AAR - 2 games

[ravenflight]

Hi All,

I played 2 games of FoG:R with some or all of the amendments.

My first game was against a cavalry heavy Russian army. My second game was against a Border Reiver army.

I can't really tell you much about what the Russians or Border Reivers had, but my army was as follows:

800 AP Later Danish (all average unless specified)
Great Commander
2 x Troop Commanders
2 x 4 Dragoons
3 x 4 & 2 Pike and Shot
4 x 6 shot with bayonet and regimental guns
1 x 3 Medium Artillery
2 x 4 Determined Horse
1 x 4 Superior Determined Horse.

13 BG's.

Someone will have to check my sums, but I think the army is correct.

General comments and Determined Horse:

Altogether, I think the games had a good feel to them. I felt that the reduction in price of the cavalry was a little too far, but the Determined Horse held up quite well. In the first game 2 BG's of DH routed, but after doing some serious hurt to a large chunk of the Russian army. In the second game I only lost 1 base of the DH. The games seemed to have the right feel of 'Determined Horse are tough but fragile, but not too fragile' I quite liked the interactions with the armour, but am not 100% certain we played it right... I think we did, but don't keep up with all the iterations. We played that being bested in armour drops the lower armour 1 quality, so my superior guys ended up average, and my average guys stayed average because they had a general in the front rank. This overall felt right. Extrapolating: The League of Augsburg armoured DH vs Louis XIV unarmoured, and it would mean 'on average' the Louis XIV would win the combats because of their advantage in the impact phase. I guess I do wonder if the 'can upgrade one BG of mounted to Superior' is necessary though as this would then lose their advantage... but that's for another thread.

Average troops resilience:

There was an overall concern about the increasing the resilience of average troops would increase the length of games, but generally I felt it was ok. Yes, it would probably slightly increase the game length, but also mitigates a run of bad luck a little too, meaning you've really got to 'win' the game, not just get 3 lucky hits against a 6 base unit.

In both games we came close to a result in 3.5 hours, and probably could have got a result if we weren't chatting so much. In one game we both had been so stale at deployment that we BOTH forgot divisional move requirements so could have closed quicker if we'd remembered.

Artillery

Didn't really affect our game dramatically. I did manage to luckily shoot down a mounted BG but would have done the same even if there wasn't luck just because of the way the game was being played out, and would have been easier to do in 'hit mounted on a 4' version. Extrapolating: I felt that the changes would encourage caracole 6 base shooters as they are now being hit by artillery on a 4 (as they were before in 4's) instead of a 3 and seem to have a chance of doing something because of their increased resilience.

Dragoon moves

Didn't really affect us because the troops never got used in a strange manner. There was one dragoon vs dragoon duel which wouldn't have been much different regardless, and there was a dragoon vs LH duel which similarly wouldn't have been much different. So, all in all can't comment. Overall don't mind the change.

So, just shooting from the hip. I think Cavalry are now perhaps a little too cheap, but that's just a gut reaction to an otherwise fine couple of games.