Space Tourists

Space Park is the type of game that tends to appeal to me right away: great looking illustration and graphic design, at a low enough price point that I can afford to take a chance and buy the game on impulse. These impulse purchases can be a mixed bag, sometimes resulting in great looking games whose novelty wears off quickly (Grimslingers), or games that sounded more interesting than they actually are (Deadline), but every once in a while we end up with an entertaining game that, while simple, bears out repeated plays and earns a place in our collection.

First let's talk about the artwork. The game board is made up of a series of large tiles, each intended to look like a tourism advertisement for a location in outer space. The illustrations are gorgeous: any one of them would look great at poster size, framed on a wall somewhere. The rest of the game's printed components use snippets from these pieces of artwork along with some considered and sophisticated typography and graphic design.

Okay, so the game is pretty, but is it any fun to play? Yes it is. Space Park is an interesting marriage of familiar game mechanics with a few unusual ideas. At its core it's a resource collection game: players move around on a board made up of the aforementioned tiles, each representing a location where various different resources can be picked up, exchanged, or spent in various combinations to purchase victory points and game advantages.

What sets the game apart is the way players move around the board. Regardless of the number of players, there are three silver rocket ships, each starting at a different location. On a player's turn, they perform the action at a location where there is a ship (usually collecting a resource), then move that ship to the next empty location. This is interesting for several reasons, the most obvious being that each player doesn't have their own playing piece, they always have a choice of three pieces to move. More strategically, it means that every time a player takes their turn, they need to think about where the piece will be moving and what advantage they're giving the next player by moving it there.

It's one of those rare games with simple rules but a lot to think about that's great for when you want a lighter game with a reasonable amount of strategic depth. And it's very pretty to look at.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) Not necessarily an immersive "play all day" type game, but excellent for what it is: lightweight and fun.

• Space Park official website
• Space Park on Boardgamegeek

Hitman 2 | Review, Trailer, Gameplay & Everything Else You Need To Know.

Hitman 2 | Preview, Trailer, Gameplay & Everything else you need to know.

Hitman 2 is the most recent passage in IO Interactive's magnificent stealth arrangement, accumulating a choice of stages instead of the main game's verbose excursion. You will by and by play as Agent 47 as he ventures to every part of the globe looking for targets he should kill by any and all conceivable means (Which he do with some cool methods). With improvement having as of late gone gold, it won't be long before we can play it ourselves.

So Here Pro-GamersArena has tried to compile everything related to Hitman 2 which you need to know including the latest news, trailer, gameplay, release date and more...


Quick Facts :

• Initial release date: 13 November 2018
• Developer: IO Interactive
• Genre: Stealth game
• Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows
• Modes: Single-player video game, Multiplayer video game

Hitman 2 News : Development has officially gone gold !!

For those new to this, this implies advancement has found some conclusion and the diversion is playable from beginning to end. It's additionally entered creation, implying that plates are being printed and retail downloads are being accumulated. 

This was joined by another trailer displaying the Colombia level, which takes our Agent 47 into thick, suspicious wildernesses with plentiful open doors for inventive homicide. You can look at it beneath:

What is Hitman 2? What is it about?

Hitman 2 is a wholly fledged continuation of the 2016 reboot, despite the fact that it won't pursue the verbose model used by its forerunner. Rather, it will discharge in full with numerous levels at dispatch. Agent 47 will wander from sun-splashed boulevards to dull, moist rainforests looking for new targets which he have to assissinate at any rate (in unbelievably imaginative ways). We'd love to see the driven story developed, as well.

Hitman 2 release date – when is it coming out?

IO Interactive has affirmed that Hitman 2 is coming to PS4, Xbox One and PC on November 13, 2018. The individuals who wanna play the game somewhat prior then they have to buy gold and authority's release which gives at that point access to play the game four days sooner. 

