So How'd We Do? (Teugn-Hausen Revisited AAR)

It was a smaller house than it has been with only Doug (panzerde) and Vance (Barthheart) able to come 'round and have a new go at Teugn-Hausen using a slightly different configuration of troops and making a commitment to, you know, implement the rules correctly.

The video is here for those inclined:

For those with less time, shortened attention spans, or both:

The Good:

1.  The game really hauled freight.  This was certainly in part due to a better familiarity with the rules, but remembering that when a brigadier fails a command roll that he is done making command rolls made a significant difference as well.  As Doug pointed out, it also opens up interesting tactical choices for opponents when a brigadier fails at a particularly bad moment.

2.  The Austrian use of march column and a better understanding of the importance of that formation made the game much more competitive for the Austrians.  It was a bit painful to end the session at the end of three hours as the Austrian reinforcements were just about to come crashing over the Buchberg.

3.  While there were many troop maneuvers, wheels, formation changes, &c., in the end, it went fairly smoothly and looked very nice as a tableau.

4.  I am particularly proud that we seem to have implemented almost all of the rules we confronted correctly.  Almost.

The Bad:

1.  We were over-generous with the divisional commanders.  They must be within 12'' of the brigadier they intend to assist at the start of the turn and must ride with him or her during the turn or they cannot assist him or her.  A significant limitation, I think.

2.  Skirmishers and units in open order (more on this later) block LoS.  Who knew?  Certainly not I.

3.  In the middle-going, you will see Doug order an advance on the French left and receive a significant success on his command roll.  Technically -- and boy do I mean technically -- the rules would not have allowed him to charge because he did not say he was charging those fellows at the edge of the forest.  In the spirit of the game, however, I do not feel we sinned very much.

The Ugly (I am not being blamed for these):

1.  The rule about how many units can charge a single unit was changed between 1e and 2e.   In 1e, it is as we played it and as my friend Doug clearly would prefer it.  In 2e, however, it is as I initially described it, viz.: only one unit can charge to a face unless the target is large and the chargers are both small or tiny.  Cleaner, but Doug's point re: this limiting the French capacity to use columnar attack is well taken.

2.  The rules re: skirmishers in Black Powder 2 are a bit buggered at the moment in my judgment.  Straight 1e -- no supplements -- seems to read that all units may enter open order and skirmish meaning they get certain bonuses when targeting for fire and shooting; not the least of these is a +1 on the "to hit" roll.  As the supplements were released, some units were identified as "skirmish" meaning, I take it, that they receive the combat bonuses where others do not.  The problem with this designation, though, is what to make of the "Poor Skirmisher" designation given to Austrian troops in Clash of Eagles?  I presume it means they can enter open order, become harder to hit, and target from wherever they like, but do not receive the +1 to hit.

And then, in 2e, the "skirmisher" designation now appears regularly in army lists and the +1 for skirmishers firing as been taken away.  I have no particular objection, but this is consequential for those building points-based armies.

I do not quite know what to think, but my gut is:

1.  All infantry units may enter open order.
2.  Only units with the "skirmish" ability may take advantage of the special firing stuff.
3.  Only units with the "Mixed Order" may form Mixed Order -- this is explicit in the rules.
4.  The Austrian "Poor Skirmishers" special rule is now vestigial.

Despite all this, my love of Black Powder 2 has not diminished and I will be back at it.

See anything else we screwed up?  I would love to hear about it.  Honestly.

Oh, and here is a shot I had forgotten I took.  This was game state when we called it for the evening.

My Goodness, but I Have Come to Dislike (Some) House Rules

Sooner or later we all get to be "of an age" and wisdom, I think, demands that we take stock of visceral reactions to make sure they are not the product of some deep-seated prejudice, cherished ignorance, or wanting people to get the heck off your lawn.  After all, we are the subjects of our own, weird interior story and our biases are just too dangerous to be let loose without reflection.  Some of these wind up holding up reasonably well under scrutiny. Quinoa, for example, much like the Chicago Bears, can ruin a sunny day.  Others, well, that is the point of the present exercise.

There was a question posted recently to one of the Facebook pages covering Black Powder of which I am a member asking about the optional rule, found in Clash of Eagles, that makes the movement distance allowed an infantry unit in line shorter than that in column.  I knew about the rule, but, reading the query on-line, I was taken by how badly I responded to it.  It elicited a response something along the lines of "oh, for heaven sake, play the game".  At multiple levels, this is an irrational response, to wit:

*It is an optional rule and presented as such.

*I am at liberty to never use that rule.

*Upon analysis, the rule is a well-intentioned attempt to correct what the author perceived as a historical inaccuracy.

So, seriously, what the heck?

