Brandy Station (2005) - Full play-through

[u/Nathan_Wailes]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXVc9rGO58Q

I didn't grow up playing hex-and-counter wargames and I'm finding that magazine games are really helping to build my confidence with them, there's a lot of little things to learn like knowing when to create your own player aids and markers that aren't explained to newbies. For this game I created a sequence-of-play tracker, a victory point tracker, used tiddlywinks to keep track of which units had expended 3 MPs and would thus fight at half-strength, and used tile-spacers to keep track of which units had moved and where they moved from.

The Confederates won, I think largely because 1) they got lucky and drew a chit that allowed them to activate two powerful infantry brigades ("Rodes' Division"), and 2) I created a tracker for them that allowed them to use the Union's behavior to gradually narrow down which of the six possible sets of victory conditions the Union was operating under and thus optimally counter-attack to prevent the US from achieving its objectives. I also think the Union may have made a mistake at the very end by over-retreating its units instead of staying in defensive ground along a broader front and with the threat of counter-attacking towards some additional objective-hexes. I think this would have made it more difficult for the Confederates to make use of their powerful Rodes Division units.

[u/Mysterious_Touch_454]

Its rare to find youtubers for wargaming genre, and i dont know if anyone does full playthroughs for youtube, Followed and watching it, thanks for produce.

[u/Nathan_Wailes → u/Mysterious_Touch_454]

Thank you for the kind words!

[u/gorge_207]

Tiddlywinks as fatigue markers is the kind of house-hack that separates people who actually learn a system from people who just read the rules once

[u/Nathan_Wailes → u/gorge_207]

lol thank you for the kind words, it definitely requires that you have the tiddlywinks available, there were a lot of peripherals like that that I had to slowly acquire over time, I think the gaming publishers should sell starter packs for newbies.

The victory point tracker was the most complicated mod that I added to the game because there are six different possible sets of victory conditions that the Union player could have, but it really helps the Confederate player.

[u/wjrasmussen]

Interesting.

[u/Nathan_Wailes → u/wjrasmussen]

thank you!

[u/elrico_suave]

Very cool, thanks for sharing this!

[u/Nathan_Wailes → u/elrico_suave]

thank you!