We was playing a fictitious scenario set in the backdrop of the Retreat to Corunna. Both our forces - me playing the French, John the British, where vanguards, my forces trying to cut off and slow down the retreat while John's trying to slow down my pursuit.
The game was played on a 6ft by 4ft battlefield and we was using single brigade forces, both 7 units a side with a single CnC. Even though our units where only 10-12 figures strong, we still counted them as "standard".
John deployed his line infantry in the centre of the board, supported by his 6pdr Horse Artillery, also his CnC stayed with them. To his right flank near the hill village was his royal marines and on his left flank through the farmers fields was another line infantry and rifles unit. All his units except for one began in attack column.
Similarly I deployed my three infantry units in mixed column with my skirmishers deployed in the centre. My hussars where positioned on my left flank with another infantry unit in march column to secure the town while on my right flank, a single infantry unit was to move up the farmers field.
Johnno took first turn and after some ace order rolls managed to move everything except his rifles forward, all except the royal marines and the infantry unit in the farmers field changed formation into line.
I on the other hand did not do so great, managed to get three of my centre units advancing, two on the left side adopting line formation while the right hand one stayed in mixed column - but one of my infantry units did a blunder and decided the fight was not for them and began buggering off the field, immediately stopping me moving the rest of my army - bloody shirkers!
Luckily what did advance was now in musket range, with good coordinated fire I managed to decimate the centre infantry unit, making them rout and flee :)
John managed to push a good number of his units forward again, this time including his riflemen.
This time his weapons where in range and I was about to get my first taste of British firepower! While choosing not to concentrate fire, he did manage to deliver a pretty even spread of damage across the board,his artillery even managed to render one of my units disordered - ouch!
The game continued with me and John trading fire, while I tried the approach of concentrating my fire, I was hampered by bad order rolls and not being able to get my men exactly where I wanted them and some very jammy morale saves from Johnno who in return began to evenly mount up the damage on me across my whole force. Also with the amount of fire I couldn't risk advancing my cavalry who would surely be turned into swiss cheese if they broke in charge.
Then in one fell swoop, the casualties became too much for my French, two units broke and fled while everything else except he Hussars was rendered disordered. With Johnno's army still in pretty fine order and half my army gone, we called that a decisive victory for the British.
I really like Black Powder, it runs at a really nice relaxed pace, it speeds up the whole manoeuvring side and slows down when the musket balls start flying - just how I like it. With 7 units a side the game lasted just under 3 hours with us chatting, drinking and not playing in any kind of rush at all - not a bad rule system at all and cannot wait for my next game :)
Johnno also wrote a report on this game, giving his first impressions of Black Powder and Zombicide which we also played that day on his new blog, link is here.
Also managed to squeeze in a demo game of Robotech RPG Tactics courtesy of Faction Ray - he has written a more in depth review of the game with more picture here on his blog.
So three new games in one day and defo want to play them again - not a bad day at all :)
Thanks for your time, cya soon ;)
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