Maurice: Quick and Dirty Demo Game

I am just starting a collection so my stuff is pretty sparse.  But I wanted to try out Maurice which had be lent to me ahead of our Quatre Bra refight on its anniversary this Saturday.  So I managed to convince my friend (a non-gamer) to give miniatures a try and humor me....

I wanted a simple game so we both started with two units of infantry, one unit of cavalry and two artillery batteries and an officer.  As the attacker I took another unit of infantry.  All units were "trained".  This conveniently matches the entirety of my collection.... plus one of the cavalry units was just a paper marker.  I'd read from other blogs that Lethal Volley was over powered so I gave it to my friend.  I took Cadence and Oblique Order.

 We diced out the scouting and fudged the terrain. My friend won and chose to defend. The light green rectangle is forest, the gray a plowed field both placed by the defender.  I dropped a road down the middle for fun.

My friend had the heroes of the 12th Line and heavily favored his right flank and the forest.  I stacked my Westphalian Landwehr in a tight group so I could roll up his weaker left flank.

(The lighting is poor, and as they are the same figures on rest of blog, the pics are really only for unit location)

Initial Positions

I ran into problems in that our bases for Flint & Steel are wider than they are deep. making movement kind of ridiculous (60mm x 25mm or 2.36 inches to the base width).  My friend elected to bombard, causing one disruption to the leading battalion. I moved up my Commander.

First move

 I elected to "march" again, but realized  to late that full movement took me into contact with the cavalry--an illegal charge so i just backed everything off a few inches. My friend charged the cavalry, engaging only the lead unit.

The Landwehr destroyed the cavalry, loosing the lead battalion in the process.  I forgot to retrograde the cavalry after his charge, but it didnt matter because a "Fire Fight" card forced my friend into a volley phase and the cavalry broke.  I ate some canister hits, but they all failed to convert to disruption.

My friend was frustrated how all his other units sat idle all game, so he changed them into columns and maneuvered them forward.  I charged the guns breaking them in a flank attack and then broke the column with volley and bayonet ending the game.

Good quick demo to force me to work through the rules.  My friends layout demonstrated the significant difference in Maurice and its card and force game play.  Wheras in "movement phase" games, the infantry could easily of shifted flanks in time (even while still getting in that cannon fire), in Maurice a hand full of 4s (lowest point cards) and a spread formation and your force is going to do a lot of sitting still.  

Mostly just confirmed what I've read but useful warm-up before trying to teach the game to the rest of the mob at some point.