Friday 11 December 2015

Honours of War, attempt two, The Refight of Lobositz.



 Colin, John and I tried out Honours of War again refighting the Battle of Lobositz, for a second time.
 Our purpose was to test the rules, and compare the result to our first attempt at the new rules.
 As stated before, Colin will no doubt do a detailed write up on his blog, Carry on up the Dale, so I won't provide a detailed account of the battle.
 We adopted two small amendments to see if they worked. One was to shorten the range of canister, making it the same as musket range, and the second was to lessen the use of battalion guns, by shortening the range, again to musket range, but leaving the minus one factor in place. Both seemed to work well without causing any imbalances.
 The battle was a very tense affair, with the Austrians holding their own on the Lobosch hill, and in front of the town, until late in the game.I found my Grenzer played a blinder, charging twice against two batteries of guns. One of the very few times, that lights can actually charge anything.
 A key feature of the rules is the ability to rally causalities off your units, by either being out of range of the enemy, usually by rallying back, or if you are lucky enough to have a 'Dashing' Commander in Chief, who can quickly re order your troops, but at great personal risk to themselves.
 Unfortunately things began to go pear shape for the Austrians, when their reinforcements, led by Colin, suffered repeated poor command throws, and when I lost two great chances to snatch the command initiative away from the Prussians, only to fail. [All I had to do was beat a one by simply throwing a two or higher!] I failed this twice in quick succession and John was able to gain the advantage and charge into my weakened flank.

 The final move, saw my Austrians, hopelessly outflanked, and ready to be routed, with their reinforcements sitting watching, too far away to influence the outcome.
 Again a great battle.
So would I recommend these rules for all Seven Years War fans? Definitely. Will we be using these again? Most certainly. Will they replace Blackpowder? Well although I enjoy Blackpowder rules, I feel Honours of War capture the period much better, so probably yes.



4 comments:

  1. Didnt we drop the -1 for not having BGs and keep the range difference for those with/without them? It was a good game and I'd be very happy to use these for SYW/WAS in the future in preference to BP.

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  2. I thought we kept it, and changed the range?
    It just shows how alert I was.

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  3. We Austrians were clearly very adept at method acting! ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm so glad that these rules seem to be catching on. The death of Black Powder can't be far away can it?

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My 6mm Napoleonic set up.

My 6mm Napoleonic set up.
Austria 1809.

Austrian Hussars

Austrian Hussars
Hinchliffe figures

Austrian Grenzer

Austrian Grenzer
Austrian Grenzer

Smoggycon 2013

Smoggycon 2013
Smoggycon 2013

Smoggycon 2012

Smoggycon 2012
Smoggycon 2012

Smoogycon 2009

Smoogycon 2009
My French getting another beating