We tried the opening scenario Weissenfels with Stephen as attacking French and I as defending Russians.
Another well crafted scenario (reminiscent of Gilly scenario).
Couple of new 'Campaign' rules apply for these 1813 scenarios eg Columns/Squares now only fire with only 1 Casualty Dice to simulate poorer musketry of most troops in period.
A nice simple 'fog of war' system at deployment using dice in lieu of standard use of FOW Cards worked well.
Game saw French forced to pile across 2 bridges and a ford to attack the Russians who are however spread pretty thinly and lacking infantry numbers.
One Russian Brigade suffered a disaster after Faltering (due to a single Routing unit) which rolled a 1 had a re-roll and rolled (oh yes folks) another 1 seeing Brigade Retreat with 2 hits per unit and losing their ADC, such outcomes can be pretty brutal.
Rather difficult to recover such a Brigade fully as despite following orders on next turn all units had hits and reduction of Russian ADCs means use of the single use Command order has slim chance as 3 ADCs needed.
Game played well overall as we managed 8 out of 14 scheduled turns despite much waffling ! But once again we struggled with what should be essentially fundamental rules ie shooting zones/target selection/hit allocation which we find somewhat opaque at times ! such issues lacking full clarity is tad annoying as having to devote time trying to discern intent and sort out how we think things should be played or maybe we are just getting too anal/confused in older age !?
As time goes on, I am more convinced that the gamer is best served by sticking with one set of rules per period and for boardgames, relying more on games that use series rules, so that loads of scenarios can be played while learning just one se as you do with Combat Commander.
ReplyDeleteCombat Commander works so very well within its rather limited parameters ie 1 same sized map never more.
DeleteWith minis waters are muddied as I like to use same toys for variety of 'scales' ie Tactical, Grand Tactical (and several in between).
For 'Horse and Musket' rules like Field of Battle or Black Powder certainly fit the 'series rules' parameters but can be rather samey/bland without decent period specific rules whereas something like GDA is more restrictive in some ways but also maybe more focused ?
I do like variety in my games but indeed this can lead to the old 'master of none' syndrome.
Certainly overall simplicity of rules is much more appealing than in my younger days of yore :-)