MY GAMING WEEK: IN HER MAJESTY'S NAME AND C&C NAPOLEONICS.

I have had a break from blogging for a month or so, for a number of reasons. I am back and looking to post on a reasonably reasonable basis.

This past week has seen me playing a new game and an old favourite. On Wednesday, we had a game of In Her Majesty's Name. This was an all in game just to try out the rules. David set up the scenario, using some of the terrain that he has constructed. The scenario was simple, capture the scientist in the engine house in Kew Gardens and get him off the table!

              The engine house that David constructed with the Airfix beam engine inside.

It ended up being a race between my Scotland Yard company and Derek and David's companies. We managed to give the shooting and combat rules a good test. There were a lot of extreme rolls on the go: about a dozen each of 1s an 10s, which were automatic failures and passes respectively. I was deemed to have won the race, but the result was not the purpose of this game. Here are a few photos from the game.

  On Thursday, Rick & I played a Commands & Colors Napoleonic scenario, using the terrain from the La Platavilla Don Featherstone tribute game from last year. I took the British. I had to set up my forces before Rick deployed the French. This simulated the morning mist screening the French advance. The river was fordable, but was in spate and infantry units ran the risk of losing hits if they crossed the river.

                                                                Starting deployments.
When the French deployment was revealed (Rick had deployed the French, taken a photo, then took then off the table) I found that I had fallen for the ruse and had deployed to defend the bridge, rather than anticipate cavalry attacks over the river.

The game became a race to redistibute my forces to meet the cavalry threat before they got across the river. Here are some photos of the game.

There was an air of inevitability about the French cavalry attack. They brushed aside the only British cavalry unit before falling on the flank. The French attacked across the bridge to keep my forces in place. The cards even added to the narrative: for the first four moves I had no centre section cards. This modeled the confusion that would have been felt in the British centre. In the end, i managed to form a defence with a few units, but ultimately lost seven blocks to nil. A decisive victory for the French.

 

A very enjoyable week of gaming.