Hitman 2 Gameplay Preview

The demo happens amid a race end of the week, where the assignment is to execute a driver amid the race itself. As any individual who plays Hitman knows, the horde ways that any mission can be finished, and the measure of concentrate that should be done to find these can take hours. For this E3 2018 demo, there were just a bunch of ways this murder can be accomplished, and fortunately, there was somebody close by to walk me through them in a smart mold. Here's the gameplay on the off chance that you wanna watch : 

The two focuses here are Robert and Sierra Knox, two previous individuals from Providence that have since abandoned. You start in a giant party zone of the celebration, out the back of the race itself. There's many individuals, a ton of clamor, and the primary errand is to make it into the VIP region. Instinct Mode is back, and by and by it features the key individuals of intrigue. It still reliably features the objective, or focuses, and also any individuals of intrigue, be them potential clueless unfortunate casualties to-be on the grounds that they have an outfit that will get us into the following room or a security protect to maintain a strategic distance from. 

There's additionally a stunning mechanics that features all the more abnormal state individuals to stay away from. Individuals with a white hover over their head will probably speculate you sooner, thus Agent 47 must remove additional consideration to remain from those. For instance, whenever dressed as a security protect, you should be more aware of chancing upon the head of security, as they'll know the names and faces of each individual from their staff. It's a super cool repairman that truly plays into the possibility of this being a reasoning individual's amusement which feels so genuine. 

And if you wanna know how he completes the mission then there's the gameplay above, there you can watch it, You will get the feel far better by watching it rather than reading it.

Hitman 2 Trailer : How does it look?

The uncover trailer for Hitman 2 is preposterously upscale. Described via Sean Bean, it highlights Agent 47 as he takes out a motorsport driver in an assortment of ruthlessly splendid ways.

The Experience

I once spent nine days as a guest at a Taiwanese Buddhist nunnery. Their hospitality was incredible and what stuck in my mind was the most amazing food I've ever eaten. They made Chinese meat dishes out of plant protein, most likely because the nuns were brought up on a traditional, Chinese omnivorous diet, and this food met their vegetarian religious restrictions without compromise. It was so good, I questioned it's meatlessness, being a vegetarian at the time.

After a week of this amazing food, I mentioned on the way back from our conference, that I could really go for a pizza, especially because there was a Pizza Hut next to the nunnery in busy downtown Taipei. No matter how good something is, you often long for the tastes of home. You know you'll get that consistent experience, even if it's not great. Consistent beats great sometimes. An older scholar overheard me and slammed me for being so disrespectful as to want pizza when our hosts had been so gracious with their amazing food. When we returned to the nunnery for dinner, awaiting us was glorious Pizza Hut pizza. The heart wants what it wants.

When it comes to hobby game stores, consistency of experience is wickedly hard. You can train your staff to greet customers, provide stellar customer service, create intricate systems to maintain product and service, but in the back room it's another story. In our Game Center, your consistency of experience is kind of in your own hands.

I could pay employees to run games of a particular style and quality, but the games they run would be limited to the customer desire to pay for that experience. Other than convention fees, which they seem to have no problem with, nobody wants to pay $10 cash money for me to run Dungeons & Dragons. $10, times six players, is $60 for a 4-hour session paying someone $15/hour. That's just their labor, not profit or materials, or prep time. This is a traditionally free experience that can cross over into "nominal" fee territory, but a real fee will never really capture the value being provided.  That may change with the mainstreamization of gaming, and someone will certainly point out the "professional" dungeon masters, but it's rare.

So we run the Event Center a bit like a concert hall in which we attempt to host high quality concerts, but with no guarantee the experience will be great. We are concert hall people, not the performers. I've been to great concerts and I've been to concerts where the performers were drunk off their asses, but in neither case did I credit or blame the venue. But in the game trade that's exactly what happens. Sexist comment? Bad DM? Poor hygiene? It will all be a black mark against the store, even though there's not a whole lot we can do about it, other than craft policies, brief organizers, and strictly enforce rules. We are facilitators. We use volunteers. The only other option is the thing doesn't happen.

