General D'Armee - McDonalds attack scenario played......and couple of new rule sets

Another go today with GDA using the included scenario 'McDonalds Attack at Bautzen'.
We had played this one initially but a lack of familiarity with the rules made for a less than stellar game for Stephens Russians.
This time round I was Russians and Stephen the French.
Having realised that hills in GDA are only useful for overhead firing with Artillery I moved off these in quick order to confront the French.
I was able to hold on my right but a failed Brigade Morale Test (ie Faltering) saw my left wing Brigade retreat.
In center a French Brigade used Infantry Assault order to push my Jagers out of a town.
I did throw my Light Cavalry Brigade forward from reserve but they failed to charge into a French Column as their massed guns helped shoot them off.
Unfortunately we failed to finish but the Russians were up against it and the French Cuirassier Brigade was as yet uncommitted.
All in all a much better game than our first try with scenario as we both now get that Brigades need deployed in depth to allow repulsed (retiring/retreated/routed) units to recover.
But we still keep coming up against several rules that lack definition (Fall Back, Skirmish Shooting and today Overhead Fire) which means much debate and page flicking, hopefully this will lessen as we play more.









Russian left wing and center

Russian center and right

Russian right wing

French arrayed

Action on Russian right

Russian Light Cavalry advances

Russian left under pressure

French Infantry prepare to assault town

New rules from Stand To Games arrived this week both based on the Over The Hills system

General D'Armee - Vittoria scenario played

Game at Stephens today and he chose to try GDA with a scenario based on Vittoria battle 1813 with his British force against my French.

Good game although the 'dice demon' was yet again on fine fettle.
He claimed not to be that lucky then rolled 6 hits out of 6 immediately afterwards, proof irrefutable says I !!

Once again we found a lot to like with these rules especially the charging and melee outcome charts, very flavoursome and easy to use.
I love the Brigade Skirmisher system.

But as always seems to occur with GDA we ran into a couple of situations where we struggled to find a definitive or at least an unambiguous answer.
Main one was regarding Skirmish units firing, with one rule clearly stating that skirmishers can choose to shoot a multiple targets at players discretion however on opposite page it gives a Skirmish Priority rules which seems to contradict the previous rule seemingly making skirmishers split their fire at any (all ??) target in arc.
We were not sure how one can have Priority Targets if able to select a chosen target ?
We simply could not reconcile these two rule entries eventually deciding that splitting fire seemed better simulation of skirmisher activity than allowing these extended formations from possibly concentrating on a single target.
But we are unsure what rules intent is ?

Artillery is pretty potent in GDA and the Faltering rules are brutal as a Brigade Falters when one unit is Dispersed or two Retreated.
Certainly leads to decisive outcomes in games.

Personally I like the rules overall but sometimes feel they are too slow/intricate compared with FOB, Shako or Black Powder but that might be down to interpretation frustrations and lack of familiarity with systems.








French left

French center (nice new 'Spanish' buildings from Empires At War range)

French right

British right

Central British deployment

British gun battery that caused a lot of hurt

French right with Artillery Brigade hoping to pound the town

Both forces arrayed

French advance on left

Skirmishers clash on right

Skirmishers and Chasseurs pushed back on French left

AS British Infantry counter attacks at bayonet point

Reserve French Brigade moves on town

French right Falters as a Veteran Legere unit dispersed

Quatre Bras using General D'Armee

Game using a Quatre Bras scenario and GDA rules today at Stephen's, I was French versus his Allies with some newly painted Hanoverian and Dutch-Belgian units see their first action.

A big game with some 20 Foot Bttns, 3 Gun Battry and 6 Mounted Regts in the French OOB with something similar for Allies.
Thankfully not everything starts on table with several Brigades in Reserve or arriving of course of several turns.

A tough proposition for French to get anywhere near the crossroads however (especially with my Command dice rolls for ADCs !!) and they took a lot of casualties.
We failed to finish the game (too much waffling as usual) but felt that GDA has a lot to like with slick systems and a nice period 'feel'.






