Not Quite To The Second Parallel

Firstly, "Sláinte Mhath!" to you all.  

I found the turn of Vauban's Wars which I played to be rather bland. However, a brief reflection left me unable to think of any wargame that I have ever played in which the first turn was terribly exciting. It would perhaps be an odd design that placed the best bits into the first fifteen minutes and after that left the players with the prospect of a couple of hours which they knew were going to be an anti-climax. I therefore re-read the rules and pressed on with the second turn. A couple of small changes:

• I rerated the leaders so that they are both the same. The difference between them was making it more difficult for me to gain an understanding of how the game works.
• It turns out that the besiegers, being Napoleonic French, should have had an advantage in the composition of their deck. I hadn't done this, because I had missed it, and have left it that way, for the same reason as above.
• I have decided to be more proactive on behalf of the garrison; this would seem to be the designer's intention.

Much of the friction in the game is exogenous to players' actions or decisions and this aspect started to kick in more this time around. On the turn of the first card it started to rain and some of the besieging forces deserted. I won't go through it in any detail - even more boring for you than for me - but I think that the garrison has had the better of it and through a combination of trench raids and artillery fire they have destroyed one unit of sappers and driven off two others for the time being. The garrison themselves have suffered no losses, although my initial disposition of their forces is doing them no favours.