2025 Hammfilade - Bad 6s cavalry game

 Another August rolls around and Doug hosted another weekend of gaming at his lovely basement set up. Friday  we started off with some napoleonic cavalry fight. Originally the rules began as a riff off of dragon rampant, but they have evolved quite far towards a system that is descriptively called '6's are bad'.

 

 

 

Units are 12 horse (we experimented with some small units of 6 as well). Generally speaking you try and activate your unit to do an action by not rolling a 6. As you go on you will accumulate BAPs (bad action points) which increase your friction, you roll extra dice and 6's are bad (a 6 is not only a fail but also increases your BAPs). There are opportunities for rallying/recovery to get rid of BAPs. The units have 2 actions a turn.....assuming they pass the first action. 

 

Movement into contact is a fight. After a fight the loser has to rally off all his BAPs before they can reform. Getting hit while unformed puts you at substantial disadvantage. 

 

 

 

 

The game was largely French vs Anglo-Allied. There was very little balancing. There are some unit characteristics but they don't do a whole lot (light, heavy, armored, hussar, lancer). We were play testing leaders (which were OP and the french had a bunch) and a cannon (which needs some tuning).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game play was fast and free wheeling and it was very common to hit the opponent and then have to deal with a counter charge for long enough that the original opponent was able to pull themselves back together and start moving again.  

 

 

 

 

We all had 2 units. Doug had one of his units chased off the board, and then finally (FINALLY) managed to get a shot off with the single cannon on the game (roll to, limber/unlimber, move, load, fire, accurate hit, and then........a bucket of dice).  

My largely intact hussar unit disintegrated. Naturally I rolled something like 10 or 11 6's out of 24 dice, but I think even with more predictable rolls the gun is a one hit to cripple a unit. 

There was much hilarity at this result including from myself, it was just such a terrible example of rolling.  

 

 

 

My other unit kept the barn between the gun and itself as we started to think about how to hunt the gun down. Eventually it got late and it had been a travel day for many so we retired.