This chaos is also our strength, our protective armor. The inability to provide a consistent experience, but to only provide a neutral venue is unacceptable to anyone with deep pockets who wants in on this. What happens if something really terrible (actionable by law) occurs? How do we make sure the D&D session doesn't have something inappropriate? How do we actually monetize this space that costs us $6,000 a month? Really, that's what we pay. About $50 a seat per month.

The reality of most D&D sessions is there are a lot of slightly boring ones and then one amazing one, which you tend to remember without remembering the boring ones. D&D especially is a constant playtest, as most people don't run the same adventure twice. Imagine sitting through a bunch of boring movies to get to the great one. That's how it tended to be before the Internet, but people want blockbusters every time nowadays, and they can get them by picking and choosing. All of this inconsistency is why there are no national chains of game stores. Managing the managers and the organizers would be like herding cats. You would have to have a whole department called Program Development to plan and test event structures. Publishers can't even pull this off well with their one game. Plus, as mentioned, the customers would never pay, at least not so far.

Anyway, this is something that keeps me up at night. Labor, as minimum wage here approaches $15 an hour, can no longer be the solution to bespoke experiences. We are fast approaching hard limits that are testing the demands of customers with the reality of what is possible in small business. It may just be the little store, with the passionate owner working for close to zero dollars, will be the one providing the consistently amazing experiences that big stores could only dream of. The rest of us are wondering if we should get a liquor license or hire some circus performers.

Tech Books I Will Read Again

I have read a crap-ton of technical books, mostly on software, but some either more general or hardware related so I felt the need to generalize the genre to "technical" books. If you've been following my blog for the last year, you'll agree that especially recently, my reading rate has been arguably excessive. I'm reaching a point where I'd like to slow down and focus on some other things in my free time, but I'm also reflecting on all of the great and not-so-great tech books I've read. One of the defining factors in whether I think a tech book is excellent versus merely good is if I have the urge to read it again. (For anyone wondering, there is no distinction needed for the bad tech books.) This feeling might happen right after I finish it, or even while I'm reading it the first time. It also might take a while to percolate and rise back to the surface as a book I want to go back to. The bottom line is, a mark of a great tech book is that it's worth revisiting, so what follows is a list of tech books I've read that I thought were so great that I'm going to read them again.

Object Oriented Design Heuristics 

This is a completely underrated book about software design, not in the sense that it gets poor reviews, because it doesn't, but it's not a very well-known book for how great it is. Other software design books, specifically Design Patterns, the notorious GoF book, steals all of the oxygen in the room, but I strongly prefer Object-Oriented Design Heuristics. While GoF is heavily prescriptive and mechanical in how it lays out the design patterns to use when writing software, OODH digs into the guidelines and rules-of-thumb that lie underneath those patterns. Instead of attempting to memorize a couple dozen patterns and their various applications, the reader learns why certain ways of organizing code work and naturally make the code easier to understand, debug, and change. It teaches fundamental concepts instead of lists of tools, and in the end knowing the fundamentals is much more valuable. In addition to being able to derive the tools you need without needing to remember them all, you can apply the fundamentals to new situations and invent new tools when the ones you have don't fully meet the requirements. The fundamentals are always worth revisiting.

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

The Pragmatic Programmer was a shoe-in for this list. It is the definition of short and sweet for a programming book, and every piece of advice contained within it is pure gold. So many concepts that I use every day are contained in these pages. DRY. Tracer bullets. The Broken Window Theory. It's all in here, and now there's the 20th anniversary edition. It's the perfect excuse to go back and read it again for the first time. 

Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

Clean Code has a fair amount of overlap with the previous two books, but there's plenty that's unique in here and Robert C. Martin is such a great writer that it's worth it to reread this book, too. This book was surprisingly engaging for how deep it went into the minutiae of writing code. Like Object-Oriented Design Heuristics, it lays out guidelines and heuristics for writing better code, but it focuses a bit more on the specifics of how to name variables, structure functions, and write comments. It may veer more into the list-of-tools arena, but Martin reasons about everything nicely and it just seems to work for me in a way that GoF doesn't. It's always good to periodically refresh the concepts behind writing clean code.

Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#

This book covers much more ground than any of the previous three books, and it is subsequently much longer than any of them. It weaves together the topics listed on the cover quite well throughout the book, driving many of the chapters with simple, instructive examples. This book is where the SOLID design principles are laid out, along with a review of most of the standard patterns in GoF. Where this book does things better than the prescriptive GoF is in how the pattern discussions are example-driven and grounded in the design principles covered earlier in the book. The flow is so much better, and the reader comes away with a great understanding of why the patterns work, when to use them, and how to apply them appropriately.

Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

This is such a quick, sharp, and relevant read, that it's definitely worth a reread every now and again. You won't agree with every one of Robert Glass' facts and fallacies, (when does anyone agree with everything in a software engineering book?) but they will make you think and rethink your assumptions, which is always valuable for growth as a developer. 

The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer

These gems were such a joy to read the first time, there's no way they were not going to make this list. The quirky humor and self-guided Q&A format work perfectly. I can't think of a better way to refresh my basic programming skills with Scheme, and rewrite a Scheme interpreter, than to reread these books. Scheme is essentially a fundamental programming language, so in addition to these books being great to go back to, Scheme is a great language to go back to and polish up any rusty programming skills.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

While SICP is the polar opposite of The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer, it's just as good for learning and reviewing Scheme and programming fundamentals. Most introductory programming books are not worth revisiting because they tend to focus on language syntax and mechanics, but that's not true here. Scheme doesn't have much syntax to begin with, so SICP goes deep into fundamental programming concepts and, well, how to structure programs. It goes so deep that it's probably only worth revisiting the first three of its five chapters (how often do you need to review how to build a register machine simulator?), but that still presents a challenging and valuable exercise.

Eloquent Ruby

If I had to pick a favorite language, it would be Ruby, and this book exemplifies why. Everything needed to write beautiful Ruby programs is contained in here, and it has none of the boring cruft of an introductory programming language book. Russ Olsen is also an excellent technical writer, so the book is an enjoyable and easy read. This is how all intermediate-to-expert level programming books should be, and it makes it a pleasure to refresh those Ruby programming skills.

Confident Ruby: 32 Patterns for Joyful Coding

This book is like an up-to-date version of Object-Oriented Design Heuristics for Ruby. It's a quick, enjoyable read, with Avdi Grimm writing in an approachable, conversational style. The content is superb, detailing the best ways to write Ruby methods that have a definitive purpose without stumbling over edge cases that often weaken code. It's a great book for reviewing how to write clean, concise, purposeful code, and it would probably work for any programmer, not just the Rubyists out there.

Rails Antipatterns: Best Practice Ruby on Rails Refactoring

The books on this list are here because they offer timeless advice, and this book is no different. It may seem like it's specifically about Ruby on Rails 3 programming, but the methods of refactoring the example antipatterns covered in the book—and why those antipatterns are bad in the first place—extend well beyond Rails. Bad code sucks for the same reasons no matter which programming language it's written in, and clean code shines in any language for the same reasons. It just so happens that Ruby and Rails are such pleasant vehicles for learning how to write clean code, and this book in particular uses a great style of showing how not to write code and how to fix that ugly code that was written before learning all of this great advice. 

HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites

This is hands-down the most beautiful technical book I've ever read, and after looking through it, it becomes obvious that this is the best way to present the HTML and CSS syntax. These are the languages of visual design for the web, after all, so it makes sense to show how all of the tags and attributes work with full color pictures and diagrams on every page. It's especially helpful when showing the differences between borders, padding, and margins in CSS, but really most HTML tags and CSS attributes translate well to this kind of presentation. It's also quick to page through every once in a while, and such an enjoyable experience that it's worth doing multiple times.

