Honours of War AAR - The crossroads (take three)

This was the third attempt at the same scenario using different rulesets in order to best compare and select a preferred one. The scenario, as before, involves two perfectly balanced forces converging on a crossroads with seperated columns (4 columns all arriving at semi random times). The strategies of the combatants had been diced in the original attempt and keep consistent since.

This go around uses Osprey's Honours of War. It was very helpfully suggested by Jonathan Freitag of Palouse Wargaming Journal who has a number of battles written up using it as well. We both liked the rules and are planning another go around (with a different scenario). We did have some concerns about time to close, but we think if we change to the 20mm distances (from the 15mm) and possibly add some road benefit it may alleviate those problems for us. On to the writeup and more thoughts...

The general is able to inspire/improve the brigade commanders (or an independent unit). Each turn you dice to see how effectively the commander/unit moves. Tommy's inspiration plus a roll of a 6 resulted in his cav racing across the table to try and close with the enemy. Meanwhile my own command roles (really for most of the game) were adequate to mediocre, so my forces crawled towards the town.

Even with adequate rolls, the lead cav elements were able to converge on Tommy's cheeky hussars and threatened with a flank attack he steadily back pedaled avoiding combat. One of cannon deployed to further encourage the hussars to leave. 
We found cannon didn't tend to do catastrophic damage to units, but was good for long-term harassing gunfire that slowly wore them down.

We ignored the rules for built up areas in this game as we had done so for other systems. They seem pretty straight forward so will be enacted in the next game most likely. 

Tommys unit closing dragoon cav force my 2:1 advantage to disappear as the units all lined up on one another. His dragoons dived in and just about routed my troops (the red dice denotes a unit that needs to rally and reform before it can do anything). He barely avoided a similar fate.

 My first infantry column was finally getting close to the down and shook out to threaten the dragoons with musketry or a flank charge in order to try and avoid losing my cavalry unit. The last infantry unit was forced to face 2 enemy infantry units including a grenadier unit.

Tommy's other brigade brought his gun onto a hill, and deployed to support his retreating hussars and defend the cannon. It gave me a tough choice about trying to dive in to get his hussars (maybe, followed by musket death) vs retreat and continue to be hit with his cannon.

Fortuitously our generals were in the middle of the scrum and could bring back nearly routed units. Normally a unit needs to be a safe distance (1 ft in this scale) from enemy in order to rally. The general can rally off a single hit regardless of proximity to the enemy.

Unfortunately I'm flesh with nearly broken units. The grenadiers  on the right flank have seen off one unit, and my other one is half done. It was impressive the hits that infantry muskets would rack up in short order. Definitely this ruleset channels the idea that infantry were the decision arm of battle. We were running short of time but the cavalry went in one last time and my units vaporized (including my second cav being done for by long range cannon fire after the melee).

The obvious cause of my solid loss (perhaps even major loss) was the failure for my second column to arrive. Good god there were a lot of rolls of 1 that stalled out the brigade during the movement phases. Perhaps there were some enemy snipers in the wood or some similar clever stratagem by the enemy that delayed them.

Thoughts on Honours of War:
As mentioned we both liked the rules. It felt like a modern ruleset that flowed well (unlike age of reason): the modifiers were obvious (rather than endless) and combat was simple to resolve. It also seems packed with a lot of historical flavour (which would require more work with blackpowder, and we question whether you can get get it in the game given the very straight forward mechanics).

It was quite notable to me when I was making a cheat sheat/learning the rules how dense the information is in the book. My document was many more pages than the equivalent for age or reason or black powder. Yet despite this the rules aren't overly complex.....just very well edited.

Our scenario tended to showcase some issues with long closing distances. While often a scenario issue, it didn't end up being a problem with the other two rules. With Honours of War you dice for ever brigade ever movement turn...and consult a (simple) table. Definitely a source of time loss. We do think that it would be pretty easily solved by moving "up" one scale to the 20mm distances. A big shout out to the designer who printed 2 pages of distances for a variety of scales rather than just noting the factor change and leaving it to the reader to make all the changes.

Interestingly the national differences (which we didn't use, selecting a sort of 'average' for all of them) slightly alter a lot of different parts of the game. This is especially promising for my imagi-nation project as it gives a lot of scope for personalizing forces or even specific units.

I have no doubt that some additional AARs for this ruleset will appear on my blog in the future. Tommy is facing a heavy semester at school in the new year though, so it might be a bit delayed...