Back To Black (Powder)

So having tried four Lilly Banners games it was time to have another bash at black powder. Steve designed the game and was a bit more brutal then we have been so far in the amends, we used some fairly fundamental ones.

Movement was cut by one third so foot from 12 to 8 inches. Musketry the same so long range drops from 18 inches to 12 inches.

These both take the game nearer to a Pike and Shotte game and we are only just leaving that period for the Great Northern War so happy with all that.

We changed the order activation table so the results are less extreme and used the roll of a D10. The table below is what we used and it gives much less extreme results. No blunders though, I do like the addition of a blunder!

COMMAND ABILITY		ROLL ON D10
		0	1	2	3
	Poor	1 to 3	3 to 5	7 to 9	10
	Average	1 or 2	3 to 5	6 to 8	9 or 10
	Good	1	2 or 3	4 to 7	8 to 10
	Excellent	0	1 or 2	3 to 6	7 to 10

We kept the house rules that a player fires before moving and brigades losing half their units take a break Test rather than breaking automatically.

We also changed the casualty removal by Generals so each general gets a chance of rallying a casualty from each of the units in his command rolling a 6 on a D6.

We then added some period flavour. Infantry and irregular cavalry cannot charge formed infantry frontally unless it is shaken or disordered. This does not apply to the Swedes. Also troops may not simply shift position they must wheel to make manoeuvres, again the Swedes are an exception they may oblique. As the game progressed we found we had a couple more to consider I will share these later.

Mr Flowers had got a deal from M&S on the biscuits, two for the price of one. I think he had already eaten the extra pack so I didn't feel bad about eating the lions share of these ones!

The speed of the rules and our familiarity with them, even considering all the changes, meant we could table much larger forces and still get to grips.

The Danes are all from Marks collection whilst the Swedes and Saxons are mine.

The Swedes had:
3 Foot Brigades of 4 battalions each. Two had a gun, the third was Guards who had bonuses
2 Brigades of 4 regiments of Cavalry.
All of the Swedes had higher hand to hand stats and lower firing stats with the addition of Ferocious charge allowing the re-roll of missed hand to hand dice. They are nasty in hand to hand.

The Allies had:
4 Brigades of foot each with a gun and 4 battalions
3 brigades of horse, two with three regiments and one with four.

So:

12 Swedish foot vs 16 Allied foot.
8 Swedish horse vs 10 Allied Horse
2 Swedish guns vs 4 Allied Guns

The balance was perhaps slightly in favour of the Swedes given the quality but not by much.

Steve's stats sheet is below, the Allies were all average. Their commanders also average, the Swedish good. Some criticism has been made about how hard it is to play this period given how much better the Swedes were. However we tend only to look at the main army which had large numbers of Guard troops and the best generals. In the Baltic the Russians were able to take the Swedes on with success with a smaller gap in the size of their armies, facilitated by less veteran Swedes and more parity in commanders. Also some of the best Russian troops were operating in the Baltic.

The below sheets are the Swedish stats we used. Steve increased firing from 3 to four dice for the Allies making it more likely they would dis-order the Swedes as they charged home. The Swedes had only 3 dice due to their troops having a third with Pike.

If you are worried about deciphering Steve's scrawled notes, I have them in my hand I cant read them either!

Sorry Steve only kidding.

Move one and the Swedes were able to shift forward at a brisk march with the exception of the Guards who only managed a single move.

The Allied response was more of a minor re-shuffle of troop dispositions.

With that done the Swedish horse charged forward, 6 out of eight regiments thundering forward and Allies counter charging, the last two Swedes were facing formed foot so I didn't fancy taking them on and decided I would use these to reinforce any success.

The Melee started well enough with the first two units of Swedish horse giving the allies a good thumping and both the opposite horse and their supports broke and fled the field. The next melee resulted in a draw however and as both sides had immediately hit their shaken point both took morale tests. The Swedes failed and retired a full move. A sweeping advance took the allies forward onto the supports and the same thing happened. The third melee was a win for the allies and the Swedes withdrew again, however as the allies were shaken they were unable to follow up.

