war to the death

Is a boardgame designed by D.W. Alexander and edited by Omega Games in 1986 (1st ed.) and 1994 (2nd ed.). It depicts the problems suffered by the French armies in Spain during the Peninsular War from 1810 onwards. The French player must confront the British (the Portuguese army is abstracted, the Spanish regular forces and the Spanish Guerrillas and. The boardgame emphatises the logistics aspects and requeriments that are different for French, British or Spanish.

More information about this game in:
http://www.isimulacrum.com/GamesDB.html
http://grognard.com/reviews/wardeath.txt
http://grognard.com/reviews/wardeat1.txt

As in the real world, the game is heavily biased against the French following the historical guidelines (for example the French units transferred from Spain to the Grande Armee for the Russian invasion). The game mechanisms are very different for French, British and Spanish sides and their complexity is moderate. Ultimately, this plays in favor of the solo player: it becomes very easy to concentrate in a given side fully forgetting the others!

After buying the boardgame and having discovered Cyberboard, I developed a first game-box for War to the Death, including the initial situation given by the designer, march of 1810, before the creation of the Massena's Army of Portugal.

In general, the original map included in 'War to the death' reflects well the limitations imposed by the Peninsular geography, but suffers from of some inconsistencies. With the help of Pablo Martín Fernández, a Spanish wargamer whom I found at the Consimworld Forum, the original game map has been modified to make it more similar to the true state of the Spanish road communications network at the beginning of the XIX century.
 

Old map New map

 

A new gamebox has been developed including both maps so the players could choose the more adequate to their whishes.

A new Scenario by Pablo Martín Fernández
During the first months of 2009, Pablo has been posting to ConsimWorld Forum some ideas about a 1808-1809 Scenario, including Spanish Juntas, Early Spanish Logistics, Portuguese Army, Spanish War Weariness and Romana Division . You can download the corresponding WORD documents starting from this ConsimWorld Forum address.
Pablo has included all the new markers in a new game-box for the first stages of the Peninsular War, that can be download from that Forum, WttD1808.gbx, or from this site: Early Years game-box.