Hi Sam
The Ilkleylads are planning on having a go at Maurice as part of our Christmas festivities. As my ACW figures are out on my table we will use these rather than my SYW collection.
Our group has a close affinity with card driven games and over the last decade has been heavily into Piquet as well as many of the newer card driven board games.
The rules look interesting and the cards look lovely. We are looking forward to our first game and will let you know how it goes.
Cheers
Mark
Thanks Mark, look forward to hearing about it.
Hi Mark ....the lads at The Sheffield and Rotherham Wargames club are playing Maurice....some very interesting battles, the cards do make for some very tense moments:)
cheers Paul
Hi Sam
We completed our first game last night. 4 players, 13 units a side - finished in less than 3 hours. Pretty good considering it was our first game.
Overall we think this is a very good game design and has a lot of potential for development into other periods. The card engine really makes the game work. There will be a lot of potential to customise any scenario by adding new cards to the deck.
I set up a game with both sides coming on the table to allow us to get the mechanics right before we came to volley fire and contact. The game flows easily with the players forced to make decisions about what to do and where to act and much like the Piquet rules we found the battle develop as a narrative.
We found that artillery had little effect but that was because I did not group the artillery bases so they could become a force which meant neither side wanted to spend cards on activating them to bombard.
Making a plan and sticking to it is key to the game as it easy to become distracted by using a card for a minor advantage which then puts your units out of shape. Keeping formations together is key to the game as it was to 18th century warfare.
The combat rules while being simple are fun and exciting with the rally command being important to maintaining your units. We liked the idea that charging against units that had not been softened up first was not going to be decisive and indeed this is going to make cavalry battles with multiple units a ding dong affair with charges, rallies and counter charges.
We plan to have another game in 2- 3 weeks time.
In all we give it the thumbs up.
Regards
Mark
Hi Mark,
The full game includes a lot more options for artillery, to reflect changes during the 18th century. There are large emplaced batteries, protected by gabions... or smaller increments of lighter artillery that can move in conjunction with infantry, to reflect smaller-scale engagements with light guns, such as in the AWI. (As well as other things, such as the professionalized train of the Austrians by the 1760s, etc.)
best,
Sam
You must log in to post.