Robert's 50th Birthday Gaming Bash

My friend Robert celebrated his 50th birthday this weekend. For his special day he decided to have a mega party with all of his various gaming friends. Some play Diplomacy, some play all types of 'Euro' board games and some play historical miniatures. I do two of the three and enjoyed most of my time with the wargamers, but was able to sneak in three board games late Saturday evening. This was a great weekend, plenty of good people to meet and re-visit, great food and best of all, great gaming.

Saturday morning kicked off first thing with a great game of Charlie's house Napoleonic wing scale rules, Napoleon's Rules of War. Charlie's been working on these rules for a while and they're pretty much mature at this point. We played a fun game with very little in the way of rules questions.

The scenario was a section of the battle of Talavara and featured a portion of Charlie's wonderful 28mm Napoleonic collection which has been entirely painted by himself. I conducted an assault on the British left flank. I had numeric superiority, but Ed's use of some reserve cavalry stopped my flank battalions forcing them to form square slowing my attack. In the middle we had more success breaking several british line units and one battery. On the other flank the Spanish pushed hard and were driving us back. The battle ended up in a classic 'pinwheel of death'. Great fun.

Saturday afternoon and evening we played a game using my Electronic Brigadier rules. I expanded the order of battle for my test scenario to a full OB for Freeman's Farm (1st Saratoga). After struggling to get the WiFi working in the room we were able to (mostly) resolve that problem and play a full game. The British pushed hard and fast with their right advance wing, in the process isolating the British Grenadiers, exposing them to fire from three American battalions. While they stood firm the damage would eventually rout the Grenadiers later in the game.

On the British left flank the Hessian wing had some trouble deploying and got jumped by Poor's brigade. The early advantage eventually resulted in a couple of lost units in that wing. The Americans lost one of the Connecticut militia brigades and suffered some heavy losses in several units, but held firm and eventually caused enough damage to the British for us to call it an American victory.

This was the first time the rules have been exposed to players not involved with the play test. Although I have several things I'd like to adjust in the programming, the game seemed to be well received and I'm quite happy with the outcome - units that suffered the worst losses failed morale and behaved as expected. Combat results all seemed to be reasonable when considering all factors involved in the combat. I'd like to give my sincere thanks to all the players for enduring the technical hiccups with the WiFi and for all their excellent constructive feedback. My lesson learned, bring a mobile hotspot to all future games.