Out on the battlefield

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Ever fancied leading your own army into battle? There are people all over the country who indulge in such fantasies every weekend. They are wargamers, and their hobby covers every thing from skirmishes to full campaigns, from several cen turies BC to several centuries AD.

English Civil War by Red Shift, is another offering to bring wargaming to the BBC Micro. The battlefield is the screen divided into a grid - which can be viewed at any time — with varying amounts of inpenetrable wood scattered about.

Each side has units of pike, musket, artillery and cavalry, and a sconce or fort to defend. The various units have different fire power, movement and close quarter fighting abilities which each player has to use to defeat the other.

> In reviewing this game I was looking for two things. Firstly, a game that is different from the usual run of Space Invaders/ Pac-Man/Frogger/Donkey Kong types, and secondly, a genuine wargame on a micro.

It succeeds with the former, but as to the latter. I was somewhat disappointed. If it is meant to appeal to wargamers rather than computer games freaks then it will fall short of a lot of their demands.

The sound effects are dis tracting and inconsistent. The graphics quite acceptable, except the sconce, though I wish more colours could have been used.

> The response times of the keys are somewhat annoying, and there is no reason why the same key has been used for moving and firing.

Also, it could have made playing easier the first few times if the values for ranges, close quarter combat and so on were in the instructions, rather than finding them out only during the game.

While playing the game, several incidents left me doub ting the comprehensiveness of the program. The size of the battlefield limits manoeuvring. The composition of the armies is fixed, which most wargamers will not like.

> Further - and I apologise if non-wargamers may not under stand what I am getting at - the rules have several oversights.

For example, musket units can fire at full effect while in hand-to-hand combat; attacking the side of a unit, particularly pike units, gives only a tiny advantage; units can back out of hand-to-hand combat without any problems; there is no morale system.

In the words of a nineteenth century French general: "C'est different, mais ce n'est pas le wargaming".

Roberta Wood