12/9 SBGC Meeting: BLOOD ON THE SANDS

Last Saturday, the SBGC met up once again for our last meeting of the year. My first meeting at the SBGC was December of last year so this would mark 12 months of playing with the club. Its been an immense amount of fun, I've made a lot of friends, and I look forward to what games I'll play and people I'll meet in 2024.

For the December meeting, I originally wanted to run a miniature soccer game based on the 1914 Christmas Truce of WW1 using Subbuteo, but the idea failed to pick up any steam, as did my idea to run a Secret Santa event, so instead I went with a holiday idea I knew no one could reject, pizza, and lots of it. So instead of running a holiday themed game, I got to play in one instead, which is fine by me. 

This month, we had Matt Hilzendrager's beautiful Madhist Uprising game using The Men Who Would Be Kings.

 

 

I thought this scenario looked really cool and unique, and I would've loved to play in it, but I RSVP'd for Chris Salander's game because I was interested in learning how to play General de Brigade. I was sure to hover around their table and take plenty of pictures though, because Matt always puts together a great looking game.

 

Greg Guth ran a practice game for DunDraCon, based on Operation Luettich, a German counter attack on the town of Mortain. (Pete, I was sure to refer to them as Germans, not Nazis 😎)

Ix Nichol's play tested Fleet of Samples, a naval game that he wrote in order to simulate ironclad battleship combat.

And the game that I played in, which was Chris Salander's Russo-Turkish War game, using General de Brigade. I wanted to try this game because I've not played the rules before and I like to jump on the opportunity to learn a new ruleset, as you never know when you happen upon something great. I was also under the mistaken impression that the game was related to Too Fat Lardie's General de Armee, which I've been playing at GK Fremont and love.

I took the Turkish center, alongside my teammates Bob and Trevor, which took my right and left flank. Against us would be Chris and Kevin. The Turk's appeared to have an advantage of cavalry, but the Russians had an artillery advantage. These factors dictated our strategy, it was clear we would not be able to outshoot the Russians and would need to advance to make use of our cavalry.

However, with the table so narrow, our cavalry advantage could not realize its full potential, we didn't have any room to maneuver around the flanks and would be forced to charge head on.

We lost a cannon early on, further widening our artillery disadvantage.

We had few tactical options aside from inching forward with our skirmish screen protecting us as best they could, and then marching our line infantry into shooting range. This was made difficult by the Russian's winning turn initiative for most the game, which meant even if we managed to move in range, they got to shoot first.

Slowly but surely, we made it into musket range, and both sides took a battering as we shot each other for the next few turns, but with their artillery advantage, it was clear we'd lose the shooting match eventually.

With our center shot to pieces, we decided to try to turn the Russian flank. Both Russian flanks were made of low quality units which had suffered many casualties under musket fire. My hope on the left was that applying pressure to the enemy infantry at the right moment might cause a chain rout as one unit fled into units behind them and caused disorder. Also the Russians had moved into range of our cavalry, and the skirmish screen provided no protection for cavalry units, so it was either stand them around to get shot, degrading their usefulness in the future, or charge in now and hope to chain rout the flank.

It was a strategy that I had seen work in GDA (particularly in my Quatre Bras game at GK Fremont), but this wasn't really the case in GDB. The melee was successful, and I managed to send 2 units of Russian line infantry into retreat, but not much disorder was caused amongst the units that they fled through, and the cavalry pursuit was rolled for, instead of something you can automatically chose to do, so the rolls determined that my cavalry would not pursue or charge any further. They instead returned to safety behind my infantry screen. The Russian right flank was severely weakened, but still remained relatively strong with 2 more units of fresh line infantry in place.

On the right, Bob had more success. Whereas the Russian right had four units of infantry, their left only had 2, making it much easier for him to secure the flank with his cavalry charge.

At that point, it was about 4 PM and I had to leave, so we decided to call the match. Below is the state of the table by the end of the game. I did like the rules, they were very simple, even easier than GDA, and there was much less mechanics for command friction, even less than Black Powder it seemed.

 

And that's it. I believe this will be my last post of the year. Unless I do something wargame related before the end of December, which I actually might do, as Geoff Barrel agreed to run a demo game of Chain of Command for me, so I can learn the rules before running the game myself at DDC in February. If so, than I'll see you than folks, if not, than I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!