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.

Swedes And Russians - The Cavalry And Artillery

I painted these the other day after finishing and photographing the infantry, but didn't get chance to photograph them until this evening.

Firstly, here's the mounted officer who was still just a blob in the previous pictures. Now he's less of a blob, as well as being out of focus.

Artillery - Swedish on the left and Russian on the right. I may do a bit more on the guns - perhaps some colour trim on the wheels.

Swedish cavalry.

Russian cavalry

A bit of a fracas.

Swedes And Russians - Test Units

I have painted a couple of my Risk figure units for Maurice now, one as GNW Swedes and the other as GNW Russians, and I'm very pleased with the results.

Here are the Swedes. The pikemen proved to be relatively easy to make from the basic Risk musketeer figure, although I suspect the soft plastic of my knock-off copy figures helped a bit there, as it made the cutting and clipping simpler. I have left the flag white; I'll do them all in one go. And, if I ever get any more infantry, I may make standard bearers from them instead, as the figures I am using, clipped from the guns, aren't that outstanding.

Here are some Russians. The brown blob in the middle is an unpainted mounted officer; I'll do him along with the test cavalry units, which are next.

Here's some painted stands along with some unpainted ones, so you can see where I started from. I gave them a basic white undercoat, then painted the whole figure in the base uniform colour before doing the 'detail'.

 Opposed units. The bases are temporary; I will do proper base texture once the whole lot are painted.

Maurice For One

It’s probably obvious to anyone who reads this blog that I play a lot of solo games. This is mostly because, whilst I have a willing family, many of my games are spontaneous decisions, and playing solo means I don’t have to organise anyone else and teach them the rules; I can have an idea, set it up and play all in my own time and at my own pace.

The problem is, of course, that not all games suit solo play, and that includes some games I like. I prefer to play both sides, being as fair as I can (and I’m pretty good, even if I do say so myself), so don’t go for any special solo mechanisms. This means that I generally play the game ‘straight out of the box’, as it were. So games which have mechanisms where one player has information hidden from the other don’t really fare too well. Of my favourites these include Memoir ’44, Battle Cry and Maurice. Now I have played the former two games solo, trying to ‘forget’ what cards the opponent has, and it’s been useful in trying out scenarios, but I have never found it satisfying. Maurice, however, is really driven by the cards, but I’d like to find a way of playing something which captures the experience but which doesn't have a hand of cards for each player (where ‘each player’ means ‘two different versions of me’*).

I propose to try the following.

Armies will be built as normal, with National advantages. I know they are cards as well, but really they are just information. Terrain and scenario setup can be run as normal.

Neither side gets a hand of cards. Instead they get a number of Command Points. These can be tracked on paper, or with counters. The Attacker gets 8 points, the Defender 5 and a Great Captain +2. A player may never end a turn with more than 10 Command points.

The turn sequence is the same as before, but there are no modifiers and interrupts. This obviously loses a feature of the game, but I can’t really see a way around it. The basic flow of the game should be the same, which is what is important.

After the Volley Phase, the Active Player declares their action. The player may not declare an action which they could not legally order with the Command Points they currently have. They then receive new Command Points based on their choice:

Event – 0
Charge – 0
March – 1
Rally – 2
Bombard – 2
Pass - 3

Activating a group within four base widths costs 1 Command Point. For every extra four, or part of four, base widths the the General is from the group to be activated, the player must pay an extra Command Point.

At the end of the activation the general may be moved, at a cost of 1 Command Point.

Charge, March, Rally, Bombard and Pass are unchanged from the rules.

If a player chooses to declare an Event, they spend between 1 and 3 Command Points (player's choice). For each point they spend they roll 1 dice, and refer to the table below. If more than 1 dice has been rolled, the player chooses which roll they wish to have; only one roll will ever apply.

1 – Gain 4 Command Points, or take 1 Command Point from opponent and add it to your total.

2 – Enemy must discard 2 Command Points

3 – Activate any two groups within 12 of the General; each group may either March or Rally OR Activate one group (with any order) to which you have a valid command path, regardless of distance from the General.

4 – Choose one enemy unit; you can choose to have that unit either make a valid March move or Charge.

5 – Automatically remove all DISR from one friendly unit OR gain a Rally Advantage which enables you to add 1 to all Rally rolls the next time you declare a Rally action.

