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).