Surprise Attack

"Those are Toy Soldiers Bigawd!" some General is supposed to have exclaimed. (or not)

Gratuitous close up of my homecast, original, US infantry 
(apart from the Zinnbrigade drummer.)

Yesterday I managed to finish fiddling with the rules (for now) and get a game on the table. Since, at this particular point, I was most interested in how it played as a game, I chose one of Thomas's One Hour scenarios, "Counter Attack". A scenario which I had previously played with other rules and enjoyed.

Since "Blue", is the attacker, approaching from the south, once again the colours matched the armies and seemed perfectly suited to the historical setting. In this case the British have one unit holding a critical bridge while the Americans have all of their 6 units gathered around a critical village on the southern table edge. On Turn 3 the other 5 British units arrive and have access to 2 secret fords across the river. Victory is achieved by holding both the village and the bridge at the end of 15 turns.

Somewhere around Turn 6 of 15. The British infantry are over the East ford and their Dragoons have switched from the West ford to the East.

Since I want to be able to use the rules to refight historical battles as well as play generic scenarios, my first revision was to adjust the ground scale to match the 1 unit=1 battalion=1 grid square equation. Unfortunately that didn't work very well on the table since effective musketry was only between adjacent units. This made it hard to make sensible adaptations of most generic scenarios and also made pretty much all tactics and unit types into vague die modifiers and unexplained special rules.

Not very intuitive at all or satisfying for a toy soldier game and waaay too quick for small games. It might work with 20-30 units a side but that's not my idea of a 'Game in a Box'. I went back a couple of steps, making constant scale subordinate to having significant, easily recognised, tactical choices. (Hopefully) 

The American left flank has been driven back and turned and their General has been hit by a stray shot slowing down their response to the threat.

There were 3 really major changes made from the previous editions.

The first change was that I resurrected rolling for the number of "Orders" available along with a group order capability. Apart from being a challenge for players when their nice neat battle plans come apart at the seams, risking Commanders in combat becomes a serious risk not to be taken lightly. As a bonus I found that it more or less removed the need to have a rule for units to rally or hold position after retreating and so on.  There almost never seemed to be enough orders available once the formations got knocked about and it soon became obvious that stopping periodically to reform your battlelines was usually a good idea rather than pressing on helter-skelter. Can't remember now why I removed it, whether it was because it was too obviously adapted from DBA or because I was experimenting with something else. Anyway I've brought it back and I'm glad I did.

The two biggest changes though, were the elimination of separate close combat system with the loser being forced to retire, and a change to the turn system so that now there are only 3 phases rather than the 6 I have had for years. Now the 1st player moves then the 2nd then both sides resolve all combat simultaneously. (Rather like one of the rules variants in the example games in Featherstone's Battles With Model Soldiers, now that I think of it.)

The effectiveness of long range fire has been reduced to reflect both prolonged skirmishing and the occasional indecisive long range firefight. The latter was the sort of thing the generals frowned upon as it expended ammo, fouled muskets and tired the men more than killing and injuring significant numbers of the enemy but sometimes it was better than having the men stand idle under fire.

With average die rolling and a default 15 turn game length, a unit of infantry with average die rolling would need around 18 turns of long range fire to break their enemy. That means its not really a good battle winning plan but it has its uses, especially in a game like the last scenario where an impassible river crossed by a single bridge separates the armies or when you are trying to tie up and weaken the enemy while waiting for reinforcements or a turning force.

I thought this might really change, if not spoil, the "feel" of the game but in practice it was quicker, kept both of my selves engaged  and somehow kept  the same basic overall feel of the game, only more so. As expected, units that were getting battered were often pulled back by the player (me) from close range fire, especially if they had 2nd move that turn, or were broken before they could pull back so the lack of a forced retreat wasn't really missed. What was diminished was the temptation to focus on low level details which shouldn't be the General's concern and weren't actually in the rules but only suggested for "feel" or "flavour".

Late in the day, the British General has been hit while leading the battered 89th Foot against the American artillery. They were nearly exhausted, only 1 hit from breaking but obviously they were so enraged at the loss of their beloved General that they over ran the battery and followed it up by driving the remnant of the American riflemen from the Stone House, breaking their army morale. (or perhaps they just suddenly got lucky with the dice ?)

The current Square Brigadier in the War of 1812 rules are available from the "Current Rules" page link in the side bar or from this link.

Hopefully the next test will confirm my satisfaction and not turn up some huge but hidden flaw but there is only one way to tell, play another game! The next 1812 game will be an Historical refight but it won't happen till the new year.

I've pretty much decided that Prince Valiant will get the traditional "Last Game of the Year" slot, usually played on New Year's Eve but I want to get my traditional Toy Soldiers on the table as well and the Christmas break is almost upon us. 2019 is not done yet!