Combined a boardgame and figures game 1862

[Norm S]

I have been playing Worthington Publishings recent Seven Days game and have already had a go at the Beaver Dam Creek and Gaines Mill scenarios.

Today, I played the next scenario, which combines those two battles into a 25 turn game.

During play, I took a slice of action of when Gregg and Branch attacked Martindale and put it up on the figures table.

There is an AAR and some brief observations up on my blog for those interested in these sort of cross-over games. LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2023/05/beaver-dam-creek-to-gaines-mill-1862.html

[Guy Farrish]

Nice one Norm.

I used to use board games to generate tabletop games occasionally- mainly campaign level board games – eg the old 1809 Napoleon’s Danube Campaign by Victory Games. The transfer back and forth between table and map sometimes felt a bit clunky but that may have been more to do with the figure rules I was using at the time than the basic idea.

I suspect because of that experience it felt like you did the right thing not transferring the tabletop result back into the board game, although the context is different and modern rules may be more amenable to such results transfer.

One of the things I was never sure I got right was the transfer of points from the map game to unit numbers and strengths on the tabletop and vice versa. Reducing the number of units to reflect map losses may tend to produce stronger units that can do more on the table than their counterparts on the counter in the map game could. Lots of smaller brittle units may shatter faster and be less useful than a few full strength units.

Table sizes may tend to favour the latter over the former however, apart from the frustration of not being able to do much with units teetering on the brink of collapse. It didn’t seem to bother your outcome though so again it may have been the rules I was using (or my prejudices about who could do what!).

Great read again.

[Norm S]

Thanks Guy, thinking about it, I should have looked at the full range of results that the boardgame could have generated in that attack and then satisfied myself that the figure game outcome(s) could sit somewhere on that spectrum without too much fudging.

In this boardgame, the combat table does not generate attacker losses – however, the defender is given an opportunity to fire first in a defensive fire phase, so taken together, one can read the single action as both sides having an ‘attack effect’.

So in terms of our figure game, if viewed in boardgame terms, we mighht say that the Union defensive fired and saw the attackers off!

 

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