And I went to the crossroad, mama

The last time we played the Seven Years War it was a playtest of some roads, which turned out to be excellent. This time around it was to playtest a whole raft of rule changes. Were they as good? Well, they were certainly better than my generalship and my dice rolling. Things started going wrong from pretty much the first thing I did. A Prussian unit moved into range of a unit of Russian Grenadiers, I turned a Musket Reload card and so I fired. In the exchange my unit ended up at half strength and shaken, and it was all downhill from there. James has blogged here about it - with pictures of the situation as it now stands - so I won't say much more. I still think the Russians have a good chance of winning - more troops and a lot more morale chips - but it won't be the most glorious of victories. And the officers are dreadful so a failed Major Morale check will probably see a lot of that morale eaten up.

James ascribes the way the game has developed to Peter having gone down to the crossroads and sold his soul to the devil. Perhaps, perhaps not. His dice rolls weren't particularly good, and mine weren't especially bad; it was simply that his were consistently better than mine, and when I did beat him it was only just and not enough to cause any damage. Such is life.  Anyway, to the new rules:

Flank support: In Piquet units get a bonus when testing morale for having flank support. Under the previous interpretation (I have no idea whether this was the core rules or some house rule that grown up over the years) it was almost literally impossible not to receive the maximum amount. Famously encircled historical figures such as Custer or Gordon would probably have counted as having two secure flanks the way we used to do it. This has been swept away with a much simpler and harsher version of which I approve. It will certainly encourage both maintaining one's own formation and trying to puncture and then turn enemy lines

Routing: This has again been simplified. The anomaly whereby better armies ran away faster has been removed, the disruptive effect from the movement of routers is more logical and it is consistent with the ability to provide the flank support mentioned above. Again I approve, although I suspect that virtually no units will now ever be rallied from rout.

Overhead fire by artillery: The rules for this have been clarified - essentially in terms of James' current terrain setup - and one can now, under certain circumstances, fire over troops on the same level as oneself. I can't speak to the historical accuracy of this, but it will make artillery more useful in attack.

Infantry Arc of Fire: This has been reduced from 45 degrees to straight ahead only. I think there may be a few problems with this:

• It is now possible - as we proved - to initiate melee against a unit that one can't fire at because it's out of arc; makes no sense to me.
• It makes the Prussians' ability to oblique at full speed even more powerful.
• I envisage units being manoeuvred to all sorts of peculiar angles so that they can shoot without being shot at, rather changing the nature of the game.

 So, mostly a thumbs up from me. I imagine that the new rules on flanks and routing will, when coupled with previously introduced changes to morale challenges, make games end a lot more quickly. We shall see.