Description

In September 1816, San Martín relocated his Army of the Andes to Plumerillo, in the northern part of Mendoza Province, where he finished the details to start his crossing of the Andes. The army was divided in two main columns and four minor ones, keeping the decided paths in secret.

On January 18, 1817, a main column parted with the artillery to Chile through Uspallata, under command of General Las Heras, reaching Las Cuevas on February 1, 1817. The second main column led by San Martín, left on January 19 through Los Patos pass, and reached San Andrés de Tártaro on February 8, where he was later joined by Las Heras, concluding the first part of the crossing.

The crossing of the Andes took twenty-one days. It was an extremely difficult enterprise, with temperatures ranging from 30° Celsius during the day to -10° Celsius at night, altitudes averaging 3000 meters above sea level, and paths that were far from being roads appropriate for an army: they consisted of a 50 cm wide paths mainly used by locals for traveling on mules, with several passages which had to be crossed literally in single file. Besides all those hardships, San Martín was far from healthy and was carried on a stretcher during most of the trip. By the end of crossing, around 300 men — 5.5% of the total at the beginning — had lost their lives, mostly due to the harsh conditions of the trip.

In 1817, he crossed the Andes from Mendoza to Chile, and prevailed over the Spanish forces after the Battle of Chacabuco and Battle of Maipú (1818), liberating Chile together with Chilean Bernardo O'Higgins.

The game recreat the cross of the Andes by San Martin´s army. In this game the patriot player wins by controlling chile´s cities in less than 20 turns, and the royalist player wins preventing the patriot´s objetive. There are special rules about movement in high altitude and patriot´s surprise factor.