I recently finished playing a game of Blucher, I used the Scharnhorst campaign to set up the battle.
I have been playing Blucher solo, but since I was designing both sides, they always turned out pretty samey every time, so I asked on the Honour Facebook group for players to design me some armies, hoping for armies different from what I would design (the request generated no armies). So I decided I would do random armies, lets just say that didn't work out.
Here I will digress a little, I play some RPGs and to help me spice THAT up, I picked up a game called Mythic Games master Emulator, which is for playing same side or GM-less RPGing, Basically you ask a question, set the likely hood of the answer being yes and roll percentile dice the result will then be either Yes, No, Exceptional No! or Exceptional Yes! You can also ask for details and it rolls some more dice and tells you for example: Player character X: the answer involves "A small amount of care" and you quickly think of something that that phrase brings to mind. Like Player X moving forward cautiously sees something on the ground. you then ask another question of the emulator and so on.
I figured I could use the emulator to design armies using the Yes query with the likely hood starting at Likely (60/40), then moving on to Unsure (50/50) then Unlikely (40/60), you can also go more extreme, Impossible (1/99) or Must be (99/1).
Example: I ask: Does Austraia want another Avante-Garde unit? and roll. Answer: Exceptional No!, So not only do they not want another one they don't want any more. Everytime I ask the same question I decrease the likely hood down a level, and an exceptional no means move onto a new unit type, and an exceptional Yes! means ask again with same likely hood, though if you have bought the maximum of that unit type you must move on.
When I say roll, I don't actually roll I found a Shockwave program of the emulator, put it on my tablet and as I design the armies I ask the questions out loud, click likelyhood and then click ask. add the unit to the list then onto next unit. Here is
a link to the file if anyone is interested, Rather than going there all the time I just copied it to my tablet.
So I made two armies, different than what I would normaly design.
Austria
3 subcommanders: Bellegarde, Klenau and Kienmayer
4x Grenadiers
2x Avant-Garde
2x Veteran Infantry
5x Conscript Infantry
1x Kuirassier
2x Hussars
2x Other Cavalry
2x Insurrection Cavalry
France
3 subcommanders: Lannes, Murat& Kellerman
2x Guard Infantry
1x Elite Infantry
5 x Ligne Infantry
5x Light Cavalry
2x Allied Elite Infantry
2x Allied Conscript Infantry
2x Polish Cavalry
I then moved onto the Scharnhorst portion of the evening, I broke the 2 armies into 4 columns each, put units on recon. Moved the colums around the map, declared a battle. then determined which columns were where, by asking the emulator questions.
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| Turn 3 Austria declared battle in D4 D5 and are REDFORCE, Both side have 4 VP, the winner of the battle will win the campaign, unless the Austrians capture the town, in which case they will win the campaign. |
This is where things got interesting, Austria had their 2 weakest groups in Column I & IV so they started with 7 brigades on table and had an Army morale of 3. France started with 15 brigades on table Army Morale of 5. I was "why bother?" Austria is gonna get its ass handed to it, but fought the battle anyway, the Austrians Won! At one point the French had their entire army on the table vs. the 7 starting Austrians. Columns D and C tried to crush I column between them, on turn 2 D's cavalry raced North to finish I column quickly but both its cavalry were crushed (1 Broken, 1 fatigued) by I's Cavalry. I column eventually lost all its infantry, but not before reducing the Allied C column to a bunch of units sitting at 2 or 3 elan, while holding off A. Column II came in behind C and finished them off as B came in behind I and quickly destroyed all of I column's Infantry. IV column spent almost the entire game unmolested in E5, eventually D remnants and cavalry from A briefly captured the objective therein, but as the French army broke their actions were moot.
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| Looking south into D4 from C4. II column just started crossing the stream with the almost fresh II Column on their left. |
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| Looking into E5 from E4, two fatigued cavalry eye balling each other, this side of the stream. |
