First game of 1812 - Retreat from Moscow

Sunday turned out to be the first time my friend Michael and I tried the 1812 - Retreat from Moscow rules that I have created - based on Muskets and Tomahawks. It would also be the first time that I would actually get to game with my Retreat from Moscow miniatures, so I was very excited.

Neither of us had ever tried playing a historical wargame before and never played with units but only with individual figures.

Everytime you try a new game you're bound to forget things and make mistakes and this was no exception. We for instance forgot to activate our Officers when their troop type card came up and therefore only activated them on their relevant Forward Boys! card.

Overall I thought that the mechanics made the game flow. I like the look of the game and the table, but I need another 2' x 4' section I think. There were however a few issues, that we agreed had to be looked at.

- Cavalry has no obvious advantage over Infantry, so this was a major point in Michael labeling the Cossacks as pretty useless despite their 8" movement.
- With the exception of my Chasseur unit all other units in the French army was regulars and would more or less activate at the same time. With their Regular Morale they were a bit to study for my liking.

With these things buzzing in my mind I started looking at how other rulesets deal with Cavalry vs. Infantry to see if any of it could be adapted to my ruleset. By chance I came across this blog: http://twomarshals.blogspot.dk/ and to my surprise here was someone who had been looking at adapting the M&T rules to Napoleonics.

I gave it a read through and posted a reply to him about what he would do for Cavalry vs. Infantry. I have now placed most of these rules into my ruleset and hope to have a play test within the next week. So thanks a lot Alan for your blog.

Below are a few images from before the game started and even fewer from the game itself. We were concentrating on the rules so I forgot to take more pictures.