Black Powder Refresher Game - 4/22/12

Thanks to my buddy James and his Prussians, we were able to get in a very nice Black Powder game today. As the intent was for a refresher of the rules, we only fielded smaller armies on a 5 X 8' table. This actually worked out well as it had our units getting into range fairly quickly. I had two French brigades - each with two infantry battalions; one also had a light cavalry unit and the other a battery. James fielded a larger Prussian force, including two cavalry units and four artillery batteries. In the spirit of fairness he did lower his Staff rating to 7 with the French having a rating of 8.

Initial French dispositions - one of the infantry battalions was in mixed order at the start.

Prussian units were arranged in an "L" shape almost surrounding the French. The buildings are borrowed from my wife's collection of Christmas stuff.

Here a French infantry battalion closest to the Prussian advance is being overwhelmed in close combat. This unit later failed a subsequent Break Test and left the table. The other two units of this French brigade were also later broken and left the table, but not before the artillery fired canister at close range into the Prussian cavalry.

The other French brigade saw a lot of action also; here one of the infantry battalions having formed square in response to a cavalry charge is being shot at by Prussian infantry.

We had agreed to 6 turns, and it was not a clear cut Prussian victory at the end of the game. In turn 5 a Prussian blunder on a brigade order ended with those units retreating away from the French. Although some of the remaining French were disordered, including the cavalry unit, it still appeared to be a stalemate.  Note that we position one of the stands off center to show the unit as Disordered.

It was a great refresher, and clarified some of the rules we were still fuzzy on. Even though the last time we played Black Powder was several months ago, the rules were easy to recall and the game was fast paced and fun. I'm now pretty confident of running the larger Salamanca game at Enfilade! next month. Hopefully James and I can get in another game early next month before the convention.