Don't Make Me Think (Revisited)

This book was an easy addition to this list, partly because I already have read it twice. It was just as good the second time around when the updated version came out. Don't Make Me Think (Revisited) is packed with examples of both the right way and the wrong way to design websites, but mostly the right way. Steve Krug has a quick wit and the full color page layouts are great to look through for ideas. All of this makes the book a fast, easy read so there's no excuse to not refresh your knowledge on website design best practices.

Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

This is another set of books that's easy to kick back with and peruse at your leisure, this time with a focus on how to display information in a way that makes insights jump off the page. These books are full of excellent advice and ideas on how to present information in charts, diagrams, and pictures so that the relevant information is clear and obvious instead of confusing and obfuscated. How data is represented is as important as the quality of the data itself, and reviewing these books will help drive your imagination to show that data in the best light for consumption and the spread of ideas.

Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information Into Insight

I enjoyed this book way more than I was expecting to. John Foreman has a great sense of humor that really comes through in his writing, and he's able to take a normally dry topic and make it, dare I say, entertaining. He runs through a bunch of data science algorithms using real data and everyone's favorite spreadsheet program, Excel. Really. He develops all of these algorithms in Excel, and yes I meant entertaining. It's not a typo. A spreadsheet is actually a natural fit for learning about these algorithms because you can see every step in the process all laid out before you in black and white. It was so good, I'm planning to read the book again the next time I need a refresher course on K-Means Clustering or regression models. 

Data Science From Scratch: First Principles With Python

This is another great book about data science that teaches the reader how to implement a number of data science algorithms and supported with an excellently dry wit. Instead of using Excel as Data Smart did, this time we're doing everything in Python. More than anything, rereading this book would be for the sake of deliberate practice. It's great for practicing programming, problem solving, and algorithmic knowledge because the book is building up data science from first principles. The more comfortable you are with the fundamentals, the easier everything else gets.

Python Machine Learning

Okay, it may start to be feeling like this list is getting a little data science and machine learning heavy, but there's a reason for that. These are great books for developing analytical thinking and problem solving skills in the context of programming. Most programming books are either introductory books that aren't worth reading again once you know the language, or they're programming craftsmanship books—like the first part of this list—that are definitely worth reading, but don't flex the analytical parts of your brain much. These machine learning books do work your analytical brain more, and that goes for Python Machine Learning, too.

Professional CUDA C Programming

I found multiprocessor parallel programming with CUDA to be fascinating, and this was the best of the three books I read on the subject. It was well organized and understandable with nice, clear writing on a complex topic. It will be excellent practice to work through this book again.

The Annotated Turing

If we're going to talk about the fundamentals, we can't get more fundamental than Alan Turing's paper on computability. Charles Petzold did an amazing job parsing out Turing's paper and making it accessible to more people. This is still a challenging read, but incredibly rewarding and thought provoking. Of all the books on this list, this book will be the one that I get the most out of with a second reading. The topics covered here are so deep and subtle that it would be foolish to think that one reading would be enough to absorb everything sufficiently. I'm looking forward to another round with this book in the near future.

Notable Omissions

People may notice some popular programming books missing from this list. First, I'll say that this is my list, and I'm not making any apologies for it. Wanting to read a book more than once is some of the highest praise I'll give for a book. Reading a book a second time is a rare occurrence. There are so many potential other good books out there yet to be read! Having said that, here are a few books I purposely didn't include.

Code Complete, I felt was too long and dry for my tastes. I much preferred Pragmatic Programmer, Clean Code, and Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#, and between the three of those books the same topics were covered in a more enjoyable way and even in less pages!

Refactoring was just a slog to get through. I thought it was worse than GoF in its itemized drudgery. Much of the same material is present in other books on the list, but those books teach the reasons and motivations behind good refactorings without listing them out ad nauseum.

Introduction to Algorithms maybe should have been on the list because I did read this book twice, but the second time was such an exercise in tedium with not much reward that I wouldn't recommend it to anyone other than aspiring CS professors. There have got to be more accessible algorithms books out there to brush up on this subject.

