Élan is a set of Brigade to Divisional level scenario driven rules for the European theatre during The Great War.
Designed as a two-player game using 6mm figures, with little adjustment it can be played solo, or in any scale from 2mm to 20mm.
The basic mechanism used in this game - élan, distills a number of factors - morale, training, leadership, fatigue, "friction" - into a single numerical value. Whenever a unit tries to perform an action, its score is rolled against. Failure not only results in the attempted action failing but a fall in the élan score, as the unit begins to succumb to the stresses of the battlefield. Under this system, even the most motivated troops will eventually be worn down and break.
In the game, much of the minutiae of combat has been ignored. As Divisional or Brigade commanders, the players only see the results of actions, not the process on the ground by which those results are determined. A commander will know only that a unit has not advanced, not which one of the multitude of reasons why it hasn't. This absence of precise control at the company level, is mirrored further up the command structure by using a non-sequential turn sequence to simulate communications failures (and initiative) within the command system.
Élan contains army lists for 22 nations involved in the Great war and instructions on how to convert any MicroMark army list for play in the game.
—description from the publisher