Friday, November 23, 2018

Black Powder AAR - The crossroads (redux)

In the quest for a most preferred ruleset (thereby sidestepping the 'best' discussion trap) Tommy and myself replayed the crossroads game . A quick recap: we are hunting for a lacewars era ruleset to use with an imagi-nations type campaign/dabbling.

The scenario has been taken out of the excellent 'programmed wargame scenarios' and sees a closing engagement between two enemies of  two brigades each  marching down 4 roads that intersect in the middle (hence the crossroads designation).  Tommy has instructions to form a north-south battle line centered on the town, while my own orders are to take the commanding heights past the town.




Tommy's troops blundered a few times coming in on the south west (top left), but amusingly the blunders cancelled each other out. Progress down the road was burst-ey as I suppose is common with blackpowder. I do like a bit of friction and unpredictability in my games. You can cover obscene amounts of terrain with triple successes though.


My troops reached the crossroads first, after coming under fear from an early deploying artillery piece.

The grenadiers screened the continued progress of the column as my orders were to move on through to the other side (and take the hills). 

 In the North my hussars clashed against Tommys dragoons and a bloody repulse occured, maxing both units out on their hits.

 The picture above shows better the screening force, and enemy deployed artillery (which conveniently ended up being screended for most of the rest of the action).



In the South flank the cavalry also clashed, lead by the supreme army commanders. Some lucky dice saw General Tommy carried off with his scattered hussars (in the picture they've been removed).

We can also see the deployed line company delivering fire on the approaching column, but threatened by an enemy unit to the North. The grenadiers came off worse in their musketry at the village, and everyone's force is pretty brittle.

Tommy deployed his second line to face the cavalry threatening his flank and delivered a very disappointing round of fire. Similarly the line marching into the teeth of the cannon to attack the flank of the blocking force at the head of his column was unable to seal the deal.

The game ended suddenly with over 50% of the brigades exhausted as my troops began to fire. Total play time after setup was about 90 minutes.

We both liked the blackpowder play through better than age of reason. I do have some concerns about how to transfer casualties to a campaign, how to make units less generic, and the lack of siege rules (which is something age of reason contains). The speed and lack of a million modifiers is definitely an asset though.

We plan on trying Osprey's lacewars ruleset next (Honours of War) which one commenter suggested on the Age of reason post up (shout out to Jonathan F).

11 comments:

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    1. I'm guessing in another month-ish. Tommy has a busy semester in the new year, so wants to get in our game before then.

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  2. Good stuff Dave. Always good to see games in progress and hear about rules sets that I'd never heard of.

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    1. It's nice to actually get a game in. Hobby time has been a bit sparse lately. Black powder has just released a second edition so maybe you'll hear some buzz about it. The original rules had some criticism about being a bit too generic and requiring some work to make them period specific (they cover a long chunk of history). I'm wondering now if all the splat books have been done they will be raided to give more concrete 'rules and recommendations' for various eras right in the main volume (ed 2)

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  3. Thanks for this playthrough. The description of units being too generic is actually a selling point for me. Personally, my tastes run against the "listbuilding" aspect of wargames. I'd much rather a few bits of grit laid on top of generic forces and "off you go".

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    1. I don't really like finicky list building either. It's nice to have some sense of unit differences beyond the colour they are painted. I suspect blackpowder just requires a bit more work than is typically handed out to gamers. It's also entirely possible that with only one simple scenario playthrough I haven't detected the differences that are there/possible. I imagine you can find some very cheap copies of blackpowder now that second edition is released.

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  4. I think to give a set of rules a decent chance you have to run through them on the table a minimum of 3 times. I only played Black Powder a couple of times with Jeff but enjoyed both games. I agree with Maj. Guiscard: I like the flexibility of the rules. Of course that comes at a cost and a lot people have a problem with that.

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    1. I played a game of hail Caesar, which is an ancients version of black powder and quite liked it. It helped that my side won and we had gorgeous painted armies to paint around that belonged to someone else. I'm sure blackpowder will get another go unless honours of war blows it out of the water. There will be some tweaking and house ruling etc.

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  5. BTW, DaveB I didn't hear back from you about hills. I have just about finished the ACW project so I will need something else to work on... lulzz.

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    1. Hah, thanks for the poke. I finally sent you an email with some photos and stuff. We've been slammed with some family healthy issues (my inlaw had a hospital admission) and organizing a xmas part we do each year. I'm sure the rest of December will be totally relaxing....(as if).

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  6. Lulzzz.. I got the email and replied. Best of luck with a crazy December.

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