General d'Armee in 15mm

This time my Austrians faced Chris' French.  Simon took command of one of the Austrian Brigades and John had one of the French brigades.  It was still very much a learning exercise with these rules.

I'm in command of the four battalions to the left of the wood.

We have to secure the town, even though it is on fire. 

Simon's command advancing on the right.

The critical turn.

The bottom most Austrian brigade has been bloodily repulsed before it even got into combat.

The fighting near the town, while starting to look promising,

ended in a draw.

Most importantly, we were starting to get a handle on the rules. 

A bit more General d'Armee

At the club last night we reconstructed the game from last week and pushed along a bit, getting a better handle on fire combat, charge and melee.

I haven't read the rules or watched any of the videos so it was a bit of a suck it and see exercise.  Some bits irked me, like skirmishers shooting up artillery and skirmishers not getting a bonus firing on squares, but this might be me being so used to playing Napoleonic's were an on table unit represents a brigade, not a battalion.

I mentioned before I found the rules to be like Shako, but this similarity started to fade as I got a better feel for them.  The charge mechanism seems interesting and I liked the idea of maintaining supports for units to rally back on.

I did have some shitty die rolls, but nothing new there.

Skirmishers have been pulled back and the French in line engage the British with some volleys.

A battalion in column stands in support.

Cavalry action, despite having the numbers and quality, the French did not have the luck.

However after two draws the British retired off the table due to lack of support.

A French line protecting their battery from deadly rifle fire.

Something must be working for me as I've agreed to play next week, but this time fielding my 15mm Austrians.

General d'Armee

So I rocked up to the club expecting to play Black Powder with some of Simon's excellent SYW figures and find I am playing General d'Armee with some of his excellent Napoleonic figures. Such is life.

This photo doesn't do the figures justice,

although I am sure you can get a feel for their charm

Originally I was going to play the British

But I ended up with the French playing against Curtis and John,

with Simon umpiring.

This was the first game of GdA for all of us.  Simon had the rules and had watched some videos and so he was the expert, although we were able to cal on some of the other club members to help us out with rule interpretations etc (but not many).

Given our novice nature, even raw conscript in my case, with the rules, it is not surprising that we only managed to complete about six turns and were yet to really get into action.

I had been busy given attention to using my artillery to bombard the enemy, while hoping my skirmishers might have some luck in resisting the rifle armed British equivalents.  This was all to give me time to redeploy my cavalry from the left to the right which I successfully did.

The intention is to pick the game up at this point next week.

My impression of GdA is that it is very much like Shako, without some of the ridged movement restrictions, although not having read the rules I won't make too much of this.

Makes me want to do more Napoleon's Battles though!