A Most Excellent Day

I've mentioned before that my Gaming Friends are spread from Hamilton and Collingwood to Chatham. About a 3 hour drive at highway speeds from end to end. 

We're sort of the middle intersecting bit of a vast sprawling Venn-diagram of many Southern Ontario interconnected Gaming groups, clubs, or local scenes. So we don't get together as much as we'd like.

One of the lads, finding himself centrally located now, has organized game days during August in between his and another's birthdays.

So Saturday I rolled up my sea matt, packed my ships, and drove off to join a dozen of my friends,  old and new, for a day of barbecue and dice rolling.

I playtested a Snorkers! (Good Oh!) scenario I want to run next month at KEGSCon. I'm hoping to accommodate 6 players.

Swordfish get some good hits on Italian cruisers

British cruiser squadron under attack. This game saw a first. Not one, but TWO flights of aircraft getting shot down.

Italian DE flotilla making a torpedo attack on British light cruisers 

British destroyers finish off the Italian light cruisers

HMS Glasgow crippled by Italian torpedo 

Another view of the Swordfish making their attack

Learned some things. I'll review the fleet composition before the convention. Hopefully my friends had fun.

The gang

After dinner it was a game of Blücher with Keith's lovely 6mm armies. Joe and Paul ran the Imperial army. Rico and I played the Allies.

Allies in foreground. 

Swedes

Prussians

French, foreground. Not as many Prussians as I had started with in the back.

Danes

I'm not sure how it ended. I had to leave.

There were some other games on the dinner table. Age of sail using The Full Nelson.

And something involving pirates.

And there was cake! 

I can tell I had a good time because, despite being completely knackered, I had trouble settling down and getting to sleep. 

No French Napoleonics

Saturday I loaded my Bavarians, Russians, and Prussians into Electrical Pete's KIA and with Handyman Huw, we trekked south of the 401 for a Big Napoleonic game at Scott's. This is hopefully going to be an annual thing.

Scott's Austrians joined my Prussians and Russians to fight his Wurttemburgers, and Italians, who were seeing dice rolled in anger for the first time. The Wurttemburgers and Italians were assisted by my Bavarians and Curmudgeonly Don's Dutch.

Russo-Prussian Grenadier Brigade 

Italian division

Wurttemburger Brigade 

Dutch Brigade 

Allied Light Cavalry Brigade 

Allied Reserve Artillery on a ridge with Corps Commander 

L-R: our host Scott, Handyman Huw, Curmudgeonly Don, and Electrical Pete. Huw and Pete are totally new to Napoleonic gaming after years in 40k. But they are building armies, so I thought they'd like to be in a big game.

Prussian Divisional Artillery

Italians assaulting the village on my left. My battalion of Fusiliers threw back four assaults before they needed to be relieved

Italian Artillery 

Prussians holding off Italian assault

Austrians arrive. Cavalry reinforces my left. Infantry move up in the center behind the big building.

Imperials moving forward 

Imperial Cavalry Brigade has pushed back my Prussian Reserve Brigade. The Bavarian Cheveaux-Leger did me proud putting in a good charge, even if they were fighting against me that day. 

Bavarian Division assaulting my center and making a dangerous hole, but I've been thrashing the Bavarian columns with fire from three batteries

Austrian Division arrives. Brigade of Grenadiers and brigade of infantry.

My Allied Dragoon Brigade hovered about menacingly, keeping these guys from sweeping around the village

Huw and Don contemplating options

Womp womp! Used two scarce ADCs to put "Artillery Assault" on my 12 pounders to roll abysmally and put a fatigue on myself. Instead of trying for other brigade orders our few ADCs (because we kept duffing our ADC availability rolls) were allocated to command rerolls to keep as many brigades as possible from being hesitant. So this was rather disappointing.

You can see the Austrian Grenadiers on the flank of the big building stopping the Imperial Cavalry from going any further

A view of the right. The skirmishers are potting at each other. The Allied Light Cavalry Brigade has retired behind the hill to get away from the Wurttemburg artillery.

My Prussian battalion on the flank of the village has been bundled back, attacked in front by Italians and in the flank by Bavarians. Fortunately they rallied.

We called it at 7 o'clock. The Bavarians were in bad shape having been hammered by the Allied artillery and the Italians had shattered a brigade against the village, so the Imperial side had two brigades on the cusp of collapsing. My Prussians were still holding on by their white knuckles, although it would only be because the Italians and Bavarians were going to break first.

So, maybe a winning draw for the Allies? Schwartzenburg will herald a mighty victory, Napoleon will blame one of his Marshalls, we went and ate pizza. Fun had been had.

It was a grand spectacle, if somewhat slow moving. General d'Armee is very detailed but the command and control really only starts to shine with a couple of divisions per side on the table. Unfortunately, I think the rules really need a dedicated club with big collections who can play it a lot to get the most out of them. I wonder how this game would have played if we had used Shako II? I am also contemplating the feasibility of making sabot bases to use my 28mm miniatures for Blucher.

This was my 22nd game of the year!