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You know, when I first got Dragoon, I was totally psyched. I’ve been an Austrophile forever, and one of my favorite paintings of all time is one of General Laudon during this war. I even wrote my senior paper in college on Austrian history. I’ve played a number of miniatures rules for the period and was extremely excited that someone has finally decided to go after this severely underexploited genre. Dragoon is a wargame representing the Seven Years’ War (more commonly know in the Anglo-Saxon west as the "French and Indian War") from 1757-1764, as well as parts of the War of Austrian Succession (only the parts involving the Prussians).

The game comes with a comprehensive 75-page manual that describes everything necessary to play with a few functional black and white illustrations. There is no tutorial section however, and this would have been useful. It installs in what is today a paltry 9 megs of space, and has relatively low hardware requirements. I did very much like that the game never took over the Win9X toolbar, allowing you full volume and session control during the game.

Dragoon is a hex-based game, familiar to anyone who is a serious wargamer. The play of the game is initiative-based, centered on the corps commanders. Each commander has an initiative rating, and when his turn comes up, you can decide to activate him (and his subordinate units) or defer him for a more opportune moment. This is an extremely handy feature, which other turn-based games would be well to copy. When a commander is activated, his units that start the turn within his command range are available to act.

Units are one of 4 relatively simplistic (but accurate) categories: Infantry battalions, Cavalry squadrons, Artillery (up to 15 guns), and Light Infantry (battalions again). [Subsequent discussion with the producer and fans has shown me that, indeed the game represents a number of different unit types such as Hussars, Heavy Cav, etc. The unit descriptions in the manual do not represent this clearly.] Hexes are 150 yards across, and turns represent about 15 minutes of real time.

The premise of 18th century warfare is represented essentially accurately. That is, units move in columns and fight in lines and never the twain shall meet. Fighting in column will get your unit slaughtered, and moving much in line will usually disrupt your units so as to make them incapable of any useful contribution. Formation changes are very simplified - too much so - and line or column are your only choices. Infantry attacked by cavalry are apparently able to form square, but you are not given the option to command them to do so in any way - which frankly is a major omission. ASIDE: I believe it was in the midst of the Mollwitz scenario where Austrian Cav are far superior to the Prussian side, and I had left a couple of Infantry Battalions in a bad spot where they were certain to be swarmed upon by said Austrians. Form square? Nope - I couldn't do it for reasons which I'm sure made sense to the designer but don't to me. (In point of fact, the manual attempts to explain this omission away by claiming that squares were "parade ground" formations, rarely used in combat. Of course, that’s illogical. 1] contemporary artworks of the battles show squares formed; 2] despite the "parade ground" claim, the engine allows units to form squares when attacked from the flank or rear by cav. So, if I understand this correctly, a unit facing the WRONG way can execute an emergency maneuver when needed, but simply cannot manage it in the absence of an enemy? That may be acceptable to some, but it strikes me as strange logic.) Of course, they didn’t MAKE it to square, and so quickly routed off the board. I happen to know that the Austrian drill instructions of 1740 discussed the forming of squares under threat of cavalry action, so the fact that neither they nor the Prussians are allowed to here, remains to me a serious flaw.

Strict Zone-of-Control rules are in force, and if you forget to reform your unit or make any last minute changes before you move to contact, you’d better be happy because they are basically stuck there until they either win or lose. Units are measured in the number of effective soldiers they have, as well as by morale and disruption (which, predictably, affects everything else negatively). In this sense it’s a very straightforward and accurate representation of the mechanics of the era However, the implementation of these (I daresay) well-understood and accurate mechanisms leaves something to be desired.

The appearance of this game is very poor. The graphics, while functional (the units get smaller as they take casualties, for example) are simply ugly – even for wargame standards. Despite a 24-bit color depth (which is admirable for a game in a field typical for a lack of attention to graphics details) the units are blocky and crude. Sounds are limited to the occasional horse-clop, tromping march feet, guns firing, and a whinny.

[One nice feature however is that they have implemented differing animations for volley fire (usually the first shot a unit fires) versus sustained fire, giving you a good feel for what condition the firing unit is in.] Unit pathfinding is simplistic and dangerous to use - the units simply move from point a to point b by a straight line route (watch the column of infantry climb the hill and go through the forest, instead of taking the road around said hill), and waypointing is not available. Each unit must in effect be lead through the nose on its route to be moved reliably.

