The Usual Fate of Plans

Well, that's the week done and not much worth writing about. Not even a proper game to report on although I did finish Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Great Boer War, (Available as a free ebook, all 462 pages, no maps or prints) 2 thumbs up, 5 stars, maybe I'll even write a book report later.

The game in 30 seconds: Red's cavalry flanked the hill on the right but were blocked, a frontal assault by 3 waves of Red infantry supported by guns eventually broke the enemy center. Heavy casualties on both sides but numbers won.

 I did play that game shown in the last post, but not the way I intended. Instead I played a turn or 3 at a time over 4 days, possibly in excess of 20 turns and a total of around 3 hours, mostly while dead tired and with frequent rule changes to test various options. Enjoyable and periodically engaging but not what I had planned, Apart from the discontinuity, the scenario itself was flawed.

Well, not the scenario but the execution of the idea. The idea was that Faraway or Red forces were marching in pursuit of Oberhilse or Blue and found them dug in atop a ridge barring the road ahead. Red had close to a 2:1 advantage in numbers but was not "all up" while Blue was entrenched with difficult ground on the flanks and their positions were concealed. That latter point proved to be an error since I used my usual card system but here it failed me, The key positions on the ridge were nearly all unoccupied while much of the infantry was massed in reserve on the far right. One might presume that Blue was the one surprised but it did weaken their defence. It would have been better if I had garrisoned the key points and used the cards to place a variable and unknown number of reserves.

The second issue is that I deployed the hill too close to the edge. When Red sent their cavalry around, to flank it, they found a narrow causeway between the rocky hill and a huge chasm. Oops! OK if I had intended that but I meant to allow for a flanking attack.

At least the game not only provided some much needed distraction if only for a 1/2 or 1/4 hour at a time but it also allowed my to try and reject various rules options. The draft is now up to date and I plan to rearrange the table and play a meeting engagement sometime this weekend, hopefully in no more than 2 or at most 3 sessions.