A tight gaming day

Yesterday, Marco, Alessandro, Diego and Massimo came to visit me for a playtest of DS Large Battles. It was a nice occasion to meet the guys from Arezzo again, after so many SDS Tournaments during the past 2 years. While Diego and Massimo can be considered expert players of the game (Diego is my main playtester and his contribution has always been very valuable for me), Alessandro and Marco actually never played this game, even if they are very good SDS players (Marco won last year Italian Championship). Above, French 2nd Brigate deployed for battle.
I prepared a scenario set in Spain in 1809, where a bigger Spanish division had to face a Veteran French Division somewhere in north-eastern part of the Country. The number of troops was voluntarily unbalanced, but - as can be expected - the Leadership of the Spanish Division was poor and their big reserve difficult to employ. Above, you can see the Spanish 1st Brigade, with a first line made of a Line Battalion and a Battalion of Reg. Hibernia (Irish) and a second line made of 2 Battalions of Walloon Guards. A gun battery is deployed in the centre.
We played 1 battle in the morning and 1 in the afternoon (2 and 3 hours respectively) trying out some small variants of the rules to trim the playing time. Both times the Spaniards lost, but the second time it was a very close thing.....