Sunday, November 24, 2019

Seven Years War, Rebels & Patriots


Last Thursday we played a game of Rebels & Patriots set in the Seven Years War. Instead of 12 figure infantry units, we used 16 bases with 48 figures per battalion, using 4 of our usual battalions grouped together. That’s why they have so many flags. Small units (cavalry squadrons and skirmishers) have 8 bases with 16 or 24 figures respectively. I figured we could have lots of figures on the new teddy bear fur game mat (from Killing Fields) and yet have a small number of units on each side.

The Prussian general Zeitgeist rolled up wheezy as a character trait. It prevented him from entering woods, no big problem since the Prussians have no light troops in this scenario. Austrian general Esterhazy got ballroom darling, which allows him to get give a unit a 3” bonus move once per game. Rick correctly predicted it would be forgotten in the heat of battle.

The scenario is based on the Lament Ridge scenario, with the ridge replaced by the crossroads.

The Austrians had 3 line infantry battalions @ 4 points each, a small skirmish unit @ 2 points, 2 small shock cavalry squadrons @ 5 points each and 1 medium artillery section @ 6 points. The Prussians had 2 line battalions @ 4 point each, 1 line battalion “good shooters” at 6 points, 2 small shock cavalry squadrons @ 5 points each and a medium artillery section @ 6 points.

Both sides deployed as below. Moltke said “errors in deployment cannot be rectified”.

Cavalry on both sides could not wait to get into musket and artillery range of the enemy.














It took 85 minutes to play 5 turns. The Austrians lost two cavalry squadrons for 10 points while the Prussians lost 1 for 5 points. Austrian bases lost in combat, rather than fleeing, were 11 cavalry and 12 infantry. The Prussians lost 4 cavalry and 2 infantry. Mistakes were made by both commanders and the umpire.

General Zeitgeist AKA Bahama (don’t ask) gained 6 honour points. General Esterhazy got none but avoided getting hit by enemy fire.

I think this worked well and looked pretty good. We used magnetic sabot bases to show that units were in close order. I think in the future we’ll put all save skirmishers on these bases (4 small bases fit on each) and indicate close order by putting them together neatly, and otherwise by staggering the bases. Our next game of some sort will be after my trip to Maine.

3 comments:

doctorphalanx said...

That certainly gives a ‘big battle’ impression. I like the mat too.

I haven’t used movement bases in Rampant games very much but should I feel compelled to do so I was thinking of using irregular shapes for default clumps and rectangular ones for close order and equivalent.

Norm said...

Thanks, enjoy the idea of visually representing these rules at a higher level.

Steve J. said...

Nice looking game and interesting to see these rules used for a bigger game. Little Wat TV did something similar with Isandlawana, so could be something to explore more in the future.