6 – Gain a Combat Advantage. You may hold up to three of these. If the enemy has one or more Combat Advantages, then yours is automatically expended to make them discard one of theirs (so only one player can ever hold Combat Advantages). A Combat advantage can otherwise be spent to: Gain a +1 on all Infantry firing in a particular Volley Phase, give a +1 to all Artillery firing in a Bombard action, give a +1 to all Infantry units involved in a Charge where you are the Active player or give a +2 to all Cavalry involved in a Charge in which you are the Active player.

Note: I have set up all of the events so that they either happen in the Active player's turn. If playing both sides in a solo game, it is best if only the active side is the one actually making decisions.

I have no idea if any of this will work in practice; it will certainly give a game that lacks some of the swings of fortune of the card-driven one, because of the lack of interrupts and modifiers. But it should capture the essence of the game and have the same ebb and flow. I will have to set up a game and try it out, but I can't see that happening this weekend.

Comments and criticism are welcome.

*Two different gamer versions; there are two different versions of me, but one is far too obsessed with shoes to do much in the way of wargaming ;)

The Battle Of Blenheim

Last night we played a scenario for the Battle of Blenheim, using Maurice. We played it as a doubles game - two shuffled decks, and two players on each side. John and I took the allies, with him being Malborough and me taking Eugene. Ralph was the French and Caesar the Bavarians. All forces were 100pt Maurice armies, some with National Advantages. We used our various ImagiNations armies, including the justly famous and garish Riskovians and Sans Couleur forces.

Due to an oversight I managed to not have my phone with me* so didn't manage to take any pictures. Other people did, however, so I'm assuming that Ralph, at least, will produce a report with pictures that I can link to from here.

(Update: Here it is. Three pictures. One of the most epic games we've played in a while, and between us we managed three pictures ...)

Here's another map of the actual battle. Basically on one side the Anglo-Dutch faced the French, whilst on the other Eugene faced the Bavarians.

John and I attacked, since that's what happened in the actual battle. John got his troops into position swiftly, and pushed across the stream which bisected the battlefield with little trouble. Where his attack fell down was in his abysmal die-rolling. John's troops had Lethal Volleys, but try as he might he couldn't convert his significant advantage in shooting into rapid French casualties. The French fell, it's true, but not at the rate we'd hoped or expected. early on the French lost a unit to a sneaky combination of cards, which saw it suddenly advance on the Anglo-Dutch force, retire, then charge them, all the time passing over the stream and becoming more disrupted. Its loss blew a hole in Ralph's line and made his command and control awkward at the key moment Malborough crossed the stream.

On my side of the battlefield, I had put my cavalry on the extreme right, and my infantry in the centre, planning on pushing it forward to pin the Franco-Bavarian line, whilst John's lethal volleys rolled up and over their right. As a Great Captain I had a huge hand of cards, and played carefully in order to maintain it. Perhaps too cautiously - whilst my infantry pushed forward, Caesar marched his Bavarians wide onto my right flank, and left my cavalry facing most of his force. In Maurice cavalry are not that hot facing fresh, determined infantry, and I suffered for it. A counter-attack saw the Bavarian commander captured, and cost Caesar his hand of cards at a critical moment, but that was really the only bright spot of that engagement for me.

The game ended when we ran out of time. John had smashed the French infantry opposing him, and was keeping the rest of the army under pressure. Ignoring the garrison dug into Blenheim itself he was turning to roll of the Franco-Bavaria line from their right, whilst using his cavalry to hold of a counter-attack from the French cavalry. My infantry was pinning the remaining French infantry to their front. This forced the French into tricky command choices, as they were trying to fight two different engagements on widely separated parts of the battlefield. It was safe to say that the French would have been taken right out of the battle. The Bavarians were still strong, though, and looking set to wipe out Eugene's cavalry and artillery before forming up to fight the remaining Allied troops. Caesar was happy to concede, but my view is that there was a lot of battle still left to fight and the Bavarians could have still pulled off a victory for their side. I had a good hand of cards, but had an army that was in a bad position and starting to look a bit sick, whilst although John's troops were in good shape generally, he would be tied down mopping up stray French units for a lot of the game.

I certainly felt we have mastered the card-play in this game now. We all made mistakes in our choice of when and where to play cards, but we now play much more quickly and the game rattles along nicely. The Great Captain ability was fun; I never ran out of cards, and only towards the end did I see my hand beginning to deplete. On the other side, Caesar and Ralph both ran out of cards at key moments,and were probably always slightly on the back-foot when it came to cards - a peril of being the defender in Maurice.

The rules delivered an excellent game.Thanks to Caesar for organising it, and to everyone who provided figures and terrain (which includes me, for once).

*Actually I did, but it was hiding in my car, and I didn't find it until I was packing up to go home.