A Whiff of Dice

Its hard to believe that I only managed 2 games in October!  Well, I already have 1 under my belt in November and it was a more satisfying one. The story of the battle is told in the captions. I'll add just a few comments about my newest, philosophically different, rules for the period.

In yesterday's post, we saw the initial French attack faltering and degenerating into a firefight. Now we see the first French attack on the battery repulsed by cannister but in revenge, the York Hussars fumbled their attempt to charge and were in turn, blasted back by cannister before they got close to the guns. The Black Hussars declined an opportunity to attempt another charge up the steep hill and have instead moved around to try to delay Coalition reinforcements.

When the Scots Greys overran the French battery and the French regulars were driven back by fire, it started to looked like another too early, too easy victory. I don't give up easily though and pushed on.

While the French infantry rallied, their sharpshooters kept up a heavy and effective fire on the Highlanders. In the distance, the Black Hussars made an attempt to flank the Hessians but were thwarted by the York Hussars. It was the end of them though,  the last remnant rallied on the field but were totally spent. The French Hussars were weakened but as they reformed, they had at least one more charge in them, and an open flank before them.  

Trusting to the Greys to cover their flank and rear, the Hessians pressed forward to reinforce the Highlanders while the Royal Artillery, reduced to a single gun with half a crew, clung to their position. A final assault by the remnants of the French was stunned and routed by what many observers said was the " most 5's and 6's ever rolled on such a small number of dice". It was over.  

The Representative of the People called for the French General to come answer for his failure but was informed that that gallant Citizen had answered with his life.

I did spend a considerable time this month, analyzing why I haven't been very happy with any of the rules I've been trying for the French Revolution, and some other eras, and what I wanted a set of rules to deliver for solo games,  but also for the occasional 2 player or multiplayer game. Those 3 goals don't necessarily have to be the same but not only is it easier when they line up, I also find it more satisfying. 

So I spent even more time than usual trying to figure out why I wasn't happy, reviewing what I want now compared to what I used to want and why it was different. Then I spent a LOT of time going back and revisiting various older and some newer books on wargaming and past articles and rules that I have written, then made a fresh start. The result was a '2 sides of a page' summary of a new set tentatively to be called "A Whiff of Dice". These have no revolutionary new mechanisms, they just leave out or build in even more of the detail, and focus on the sorts of choices that they reward or punish, and on the balance between too fast, simple and abrupt and too slow, detailed and tedious. 

The game only lasted a few more turns  than the last one but unlike the last one, it wasn't effectively over  after about 20 minutes on turn 3 of 15, and the kinds of decisions I made were mostly more General’s decisions than unit  commanders'  decisions and luck played a substantial, but not overwhelming, role in the game. The game also lasted almost twice as long time wise and included more substantial player decisions and responsibilities and consequences of decisions rather than luck are what makes a game interesting for me.  

But its early days, the rules needed to be tested more and they need to be flushed out into a proper set rather than just a quick reference and that's not a speedy process for me.