Wargaming again

Strange day. I voted of course, and got bitten on my leg by something unidentified (but presumably an insect) leading to a lot of blood and a large swelling. On top of which the country I live in may be only hours away from being taken over in a coup by an unholy alliance of the ignorant and the sinister. I shall therefore talk about wargaming.

We returned to the table for the first time in some weeks and it was just as if we had never been away: no one could remember the rules, there was endless debate about what constitutes a flank (or its modern hi-tech equivalent, the beaten zone), and Peter rolled a lot of ones. I won't go into detail about the game because you can read about it here on James' blog. But points to note would be:

• It only occurred to me shortly before the game that I had never played the Austrians before and, in particular, had no idea how to use grenzers. Following the first night's play I have plenty of ideas about how not to use them.
• Successful battlefield selection and blind deployment are not intuitive. I like the system, but am under no illusions that I'm any good at it.
• Ditto for the whole campaign system really. As the Austrians I think one has to be both cautious because one's generals often end up doing nothing, and also opportunistic on the odd occasions when the Prussian generals do the same.
• The thing that really pissed me off was when I foolishly moved a limbered gun, and invited opportunity fire which destroyed it for the second time in quick succession.
• The thing that really made me laugh was when Peter managed to fail Major Morale despite only having lost one unit.

Interestingly, Peter admitted to his own loss of painting mojo in recent weeks/months. It's obviously catching.