Battle Cry!

With all of the square-grid games I've been playing recently I was up for some more Battle Cry, and Caesar was happy to oblige. For various reasons our session kept getting postponed, but last night we finally got down to it.

We played two scenarios, both from the 1862 Kentucky campaign. And we used my 6mm figures rather than the ones that came with the game.

Here's Caesar contemplating his cards as we play the Perryville scenario. He played the Union, who have a stronger force, but with a lot of it wedged behind a river and rough terrain, so slow to enter the game.

I had a smaller force of Confederates, and launched the usual furious assault.

Unfortunately Caesar had the cards to oppose it, and neat positions like this - artillery on a hill with a solid infantry line in front of it that it could shoot over.

We had a nice little cavalry action. Mine came off better and, in fact, worked its way behind Caesar's line, doing a small amount of damage before the cards and dice caught up with it.

Caesar's reserve infantry pushed forward on the other flank

Eventually it rolled over my limited resistance, to give Caesar a 7-4 victory.

Perryville was fun, but along scenario, so we decided to try something quicker, and play it twice, swapping sides. We went for the other Kentucky Campaign scenario, Richmond, which took place about five weeks before Perryville. Here's the setup, with the numerically superior (for once) Confederates in the foreground. The Union are positioned well on a line of hills, but inferior in cards.

Both games were close and fun, with the Union desperately holding a line against a fierce Confederate assault.  I played the Confederates in the first game, and won it, albeit with a close score (6-5, I think).

We then swapped, and I got to try the Union defence. Their position looks strong.

Caesar was up to the job, though - the Confederates won again, 6-4. Here his cavalry pushed a Union unit out of their field fortifications.

Richmond is a very interesting scenario that I'm keen to try again sometime.

All of the games saw the usual cunning card-play, with Forced March being popular, and useful, in all games to make sudden assaults with a mass of infantry. In two games we had cases where a player had both Bombard cards as well, allowing them to swiftly position artillery on one turn, and punish the enemy line with double-fire on the next.

The 6mm figures looked great in the game. If I was doing them again, though, I'd use narrower bases - maybe 20mm x 15mm. At present they fill the hexes nicely, but what if I wanted to make proper 3D terrain tiles, eh? There's no room for terrain and the figures at the moment.

Ralph and Bryan played Flames of War, so here's something we've not seen yet this year - one of Ralph's burning tanks.