Commands and Colours Napoleonics, first game

Last night was games night and Mike and I headed out to John's place with C & C Napoleonics. We chose the first scenario, Rolica, with Mike taking the Anglo-Portuguese and me with the French.

 The initial deployment made me a bit jittery. I had to curb my instinct to attack, as I didn't want to give up the advantage of holding the high ground. I decided to occupy the town at the end of the ridge and send the cavalry guard the hill on the right, which was a British objective. I also drew a hand of cards that didn't allow me much control over my centre.

 Mike, on the other hand, was all about the centre, and his cards seemed to push him towards an attack up the guts. What he didn't count on was the superior French melee and advantage of being uphill would make mincemeat of his forces. He soon realised this and withdrew to bombard the hill while moving around the flanks.

 Things really started to get fiery on the French left, seeing both sides lose their cavalry (you can see in the top left of the picture above that a Portuguese unit was forced into square). Meanwhile the British moved up their left and bombarded the French holding that area. I moved my remaining central forces behind the ridgeline and started inching them to my left.

Things were tense at the end of the game. Mike had killed 4 of my units, and 5 victory banners was the wining of the scenario. I had three. I moved my infantry back onto the ridgeline and engaged the Portuguese on the left. I have to admit that there were a couple of lucky dice rolls involved, but I successfully knocked out the last couple of units I needed to take my total to 5 victory banners and the winning of the scenario. General Delaborde made a good fist of keeping the British at bay!

Mike and I both enjoyed the game, and agreed that the extra detail that you don't find in the Ancients version (such as decreasing combat power for reduced units), and the presence of more terrain than what is found on most ancient battlefields, led to a superior game. Discussion moved to the possibility of using miniatures - 2mm micro-blobs or possibly 6mm. I've already built a 3D Hex board for use with the Samurai Battles game, and I have 15mm figures for that, using micro-dice to track losses. All food for thought.

Nate