Seven Languages in Seven Weeks is a book that I would put on any best tech book list because it's an excellent book that's definitely worth a read, but probably only once. I don't have much desire to read it or any of the other Seven in Seven Weeks books again, even though I thoroughly enjoyed them all on the first read.

Well, there you have it. A complete list of tech books that were so good that I'm planning to read them again. They all have a common thread running through them in that they teach the fundamentals of whatever topic they're covering, and they do it really well. The fundamentals are extremely important in any field, and it's worthwhile to constantly revisit them and refresh your skills. Doing that with books that are engaging and enjoyable to read makes the whole process that much easier, and that is another defining characteristic of the books on this list. I imagine I'll add a few more books over time, but probably not too many. It's a rare thing to find a tech book worth reading multiple times.

A Little Touch Of Leipzig (In The Night)

Apologies for the obscure 70s music reference ! Some of you may recall that we started to delve back into the wonderful world of 15mm Napoleonic gaming recently after I finally put together my Quarrie / GdeB mash up rules. A rerun of Albuera ensued recently and that went quite well so it was time for a second go with the "new" rules. We decided to move away from the Peninsula and try some Central European action to see how those armies performed. I will put a link to the rule amendments at the end of the post.

Italian Light Infantry masquerading as Young Guard

I picked the 1813 Dolitz & Probstheyda Scenario from the Napoleonic Scenarios 2 book from Partizan Press, avaliable below,

https://www.caliverbooks.com/Partizan Press/partizan_NS.shtml

An excellent set of scenario books perfect for any rule set. Even with over 6,000 15mm figures for the period I had to make some compromises as I have no Austrians and no French Guard, so my Italian Guard and Russians had a run out instead.

Historical Background 

We will all be familiar with the background of the Battle of Nations and this game represents a small section of that battle, the centre of Napoleons positions in the South of the battlefield to be precise. The game represents the Allied attack of the 18th October and is a simple attack and defend scenario.

Russian Cuirass

Set Up 

12 x 6 table with the Allies marching on the table on move 1 from the left, as viewed in the photos below,

Allies March On

From the French Lines

A fairly straightforward battlefield, there is a line of two villages and a farm along the centre of the table, Dolitz, furthest from the camera, Dosen in the centre and then the Meusdorf Farm. The Farm and Dolitz each had a small wood adjacent to their left flank. On the far side of the table there is another wood and the edge of a steam.

The rear of the French Line is dominated by a ridge line on which the village of Probstheyda is located (green copper spire church) with a fifth and final village, Lossing, which is level with Probstheyda and behind Dolitz.

French Infantry in Dosen

French Orbat

For general stats see the Quarrie / GdeB mash up rules post below, any variations on the standard charts to reflect the lower standard of some of the French units is noted below.

C in C - Murat

Augereau - IX Corps
Brigade Sierawski - 3 x Polish Line Battalions (2 x 36 figs and 1 x 32 figs) and 1 6pdr Polish Foot Battery. Set up between Dolitz and the stream.
Brigade Lagarde - 2 x Legere Battalions (36 , 30) and 2 x Ligne Battalions, both 36, both -1 on standard French Morale. 1 x 8pdr Foot Artillery. Set up in and around Dolitz.
Brigade Semele - 1 x 36 Fig Legere Battalion, 2 x Ligne Battalions 1 x 36 and 1 x 30, the 30 man unit is a- 2 on Morale. 1 x 8pdr Foot Artillery.
Brigade Sulkowski - 1 x 18 man Polish Uhlan Regt and 1 x 6pdr Polish Horse Art.

Probstheyda

Victor - II Corps
Brigade Dubreton - 1 x 36 Legere Battalion, 3 x Ligne Battalions 2 x 36 and 1 x 30 (also -1 morale). 1 x 6pdr Foot Artillery. Set up in and around Dosen.
Brigade Dufour - 1 x 36 Ligne, 1 x 30 Ligne, 1 x 30 Legere and 1 x 24 Ligne (-1 Morale). Set up around the Farm.
Brigade Corbineau - 1 x 18 Hussars, 1 x 6pdr Horse Art. Set up between Dosen and the Farm.

