Saturday, November 8, 2014

The 28mm Classroom

My Simulation Games "minimester" is about halfway over. To those new to my blog, I have been granted permission to offer a course in historical gaming to high school students. We meet once or twice a week. Thus far we have done a 28mm Pirate game and a 10mm WWII game. It was time to break out the big guns: Napoleonics.  We're using Black Powder to play this one. Quick, easy to learn, and despite the artificiality of "I go, you go" rules, the natural breaks in play are great when you have to stop after playing for an hour and  wait a few days for the next session.

The Spanish brigade gets ready for the battle.  Note the artsy photo effects I used in this batch of photos. I am not likely to use them again...

A brigade of British foot.  This was pretty much a meeting engagement over a field with minimal terrain. Because I need my table for teaching, I was not able to deploy the full 6' width of my boards.

More British.  I tried a different color effect with this photo.  I should just stop trying to be clever.

The guy on the right just dropped in to the class because he had a free period. He'll be back, he said.  Meanwhile, CJ shakes his infantry out into a firing line. Impressive, but he did not leave himself much of a reserve.

The British cavalry was outnumbered 2:1 in this game. On the British right, Emily tries to use her light dragoons to draw  the French light horse away from the British line of infantry.

Looks like a successful tactic, if the can close in time...

meanwhile, there is no cavalry on the British right to distract the dragoons. CJ quickly learned the value of a square, but the French player then realized that he could redeploy artillery to take advantage of the stalemate.

The Spanish plod forward. With the Light Brigade pinned down by cavalry, that hole on the right is awfully tempting for the other squadron of French dragoons. Tune in next time...

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