Playtest Revelations --

I am currently zonked on painkillers (back problems), so I will probably not make too much sense regarding my comments on Sunday's "Tricorne Wars" playtest.

I see that Murdock has written a rather extensive account of the battle on his blog. See:

http://mieczyslaw.blogspot.com/

I haven't tried to read it yet since my medicated attention span is almost non-existent. Trying to follow anything is tough right now. But I did take some notes on things during the game.

The big one is that I have to reduce the number of skirmishing foot troops. I've always maintained that they did not have much of an effect on the European battlefield during the first two thirds of the eighteenth century.

Admittedly, the competitors die rolling (to see how many skirmishing stands were involved) virtually maximized the number of available skirmish troops. Please note that I'm talking about Jager-types, not Grenzer-types. There were far too many (on both sides) and yesterday they played too significant a role (in my opinion). So I have to re-evaluate my Skirmish rules.

Next, one of Murdock's commands spent five turns failing to overcome it's "inertia roll" so that it could act upon it's orders . . . then, with the Nordic troops advancing over the hill in front of it, they finally got to act upon their orders . . . except that when their Brigadier made his interpretation roll, he understood them to be "Withdraw" and began to leave the battlefield.

As it happened, this was actually not a bad thing at all for Mieczyslaw . . . but the important thing for me was seeing how my "Command and Control" mechanisms could work the way I intend them to.

I'll publish more thoughts in a day or two when I can think cohesively (it has taken almost 35 minutes to type this out -- many too many corrections necessary).


-- Jeff