This led me to reflect on what I believe to be a fact:  Black Powder in both its editions is one of the most optional- and house-ruled games in the history of our hobby. A quick search under the terms "Black Powder House Rules" bears this out.  Part of this is certainly its popularity, viz., more players increases the likelihood of more house-rules.  The other bit, though, and I think this is the root of my grievance, is that people want Black Powder to be something that it is not.  Bear with me on this one.

I am not here talking about clarifying house rules relating to what a particular rule means.  Heaven knows I have posted a video asking for assistance in interpreting the sometimes opaque prose.  I am talking about rules intended to make Black Powder more [Insert Era Here].  In a measure, Warlord has contributed to this as it tried to give each nation it added in the supplements something "special".  This is Warhammerism at its worst, although, if it be confessed, my Napoleonic brethren love doing this themselves.  Surely, after all, the Marines of the Guard deserve some unique statistic?  I will here also only note in passing the mess I think they have made, though imprecise version control, of "Pas de Charge".  There have also been rules in each of the source books adding new formations, changing approaches to terrain, modifying the rules for forming square, &c.

This, in turn, has joined with the torrent of house rules from every corner of the globe to create a -- to overstate matters -- Gestalt in which there really does not seem to be any thing that is "officially" Black Powder 2. 

I find myself un-moored.  From the first time I began to understand the fun, friendly simple system at its heart, I really did embrace a game that was a welcome change from the pedantic nonsense that infests tabletop gaming.  When I asked Prof. Pollard which rules he had chosen to manage his recent Waterloo extravaganza, he told me Black Powder because it was the only system capable of managing a game of that size.  And its broad popularity made me think we had evolved a lingua franca for use in friendly games -- it confesses to being fairly useless for tournaments -- in a variety of settings; a game that Featherstone and others might have understood.  I thought that the reviewers at Little Wars (those narrow-cast) simply did not understand it for what it was and have defended it since from similar criticisms.

And yet...

I, you, all of us, are at liberty.  I will play with none of these rules -- all right, I do like the forest rules from Clash of Eagles -- and be quite happy doing so.  Those who play with 12 pages of house rules will, clearly, do likewise.  I trust we will all have fun.

Do you like house rules?  I would be particularly interested in hearing from those that do not.  Why do you not?  And do you react this badly to them?

The next game, by the way, will be live-streamed commencing at 1600-1700 (working on that) CDT tomorrow.

Damnation, "Black Powder 2", are You Being Serious Right Now?

That is how the young express frustration, is it not?

In any event, last night the lads from Armchair Dragoons got together for what we hoped would be the second part of our Battle of Teugn-Hausen using Black Powder 2.  We all like the rules and, despite a few goofs here and there, I thought I had been running things reasonably well.

Then, while looking up an entirely different matter, I happened upon a teensy paragraph near teh bottom of p. 29 to the effect that if a commander fails in an attempt to give an order, that commander may give no further orders that turn.  I understand that the rule is there.  I do not know what I was asking the authors and editors to do to prevent my missing it, but that is a rule of first consequence and, despite having logged several dozen hours now playing BP2, I just missed it.  Veterans who have not missed it are, of course, laughing at me (at worst) or nodding sagely (at best) when I say the proper implementation of that rule makes brigade orders a much bigger deal and makes initiative orders of much greater consequence.

I enrage myself sometimes.

Other notes:

*Commanders must issue orders (or attempt to) for the turn and then and only then may move (cf. p. 39 top left).  I am glad this rule is the way it is.  This was the rule I was looking for when I found the one that so flabbergasted me above.

 *We (I) have consistently missed the modifier (a negative) for a commander's strategy rating when an enemy unit is within 12'' of a unit the commander is trying to order.

*"Pas de Charge", had by many French troops, grants a +1 to French troops in column.  This is added to the +1 all units receive for being in attack column for a net +2!

*Cavalry cannot form attack column.  That's an infantry only thing!

*LoS is determined from the flag stand to the target.  We may have buggered this one up once or twice.

*While it is true that skirmishers sight from the model of their commander's choosing, if a proportion of the unit cannot see the target, the number of dice rolled is reduced by that proportion.   We definitely did this one incorrectly.

*We will have to keep a close watch on the diagram on p. 48.  While it is true that one can ignore skirmishers and fire at a more distant target, this is only the case if the more distant target is otherwise (pace the skirmishers) clear.

And this, which I take to be an editing omission, has me cross with the author:  The rules on retiring indicate (p. 80) that a "retire" move is "a normal move in every respect".  I wish it had clarified if this includes being affected by terrain.  Miniature games are not of one mind on that topic.  Worse, though, the rule does not include the little tidbit included in the table on the preceding page that if one move is insufficient to get a unit clear of friendly troops, it may make a second move and only then break.  Would have made matters a good deal better last night had this been notived.

