Back to Gaming

 I haven't managed much gaming over the past few weeks for various reasons (including 2.5 weeks away in Norfolk and Suffolk) but did get in 6 games this week!

I played a Seven Years War game using Honours of War on Wednesday Morning with my regular opponent Anthony. Prussians vs Austrians which we called after a couple of hours as Anthony had to go and the Austrians were halfway to Prussian breakpoint with no losses themselves.

I then had a friend (Ian Marsh of Fighting15s) staying a couple of days and we played the same game in the evening before and then after dinner. it was a close game with each side needing 6 kills to cause the other army to break.  The final score was Austrians 8 units lost (3 of those on the final turn) to the Prussians 5 units lost (but i just failed to break a final Prussian unit for a draw).

On Thursday Ian and I also played a Travelbattle 54mm game (slightly marred by Ian's inability to roll anything but a 1 or a 2), a game of General Orders: WW2 from Osprey and two games of Azul all whilst hiding from the heat.

Not quite sitting in a dark room playing D&D like we used to when we were at school together but close!

Field of Battle 3rd Edition

Played an FPW game on Tuesday morning using the Field of Battle 3 rules - I have had these quite a long time but have never got around to playing with this edition.

Field of Battle comes from the Piquet stable of rules and uses a similar style of rolling for initiative and turning and acting on cards.  But, it has ironed out a lot of things that people disliked about the original Piquet rules and provides a very interesting game.

You both roll for initiative and the difference in the rolls is the number of cards you can turn. The winner of the rolls decides whether to go first or second.  Turning a card costs an Command Point, but all units can act on a card without using any further Command points.

All the cards have the detail of how you use the card, what the opposed roll is (if any), the result of rolling even, etc

You use polyhedral dice for rolls and having an advantage moves you up a dice size (so a D8 becomes a D10) or a disadvantage moves you down a dice size (D12+1 becomes D10 if you are down 2).  This becomes pretty easy to calculate after a few turns.  D12+3 is the maximum dice and D4 is the minimum.

It makes the game move quickly and is relatively easy to follow.

We both enjoyed the game despite me getting a number of things wrong and completely forgetting the disorder rules.

The game resulted in a crushing victory for the French, mostly due to my inability roll anything but a 1 on a D12 - every time I picked it up!  Managed 4 1s in a row...

Will definitely be playing a game with these rules again soon.

One Hour Wargames

 

Played a game with my regular opponent Anthony today.  Still feeling a bit under the weather so I went for One Hour Wargames and the "Unfortunate Oversight" scenarion we have played a couple of times before (though not with the OHW rules).

This time used the OHW Rifle Age rules on a 4' x 4' table with my Franco Prussian figures.

I took the Prussians and rolled up a 6 unit force of 4 infantry, 1 Skirmisher and 1 Artillery

The French had 3 Infantry, 1 Skirmisher and 2 cavalry.

The Prussians have to get across the river and capture the hill in 15 turns.  Not having cavalry made that task slightly more difficult.

As with a lot of OHW scenarios and games it came down to the last turn and last die roll...

I had lost several units (mostly due to Anthony's excellent dice rolling and my habit of rolling 1's) but I finally forced the town and cleared the hill of all but one of the French Infantry.

On the French's last turn the french could have shot at my unit that had advanced from the town and onto the hill and would have automatically killed it (it had 13 hits already) but that would have been a draw as he would also not have a unit on top of the hill.  Or he could charge with his cavalry where he needed to roll a 3-6 in melee and kill me to win or he would fail to kill the unit and he'd bounce off the hill and I'd win.

He chose to charge and killed the unit, securing the victory for Anthony and the French.

Very close game as always with a lot of tactical thought going into unit positioning and how to take (or keep) the town.

Also both decided we would possibly have tackled things slightly differently with hindsight.  I would probably have put most of my troops over on the right with the gun and crossed the ford in order to shell the town from the start.  Then held back two units to attack on the town once the occupants were reduced in strength.

Anthony felt he would have been better to send his cavalry through the town and across the Bridge to threaten my rear and to keep the town free.