Only a couple of photos as I forgot !

French Light Cavalry Brigades arrive

As their Foot suffer attacking the ridge

General D'Armee scenario played

Another game at Stephens using General D'Armee rules this time adapting a Gen De Brigade scenario from battle of Bautzen 'Frequmounts Attack'.
This pits French Division attacking a Prussian Division in 1813.
OOB varied to fit with GDA.
A good game again with these rules although we still found artillery using the Artillery Assault order to be very potent.
We have decided in our games to make use of this order cost 3 ADCs instead of the standard 2 to cut down on the frequency of its use especially when a Brigade of Artillery is present.
This worked quite well especially once battle was joined as just so many other things to do with limited ADCs.
My dice rolling in this game was amongst the worst I have ever suffered (and that is saying something !!!!!)
French routed a Prussian unit (via tremendous Skirmishing rolls and of course Artillery) which forces a Brigade to falter.
I then 3 turns in a row allocated the required ADC backed up by a second ADC to re-roll any failure and managed to roll 6 ones or twos seeing the Brigades 5 other units flee the field !!!
Meanwhile I charged an isolated French battery with Dragoons and thought woo hoo when the guns only inflicted a single casualty in defensive fire.................however in the charging sequence the guns rolled a reasonable 2d6 result of 8 whilst my Dragoons managed a minimum double 1 !!! this saw them Retreat with and additional 3 Hits.....unreal !!
Even my Artillery was poor after an initial decent roll.
The French (well actually a Wuttermburg unit) took possession of the key town area and even whilst Unformed while forming Garrison formation I managed to fail with two separate charges by two fresh units.........
Of course the 'dice demon' suffered no such horrors maintaining his usual ratio of both high and timely rolls including 4 double 6s when firing with Skirmishers resulting in not only 2 hits but Discipline Tests on my Skirmishers !!

Lady luck may be fickle but she is also a bitch and anyhow ALL DICE HATE ME..................

General D'Armee game played French vs British

Game at Stephens using General D'Armee rules.
Stephen used his Peninsula British and I fielded a French opponent.

We used points system at 2000pts although turns out Brigadiers are now costed (in update) so both were foelding 2300pts
We had 4 Brigades each being 3 Infantry and 1 Cavalry and both had 2 Batteries of guns so fairly similar (British had 15 units French 16).

Stephen had set up the terrain beforehand to save time.

Been a while since we used GDA but both found it was a fast playing game with good period flavour and we had only a few queries that were easily resolved.
It has a fairly arbitrary Command System (not unlike Black Powder in some ways) with Brigades being Hesitant on 1-1 on a D6 although one can get re-rolls by use of ADCs.
The availability of ADCs is however also arbitrary (ie dice dependent) but it all works overall.
Whilst no strict orders system as in Gen De Brigade/Over The Hills/Principles of War the Line Of Battle and Re-Deployment rules effectively make 'on the fly' maneuvering pretty much impossible anyhow.

I of course prefer some level of chaos/inertia in my games and feel the rules do generate a nice narrative (not as dramatic as FOB but close).
Like Black Powder the Brigade Morale rules can be brutal as a single Routed/Destroyed unit (or 2 Retreated units) forces a Brigade to Falter.
And as I found today even the loss of a Skirmish unit can cause the Falter.
We both had several extreme dice rolls (12 on 2D6) though of course balance feel in favour of the dice demon.
This saw a British Brigadier cut in two and a British Artillery Battery cause crippling causalities to a Veteran French column.
My poor dice seemed to be reserved for generation of ADCs (or more accurately lack of) and then seeing several Brigades become Hesitant !

But a fun game overall with a slick rule set although I still think Artillery needs limited as it could dominate a game at this level if Batteries too numerous..




French centre

French right

Wellington loves his central hill locations

British right

French advance on right

French Conscripts advance on left

And central Brigade moves forward

Skirmishing battle on right

Later on right with French assault repulsed

French Cavalry reserve unleashed (eventually) and then stuck Hesitant !

Central French Brigade has been Demoralised with remnants forced back