Like Romans, like Prussians

The Punic Wars have gone temporarily into abeyance to be replaced with an early run through of Zorndorf, James' demo game for Triples. Fate had decreed that I had not received a sufficient kicking as the Romans and should therefore receive another one as the Prussians. The scenario requires Frederick to behave much as he did on the day (including the bits he didn't plan) and therefore it is more than usually about the cards drawn and the dice thrown.

Bollocks

Events were, I think, quite instructive. The luck was quite evenly split, but heavily skewed within specific areas. Peter won the vast majority of the initiative, thereby proving that the gods of the dominoes can also have their favourites. We are just about to end the second turn and I won't have cycled through even half my deck in total.

Temple to the gods of the dominoes

On the other hand his dice rolling was pathetic even by his own standards, especially when it came to unit quality. I, in contrast, rolled highly for the effects of my pre-battle artillery bombardment, for unit quality and on my defence dice, but in melee and in particular on morale dice I was truly dreadful. So, I hear you ask, what was the outcome? The result, dear reader, was that my attacking infantry force ran away. That's right, they weren't destroyed - I haven't lost any units in that way - the whole lot of them just took off. Now I'm no expert on the Seven Years War, but I'd always thought that Frederick was best known for his ruthless discipline which if it achieved anything it was to stop his men deserting their posts. Not this time.