Sunday, April 22, 2012

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.

8 comments:

  1. Richard:

    It definitely was; I really enjoy Black Powder for it's simplicity and overall game play. Regards, Dean

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  2. Looks marvellous! Just a quick question; do you start with the artillery pieces pointing the wrong way to represent that they are limbered up, so to speak?

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  3. Michael:

    Yes - that's how James did his Prussian batteries since he hadn't painted up limbers yet. My French have limbers and they were limbered at the start. Best, Dean

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  4. Nice looking game and great looking troops. Still not played Black Powder yet!!!

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  5. Very nice game. How many miniatures were on the table?

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  6. Thanks again for your comments, everyone!

    Schrumpfkopf: I can't give an exact number on the Prussians James fielded, but his two cav units had about 12 figs each, plus his infantry battalions were 24 figs minimum - I think he had about 6 battalions. I fielded four French infantry battalions, three with 24 figs and one larger one; one Chasseur a Cheval unit with 12 figs and an artillery battery. So maybe just under 300 figures total. He and I only used less than half of what we have for French & Prussians. We will definitely be playing a larger game with more or all of our figures at a later date. Thanks again, Dean

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