French Cuirass

Oudinot  - Guard Corps (all in Reserve behind ridge, activated the turn after one of the front villages is either assaulted or fired on by musketry.
Brigade Pacthod - 4 x 32 Young Guard, 8pdr Foot Artillery
Brigade Curial - Italian Guard Grenadiers, Italian Guard Fusiliers both 30 figs, Italian Guard Velites 32 Figs, Italian Guard Foot Artillery 12pdr.
Brigade Bouresoulle - 3 x 24 Fig Cuirassier, 1 x 24 Dragoon (inferior mounts)

On a roll of 12 on initiative - Napoleon arrives anywhere on the French baseline escorted by 1 x 24 Guard Lancer and 1 x 24 Guard Chasseur.

Italian Guard on the ridge

Allied Army

C in C Schwarzenberg (remember Russian troops have been substituted in for Austrians)

Hesse Homburg - move on table opposite Dolitz
Brigade Roth - 3 x 48 Fig Russian Infantry Battalions one with -1 morale. 3 x 36 Fig Russian Infantry Battalions one with -1 morale. 1 x 6pdr Prussian Foot Artillery.
Brigade Mezentzov- 1 x 48 Fig Russian Infantry Battalion, 2 x 36 Fig Russian Infantry Battalions both with -1 morale. 1 x 30 figure Prussian Landwher, 1 x 6pdr Prussian Foot Artillery.
Brigade Vassov - 1 x 36 Fig Russian Grenadier Battalion, -1 morale. 2 x 16 Fig Prussian Hussar one with + 1 morale and 1 x 6pdr Prussian Horse Art.

Cossacks in a wood, what a surprise 

Gorchakov - move on table opposite Dosen
Brigade Grenadier - 4 x 32 Grenadier Battalions, 2 Prussian, 2 Russian. 1 x 6pdr Prussian Foot Artillery
Brigade Laelin - 1 x 24 Russian Guard Cuirass, 1 x 24 Russian Cuirass
Brigade Larkov - 2 x 24 Russian Cuirass

Russian Infantry Battalions attack

Barclay move on table opposite the Farm
Brigade Pirch  - 1 x 32 Prussian Fusilier (+1 morale), 1 x 32 Prussian Musketeer, 2 x 24 Reserve Prussian Infantry, 2 x 24 Prussian Landwher.
Brigade Von Kluse - 1 x 32 Prussian Fusilier (+1 morale), 1 x 32 Prussian Musketeer, 2 x 24 Prussian Reserve Infantry, 2 x 24 Prussian Landwher, 1 x Prussian Foot Artillery, 1 x 16 Landwher Cavalry.
Brigade Oldenkop - 5 x 32 Fig Russian Infantry Battalions (2 are -1 morale) and 1 Russian Position Battery
Brigade Zilowski  - 1 x 24 Russian Uhlan, 1 x 18 Russian Hussar, 1 x Russian Horse Artillery.

Prussian Reserve Infantry on the move

How did we get on 

We actually played through the scenario twice and it was quite an interesting experience having a go at a Central European battle after the Albuera Peninsula game. National Characteristics definitely give each army a personality and once you become aware of its strengths you start to alter your tactics to those of that nation, something I have been after in a game for a long time.

1st shot 6 gun battery, low ammo !

Normally I let the photos follow the story of the game but on this occasion they are a bit random, one because we played through twice and secondly because I was too busy taking notes about the rules rather than what was happening in the games.

Prussian Infantry attacking the Farm

In game 1 the match was over pretty quickly, the attack on Dolitz was a bloody affair with the Russians failing to gain any headway against the village and the Polish Infantry who had formed a line behind the stream. It wasn't long before the attacking Russians were streaming back to the baseline.

