March across the felt

After being inspired by a youtube video on a commands and colors game i had a flash of insperation , since I have lots of 6mm Baccus napoleonic based in 30mm square bases , got one of my old hex cloths out , cut up some carpet tiles for hills and setup a little game for me to play solo tomorrow

Setup

There are your enemy go get 'em

A very hard fought battle by both sides and lasting 22 turns ( 22 orders cards for each side )

The British attacked up their left flank but this stalled and the they took some heavy casualties but not enough to lose a banner , on the right flank a slow and supported advance pushed the french off the hill both sides sustained heavy casualties but the attack succeeded (i used small dice to mark the losses to the units.

Mid Game

Roughly midway through the game the British managed to gain the bombard card just at the point where the french were counter attacking on the British left , this was disastrous for the french as they lost a lot of casualties , this stopped their advance and allowed the British to push the french back.

In the end numbers told and the french lost by 3 banners to 5 but neither side really could claim victory.

End Game

Aftermath

Since i played this game solo i played each side to the best of my ability and quickly found that i forgot what cards the other side had , some cards were removed due to the player interaction that was required from those cards.

Another thought was that there is no requirement for a side to fight the battle in a shorter time so i used a blank piece of card and shuffle this into the the deck of command cards after the first 20 cards , this I decided would cause night to fall and allow 1 more move for each side before the game ends ( this card was not drawn this game).

One thing i did realise is that having larger forces will slow the game down and stifle the ability to create a combined attacks so i would suggest if fighting bigger battles then the number of units that can be ordered by a card be increased by 1 or 2 units but this would need to be done sparingly , this at the moment would be my only house rule.

This was a really interesting game , normally i would use field of glory for my goto set of napoleonic games but i did feel that these rules gave a nice period flavour even though they are reported to be a "game" rather than a simulation so more battles using this system will be forth coming.

Since i have French , British , Spanish and Austrian i will now have to finish my Prussian and Russian forces to give them a tryout.

A little Update , i have been working on a Late 17th/18th Century add on , i know there is an AWI set about to be released but here is my thoughts on a more mass battle set to say fight the larger battles in this period so if any of you wish to try them out let me know your email address so i can send you a copy.