Ah – the portraits !
Just a bit of theatre really. I like to get players thinking that the events on the tabletop represent a struggle between a few gentlemen of distinguished breeding stock … and that the thousands represented by the mass of little lead men are of far lesser consequence.
Its actually a useful mindset to adopt in order to really understand the whole period I think.
Its also a useful mindset to adopt in order to fight well at grand tactical level.
The poker chips being used as blinds – I know this makes little sense to use blinds in a solo game, but it does actually serve a purpose. It means that the 'pre-battle' moves can be ripped through very quickly (no need to shuffle dozens of figures around each move).
Otherwise, Napoleonic battles tend to be big 'line em up and smack em into each other' affairs. My aim is to better understand what really happened at Jena-Auerstadt, so I need something that allows a lot more pre-battle flexibility there. I sort of need to satisfy myself that the whole campaign was won on the march before the first shot was ever fired.
The coloured popsicle sticks – I am using these to mark the current orders / commander's intention for each Division sized unit. In the rules system I am using, all units pretty much blindly follow orders each turn, which is a 2 edged sword. It is somewhat difficult to alter the orders – especially quickly – so having the coloured stick markers on the table removes the need for paperwork.
Found a small error I made the other day with the rules too. The Austrian artillery scored some good hits on the leading French column, giving a couple of kills and 2 panic hits. I missed the sentence in the rules that says "panic hits from artillery fire do NOT trigger the need for divisional panic tests." Thats only for panic hits in melee combat. So it seems like the French 1st Division should have pressed home their attack instead of falling back to the orchard. Never mind …. there is always the 2nd wave that is about to hit.