Another view of the Prussian attack on the Farm

In the centre the Allies sat there and got shot ! The Russian Guard Cuirass ended up retiring off the table without moving forward at all. That woke the rest of the troops up and there was a glorious charge against a gun line (see top photo) at the end of that game.

Waiting to go again in game 2

The Farm side of the table ground to a stalemate fairly quickly, the attack started on the Farm but all the French Heavy Cavalry came out to play, putting the Prussian Infantry in square ending any movement. With all the Russians running away at the end of our first session we decided just to reset and go again. I made a couple of changes to the orbat (the French started with the Guard Cavalry in game 1). Overall an easy Victory for the French in our first run through.

French Infantry in Dosen

Another aspect of game 1 was the atrocious dice rolling of the Allies (including myself) the double one for the Russian Artillery in the photo above was just the start, we have all had it, those days where you can't roll over 5 on 2 d6 until you need to roll low when you roll a double 6 !

French in the Farm

Game 2 went on for a lot longer (3 sessions) and was a much closer affair. We realised that we had been allowing too many people to shoot out of built up areas which made the approach to the villages a bit easier and the removal of the Guard Cavalry made the French player a little bit more cautious.

Attack on Dolitz in Game 2

The Russian attack on Dolitz was more sustained and they had a good deal of success against the French in the wood near the village, however the downfall this time was the Polish on the flank who pushed home their own attack in support of the village, there were some further shocking die rolls by the Russians but all in all a much closer battle.

French Cavalry mass behind the lines

In the centre the Allies wisely stayed out of range of the French Artillery, this time the French Cavalry massed behind the lines in the centre of the table but it all ended up with a lot of posturing. The Allies never got a clear run at a target whilst the French kept failing command rolls and remained on Hold orders behind the central village.

Cossacks skirmishing against Young Guard

The area around the Farm got a bit more fruity this time, this time the Russian Infantry led the attack, one thing we have quickly learnt is there is no point messing about firing Russian Infantry, get them stuck in as soon as you can. A battle raged over the woods adjacent to the Farm and the French sent two units of Young Guard to hold the line.

Prussian Infantry supporting the Russian attack

The Russians attacking the Farm failed to charge but those in the wood unceremoniously dumped the Young Guard out of the cover and into the path of a waiting Russian Hussar unit.

End of the Young Guard

The French committed the Italian Guard to hold the line in that area, the Allies had turned the flank but the new line at a right angle anchored on Probstheyda was pretty strong but was lacking Cavalry support.

We finished the game at this point entering a period of stalemate, the Allies had made more progress than before but had failed to get into the villages, with a bit more luck on dice rolls we could have got into the front line of built up areas but I don't think there is enough to get into the rear towns, it also felt that the French had a lot of artillery and with the ridge line they could often get multiple batteries on one unit when needed.

Italian Guard coming to the rescue

Rules Development 

The original Quarrie / GdeB mash up rules post can be accessed below,

https://yarkshiregamer.blogspot.com/2018/10/quarrie-to-general-de-brigade.html

There is still some work to do to get them perfect but I am happy with the progress and it's given me a renewed interest in Napoleonic gaming (which was my first gaming period) after years of inactivity so that in itself is a huge positive.

General de Brigade makes it harder to get into contact than other rules but when you do melee is over quickly, usually in a single round and there is none of the enormous black holes pulling in multiple units into massive combats which last 3 plus turns like say Gilders which needs a change of mind set from players of those sets.

The magic floaty tree

We found getting into contact a real problem in this game which is interesting as that wasn't an issue in the Peninsula bash, maybe we were expecting the British to shoot units off ?

The main discussion point and change from the game was the +1 for infantry charging in column. Infantry now has a charging factor for melee and a confused factor when not. We found that a plus 1 on top of the Impact factor was too much but we needed to reflect the impetus of charging in column so the decision was to count the Impact factor as the charging column factor and add a -1 to the Impact when charging in any other formation. The exception being the British.

I hope to get at least one more Napoleonic Game in before Xmas, oh the joy of too many collections ! Next game, currently on table is Spanish Civil War.