Ersatz Eckmühl

We played the sort-of Eckmühl game last night. The good news is that it was enjoyable and met the aim of getting a game that neatly filled the three hours available. The bad news is that I didn't take any photos, that I have prepared neither maps nor OOBs and that we got some of the rules wrong. One cannot have everything.

To recap, this was scenario that I translated to C&C from an article in Miniature Wargames, with the specific intention of playing a game with victory conditions different to the normal C&C option of (mostly) aiming to destroy a certain target number of units, that number being the same for both sides. I think the consensus was that it worked OK, only slightly undermined by James' perverse interpretation of what was meant by 'the road'. As Gertrude Stein would have said had she been a wargamer "a road is a road is a road". So, I shall definitely give this method of generating a scenario another try.

We used Prussians to replace the Austrians that I don't have, but played them as Prussians with appropriate national characteristics. Apart from anything else that was because I have prepared laminated sheets with all those details on them, and - not having Austrian figures - haven't done one for them. As previously featured on the blog their forces included the 6th Hussars. Traditionalists will be pleased to note that they were destroyed without achieving anything, as all newly painted units should be.

The key rule that we got wrong was the one whereby Command Cards with stars on them - there is a proper name for these, but I forget it - allow extra March moves in the section in which they are played. This would have allowed the Franco-Bavarian attack to develop more quickly, although given that James didn't know what he was trying to achieve in the first place it's unlikely to have made a great deal of difference. There was also a certain degree of rule rustiness, reminiscent of the games of Pike & Shotte over the last couple of weeks; it seems to be getting more and more difficult to retain information as I slip into my dotage. I think that next time we might perhaps try a bit of a variant on the use of specific cards such as Bombard and Fire and Hold. I shall explain our thinking in due course.

Anyway, I'm off to vote, with neither hope nor expectation. As someone once said "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", a quote that is doubly apposite today.