"Fictional end of 1813 game N@W AAR" Topic

Here's an AAR of a fictional game set at the start of December 1813.
Hope you enjoy.

roll4reserves.blogspot.co.uk

Cheers
Andy

I enjoyed the pics and report, Andy!

One thing to consider for large multiplayer games is giving the players choices about calling for reinforcements. From a game standpoint, this can be done at the Army level which is most realistic – it is napoleon or Schwarzenberg, etc, deciding who gets what when, withing constraints set by the scenario. This has worked really well with our Wagram and Borodino games, except that it is hard to get a player to take the role of C-in-C! Most guys want to fight it out at the tactical level, and managing the big picture is a bit different. Also the C-in-C usually has a command of his own, and the big picture can be distracting from his tactical fight (and vice versa), so it is stressful! For a fictional game, you can have each player have some reserves they can call upon. However, depending upon the game system, there should be some cost to doing so – in Victory Points or Morale points, OR the longer you wait to call on the Reserves, the more/better troops you get (and probably, more likely they will comer on when, or soon after you call for them). Or even a combination of several of the above. Lots of room for creativity there! Forcing players to make some larger decisions is good… do I call for my reinforcements =early so that I can press the attack and gain ground and/or VP, or do I wait to enhance what I get and counter-punch? Using this option it is best not to have the starting forces be too generous so that they *will* need those reinforcements before too long…. or at least think that they will!

Thanks for the comments and ideas Gonsalvo.

The key things I learnt relate to how long such a game takes and what can be reasonably expected of people. In this game we had twice the number of players than the Leipzig game (still only 4 people) and I'd assumed that would equate to more turns completed but it didn't. We still got 6 turns in. It's worth remembering that a lot can happen in a N@W game turn including a lot of movement.
Therefore future games of this scale will be based around 6 turns. Also I think the two sides should start a bit closer together so the action starts earlier.
In this game the over all CinC of each army knew what forces were available but wasn't sure of arrival times. Prior to arrival the CinC could request where the reserve would arrive, what they didn't necessarily know was the further away from the central road they wanted the arrival point to be, the longer that reserve would take to arrive. Thus the French heavy cavalry that arrived on the far right on turn 5 could have arrived on turn 3 if the CinC had wanted it to arrive in the center.

The reserve arrival times were set when I'd hoped we'd get approx 10 turns in. With 6 turns it meant some arrived too late to have a real impact.

So the next big game will hopefully see the battle reach a more decisive conclusion now We've got a few games under our belt.

Cheers,
Andy

Well done, Andy. A good looking game, and well game-mastered.

Don't forget that it often happened that troops arrived too late to have an impact on the outcome of a battle. The hope of friendly reinforcements or the threat of enemy reinforcements can shape a scenario as much as the actual arrival.

It's nice to see someone honing their scenario design skills . . . a much neglected aspect of wargaming, and one that has as great an impact (if not even greater) on the players' enjoyment of the game as the choice of rules or the aesthetics of nice figures and terrain.

Jeff

Thanks for comments Jeff.