Kvintessensen

There has been wargaming. The scenario is over at the Olicanalad's Games blog and hopefully some sort of report with photos will appear there as well. Last night saw two turns played through, which couldn't have been more different. On the first Peter, as the Austrians, quickly moved his light troops forwards. It looked as if we were in for a repeat of the recent game where my march columns got caught on the roads before getting a chance to deploy into the buildings. The Austrian cavalry also swept threateningly towards the still limbered Prussian artillery. Then came turn two and everything changed. I got an embarrassing amount of initiative and far from scrambling to occupy the town I was able to march straight through and deploy on the other side. My guns unlimbered and the Austrian cavalry withdrew circumspectly.

On the down side, I did listen to James' advice regarding attacking, casting aside the hard earned lessons of many years experience in the process. I did it essentially because I always like trying out unusual rules and this one was so obscure that a cynic might imagine that he had made it up on the spot. Anyway, for better or worse I am now minus one unit of Hussars while a second is occupying a village and a third has crossed the stream only to find itself outnumbered. If I can continue my run of initiative then maybe I can move some support up across the stream and extricate the cavalry from the village; otherwise advancing Austrian infantry may make things difficult. The forces for both sides are now on table and next week should see some heavy action.

In other hobby news:

• James' new roads are excellent.
• James' new space junk looks exactly like two razor blades stuck back-to-back.
• I have ordered a shed load more Hexon terrain to pick up at Vapnartak.
• My search for a painting project is leaning very much in the direction of WW1 trench raids, even to the extent of having bought a couple of books to read. However, and as readers of wargames blogs know more than anyone, the menu is not the meal and the map is not the territory.