General d'Armee 2

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to be able to play a game of the new Second Edition of General d'Armee umpired by no less than the author himself! 

The game was at the Herts Volunteers and was a 28mm outing in the Peninsular War.

As usual I was a commander on the French side of the engagement facing one of the two villages in the centre of the table (in my case made up of two sections one of which was fortified).  I did manage to successfully assault and take the unfortified section but couldn't hold on to it and took heavy casualties.

Here are some photos from the game:

Second edition GdA isn't a radical departure from the original, it's more of evolution rather than revolution with some streamlining of mechanisms.  Having played the first edition a couple of times I found the transition pretty straightforward and will be playing these again (using other people's figures as I don't have enough suitable ones of my own!)

Battle of Quendon Bay

The other week a friend and I put on a larger Sails of Glory game at the Herts Volunteers.  This one was a fictional encounter inspired by the Battle of the Nile but allowed the French to react to the British fleet thus making it a more interesting game for them.

I put together some coastal terrain for the game the weekend before and, as always with such projects would do some of it differently next time but you live and learn.

We had a mixed group of players some of whom had played before but several had not.  They picked up the rules pretty quickly and all seemed to enjoy the game.  We played with most of the advanced and optional rules but not variable wind strength - which was probably a good decision as the variable wind direction gave the French something of a challenge by itself!

Here are some photos of the game:

General d'Armee - Waterloo

 The Herts Volunteers club has been generous enough to invite me to come along to their games.  I don't get up there as often as I would like (it's a hour and a half drive, M25 willing).  But when they offered me a chance to participate in their 28mm Waterloo game I wasn't going to miss it.

The game used the General d'Armee rules by Dave Brown published by Reisswitz Press (the TooFatLardies sister imprint). We were lucky enough to have the author himself come along and what a nice chap he is.

I was given command of the French 2nd Cavalry and 3rd Infantry Divisions which saw a lot of fighting over toward the right wing.  In the end, and despite some heavy pressure from the Allied forces I managed to hold out and in combination with a massive cavalry engagement on the actual right wing we allowed the left wing and centre to press home.

Here are a few photos - it's unfortunate that the identifying cards are so prominent but with so many people supplying figures they needed to be easily identifiable:

Sails of Glory

In the vein of catching up on some missed posts, I hadn't posted anything about a large game of Sails of Glory that a friend of mine suggested putting on at the Herts Volunteers club.  Between us we have a decent collection of ships (and mine has grown since) and the game is really easy to pick up.  We didn't include all the optional rules as, I think, all the players were new to the system but we did include the variable wind direction.  Here are some photos of the game: