2nd Battle of Limonest

First off, major disappointment.  With lots of planning and arrangement and purchasing of the flight, this weekend was to be my trip up to see Mike B. and do an all-weekend game fest.  However, fog.  Lots of fog.  All up and down the coast for 500 miles and not burning off.  Well, perhaps just for an hour late in the day, before the sun goes down and it rolls in even heavier.  Many cancelled flights especially the smaller carriers to the smaller towns including mine. Damn. Damn, Damn.

With the weekend open, I decided to do another go at play-testing the rules and set up this historical battle again. Good to compare the command rolls verses the first go-around.

The main Allied thrust represented by my Prussian elements moving against the French on the hill.

Because of the complete randomness of the rolls, even small commands of 3 or 4 elements cannot often benefit from the comparatively potential of pip happy times.  Well, not with the numerous 1's and 2's I roll certainly. This was made very evident in an interesting conclusion of the battle as, with the French retreat in full bloom, the right flank Allied commander obviously frustrated with no more opposition to his front yet rolling poor movement pips each turn, drove only an element of dragoons forward in an effort to close off the bridge to the retreating French.  On the way his sliced up ol' Grouchy with a couple saber cuts (lone HQ overrun on a "Danger to General" roll. Adds drama and if the General is killed, the HQ is eliminated and all elements now double price to move)

my Grouchy HQ element

Anyway, this silly dragoon brigade is now out of command distance, the player (me) not moving the HQ to keep pace. Well, now I again roll a '1' which does not allow the dragoon element to about-face to meet the oncoming French; who besides, laid up a cannon to blast its way past!  A lesson to all the players to keep all under command distance.

One command [lower portion of the photo] but with the lone dragoon element [cavalry in green] near the bridge but out of command distance ...

...and now unable to be ordered to turn around to face the retreating French elements [infantry with the tricolor flags] and now facing deployed artillery [left] by a commander WITH enough command to do so!

Also had other situations which hopefully simple conclusions with the rules will result. 

With only 7 turns done, which at half-an-hour assigned per turn, it is roughly the same time frame as the real battle and this was done in a fairly small area of 3 feet by 4.5 feet.   Lots of elements eliminated or done to 1 MP only so conclusions to any battle will certainly be easy to reach.