Just a few lines to report on the ‚Reserve Demolition‘ scenario that I posted a couple of weeks ago. The photos are from the second game.

The game was played twice. The first game, as much as anything, turned out to be a rules checker game. We had to look up so many things, and play other things as ‚probably best to…‘ that the game barely flowed and as a result, by the end of play, there was no result. 

 The second game was, by and large, played through to a conclusion. There were still a few things that we needed to look up, and one or two things where what we looked up didn’t tally with our ‚historical knowledge‘, but we muddled through to a French victory – the British singularly failing to activate their engineers before being overrun by the French. 

One thing in Black Powder that didn’t make much sense, unless we are missing something, is the treatment of squares in the ‚Break Test‘ phase. Let me set the scene. 

• The French cavalry forced a British battalion into square before withdrawing to a safe distance. 
• In the British turn, the British square was unable to come out of square for one reason or another – enemy not with 12″; failed order; not withdrawing under free move. – 
• In the subsequent French turn the square was charged by infantry. The French infantry duly won the melee round to good effect, the British square was shaken in the encounter, and then the square rolled 5 in the Break test. Usually this would be a retreat, but the rule says squares ignore this result and stand. If attacked by cavalry I think that would be OK, and the other players thought so too, but versus infantry it seemed a bit odd – very, very odd – so we made it break because squares can’t retreat. Personally, I’ve always been under the impression that squares assaulted by infantry were dog meat.