A Game of "It's Getting a Bit Chile"

I was lucky to have a visit today from Tim Gow of "Megablitz and More". He was mostly passing through but was able to spend a couple of hours in Shedquarters and roll a few dice. What more excuse did I need to roll out a quick bit of South American action, and introduce him to "It's Getting a Bit Chile"?

Tim was more than happy to pose with a copy of the aforesaid rules. He was given command of a strong force of Chileans and I took some Peruvians defending some ramshackle buildings and some improvised defences.

Tim pressed forwards all along the line, and started to deploy into a firing line as my hilltop artillery opened up.

Tim sent his cavalry out wide to his right, transferring it from the central army reserve. Nearer the camera Tim was forced into open order by more accurate shelling from my Krupps, giving up formation and movement to avoid taking Disorder.

Fearing that my left would be turned I moved my (weak) cavalry reserve out wide, but unfortunately took heavy fire. I also bolstered that wing by bringing across one of my reserve infantry formations.

My guns were doing a good job of holding off Tim's left wing Division, but his massed rifle fire started to cause disruption in the buildings. I was already regretting reducing the defensive value of the buildings in the interests of speeding the game along.

Having taken a lot of rifle fire (and some from a Gatling Gun) I compounded the problem by failing all my rally rolls.

Tim was turning out to be a bit of a dead-eye. His firing forced my men on the right to fall back out of the buildings. On the left I had to withdrawn my cavalry to safety, but the men in the trenches were suffering, especially as Tim had been able to deploy his reserve artillery and open fire.

A more effective round of rallying off Disorder on my left made things look a bit better.

Alas Tim then opened up with everything and I was again driven out of the emplacements. It was all looking a bit dodgy. On my right Tim's troops in Open Order rushed the now unoccupied area of the built up area and claimed it for Greater Chile.

Then the Cazadores del Misti pulled it out of the bag on my left. Looking for multiples of 12 to get a hit they came up trumps with 3 x 8 on the d8s, giving me that magic 24 and two hits.

I had shored up the centre by bringing up the reserves and deploying into Firing Lines. This was effective enough as far as it went, but my other troops had been shot out of the buildings too.

Tim had to head off at this point after nearly 2 hours play, just as it was getting interesting. I was badly let down by the failure of my Commanders to deal with the accumulating Disorder. I set the game up to precipitate some quick action without too many distractions as it was the aim to see how quickly a complete novice would come to terms with the rules, which contain quite a few new concepts.

Tim is an experienced wargamer and acclimatised quite quickly. He soon grasped the different ideas in the game, especially those around support stands and Disorder and identified the importance of getting your Commanders in the right places and making use of the flexibility afforded players through the various formations. My main disappointment was that we never got to any hand to hand combat. However, Tim still had a number of nice things to say about the rules and the game and the readability of the rule book.

A pleasant way to pass a lunchtime.

(NB The rules are available from Amazon for £14.99 or equivalent in your region, or you can buy a pdf from Wargame Vault.)