On the right the Swedish foot advanced up to the river line to take on its opposite Allied brigade. The lead unit taking 4 casualties from musketry and artillery and taking them straight to shaken.

On the left the guards got another two moves and the extreme left brigade advanced to within short musketry range. As we fire before moving I couldn't fire and had to take a volley from the Allies defending the village, luck was with me though and I saved the majority.

Into the next move and on the left the Swedish foot charge the allies after a close range volley inflicted minimal casualties. Marks closing fire inflicted a decent number of casualties most of which I was again able to save, however more worrying he dis-ordered two of the three charging units reducing my effectiveness in combat. We had a discussion at this point about whether the Swedes should still get their ferocious charge re-roll bonus if dis-ordered. However as was pointed out without their bonus they  were unlikely to win any melees and the Allies were likely to dis-order two out of every three Swedish foot charging home and so would get this result in most cases. This would put the Swedes to a dis-advantage meaning that they would only ever be able to fight on equal or better terms attacking the allies. We dismissed this notion for now, I have no doubt we will return to it.

All that said the Swedes were successful in all three melees. The Allies were pushed out of the village, two units retiring and two other breaking. However two out of three of the Swedes were now shaken and unable to do anything further for the moment. The guards brigade moved to short range in order to deliver a short range volley and charge home, the Danes volleys inflicting minimal casualties but again the front battalion of Guard Grenadiers was dis-ordered meaning they at least were not going to be in a position to charge next move.

With the Swedish Cavalry unable to charge the Allied Cavalry under Chris took advantage and charged the Swedes, unable to respond two more units were again driven back and a third broken. The remaining Allied cavalry was however also all taken to shaken and unable to take advantage.

Both sides still had a small reserve of cavalry with two Swedish and three Allied units looking for an opportunity to exploit a gap, these were however all filled with shaken cavalry units from both sides.

This is where Steve's addition of a die roll for each unit to remove a casualty is at its best. You might only get 1 in every 6 but that one could make a big difference in these circumstances. Unfortunately both Chris and I managed to rally none! I like the idea of attempting to rally off casualties in this way but wonder if it should only be applied to shaken units. Undecided we will see in our next test games.

On the extreme right flank the Swedes advanced just one battalion over the river, a daft move I know but I wanted to relieve pressure on the unit that was shaken. Predictably Chris concentrated his gun and two battalions on it and this unit was now also on the verge of being shaken. What I should of done of course is stay outside of musket range and just negate this brigade from the game. But its a play test and we needed to see what works and what doesn't, marching a battalion over a river unsupported against a Brigade doesn't! Who would have thought.

Time was pretty much up with just enough time for the Guards to charge, the Grenadiers were unable so just one battalion fired and pushed forward, the end result was a draw which both sides passed their morale taking us into another round. All in all it felt like it had worked pretty well and we had  a bit more period flavour than using the rules raw.

Chris was pleased as punch, the first time he had not been completely bashed when playing against Swedes, While the game was not over the Allies had by far had the better of the fighting on his side of the table.

Chris Flowers looking rather pleased with himself

On the other flank the Brigade on Marks extreme flank was in very poor shape, two battalions left and both shaken, the Swedes had all four left but two were shaken, they could finish off the Danes but were unlikely to be able to do much more. Marks centre had 8 intact battalions facing the Swedish Guards so again all still to play for. On the whole the Allies still stood a very good chance of winning or at least holding the Swedes to a draw.

 

Given it was an experiment it went surprisingly well. The Swedes remain difficult to stop but not impossible as Chris proved with the allied cavalry.

A couple of amends we are now actively considering.

Should a unit being charged test to stand? Poor quality troops potentially should stand a chance of retiring from a charge.

Also if a unit retires or routs back through its supports should the supports be dis-ordered for a move? Seems odd that they could have a regiment of cavalry blunder through them and then be able to charge the opposition cavalry in front of them next go whilst they re-cover from winning the melee.

We also considered whether to add in first fire for all the decent troops.

Other than that a very interesting game, playing again on Sunday at Dave's house, no doubt with a slightly different take on Black Powder, as always I will let you know how it goes along with some pictures of Dave's lovely Russian collection for the Great Northern War.

See you soon.