Hungarian (Or was that Romanian?) Goulash!

 Two Saturdays in a row - two CBW era games!  It has been quite a couple of game days at Ed’s house playing a new skirmish scenario from Ed M. of Ed’s Wargame Meandering’s .  We have really taken a shine to One Hour Skirmish Wargames by John Lambshead.  

This is a set of simple rules based on card draws to establish movement and “action” parameters for each figure in your force as well as combat resolution.  You can find an excellent description of the game here at Dale’s Wargames.  Ed has done his usual great job of summarizing the game into an easy to follow Quick Reference Sheet (QRS) and we have made some slight modifications to the rules as this is the Age of Rifles so weapons and troop types have a bigger impact on warfare than the author envisioned in his original rules.  While being slightly more detailed, the modifications we made do not make gameplay that much more complex.  

Over the past couple of weekends Ed and I had the first play-through of his modifications and then we added in our friend AJ of AJ’s Wargaming Blog to help with the play testing. We had a great time playing through Ed’s scenario to see if we could “break” it. We found a few places that it needed to be tweaked, but overall the game is a real challenge from either side. Even when the dice gods…. I mean the card gods go against you there is still a chance that you can pull out a win from either side. I think this is a really good indication of a solid game system. Both players should always feel like they have a chance of winning. Of course that that is also a function of good scenario design and Ed has come up with a good one in this case. 

Set on the Romanian/Hungarian border in the mid to later 1800’s, this game features a mix of light troops coming to blows over a frontier telegraph office. Ed has done a marvelous write up of one of our games with links to his play sheets and explanations and photos. 

Here are a couple of photos I took when Ed and I ran through our play test games:

I start to move forward. My forces are on the right with the telegraph building in the center left side of the photo. Ed has already dropped one of my Romanians in the forest area center of the photo. Unfortunately for Ed, he killed one of my Dourabanti Militia. His fellow militiaman would not take kindly to this.

The other militia man begins an odyssey of death and destruction which will be written about through the annuals of Romanian military history!  In this phot he is hidden under the tree by the hill where he has just despatched a Hungarian Chasseur. 

Here is the aftermath of the Dourabanti’s continued rampage. He has charged towards the telegraph office the red markers showing the gory trail of his fury. Now he is in the telegraph office with another victim and the Hungarians have one chance to evict him. 

The end of the game.  The Hungarians were unable to defeat the Dourabanti militiaman and he ended up smashing the transmission equipment and chocking up a “W” for the Romanians. 

I do not have any photos from the day AJ and I played our games. To me this is a good indicator of a fun game - we were having such a good time we forgot the photos!  Another point - the game is truly a fast play system as AJ and I were able to get in two games in one afternoon!  This system has some real potential for many different eras and scenarios. I am really looking forward to more games in the near future. Don’t forget to check out Ed’s blog and AJ’s blog - it is well worth the time.