Song of Druns & Shakos AAR

Well Eric and I managed to get the first game of SDS in last night using all of the figures previously painted.  The mission was just a basic set up each side and have at them so we could get our heads around the rules.  Both sides played with the same stats and I set the table up in no particular design.  Eric won the toss for who would get the initiative and we decided French or British and table edges by the simple measure of which was closest to you when you sat down.  No over thinking here!

You can see the set up of the table and both forces here

I should point out early that we started at around 4.30pm and finished around 6pm so you will see the battleground getting progressively darker.  You will also see a dark omen on the table with my dice showing two ones!

Fortified by a good coffee each we started with Eric having the initiative and rolling quite well to activate his troops.  Handed over to me it started very well with my officer taking the lead and giving a bold En Avant to his trusty band grouped together.

And that is all that happened.  Poor Etienne was left for several turns standed by the barrels with his troops obviously not hearing him for about three activations as I continued to get 2 failures.  I think after the event reading the rules more closely I could have had one move but I didn’t pick that up.  Meanwhile half the British force was marching nicely forwards and taking ground.

Finally I had some success and was able to move forward my left flanks but as you can see the British were coming up in force and the French right flanks were stuck in their starting positions

It was all going swimmingly well until the French opened fire and wreaked havoc.  The British Officer was struck down wounded with a private and another private was knocked down.  The British right flank was in disarray!  You will note the white pom poms used to indicate who had fired.
With the British losing their Officer an immediate morale test was taken and they fled.  One bolted completely and the rest were scattered badly. 

The French were feeling very pleased with themselves and even their right flank started moving up.  The British were able to rally but the French firing line soon took their toll and the British were down 4 men with no loss to the French.

But steely in resolve the British Sergeant soon rallied his men and sent them forward to seek some revenge on the French.

Both sides moved forward and then started to exchange fire and the superior weapons skills of the British began to take its toll and soon the French had lost 3 Voltiguers themselves for the loss of another Light Co private!  After some knock downs and recoiling the French weight of numbers began to tell and the British lost another soldier bringing the game to an end with a French victory.

Both Eric and I really enjoyed ourselves and even though we just played a very basic move and fire we were able to pick up the rules very quickly and with only one rule book.  I really liked the activation method and the game can twist and turn quite viciously at the wrong moments.  The British had generally really good activations to get the troops moving while the French were just plain diabolical!  But then once in musket range the French found their mojo and were quite deadly although no triples were rolled.  We both played reasonably conservatively and generally went with 1 or 2 die rolls although the odd three was rolled generally to no great success!  But we both had fun and are keen to play again no doubt getting much better with the rules as we go.  Thumbs up for SDS from us.   One thing that we did was use the 40mm ranges so 100mm, 160mm and 240mm for S,M & L which worked well on the 4’ x 4’ table.  Using a single tape measure was a bit irritating though and I have since got some bamboo skewers which I have painted suitably.

Cheers,
Adam