Siege of Mantua

Two armies march to the relief of the fortress and its exhausted garrison. One from the East, and one from the North, converging on the outnumbered enemy. That enemy was the Army of Italy, the first field command of Napoleon Bonaparte. The fifteen days that followed would make him a legend.

Taking as its subject Bonaparte's famous Arcole campaign, Siege of Mantua is a game of operational maneuver and tactical daring. Players move blocks on the mapsheet to threaten and deceive their opponent, with the object of bringing them to a decisive battle. These are fought on a battle display with counters drawn randomly from your unit pool. The quality of your pool improves with every victory; suffering losses will damage morale, degrading unit quality.

You must master both of these spheres if you wish to be victorious. Though outnumbered, the French player has the benefit of moving along interior lines, allowing greater coordination of forces. But those men are stretched thin to deal with two distinct lines of enemy advance. The Austrian player can use this to their advantage, bringing superior forces to bear at weak points in the enemy line. What results is a desperate battle of wits and nerve, and a novel take on the "block game" genre.