Pub Battles Brandywine. What if Howe flank attacked from the South? Can Greene’s troops face down Cornwallis’ best?

A quick battle, and one that makes me curious what others might think about the way it ended. Please let me know in the comments below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNfPOwK8GNw

This time, Napoleon decides to fall back and not fight the Austrians immediately. One of the things that I really enjoy when playing double blind solo, is that I can try different things out, and then “Run the simulation” and see how it goes.

I’m not trying to win, but the “boots on the ground” certainly are! I’m directing each command to the best of their abilities, given their limited knowledge, and the orders they were given. I let the chit draw simulate things like lost or confused orders.

The Alter Turn Order rules work great for simulating different leader’s abilities, especially when facing a human opponent, but I still think it gives players too much control. Yes, different leaders had different abilities, but isn’t the whole point of playing competitive wargames wondering “What if I had been in charge?”

Washington tries a radically different strategy. Let me know what you think of it!

What goes wrong? Let me know what you think happened!

Pub Battles: Gettysburg. Epic 3 day battle in under 15mins of video. The actual game took almost 5 hours to play, with both sides nearly winning on several occasions. Ordinarily, I don’t like playing any game for that long, but I couldn’t stop, I had to keep playing to find out what happened next. Sometimes my dialogue is a little off, because I was pretty exhausted after hours of narration. Hope you can cut a brother some slack.😉

As always, I was playing double blind solo. I don’t use written orders, but I do imagine what their orders might have been. That never includes: Hey, if you see a possible flank attack open up in another corps operational area, go ahead and rush over there and jump right in. It’ll be fine!

A quick video demonstrating a first day victory. If you pay attention to the troops moves and attacks, you can see how chit order, even though it isn’t specifically described, plays into how the battle falls out.

I have a minor nit to pick with the way Buford is handled at Gettysburg. Pleasonton is placed on the map with him. Pleasonton wasn’t there, but it saved having to add extra scenario rules. I get that, and that is the way it should be played until, like me, you’ve played it almost 200 times and you start exploring novel ways to use Buford. I have found several ways to make Buford really annoying. Ways that weren’t physically impossible, just highly unlikely.

As long as Pleasonton is on the map, Buford is in command and can attack. This allows his cavalry unit to be especially threatening. Threatening because as the player, you know exactly who and when all the troops are going to show up for the battle.

What to do about this? What is the simplest way to have Buford behave more historical?

Easy, don’t have Pleasonton appear until day 3 with the rest of the cavalry. That means that Buford can’t attack any units. He is completely a defensive unit. Now he acts as he should, historically. The actual rule reads like this:

Pleasonton does not appear until Day 3 with the rest of the Union cavalry. Until then, Buford may activate once per turn when any Union chit is drawn, but cannot be in command range until Pleasonton arrives on Day 3.

Boom. Done.

I’m going to try it in my next Gettysburg video, which should be posted by 5/17/21.

Pub Battles Antietam. Exciting game that had me assuming a different side would win easily each turn towards the end! Have you ever had games like this?

Waterloo fought in a very different way using Pub Battles. Wellington decides to fall back on hoped for Prussians. Falling back in face of an aggressive enemy is fraught!