Friday 19 January 2018

2nd Game of 2018, Battle Report

Peter's Austrians deployed on their right with their strong command cavalry holding the flank. 

The cavalry would suffer early in the battle from artillery fire from the massed Prussian batteries.
Graham's Russians deployed on the left of the Allied line. Their reserve infantry were deployed in columns, ready to react to the Prussian deployment.
The Prussians deployed facing the Austrians.
The distribution of initiative in the session was pretty even. The allies got most at the start, then it balanced up.

The Russians, out on their own, spent much of the early initiative to redeploy onto the Prussian right flank; this threw any hope of a planned early Prussian attack against the Austrians off balance. On the other flank the Austrians demonstrated with their infantry and launched their cavalry into the attack.
The Prussians dispatched infantry and cavalry to slow the Russian advance.
The Prussian cavalry with infantry support duly slow up the Russian attack and temporarily throw its advance elements into confusion. 

By the end of turn two several allied units had been repelled. 
This shot shows the position of the Russians at the end of the first session. 


The Austrians have had one success. Their cavalry has managed to summit the hill first and is now fighting down hill. 

The Prussian infantry, in the wood are seriously threatened by a flank attack. This will be touch and go - will I turn a manoeuvre card before Peter turns a move in difficult terrain card.

This shot shows the Austrians facing the windmill and the Russians, still in columns, massing for their attack.

Note the Prussian Guard infantry holding the windmill. In most games this unit gets clobbered but this time it did sterling work. It has stormed the hill, thrown the Grenzers out of the windmill (both units were routed early on) and is now peppering the Austrian line infantry at the stream.
The Russian position at the end of the first session. Again, the Prussians desperately need an elusive manoeuvre card.
A shot of the extreme left flank of the Russian line. Barely visible, coming up the road behind the wood, the Prussians are trying to bring up a battery to face the Russians.

On the whole, the first session went decidedly in favour of the Prussians and the Allies are facing ever more difficult major morale checks*. However, the Prussian line is threatened on both flanks and I feel decidedly uneasy about my position - next week it's going to be nip and tuck.

*In my amended rules for the SYW we play the effect of major morale in a very different way to that in the official master rules. For one thing, each side has two major morale cards and our rule runs as follows:

MAJOR MORALE CHECK
The routing and pursuing units of both sides move at this time regardless of terrain; they move at their full normal rate; they move for free. Routers always ignore the impediments of terrain.

When this sequence card is turned it is played against the enemy army. The enemy’s C-in-C must take a major morale check. He does this by rolling a d20, adjusted for command quality (-2 to +2 in this case) versus the total number of units he currently has destroyed or routing. To pass the check the die result must be higher. If the check is passed no further action is required. If the die roll is equal or lower than the number required the army fails the check and:
  • The army pays 1 morale chip.
  • The army adds one Dress the Lines card to its sequence deck. 
  • The army must individually check the morale of each of its command groups.

If the army has no C-in-C or morale chips to take the major morale check it automatically fails, the army adds one Dress the Lines card to its sequence deck, 
and must individually check the morale of each of its command groups.

Command groups forced to take major morale checks do so by rolling D12, adjusted for command quality, versus D8. If the command is currently leaderless a D6 is rolled. If the die roll is higher the command passes the check. If the command fails the army loses one morale point; if the army cannot pay a morale chip all of the group’s units are downgraded one battle quality level (determined - eager - ready - battle weary) and any units already rated as battle weary are routed.


Recovering lost officers. On the appearance of this card any officers lost in battle can be recovered on a successful other difficulty check versus D8. Each test costs one initiative point. If the officer is recovered at the first attempt the replacement officer will be the original one (he had just fallen off his horse, or something similar); if not, the officer will be a new officer and his quality will need to be diced for.

Note that we do not add Dress the Line cards for the loss of units.

7 comments:

Jay White said...

Stunning game. Apologies if I missed it somewhere ... but which rule set are you using?

JAMES ROACH said...

Home amended classic Piquet.

Jonathan Freitag said...

I'm with Jay! Stunning game.

Gonsalvo said...

Looks super!
Are you using Eric's rule of 1/3 or some other impetus limiter, or straight opposed D20's, or something else?
I like your ideas for the revised MMC

JAMES ROACH said...

We are using the following, and it sounds more complex than it is in practice:

DOMINO DRAW USING STANDARD DOMINOES (spotted blank / blank to six / six).
To determine who wins the initiative and to determine the number of initiative points won each side draws one domino from a bag at the beginning of each initiative; high domino wins and receives the total number of spots on his domino. Where the total number of spots is the same for both players, the domino with the largest number on one half wins. The side drawing lower gets initiative points equal to the spots on the high side of his domino. There is one exception to this; where one side draws a double domino, the player with the higher domino adds the number of spots on both dominoes together to achieve his initiative point total (e.g. 4/4 and 5/4, the winner with a score of 9 gets 17 initiative); where the player drawing the low domino has the double, he gets the total spots on his domino (e.g. in the above case 8). The player winning the initiative always goes first followed by the losing player. Dominos are returned to the bag before the next initiative. The turn ends on a draw of double domino and double domino (e.g. 2/2 and 4/4).

Secundus said...

Lovely looking board! I do like those buildings too.

Anonymous said...

great i like this game