addition of ‘story-driven’ random event cards and night game turns that provide the operational pauses and “friction of war” which gives players a great feel for the parry-and-thrust of a Napoleonic grand battle as the armies close to bayonet-point to see which will break first!

Complexity: 4 on a 9 scale

Scale: Each unit is 1 corps, each hex is about 1000 meters, and each turn is roughly 3.5 day hours (or 10 night hours).

• Smolensk 20
• Napoleonic 20 Expansion Kit
• Berezina 20

Part of the Napoleonic 20 series.