If you make your way through the whole of last night's festivities, you will also hear a lot of discussion about the best way to handle movement through heavy trees.  Forests played a big part at Teugn-Hausen and I am not comfortable that the standard forest rules represent this well.  I think, therefore, that we will use those from Clash of Eagles entirely, viz.:

*Woods are "rough ground" meaning skirmishers move through them without penalty, formed infantry and cavalry pay 2:1, and artillery pays 3:1.

*Non-skirmish troops and troops not in march column may only receive one order per turn, no matter what the command roll.

*Brigade orders may only be issued to units in march column positioned with 3'' of each other.

*Shooting at a unit with 50% or more of its footprint in trees grants a -1 shooting modifier.

*Troops sheltering in the woods (50% or more of its footprint in) receive a +1 morale modifier.

*Non-skirmish troops fighting hand-to-hand in the woods receive a -1 to their to-hit rolls.

*For a unit to fire out of the woods, it must be within 1'' of the edge of the woods.

Again, this feels like a lot, but one only learns by playing.

...and the video itself:

So animated was I by the retiring question, I fashioned this video:

My Goodness. Twenty-one Thousand Visitors...

I do not quite know why that number leaps out at me, but it has been great to have you all by.

In honor of achieving a nice, round, large number, may I invite all and sundry to come by my YouTube channel and subscribe -- or perhaps sign up for alerts -- if only because tomorrow, at ca. 1900 CDT, the gang from the Armchair Dragoons will return to the fields of (dis)honor and have a second go at the Black Powder 2 scenario we started a couple weeks ago.

It promises to be a good deal of fun and, perhaps, informative, although no warranty is offered or implied.

A Very Well-Intentioned YouTube Page

And a Good Time Was Had By All...Except Some French Foot

Doug and I got back to our game of Aspern-Essling using Tabletop Simulator and Blucher.  I ahould like to think my rules penance did some good as I do not think we mussed up too much.  I, on the other hand, have utterly bollixed up my French.

The thing about Blucher that is not obvious when you first open the tin is that corps structure really does matter.  The good professor goes so far as to point out in his F.A.Q. that he does not like rules that require corps to maintain divisional integrity, that he considered many of them, but eventually rejected any as unnecessarily cumbersome.  As a result, divisions can park themselves fairly well wherever they like.  So far so good.  The problem becomes when one is trying to activate all of those dispersed divisions.  Suddenly you have to wait until corps moves are over, each move costs two MO points not one, and you have to check to see whether you have burned through your MO points after each brigade is moved.  This has turned the space between Aspern and Essling and the Danube into a disorganized French parking lot.  Among other things, the Guard is parked what seems like 100 miles away from the action.

Napoleon would be very cross with me.

Still, at the moment, we have a one morale point lead and we ended the last turn of the session with one of my cuirassiers riding forward and smashing an Austrian brigade.  That is something of which His Majesty would have approved.

And, of course, the video:

Time for Some "Blucher" Confessions

Considering it is the most viewed video we have posted from the Saturday Night Fights (by a distance), I am a bit put out with myself for not getting back to "Blucher" generally and the Aspern-Essling game with my friend Doug (panzerde) in particular.

Here is the video of the first part of the first day:

That many viewers is a very fine thing, but it did prompt a fair number of game play corrections.  Which, although they leave me a bit shame-faced given the relative simplicity of the rules, I still take to be a good thing.  So, in the present confessional spirit (and anticipating part three this weekend), I proffer the following list of rules we either messed up or seem obscure enough to warrant posting this way.  As was the case with "Black Powder 2", I would certainly welcome mentions of rules you forget, foul up, think are really important, &c.

In More-or-Less Turn Sequence Order

N.B.:  I know that Tabletop Simulator does not quite pivot the units correctly.  Yes, this messes the rules up a bit, but it cannot be helped and I do not think it makes that big a difference.

*Corps activations must involve two units.

*Garrisoning an urban area requires activation.

*Simple Move: Pivot first, then move in a straight line through non-rough terrain

*Difficult Move:  Pivot either first or last but move in a straight line otherwise

*Charges may pass through difficult terrain

*The center line of a charging unit must pass through some portion of the unit being charged for the charge to be valid.

*Roads only matter in reserve movement.  This is a weird one for me, but I get it.

*Artillery need only fire at the nearest eligible target if it is within 2BW.

*Firepower and Skirmish abilities do not apply against cavalry or artillery.

*Artillery may shoot into urban areas, although at a penalty.  Infantry may not.

*Probably the biggest:  Infantry that fights cavalry (attacking or defending) and is not broken, drives off the cavalry whether the infantry wins or loses.

*Retreat is conducted through the rear base edge but not necessarily straight backwards.  Cf. the importance of making the retreat route as short as is possible.

Well, that was more than I expected when I started.

