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.....

The Poll is closed

Thanks to all readers (32) who voted.

The poll shows without any doubt that a playing time from 1.5 to 3 hours is what the readers of this blog prefer (68%).
15% can play up to 4 hours and just 12% more than that.
1 voter have very limited time (1 hour).

Therefore, for my Large Battle game I think we are exactly on target (2,5 to 3 hours).
I am happy about this also because I launched a thread on TMP asking more or less the same question. It came out that many players (mostly American) have few opportunities to play, but when they do they prefer to play for 4-5 hours and they have space enough also to leave a battle for a following session.
Any comments are welcome...

More books

Ordered (and received)

P. Hofschroerer's - Waterloo 1815: a German Victory
P. Hofschroerer's - Battles of Quatre Bras and Ligny
J. Gills' - 1809 Thunder on the Danube vol.2 (to complete the trilogy)

After finishing Lieven's Russia against Napoleon, I started reading The Spanish Ulcer by D. Gates. Just a couple of chapters read, very interesting........

The more I read, the more I want to depict somehow the last 2-5 days before a battle, with a sort of pre-battle sequence.....

A great reading experience

Just finished to read (I should say devour) Dominic Lieven's "Russia against Napoleon".
A great book: over 400 pages that you cannot stop reading, where the author mixes God's views with worm's views i.e. from ther highly strategical to the single soldier's memories and first hand accounts. Lieven's book shows the Russian Campaign of 1812 (and the following Campaigns of 1813/14) from the Russian point of view, thanks to an enormous amount of sources. The overall picture is therefore much different from what we were accustomed to read about 1812.
The "General Winter's Victory" is much shrinked in Lieven's view and the very detailed analisys of the whole system of recrutiting, victualling and logistics shows how it was Russia - first of all - to win against the bigger Army ever risen until then.
Strongly suggested.
For italian readers: the book has been published in Italy too, but with another title (La tragedia di Napoleone in Russia - Mondadori).

Some updates

While the poll is going on (thank you to all who voted), I had some very busy day at work, travelling up and down Italy by car. My gaming table is ready for the (third) battle of Retschow, waiting for an opponent (DS Large Battle). Last friday we had a very nice evening at the club: the guys wanted to play something for "pure fun", so I prepared a scenario set in Haiti 1803, where 3 French squads had to inspect a farmhouse after some rumors spread about rebel kidnapping Monsieur Albaine and his family. When French captain Leroux arrived with his men, they discovered a strange looking man with a round hat who started playing a drum...
Soon after a horde of zombies entered the table from 3 sides, surrounding the French soldiers.
I did not tell my friends about this and - more important - they did not know how to kill the zombies... It was really a lot of fun. For this scenario I made 2 palm trees (you can see them in the above pic) and a "colonial style" farmhouse with a small portico in front.

A pic of the final stage of the battle (above) with hand to hand combat raging in front of the house and near the pumpkin field. We used a mix of rules (SDS and Fear & Faith), but zombies were too few. Next time (this friday) we'll change something.

A new poll!

Well, I've been thinking about a new poll for some weeks now, and here it is.
I kindly ask all of you to vote, as it is very important for me to know.
This poll will be about playing time. In other words, how much does a single of your gaming sessions last.
To vote, scroll this page till the end ...

Please give me your feedback!

Books, books, books....

Just received 5 books I bought:

Russia against Napoleon - Dominic Lieven
The Spanish ulcer - David Gates
With Eagles to Glory - John H. Gill
1809 thunder on the Danube, voll.1 and 3 - John H. Gill

I think I could sell my TV on EBay....