Anthony and I played a 54mm Blucher game on an 8'x 5' table. I took the
French vs Anthony's British (as usual).
We played through 16 turns (8 each) before having to stop as we ran out of time. The game was still pretty even at that point - I'd lost a light
cavalry unit but his light cavalry was pretty spent and his allied infantry was
starting to be worn down.
We were able to resume the game 3 days later and play it through to a conclusion.
My left flank ended with the mutual destruction of both sides Light Cavalry with me losing 3 units to the British 2.
But, I was able to apply pressure to the weaker Dutch Belgian allied corps on their Right wing and that forced Anthony to use his command to slowly withdraw them as they were in danger of losing 2-3 units. He also concentrated his main attack on the his left wing heavy cavalry who were facing the French heavy cavalry.
This meant that he was unable to manouevre the higher quality, stronger British corps in the centre and it was left to exchange skirmish fire with my weaker french/allied troop corps.
His concentration on the heavy cavalry was his undoing as he was convinced he could win the combats and I managed to consistently throw slightly better dice than him which meant his units were worn out slightly faster than mine. Also, he didn't withdraw any units as they neared breaking point and I kept enough of an upper hand to break all 4 of his heavy cavalry with the loss of 3 of my own units.
This put us on 6 units lost each - the British break point was 6, the French 7, so the British army broke and ran givng a French victory.
It was a very close and quite tense game at times - we got a couple of things wrong but that didn't change any outcomes.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteI never cease to be amazed at just how great wargames fought with 54mm figures look! I’ve never used the Blucher rules, but they seem to give a good game.
All the best,
Bob
Thanks Bob. Yes, Blucher work well - they are straight-forward and have a clever command mechanism where you your opponent rolls 2 dice for command pips but these are hidden. So you don't know how many you have so there is a lot of thought about how to use your CP. Also, you can exceed them, so even if with only one 1 CP left you can do a corps move of 5 units and then go bust. it is an interresting exercise in which sometimes you push too hard in one area and can't do the other equally important thing.
ReplyDeleteThe units have an elan rating which is the number of dice they roll, and this is also their morale rating. Once it reaches zero they are broken and removed.
Combined, these make quite a fast game.
We had 18 units for the British and 20 units for the French.
Hello again Mike, I'm a follower now. Can't wait for your next post.
ReplyDeleteWow that’s a fantastic game thanks for sharing! Great looking 54mm toy soldiers - Quinn
ReplyDelete