Sunday, September 30, 2012

Maloyaroslavets Playtesting #1

Eugene gets out on the field for the first time
I was able to clear off enough time to get in a playtest of the Maloyaroslavets game today.

I did this to ensure that I had all the materials for the terrain, I knew I had the troops, it was all the hills and rivers and five roads that are all over this battlefield that I was unsure of.

After spending more than an hour in laying out nearly ever section of 1/2" foam hexagons and slopes that I have and some of the 1" thick stuff also I was able to more or less layout the topography for the battlefield.

I needed to use all by 2 of the new river sections that I have for the tributary stream and 2/3rds of the cloth river that I have, all three woods 'under' sections were put into use.  Like I said this is a BUSY battlefield.
Italian forces arrive and press south on the one road across the river

Then came some time to lay out the starting positions for the troops and snap some pictures.
Maloyaroslavets manned by Italian troops "inside" my tabletop buildings

After feeding children (something I do a lot of on the weekends) I was able to get the first moves done and sort out the timings for arrival of the other troops ... though some more playtest and thinking may be needed here as FPGA does not have a 'set' time on each turn or pulse, this will make for somewhat unpredictable arrivals for the troops.  In this playtest there were only 2 pulses on turn three, which meant that a lot of troops were going to all arrive at the start of turn 4.  Causing some crowding to say the least.
Game 'on hold' I will be able to leave it up overnight though and finish on Monday

The battle centers around the town of Maloyaroslavets (shown on my map as the two buildings near the top of the hill) and the Church (seen with the tall steeple and blue roof).  My smaller buildings are all large enough to have the 3" square bases for the troops be set 'inside' them for 'occupying' the town sections, I do not have one like this for my church yet, though I am seeing a design for it in the future in my minds eye now.

A callout for firewood came and I had to put all further playtest and planning thoughts down, make dinner and go out to haul wood for three hours.

The rest of the playtest and further notes will come this week.

4 comments:

James Fisher said...

Looking great Murdock!

MurdocK said...

Thank you James.

It has been quite a learning curve with the new rules and the very busy topography that Maloyaroslavets presents!

Gonsalvo said...

As I said re: James' effort (and our own), the terrain and especially the bottleneck at the bridge make this a challenging game for the French/Italians to win, but very instructive!

Peter

MurdocK said...

I found the bridge bottleneck only a challenge once, the FPGA rules allow more 'inter-penetration- of units.

The hard area is that steep hill on the north side, where movement drops off completely so even Cavalry forces cannot move as fast as on 'flat ground' something that made any sort of sustained pressure impossible from the French side.