General d'Armee Learning Game

For my SIXTH Face to Face game within 4 weeks Scott brought some of his simply enormous Napoleonic collection over for a game of General d'Armee. 

We played an 1809 game with my heroic Bavarians and their noble French allies fighting off the invading rapacious white-coated Austrians. 

We set out two identical armies. 12 battalions of infantry, 1 battery of medium guns and 4 regiments of light cavalry. The Austrians had 2 battalions of veteran grenadiers. I split the allied cavalry into two 2 regiment brigades, giving me an extra ADC.

Center brigade 

French cavalry on my right wing 

Franco-Bavarian cavalry facing 2:1 odds!

Right hand brigade with artillery

I learned that allocating ADCs to the artillery can be very useful. 

Learning about charging squares, for reasons 

A lot of doings on the flank

Austrian cavalry putting in a couple of charges

A lot of time looking things up.

Overview towards the end. French hussars that charged the square are off picture to the lower right

Charge! Bavarian Cheveauxleger thrash some Austrians 

My first infantry attack is repulsed 

Franco-Bavarian left looking a bit tattered 

"C'mon, if you think you're 'ard enough!"
Much reduced Bavarian cavalry still shouting the odds after holding against 2:1 odds. Beer and medals all around for those lads.

So some good work learning the basics of command, subtleties of ADC allocation, movement, charge mechanics and shooting. We will have to add skirmish lines and more complex terrain later. Now that I've got a couple of games under my belt (although the first one was over a year ago!), I should reread the rules.

Of course now I realize that I'll need more skirmisher figures to make the separate skirmisher stands for the Bavarians, Russians and Prussians! G d'A generates  ~1 stand per battalion in a brigade. I suppose I could just use the flank companies, since casualty and stand removal isn't strictly necessary to track casualties if you have other mechanisms to use. I guess it would be cheaper/faster/easier to make some numbered chits or get some of those fancy dial counters.

sigh