I played a game with the new v1.5 rules. I used Scenario Six from One Hour Wargames as a basis. I quickly converted the map to hexagons and gave each side eight instead of six units. My wife played the red army, springing a trap on my unsuspecting blue column.
The game went fairly quickly with the red army rolling abysmally for activations. The blue column was able to start turning the tide by using cavalry to charge the force blocking the road from their flank. With nowhere to retreat, the blocking force surrendered and was eliminated. This compounded the activation problem because the commander was attached to one of the blocking units, which meant that two iniative points were required to activate most of the red force. Blue took advantage of their iniative point advantage and moved their disordered cavalry off the field, completing the mission objectives. The game ended with blue successfully escaping with all eight units and destroying four of red's units in the process.
We only had time to play one game, but I wonder if I would have been able to stop blue's advance if I were the red player. Sorry no pictures from this one. It took us about two hours to play with frequent breaks to check the rules and there was the constant distraction of the dog who thought we should be playing with her.
Overall, the game worked pretty well. Artillery felt pretty under powered and cavalry felt overpowered. I'm probably going to have to reduce the melee starting value for cavalry and mounted dragoons by 1. I don't know how I'm going to make the artillery more powerful. My first thought would be to set their base ranged stat at 0 and have a -1 modifier for long shots, but that is statistically identical to having the base stat at -1 and a +1 modifier for close shots. It might make players feel like the artillery is stronger and use it more. Another option would be for the artillery to fire using only 1 activation point, even if they are far from the commander or getting a bonus for firing on the same tile as on the previous turn. This would have the unfortunate consequence of forcing the players to remember where they fired last turn, or cluttering the already often tightly packed tiles with a marker of some sort. I know historically artillery wasn't really that effective, but I think the four batteries on the field scored a combined total of one effective volley.
If you have some spare time and wouldn't mind reading or playtesting my rules, I'd greatly appreciate it.
