General d'Armee - First Try

A few friends and I played a game of General d'Armee yesterday to see how they felt. We are all long time, former Napoleonic players who are all a bit disgruntled with the rules that we've been playing in recent years. So, Robin, Peter, Andrew & I set to!

Robin & Andrew ~ French.
Peter & I ~ Prussians.

I got the rules when they were released last year, read through them and put them away. But, a couple of weeks back talk turned to Napoleonics and I suggested GdA. So, we all read them (I watched the You Tube videos too) and yesterday we put some figures on the table for a run through.

The first thing we liked was the size of the battalions. We'd been playing a Empire-esque, home brew rules for some time with small 12 figure (1:60) battalions. We opted to double the size and they looked good. We were a bit short on Cavalry but we'll sort that out by painting more horses!

None of us were sure of the rules and we expected to get through 3 or maybe 4 turns. I was expecting to get bogged down with the turn sequence and I was dreading the Charge Sequence. However, we ended up playing 6 turns with plenty of time buggering around and chatting. After the first couple of turns the Turn Sequence was easy. The shooting was simple and reflective of what we expected.

Note the small buildings.

Just a note: My cavalry got caught by Andrew's artillery. He rolled 12 (-2 for unlimbering) ~ 3 hits and a Discipline Test! Next turn... Should I move them or let them be? Surely he couldn't do that again. WRONG! ~ 3 hits and a Discipline Test! Damn those French gunners!

Time for my guns to fire... Hee, hee , hee, This'll learn 'em... I rolled 1 (3 -2 for unlimbering). Fatigue casualties but at least I wasn't Low on Ammo (natural snake eyes for that). Damn those Prussian gunners!

Note how the buildings grew in size.

I brought a box of cardstock buildings but we put some smaller buildings on the table. Robin and Peter saw the box of buildings mid-game and decided to replace the original buildings.

Anyway, back to the game...

We ended up with a several instances of charges. We just took our time and went through the process and it was much easier that I expected. Only one charge drove home and the Prussian cavalry demolished a battalion of French Infantry. We pretty much realised we'd done some things wrong and worked it out again. The French were hurt and the Prussians returned to their lines to lick their wounds.

My big move of the game was an Infantry Assault. I got one brigade into position and applied all my ADC taskings for Infantry Assault & Glory.

The troops got up to the 3" mark. Dice were rolled. I took a punt and re-rolled one dice and got a 6. But it wasn't enough and the attack stalled on the hill crest. But my troops did not become unformed.

Next turn I had 3 ADC's I gave them one for Glory! and allocated the other two to my other brigades. I then failed the Command Roll for everything. EVERYTHING! My whole line halted. and my attack was relegated to being shot up by the French lines.

All in all, we were all impressed by the rules and we want to give it another go as soon as possible. Or, in the words of Andrew: "Before we forget everything."

Despite what I thought was a pretty confusing turn sequence when I was reading, proved to be easy in execution. The shooting was also pretty easy once we worked our way through the process. So too were the charge and melee sequences.

So, we're keen to get more games under our collective belts.

Robin doing some serious generaling in our new club setting

at the RSL (Returned Servicemen's League).

P.S. I made some tokens using Photoshop. They were printed onto an A4 sticky sheet, attached to some card & cut into bits. I did them in 5 colours and I'll make them available for download as pdf's soon.