The Battle of Plutusk - 26 December 1806

On Christmas day my good friend Dave and I got out Command & Colors: Napoleonic's, and setup the expansion 2 The Russian Army. The scenario played is as stated in the title of this post. Dave and I happen to be big fans of the sister series Command & Colors: Ancients and play that system quite a bit. So we don't play this series as much. The two systems are similar but not quite the same so having a long period of time between play sessions means re learning the rules again.

We ended up playing two games, the first being more of us trying to remember stuff and constant referencing to the rules. But it didn't take long for things to come back to us and so once we were satisfied we knew somewhat of what we were doing we set it up again. 

The second game was going to be what I thought another lesson taught to my good friend of why the French soldiers are to be feared. What happened instead was the lesson taught to me of why the Russian soldier is to be feared. What they lack in number of blocks they can take for causalities (some of the units at the beginning of the battle can be brought up to full strength with the Mother Russia roll at beginning of game), they make up for in their stubbornness when it comes to retreating with a built in may ignore 1 flag. There were so many times I got brutalized because I could not get an attack going to push him off terrain because he was able to ignore my retreat results. It also didn't help that my hands sucked and so did my dice rolling, while Dave made masterful strokes during his moves and rolled dice the Greek God Mars would envy! By the time we finished (I conceded) I had three useless Cavalry charge cards that couldn't get used as I wasn't getting any cards to get the infantry out of their way. Though it wouldn't have mattered much as the Russian's where dug in deeper than an Alabama tick (okay an exaggeration, but that's how it felt to me;)). 

Here are a few snap shots of the game at the start. If you haven't played this, I highly recommend that you do. Especially if you're a miniature enthusiast. You don't have to paint any minis to play this, and the feel the blocks give you is, well miniature soldier like. Enjoy your holidays.

Cheers

Kevin