Black Powder 123

We had an evening of Black Powder Napoleonics yesterday, playing the simple six-unit 123 scenarios our group enjoys. The aim was to play a couple of games during the evening, but really I was only up for just one game - I'm still shattered from our long, long weekend away.

Caesar and I played a scenario which concerned controlling a house in the centre of the board. Our forces were nominally French (Caesar) and Russian (me), but the troop stats were identical and fairly generic. Oddly enough, however, the units seemed to mostly perform according to the figures used to depict them, which was lucky.

Caesar made the opening moves, and quickly seized the house.

I didn't mess around, and threw my three infantry units at the objective. Caesar was covering his occupying force with a second infantry unit, but they were forced into square by my lurking cavalry.

I attacked Caesar's square, hoping to remove the garrison's only current support before the main attack. Amazingly, and frustratingly, the square held on for turn after turn. However Caesar failed command rolls in order to bring up the rest of his troops, leaving his garrison isolated.

I attacked the house, making use of my unengaged units to provide as much support as possible. The French garrison found itself in a desperate, losing struggle.

Caesar finally got his cavalry into action, driving off the Russian supports, but then falling back from some infantry behind them.

Caesar's infantry square finally broke, allowing all of my infantry to assault the house. This saw the end of the French garrison as well.

Caesar now only had one unit left capable of assaulting the house, and there was a Russian line between it and the garrison. With time running out (there's a turn-limit) he conceded.

Caesar failed to get enough units around the garrison to prevent the Russians from massing their forces against it. The units that were there, and which bore the brunt of the attack, were the same ones he would have had to use to retake the objective, so when that 'opportunity' presented itself they were no longer present.

Thanks to Ralph for organising the evening and to Bryan for adjudicating our game. It's a while since I've played Black Powder, but a surprising amount of it came back to me as I played.