It's been a while since I've posted on here, but I promise I have a decent reason. My wife and I welcomed our first child, a daughter, on April 24th. My employer offers a very generous 3 weeks of paternity leave, so I've been reading everyone's blogs and getting inspired to play a few games. It seems that Simplicity in Hexes has been exploding in popularity the past few weeks due to a linked campaign crafted by "Old Trousers" of Numbers, Wargames and Arsing About. Having a mostly painted generic 18th Century Army in red and blue and a hexed board of 8x9, I convinced my lovely wife to play the first game of the campaign. Having read many blog posts, I decided to start under the assumption that units could be adjacent without charging per the recommendations of Kaptain Kobold.
She selected the blue army, leaving me with the red. We both rolled up a force with 4 units of regular infantry and a field battery. She fielded a dragoon regiment and I brought a regiment of horse. She elected to designate one of the infantry regiments as elite and her dragoons were allowed to take the +1 charging national bonus. I designated the cavalry regiment as elite and they also received the +1 when defending against cavalry national bonus.
Unfortunately there are no pictures of the action, but I will do my best to give a brief recap and explain my thoughts of Simplicity in Hexes. The game opened with two of my infantry regiments on the hill facing the full strength of my wife's forces. She positioned her artillery in the middle of her infantry line with the dragoons on her left flank. Luckily, she did not inflict any damage on the first turn, due to unfortunate dice rolling, and repositioning the right flank. In error, the remainder of my forces joined the fray from the woods. This allowed my heavy cavalry to fall on the flank regiment of her line causing two hits. My infantry was not able to finish off her rightmost regiment due to the rule requiring units to fire at the closest unit.
Over the next few turns I attempted to roll up her line with infantry units firing volleys and the guard cavalry crashing into the flanks. A few bad rolls later and my elite heavy horse was down to 3 strength points, making their charges much less likely to cause significant damage. While my strategy faltered, the blue army continued its frontal assault on the hill.
We did not count the hill as difficult terrain, certainly to my wife's (blue) advantage. She was able to wear down my two hilltop regiments with repeated dragoon charges, volley fire from two regiments, and battery support. She eventually captured the hill, moving the dragoons, battery, and a full strength regiment onto the objective. With 8 strength points remaining for each side and a baby waking up from a nap, the game was called as a victory for blue.
Simplicity in Hexes is a great introductory game. Being mostly a boardgamer, my wife despises rulesets peppered with "If x, then y, except for z" and dreaded modifiers, especially if math is involved. We were able to finish the scenario in about an hour with minimal headache. She even said that we might be able to play again in the future. I thought the rules live up to their simplicity moniker well, possible too well. I would like to see downhill melee given an advantage over an opponent attacking uphill, generals impacting ability/resolve, and ranged combat deteriorate as well as melee combat. I also prefer systems where players roll more than one dice as it creates a somewhat normal distribution. I did like that units cannot pivot on a dime in their cells, but I think adding a pivot before moving and another upon entering a cell would allow more maneuverability. I also really liked the rule that requires units to fire at the closest enemy unit. This rule feels very real, even though it reduces the number of decisions to be made. I'll definitely be playing Simplicity in Hexes again. I'm very grateful to the community for writing these simple storyline campaigns. It's really interesting to see everyone's take on the same prompt.
