One Hour Black Powder

Continuing my exploration of Black Powder I set up one of the OHW scenarios, planing on running it with one commander on each side controlling the six units. The problem is that the OHW scenarios assume that you don't have commanders and limited activations - all units move all of the time - so they do tend to stretch the capabilities of a single commander somewhat. 

To make matters worse, I rolled the Encounter scenario, in which units appear randomly over multiple turns on their own side's baseline, whilst fighting for control of a hill in the centre. This was going to leave my poor commanders having to run back and forth collecting newly arrived units, whilst also trying to run the fight in the centre.

Anyway, here's the Russian commander exhorting his initial unit - some infantry, to advance.

The Swedes had a cavalry unit at the start. Their commander waved his hat and told them to get a move on.

The terrain. The Swedes were entering from the left and the Russians from the right. Both sides had three units of infantry, two of cavalry and one of artillery. The winner would be the side that held the hill at the end of 15 turns.

The Russians got the first move and no new unit, so their commander simply used a 'Follow Me' order to advance the infantry straight onto the objective. The Swedes responded by moving their cavalry to threaten the infantry's flank; I felt a frontal charge was possibly unsafe at this stage..

The Russians brought on some cavalry themselves, and a Follow Me order saw them able to charge straight into the flank of the Swedes.

Naturally the Swedes lost, and were driven back. The Russians pursued and the Swedes lost again, but surprisingly they didn't break.

At this point I was joined by a first-time player - my grandson Eli. We worked out the next few turns together, and he even had a go at rolling some dice, failing in this task because he wouldn't actually let go of them. Still, we had a pleasant time checking rules and moving figures together.

Eli was very excited when the Swedes were able to bring some cavalry on, and suggested that they swung round and charged the Russian horse in the flank. I was in full agreement with him.

In fact the Swedes were having a good time of it with their reinforcements, and had also got a couple of infantry units into play that had been steadily advancing towards the hill. Things weren't looking good for the Russians at this stage.

The Russians turned and reorganised. Their initial cavalry unit routed, but another appeared and took its place, driving back the Swedes. Meanwhile a firefight broke out for control of the hill.

With the odds in their favour, though, the Swedes charged. There's doesn't seem to be an uphill bonus for melee in Black Powder (that I could see), so the Russians didn't really have any advantage. However they fought the Swedes to a draw.

In the following round of combat they routed the Swedes.. And they had another unit coming up to bolster their defences.

The Swedes brought up another unit of infantry as well.

A command blunder saw the Russian reinforcements veer off to their left instead of advancing with best speed towards the hill. Their commander pointed out where they should be going.

The original defender of the hill was taking heavy casualties but was holding firm.

And the blunder worked to the Russians' advantage, as it left their infantry unit with a rapid advance onto the Swedish flank. Meanwhile more Russians were appearing in the distance. To the bottom left the Swedes were reorganising and rallying their cavalry.

The Swedish foot on their left was charged in the flank, whilst the Russians launched a bold charge against the opposing cavalry.

The Swedish foot were driven back, disrupting their line, and another unit was hit in the flank. This one held firm and was able to turn to face.

But the Russians had their blood up and kept charging. One Swedish infantry unit broke ...

... and seeing their friends rout the other broke as well.

The Russians had two infantry units on the hill, and other advancing to the fight. The Swedes were reduced to two battered cavalry units, and some artillery that hadn't even appeared yet.

On that basis I called the action a Russian victory.

"Retreat!"

"Advance!"

I made a few mistakes, but probably not as many as the first game. I'm sure a couple of times I forgot the -1 command roll for being within 12" of the enemy. And early on I misunderstood the rules for Follow Me, assuming that a commander could order it so long as the unit was within his movement distance. This made it easy to bring up units from the baseline. In fact he has to be within 12" (4" on my board), which makes it a lot harder to do.

In fact that was a big issue in this scenario, as mentioned above. The poor commanders simply couldn't bring up their randomly arriving troops whilst trying to run a battle in the centre. I suspect that the answer is to allow the arriving reinforcements some kind of free move, so they at least get close to the action on their own initiative. Alternatively the tactics for the battle would be to hang around on your baseline until you feel you have enough troops in play to make a move on the hill, then hope you can bring up the remaining troops as they arrive. In some ways this might be more interesting, since the battle is on the clock and you can't necessarily afford to hang around too long.