Campaign Game

24th April 2017 saw another campaign game.
This time I was asked to command the Spanish.

In this battle I wish I'd read the objectives properly. We were tasked with holding ALL buildings, however i assumed we had to hold the town and stop the French from crossing the river.

All the Spanish had to do to win the game was stay in the buildings, so we lost the game.

Battle was good, and the Spanish held up quite well.

Deployment -

The main Spanish deployment was around the town including across the river, with cavalry protecting the flanks.
The French also concentrated in the centre with some flanking forces looking for fords, which they found and poured across.

These flanking force overwhelmed the Spanish and along with the centre attacks the Spanish were defeated.

Campaign Game

Going back to 2016 for the first of these.

21st December 2016, Anglo-Portuguese (Bob & myself) have pushed the French (Arthur) back over the last week campaign weeks from Corruna, through the mountains and have finally caught them crossing a river.

The French are out-numbered and their mission is to escape across the river, we need to stop them.

The Portuguese deployed right and British left. My plan was to engage to the front whilst sending a flank force to block the road. My large collection of artillery to the front.

My Plan -

Deployment -

The French advanced to stall us and it partially worked, I had to swing the flanking brigade to deal with the advance, but the French paid dearly for doing so.

French Advance -

The French suffers from the flanking fire -

And eventually fall back -

The British initially suffered from an aggressive enemy, but eventually pushed them back, whilst on the Portuguese side the French suffered heavy losses and inflicted a few also, but allied cavalry and infantry found a ford and were crossing at the end of the game. However, the road ans bridge were still in French hands and so they gained a win.

Because loser have a worse chance of regaining losses Portugal lost 3 units of Infantry, can't recall French losses, but they regained a lot of their losses as winners.

Grand Armee (part 2)

In the second half of the year we played a couple of games from the 100 days.
Quatre Bras was played first (obviously).

The allies were just about holding the cross roads at the end of the day.

The units that are in "walls" are actually in built up areas (BUA), I had the buildings on a removable base in side to swap for occupying troops. By Waterloo game I had gone for a more realistic look on the BUA with small counters to represent the occupying troops.

Quatre Bras - 2nd August 2017

5th November 2017 - Waterloo
 As mentioned earlier BUA were changed and we also introduced the cavalry blown rule.

The battle was 3 player per side with myself as umpire/Prussian. The Prussians didn't arrive til turn 4 and the French had tried to anticipate this, however some heroic use by the British Cavalry meant the were a bit battered by the time the Prussians arrived.

La Haie Saint finally fell to prolonged artillery fire, but there were no French troops available to occupy.
The French really suffered with poor command rolls. If being completely fare and as we never reached the final turn it was a bloody draw.
The French guard tried to attack up the right centre but were pushed back and suffered when being pushed back through their own troops.
Papelotte ended in french hands but no other BUA as they decided to by pass Plancenoit.

The troops allocated to fend off the Prussians (Lobau) had a long way to walk and terrible command rating, as well as being last to be given any CP, quite often they didn't move. They were helped though with the late Prussian arrival.

 

Some pics from the attacks around Hougomont, French gave up attacking it and tried to go round.

 

 

Grande Armee (part 1)

During  last year we played quite a few games of the excellent mass battle rules - Grnade Armee.

This rules have bases that each represent a brigade.

Each turn a force gets a number of command points (CP), this is random each turn. However turns are split into "phases" each phase has a round of move/shoot/combat. The number of phases are random and the choice is to use CP at the beginning or try to spread them out.

There is firing by Skirmish troops and Artillery, but all other combat is represented by making base combat. This is the closing of brigades and either a firefight or firefight and a charge. No formations are needed as its assumed the brigade commanders choose the correct one.

The rules focus more on command and control and can prove quite frustrating when you have run out of command points for the turn and a vital commander refused to move.

2nd August 2017
 A first practice game for everyone to try the rules out.

25th August 2017
 Our Next game was Corunna.

The French seemed to have command problems and the allies held the line til the end.