Ok,
Over the past 3 weeks I've managed to arrange/play 5 games so I thought it would be a good time to give my impressions of the game and compare them to my initial considerations.
First, all the games were played FULLY according to the rules. Armies were legal armies, we always used the set up system and the attacker defender system.
My initial concerns with the game were: 1) evilgong's initial concern about the vitory system ( I kill 100% of the enemy and lucky enemy does not fail morale role ), 2) some initial comments about artillery "having no teeth" 3) how players would deal with the "no fire if friends are on my line of fire" 4) the famous two columns on one line attack 5) command range not being a factor
So after a few games here is what I think of my initial concerns (at least so far, only after 5 games ):
1) victory system: no concern at all , the system works fine, I've never seen anyone come close to killing even half their enemy. Usually whoever wins reaches the 1/3 of attrition almost at the end when it very likely that the other side will fail the morale role in one or two turns. So for me it works and I like it
2) "artillery has no teeth": not really what I have seen. I've seen units exterminated by artillery, I've seen attacks stalled by artillery. The key is that if you only have one battery then it is just a tactical factor simply adding some disruption before the close in. To have damaging effect as a weapon you need to combine one or two batteries. Without debating if this is historically accurate ( I personally believe it is ) , from a game point of view it is great, you really need to plan well, and combined with no firing overhead even from hills this makes for a much better game. We introduced to the game a gamer from France yesterday ( of course big fan of the period ) and we was very positively impressed by how artillery worked in the game by forcing players to think about position ( ie. not just choosing a hill ), as opposed to most other systems he's tried.
3) "no fire if friendlies in my line of fire", this is great forces players to think carefully their infantry tactics...
4) "two columns on one line", not a terrible issue, usually it is difficult to obtain that ratio, of course the attacker will always try to concentrate on one point of the defenders line but this is a valid normal strategy and the defender has many tools to deal with this. And even if it did get two columns on one line the attacker only gets about a 55% chance of a decisive win so it is not a game breaker...
5)command range: command range is not an issue when you have your army in order ( and I don't think it should be due to the scale of the game ), however once the units get engaged the now command line within 5cm of the enemy really kills your line of command.
All in all, the more I play the game the more I enjoy it and the more I see that some red flags that came up to me early on don't really worry me anymore.
Even better my group of players here in Buenos Aires loves the game. I have one player who so far has been a warhammer player and is trying his first pass at historicals, he loves it even though his initial interest is in WWII. And he has learned almost 95% of the rules just by playing three games ( no reading rules ) and has become one of the most cunning tacticians.
Another player is the most fanatic Napoleonic player, this guy even has a masters on military history from the army academy ( here in BA ) and he loves the game. Now this guy is used to some very sophisticated rules modeling the period with a lot of detail but he still enjoys this system as a reasonable game that can be played in one afternoon with a very reasonable degree of historical accuracy.
It's been a while since I've seen this much interest in the period from my group so once again, good job with the rules..
I'll try to post some pictures of these recent games soon.
cheers
Francisco