Last year I moved from the US to the UK. Having met several wargamers in the UK on the first Duffy trip I was hoping that I might be able to do some gaming while I was in the UK. Last month, I attended Warfare Convention for my second time since living here. For those of you who don't know about Warfare it is a very large competition convention in the UK they have numerous periods including the SYW period. Last year, when I attended I just watched the games and visited the dealer area. I had three gamers staying at my place for the weekend and I decided that I should give this competition stuff a go.

Now I must say that I was extremely biased on gaming when I first got here. My background of gaming has been lots of home rules for SYW period, in addition to the numerous published sets. I had never played using WRG before and I had never been in a competition convention before. I also thought that competition would lead to rather confrontational gamers and lots of bitching about the rules and interpretation. I wasn't looking forward to it at all. At last year's convention I noticed the SYW group seemed very civilized and I thought why not give it a try. The group seemed nice and I noticed all of the games seemed very friendly.

Well this year I played and I can say that I had a very good time. I had some trouble with some aspects of the game; I suppose it would have helped if I read the rules before the tournament, but why would I ever do that! For those of you reading this article who are experienced WRG gamers I apologize if I have over simplified or gotten part of the rules incorrect, you must understand this is a novice WRGer and a beer and pretzel gamer writing the article, anyway here goes.

I decided for this convention I would use a French Army, it was probably the wrong army to use based on the current point system, but I was more interested in playing in the tournament and just seeing how the mechanics worked.

Over the weekend I played in four games. The way the games are organized is the judge who is running the games draws names for the first round. After the first game is played, the judge looks at victory point totals and players are seeded highest to lowest. The people who have the highest point total play each other and they keep doing this until everyone has played 4 games and the tournament is over. The other adjustment that is made is you don't play the same person twice. I thought that the parings seemed to work out well. All of the tables are set up side by side, with different terrain layout for each one.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with WRG, players puts together an army from the period and for this competition we were using 1600 point armies. Don McHugh has published an army list for the period, and this list is used by the players as a tool to put together an army. You pick your nationality and in some cases early period or later period and Don's army list is the guide that tells you what are your options for unit composition. It might say you have to have so many Hussars, or raw infantry, and tells you a cavalry to infantry ratios as well as artillery that you can use. The army list does give you options to weight your army differently, but you have historical limitations.

The first thing that might come to mind is, you can have traditional allies playing each other, or even the same armies fighting each other, which we had on this occasion. But I don't think that is the important issue. I see the goal as trying to put together a historical army and figure out how to fight a battle with this army. Also, by playing four games over the weekend, against four different armies it gives you a chance to see your armies' strengths and weaknesses against different types of armies.

My first game I went up against Don McHugh's son, Dan. Dan was fighting with an Austrian army. In this game the terrain objective was a farmhouse on a hill. I thought the game we played was very balanced. It was a very good game and near the end of the game the battalion I had in the farmhouse was pushed out. This terrain objective cost me the game. When the game was over we counted up the casualty points and I was ahead on this part, but the terrain objective swung the decision into Daniel's favor, 9-11.

My second game I went up against Bill MacGillivray, he had a late Russian army. This was a hard match and my French had a very difficult time with the Russian infantry. The Russians are rated a little higher than the French are and I was slowly losing the struggle. Once again, like all of the games there is a terrain objective, and I was pushed out of it by the Russian grenadiers. I saw this coming but not in time to put together a counter attack to retake the position. In this game the casualties were very close, but the terrain object is worth 6 points, I think the result was 5-15.

Sunday was going to be a new day for the French, or so I thought. My first game I drew a player who was new to the period. He was fielding a Prussian army. I knew that things might be tough since most of his cavalry was much better than mine and I had a good amount of cavalry. In this game the terrain objective was a road that ran through a hill area. I decided for this battle I was going to try and either take the terrain objective or at least keep my opponent from having it. I positioned all of my infantry in front of the hill. I had a battery right on the road to hit anything coming down the road and I had a battery on my left supported by an infantry battalion to try and hold my left. Almost all of my army was on the right third of the table. I had one cavalry brigade on the left side. The other was covering a small opening on the right side of the hill.

The new player was a little hesitant to advance towards the hill at first since my battery covered part of it. On my left he had an infantry brigade supported by 2 hussar regiments. I thought that this infantry was to far from me to come into play; this was to hold true. As the game unfolded my opponent advanced up the hill, but did not want to come over the crest of the hill. I was happy with this since I knew the Prussian musketry was more than a match for my infantry. On the left flank, he got a little aggressive with his Hussars, I charged both of them with Cuirassiers and had the advantage on both of them.

Unfortunately for me I needed to roll a 4-5-6, I had 4 dice and could only roll a single one, ugh. He was rolling for 6s and I think he rolled three of them. In the end he routed two of my regiments, I had two more regiments and was able to rout one of his Hussars after they over pursued my routing cavalry. The rest of the field was a stalemate. The Prussians made a gallant effort toward the end of the game and went for the terrain objective. The Prussian Grenadiers advanced over the crest and came head to head with a battalion of my infantry. I delivered a suprisingly devastating volley and the grenadiers fell back disordered (this unit had also been hit by some artillery fire). The game ended at about this time and we counted up the casualties and I barely came out ahead, 11-9.

My last game was against Phil Mackie. Phil was playing with a Swedish army. Once again there was a terrain objective. This time in the middle. I had more scouting points in this game and Phil deployed. Most of Phil's infantry was placed in a position to contest the terrain objectives. On his right he placed his cavalry. I decided to try and go toe to toe with him. I thought my infantry could stand up to his. I also decided to place all of my cavalry, 5 Cuirassier regiments, 1 Heavy, and 2 Hussars against his cavalry. My cavalry was rated as good or higher than his and I thought lets see how this is going to work out. By turn two the cavalry melee was starting I hit Phil with 3 regiments he came at me with 4. At the same time, some of Phil's artillery hit one of my Hussar regiments in my reserve brigade. This was to have dire consequences for me. These casualties caused me to have to take a morale test, which I blew, and my cavalry brigade in reserve had to stay stationary for three turns.

There were three cavalry melees. I had the advantage in two of them and Phil had the advantage in the other. I won one, had a draw on the other (I was to lose this one in the second melee round), and I lost the third. To make a long story short, the melee I won eventually turned against me since when I tried to pursue Phil's cavalry I was hit by another Swedish cavalry regiment in reserve and this routed me. Phil's glorious Swedish cavalry came barreling through pursuing my routing cavalry, of course I had three more cuirassier regiments in reserve, but they could do nothing (since three turns ago they had failed the morale test) so they sat in their saddle as the Swedish Cavalry Horde road them down.

At this point I conceded since all of my cavalry was lost. It was a 0-20 score.

All in all I had a great time playing in all four games. The SYW gamers were a real nice group of people and I am looking forward to next year's wargaming calendar already. I am already trying to figure out which army to use next year.

This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com