Night has fallen on squelchy Clifton Moor and once again it seems I’ve failed to stop the majority of Lord George Murray’s tartaned troublemakers retreating northward towards the Scottish border. My search for a win in the fascinating War of the Austrian Succession continues.
Next time I try this 18-turn recreation of a skirmish some historians call the last battle fought on English soil, I think I’m going to send the Duke of Richmond’s cavalry up the (presumably) deserted eastern side of the Eden Valley in the hope of bypassing Jacobite roadblocks and reaching Penrith before the retreating rebels. While Bland’s dragoons attempt to battle their way up the congested ‘M6’, my galloping carbineers and light horse will try a sly bit of cross-country manoeuvre warfare!
But before my third attempt at Clifton Moor, I really ought to go back to the game’s 108-page pdf manual and re-read the sections on the causes, consequences, and remedies of disorderment and detachment. Success in the IGOUGO WotAS isn’t simply a case of putting the right units in the right places at the right time. It’s rather important your battalions are in good order and close to their commanders during combat. As disorderment can be caused by a variety of things (movement in certain terrains, involvement in melee, different unit types sharing a hex, different formation types sharing a hex…) and its all too easy to unwittingly ‘detach’ a unit by moving it beyond its commander’s command range, you really need to have your wits about you when playing Wargame Design Studio’s latest release.
After a few evenings of rapt generalship, although I’m enjoying myself and starting to get comfortable with WotAS’s numerous rule subtleties, I do find myself wishing the game utilised a more modern engine. A combination of fixed view levels, relatively uninformative sprites, and a welter of toggleable info aids, makes analysing battlefield situations more complicated and labour intensive than it should be.
Happily, it seems more significant personages than I have been picturing a modernised Musket and Pike series too. Last week, via a blog post that created quite a stir amongst fans of Tilleriana, Wargame Design Studio revealed American Revolutionary War, an upcoming M&P game that will “lead the charge in a new generation of games from WDS”…
“We are building upon the solid framework of calculations and data handling, etc. that Dr. Tiller created over the years, but we will be introducing a new user interface, graphics rendering engine, AI engine, multi-player enhancements and more.”
Gosh, what absolutely splendid news.