Boardgame Night

The wife and I went over to a friends of ours house this past weekend for a night of boardgaming.  After playing several standard boardgames our wives retired to the den to watch a chick flick.  As you know most of my gaming is done solo thankfully my friend is one of the few I know who likes wargames, specifically boardgames.  (I am working on him for miniature wargaming)  So after getting some food we sat down to play a scenario from the AWI boardgame Hold the Line.  My friend had never played and I haven't played the game in a long while so there was a bit of rule reading, learning and teaching before we jumped into the game.

We played the 'Long Island Scenario' with my friend playing the British and me playing the Americans.  The Americans were the defenders and were tasked making the important decision of whether to evacuate a set amount of troops after the 11th turn or hold back the British attack with limited casualties, a decision I would make incorrectly.  The British goal was to destroy 7 units before the end of 22 turns.  I did manage to take a couple of pictures of the action and needless to say it wasn't pretty for me.

This was our initial setup.  If I chose to evacuate any of my troops I had to have them next to the river hexes in the upper left corner of the board.  Solid lines are movement and dotted lines are shooting.  The first couple of turns the British fired into the American defensive position with little success so they decided to move their light infantry around the right flank.

Several turns later I had take some casualties and the British had succeeded in flanking me.  I suffered several units killed and decided to make a fighting withdrawal to my secondary defensive line in hopes of using up the remaining turns.

From there things got worse as I suffered more casualties and I had to make a run for it before I was surrounded and cut off..

Needless to say the combined fire from the advancing British troops overwhelmed my units and succeeded to kill enough to end the game.

Even with the loss the game was alot of fun and I was reminded why it was fun.  The mechanics are easy to learn but portray enough realism to be enjoyable.  Also there is plenty of room for tactical movement and decision making.  It was fun night and I can't wait to get together again with my buddy to play some more wargames.