How is the game?

[Steel God]

Well...

The game covers a century of warfare. Earlier in the century you find less muskets and more pikes, later in the century more muskets and less pikes.

Learning how to move and change formation has been the steepest learning curve for me. Mixing unit types in a hex in anything other than column formation earns you disorganization, which basically answers your question about staking the muskets and pikes together. The answer to that is no, unless you want your units disorganized. Moving in formation into any close terrain (village - rough - forest - etc) earns you disorganization also. Now you can still fire and melee when disorganized so it's not the same as a disruption in PzC, but it does draw a penalty. The trick becomes learning how to create a line that inter spaces your pike and your firing units (not just muskets but crossbows and archers too, and also cannon).

I find the most fascinating think is the route rules. Others familiar with ACW and Nappy games seem to take it in stride, but I have seen great plans fall apart because of routing, and likewise seen hopeless situations saved by the enemy routing. Unlike PzC where a unit breaks when it fails a morale roll, in this game, he morale rolls are cascading...when one fails the units next to it also check, and the units next to those check it they fail, and so on. You can loss a lot of units pretty fast.

Paul