My First 'Battle'!

Following on from yesterday's post in which I told of how jaded I had become with my Napoleonic project and after receiving some very supportive comments from fellow gamers, I decided to get off my backside and try an actual game using what I've already built up.

So, yesterday evening I dug out a mega simple rule set 'Horse & Musket Rules SIP' (from the excellent Free Wargame Rules site) and set a game up in the 'War Loft'

The rules are very, very simple (always a bonus in my book!) whereby units acquire Disruption Points through combat, whether through ranged fire or melee.

Once a unit reaches 4 DP's it is eliminated and removed from play. (6 for elite units in my tweaked version) The rules follow a simple 'IGOUGO' system but I tweaked this by playing so that each side randomly activates one of the 3 Commanders in it's force each move. I also randomly generated Commander Class for each officer which gave both the French and Allied forces 2 x Average Commanders and 1 x Poor.

Each time an Average Class Commander was activated 1d6 was rolled and this indicated the number of units he could act with this phase. Similarly a Poor Commander subtracted 1 from his roll upon activation. A Gifted Commander would receive a +1 on his roll.

The rules make no allowances for troop rallying which although keeps the game simple just didn't seem right to me. So another tweak I made was to allow a Commander to use one of his 'actions' to attempt to rally off  DP's on a unit within his command radius during his activation dependent upon his class:

Gifted Commander (Command Radius: 40cms) removes 1DP with a roll of 4-6

Average Commander (Command Radius: 30cms) / 5-6

Poor Commander(Command Radius 20cms)  / 6

(+1 to die roll if Commander is attached to testing unit)

At some point in the future I'll post my tweaked version of this rule set as I think it has a lot to offer those gamers such as myself that prefer to 'game' rather than 'recreate' our Napoleonic battles.

Anyway here's a few pics of the game and although it's by no means a grand affair I must admit to really enjoying the action so far..........

The Austrian command on the right flank has made very little headway having been activated just once  so far and only managing to push his artillery and one infantry in the French direction!

Austrian Centre take the BUA and await the advancing French onslaught.

A view along the French line. Infantry advances steadily towards both the Allied Right and the BUA in the centre. Over on the far Right the French force are desperately trying to respond to the advancing Russian heavy cavalry!

Allied left flank and the Russian Command is making a general advance despite having a 'Poor' Commander. On the extreme left the Russian heavy cavalry is preparing for an all out assault on the French Right.



The game has somewhat of a boardgame feel to it which suits me fine. There may be a lot more work to do (especially in the scenery department!) but for now I'm finding this simple little rule set great fun.