Here's looking forward to Saturday night and a return to Lobau Island.

"Black Powder 2": What I Vow Not To Forget

I am now officially "in" on the following rulesets:

Black Powder 2

Blucher

Sharp Practice 2

The Men Who Would Be Kings

What a Tanker!

Given this, I feel an obligation to write down those rules that I keep forgetting or got horrifically wrong in playing each of them.  Thus this begins my Black Powder 2 list -- others will follow.

I would more than welcome comments about rules you bugger up regularly or think others do.  Also, if you watched our Teugn-Hausen game and saw us get something wrong, I really would like to know about it.

In No Particular Order:

*Units using initiative movement may either move their 12'' forward or back or try to roll for command.

*Limbered artillery gets one free move, even if its commander fails.  This does not apply to blunders.

*Divisional commanders can re-roll blunders.

*Enemy troops within 12'' of an ordered unit reduce command by one.

 *The -1 for shooting at skirmishers or troops that are "not clear" does not stack.  Only a single -1 is possible.

*Artillery shooting at any column (or square) gets a +1 to hit.  I call this the "no, the artillery in Black Powder 2 is not under-powered" rule..

*Hits from artillery at long range receive a -1 on subsequent morale rolls.  Hits at medium and close range are at -2.

*I believe the -1 modifier "To Hit" in close combat set out in Clash of Eagles for troops fighting in heavy woods would only apply if both units had 50% or more of their footprint in the woods.  I am certainly open to correction on this one.

Why I Do These Things.

It is not every day that you get one of those clarifying moments that reminds why you pursue a particular hobby or go about it a particular way.

Last night's Battle of Teugn-Hausen with the lads from the Armchair Dragoons was one of those nights.

First, for those with short attention spans, here is a video of the whole shooting match:

Yep, three hours and eighteen minutes of Black Powder 2 played using "Tabletop Simulator" and a Teugn-Hausen module of my own creation.  We made it through three turns of a projected eight, although we certainly were not at the game for every minute.  Why was it special?

1.  The people.  Watch the video and know these are the kinds of guys you would like to play games with.  Sure they are playing to win, each in their way, but it is never an over-serious matter.  The response to the French decision to run at those Austrian guns in the west should tell you that.  While yours fondly was not always the most capable (coherent?) umpire, it never once devolved into the kind of rule-lawyering nastiness that we have probably all seen out there.  It was the spirit in which Black Powder 2 was meant to be played and I was very pleased to be a part of it.

2.  Black Powder 2.  I have played an awful lot of Napoleonic systems in my time.  No, really, a lot.  Trust me on this.  BP2 is presently my favorite for what it is.  It plays with a good spirit, it is Napoleonic enough, and, as one of the player's discusses in the video, creates a tabletop that looks Napoleonic.  I have heard the criticisms loud and clear -- oh, yes -- but this is a really good system.

3.  The camaraderie of the tabletop.  Once upon a time, in a world I can barely recall, we up here in Milwaukee were favored to have one of the finest wargame stores to ever exist, Napoleon's.  Run by a man I came to call a friend, it sold miniatures for decades, beginning in an era when Minifigs came in blister packs.  When I was a teenager I fell in love with the 32' X 6' table the store had in the basement on which Napoleonic battles could be fought.  And all around the table there were friends who mocked one another, drank, celebrated their victories, and howled at their occasional bad fortune.  I grew up thinking this is what fun was.  I suspect it is why, almost 40 years later, I am still dragging my family to farm fields in Europe because they once had battles there.

These days, I have no time to paint soldiers and my eyesight would not let me paint them well if I did.  Moreover, I have always been far too ADHD to ever paint just one army or even set of armies.  Worst, though, is that Napoleon's was ground under the juggernaut that is the World Wide Web (that's still a thing, right?).  There has been nothing even close to replace it.

So howling around a digital tabletop last night was very special and a fine memory.  A few photographs:

That'll Do Pig.

Austrians At Left

As for the battle?  Well, the Erzherzog Karl Jaegers are the battle's only casualties so far as both sides have struggled to get their troops forward.  Still, as the third turn ended, the better part of half an Austrian division was finally shoved over the Buchberg to join the scrum.  Much more left to be said.

What, a Post? Surely You Jest!

I know, I know.

The problem is that there's so many very fine places to write to that I never quite know which one to choose.

I post this, though, because I wanted to send out a proper thank you to Sparker at Sparker's Wargaming for helping me nail down how to do Teugn Hausen in Black Powder 2.  I had been using the same Osprey book he did, but it never dawned on me to play the map north to south rather than east to west.  Unlocked a great deal for me and lead to this:

Yes, I now have a bit of an obsession with both Black Powder 2 and Tabletop Simulator.  Perhaps more about that later?

But, for now, a note of gratitude where due!