General D'Armee at the Club

Last night Tom and I ran our first game of General D'Armee at the club.  Thanks very much to Ed and Simon for being willing test subjects and for being such good sports as I constantly looked up rules.

The game was a fictional meeting engagement.  pitting a British / Spanish force against the French.  The sides were even with 3 brigades of infantry (each 4 battalions) and one brigade of Calvary (3 units).  2 of each armies infantry brigades had an attached artillery battery.  The only thing lacking is that I only had enough skirmish stands completed to allow skirmishers for only 1 brigade per side.  It did show that skirmishers are really important in these rules.

For simplicity sake, all units were rated "line".  I am sure that I got a lot of nuances wrong - like fighting in built up areas (BUA's).  One thing that is clear to me is that I need to make village plots that outline the shape of the BAU and govern if a unit is in or out.  Using just buildings was very confusing.

The French ended up attacking.  The impact of no skirmishers was really felt by Tom's British left flank (upper right) where my Brigade with skirmishers managed to inflict more damage than received (he lost 2 of his infantry battalions to only one of mine) and the others were pretty chewed up.  In hind sight it was a very unfair but did so how important the correct use of skirmishers are in this rule set.

Overall, I was very impressed by the rules - the command system is both elegant and challenging but not so much as you can loose a game from a single round of bad die rolling.  The combat system is good but a tad complex - I think we'll get a grasp of the rules for club play after another game or two.  I am concerned about using these rules for the upcoming Historicon games this July and may need to figure a way to strip them down a bit.

Overall very impressed with the rules and left last night wanting to play a lot more.