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.

The Romans are Coming!

I'm about to start on an early Roman army to match my Carthaginians.  This is based on a DBA army I picked up from the late Tony Cooper, some spare figures from Simon and a purchase from a chap in New Zealand which I had the good fortune to find on Facebook.

Need to do some research, but I am sure I have at least enough for a Basic Impetus army.

Twilight Struggle - Take Two Completed

Today's session completed this excellent game.  We had a lot of ups and downs, but ended up exactly where we started in terms of Victory Points - zero. nada, zilch.

Richard claimed moral victory as the US was ahead in the space race.

Excellent game.

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!

Twilight Struggle - Take Two

Tuesday Richard and I started our second session of the Cold War game, until life cruelly interrupted and called me away.

The US seem to be gaining control of more countries, but the USSR has put a dog in space.

Maurikian Byzantines versus Arab Conquest

Effectively a rematch from our game on 16 December, this time Stephen took command of my Arabs and roughed up my Byzantines.

The Byzantines outscouted the Arabs.

I thought my three units of cavalry would be more than a match for the Arab fanatical foot.

Wrong!

We advanced, but Byzantine missile fire proved ineffective.

The Arabs won the initaitaive and charged and were just able to make contact.

One unit was beaten off but another took out the Byzantine CinC.

Oh dear!

The ability of the Byzantines to turn the Arab's left flank was way too late

as another Byzantive cavalry unit was routed.

The Arab foot put paid to the last Byzantine elite cavalry and game over.

Twilight Struggle

Using the same system as Europe in Turmoil, this game tackles the Cold War.  Richard and I started the game on Tuesday and got carried away staging coups in Egypt only to discover this raised the Defcon tension and precipiated Nuclear War and end of the game.  Being gentlemen we didn't apportion blame for causing the Nuclear War and with the planet now destroyed there seemed little point.  In the future cockroach scholars are sure to debate the origns of life on the planet, once they have evolved sufficently.  The smart money is on a lot of big bangs.

Excellent game, looking forward to next session.