Hammfilade 2026 - Saturday. General du Corp. Battle of Siebenkiefern (pt1)

 Doug hosted a game of General du Corp. It's a convention ruleset for napoleonics meant to finish large battles in a convention time block (3-4hr) with historical results. It's notable for the attrition of units, large base basing, and easy to learn/remember rules.  

 

Most years Doug will take a historical battle and whip up an order of battle from it, along with battle directions to various commands. He usually hides what it is by changing place names, rotating directions, shuffle nationalities, taking battles from non napoleonic but still horse and musket periods. Usually the reveal occure around the 1/3 to 1/2 mark, after all the forces have arrived (we often have no idea where or when reinforcements, if any, will appear....which seems appropriate). This year we didn't even know who was commanding what as Doug had preselected our commands and only told us as we marched onto the table. 

 We found out (eventually) that this was based on the Battle of Seven Pines, an American Civil War battle. The real battle must have been pretty wild, as we had troops arriving from all around the table edge, often threatening to flank the previous command that had just arrived. Victory was generally determined by control of the central village/town. 

Garret started with a fairly decent sized force of Russians, including some emplaced/fortified guns. He was instructed to hold the town. Ron marched on the table edge and for a good 3 or 4 turns they smashed heads (2 hrs in pretend game time).  

 

Then things started getting spicy. 

 

A reserve of Russian troops arrived behind Garrets line. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Followed one turn later (30min game time) by my Prussian command. 

 

 

 

 

 

 I was given a roll to see how far down the road my clever flankmarch had managed (note: note my plan, it's the historical one I inherited. But still clever).

I aced the roll and was positioned to hit the reserve on the flank in short order, and was threatening Garret's dangling defensive line. 

Ron was low on manpower on the attack so this was a critical assist.  

 

  

 My command challenges were that I needed to threaten the dangling flank of Garrets town defense (my orders were to secure the town he was defending), while also taking advantage of my options against the Russian reserve (and not get murdered by his exposed artillery). 

 

 

 

to be continued....