Carnage 2014 AAR - Part Two - Electronic Brigadier Unveiling

Saturday mid-day at Carnage I ran my first public game using Electronic Brigadier. I was somewhat nervous but several conspirators stopped by to help me set up and also to proctor the players through the first few turns. A huge thanks to Ed and Ralph for helping me out.

The game I feel went very well. The players seemed go grasp the system quickly and were more focused on the miniatures than the tablets, which I very much desired would be the case. I had some players experienced with computer moderated gaming and some completely new. Both groups seemed to like the system. Considering I took about 20 minutes to explain the rules, terrain, scenario and the computer system, after we got started moving the figures, the players played the game to it's conclusion in about 3 hours. Each side played 12 turns for a total of 24 turns.

The game was a moderate American victory, although their casualties were significant. The outcome info from the computer was pretty close to the historical casualties of 556 for the British and 316 for the Americans:

British Forces Army cohesion:46.7% Total Casualties: 495 / 3709 (13.3%) 4 units dispersed 1 shaken units

American Forces Army cohesion:59.0% Total Casualties: 302 / 3740 (8.1%) 2 units dispersed

During Friday evening and Saturday day I had 6-7 people approach me disappointed that they couldn't get into my game as it had filled up very quickly once the Carnage event listing was posted. My table was open in the evening period so with the encouragement of some of these people, I volunteered to re-run the game so some of those people could play it.  I didn't get a lot of photos, but my friend Ed was generous enough to share these that he took.  This one to the left is me explaining the rules, terrain and scenario and the one below is me playing.

We played the game, which has 3 commands on each side, with four (4) players, me being the fourth. I was on the American side, my opponent was a young gentleman named Sean who out played me the entire game. So much for having an author's advantage!  Other than myself, the other three players were all new, but none of them had any trouble keeping up with running extra troops. By turn 3 Sean was able to enter my moves faster than I could move my figures.

This second playing was vindication for the British as they won in good order. They used an excellently formed line of battle with charges to sweep away the militia and rifles without charging unnecessarily. I had less luck charging in the dense woods, as my troops regularly refused to close there. In the open field I eventually lost both New York continental units although I think my opponent was also close to breaking in some places. Final battle statistics for game 2 were:

British Forces

• Army cohesion: 72.2%
• Total Casualties: 427 / 3709 (11.5%)
• 1 shaken units

American Forces

• Army cohesion: 58.0%
• Total Casualties: 420 / 3740 (11.2%)
• 3 units dispersed
• 2 shaken units

Elsewhere in the evening session, Mark D. ran his 28mm War of 1812 skirmish game using Brother against Brother and Ralph ran his 28mm WWII skirmish game using Bolt Action with our local 'big battles' modification. Photos below again were taken by my friend Ed.