The AI is mediocre, with some glaring problems For example, playing the Western End of the Battle of Kolin, the Austrian top general Daun rode calmly in front of his guns, past two battalions of Prussian infantry, and set up his command position amidst the Prussian lines. While I agree that his view of Prussian dispositions would have been unmatched from such a vantage, I suspect that he probably wouldn’t have done that in real life.

Zoom control is one of three levels, although the graphics are so painful at the lowest and highest resolutions, it’s unlikely anyone would ever use them. Further, to list a number of specific complaints about the AI is tiresome, but a necessity: a) unless the units were stationary there was little respect for formation integrity opening easily-exploitable gaps needlessly; b) cav units sought flanks to the extreme, placing themselves in needless jeopardy just to attack the flank of some unit deep in the middle of the enemy's lines; c) i found little or no coordination between artillery and infantry fire attacks (arty would fire at one target, and then the infantry in the same hex would fire at another, needlessly spreading shots around, rather than concentrating fire which i.)makes logical sense and ii.) was the common technique in AoR military practice); d) routing AI units would run everywhere - maybe this was to make them seem "crazy" but usually don't they run AWAY from the enemy? e) enemy units ignored friendly exposed commanders; f) enemy cav were easily baited with a seemingly-exposed limbered gun. Even something as simple as game auto-scrolling of the map area isn’t implemented - a relatively fundamental feature? Right-clicking for hex info is implemented at a rudimentary level, but the layout of things makes the player click all over the board (for example, there are no hotkeys listed in the manual - everything is moused).

And counterintuitively, they indicate a fire combat to be resolved by a smoke cloud on the target (not on the firing unit, as would make logical sense). It’s easy to get used to, but still kind of backwards. And despite my basic agreement with the simulation rules under the system, I have some (narrow) reservations about the rules paradigms themselves. Firstly, artillery is not attached to anyone. This is inviting abuse by players, by allowing them to in effect form "Grand Batteries" of massed guns 40+ years before such was the case historically. [To be honest, according to designer David Erickson this is the reason - potential for player abuse - that they didn’t allow player control of units going to square. I have a disagreement with THAT based on my own historical observations, but I’m no expert. I’m just a hobbyist with some experience playing games from this period.] Second, units seem to move far too quickly. It’s possible for a Prussian unit, in line, to travel 900 yards (a half mile!) in 15 minutes, and only suffer minor disruption. The Prussians were good, but not THAT good. One good feature of their particular system of combat representation is that disruption affects morale in a general way. For example when two units took fire from an Austrian cannon and one took 16 casualties, the other unti 200, but the 16-casualty unit routed. This was initially a major "huh?" for me, as I had carefully reorganized at a 3 hex range and the two units final disruption values were within 1 point of each other. But, since one had been seriously disrupted earlier, their morale was much lower, resulting in their flight. While I can only hope the program makes allowances for disruption accumulated by movement versus that acquired by combat, this is in general a good feature.

Further, it didn’t appear - to me - that the Generals matter at all to their armies. In the Battle of Kolin recounted above, I captured Daun, the commander of a LI detatchment, and BOTH their substitutes. The rules claim a number of serious effects of leader loss but this reviewer didn’t see them in the number of scenarios he played in which enemy leaders were routinely killed/captured. [I will say further, however, that again after discussion with fans it is apparent that the circumstances of my "leader captures" might have skewed my viewpoint - they were universally when the computer was on the defense, so the effects of leader captures would be minimally apparent with static lines. I’ll trust them on this, since anecdotally other players have seen it happen.]

Finally, to their credit a scenario editor is included, which ran very well and was simple and clear. Building a simple scenario took little time and ran without trouble. The editor was spartan (what editor isn’t?) but I found it very functional and - contrary to most - stable. (Although I have to say it: when you’re writing a game of something so narrow in scope as Dragoon, why do you have a "side A" and "side B"? Especially when point is made that "side A is always the Prussians" - wouldn’t it be simpler just to call them Prussians? I suppose this could indicate that they intend to offer other options in future installments, which is a good thing.)