Big Pat and Rabbitman's Grand Day Out

My horse and musket era loving friend, Scott, has always come to my house to play, when his work and mandatory overtime permit. But he's been quietly building a nice comfy wargaming room in his house in deepest darkest southern Ontario. He's ony 40 minutes away, but he's south of the 401, and that is Here There Be Dragons land in my mind.

But he invited Big Pat and I down for a big Napoleonic game last Saturday. We would finally have a chance to fully enjoy Scott's preferred rules, General d'Armee 2e, and, of course, beer and pizza together.

I was a wild man, and two beers.

We played the Plancenoit scenario from the 1815: the Hundred Days scenario book. Scott built his Austrians in the later shako, instead of the helmets, to match his Waterloo campaign uniformed French. So we just assumed Napoleon had beaten Wellington and Blücher, and was now facing the Austrians and Russians along the Rhine, or we were somewhere in Saxony in 1813.

Our congenial host and Game Master, Scott in foreground,  and Big Pat on the right. The table is 12 feet by 7.5 feet.

Austrian Landwehr 

French holding the town. My objective is to capture 2 out of 4 Built Up Areas. 

The church counts as 2 BUA

Austrian horse artillery 

Austrian cavalry 

Young Guard and Guard 12 pounders dispute entry to the town 

French artillery moving to the flank.

Austrian CiC and caisson for those "Out of Ammunition" results 

Landwehr attack on French center building up

Austrian pinning attack on left. Brigade of Grenadiers in column moving forward 

9 battalions of Landwehr assaulting flank of Plancenoit church

Austrian left wing

Austrian center 

Austrian right. Cavalry charged. Crossed sabres and recoiled. Then stared at each other for the rest of the game. 

My Austrian skirmish line actually won the firefight! Pushing a little harder on my left.

Reserves arrive. Battery of 12 pounders and 6 battalions of line. They kept rolling 'Hesitant' so I never got them up to make another attack in the center 

Landwehr charging Young Guard behind a thick hedge. Lost the fight, recoiled, rolled badly, entire brigade of 6 battalions evaporated!

French reinforcements propping up the center 

Overview Austrian right wing close to Game End

Grenadiers pushing into town. 

When your Grenadiers have 'Glory!' and 'Elan'

Some of the pictures are out of order, because of how Blogspot uploads them, if you're wondering why troops seem to be moving back and forth. But you get the idea.

Game end, Austrian left wing

A battalion of Landwehr had broken into the church, but then got pushed out before I could capture a second BUA with my Grenadiers. The Grenadiers drove into the town, pushing Young Guard in front of them. At game end I was in a good position to attack the house in the photo above from 2 sides, but it would have been too little, too late. 

It took us about 8 hours of playing to get through 14 or 15 of the 16 turns for the scenario.  It was just super to actually have enough maneuver room and big enough forces to really get the most out of General d'Armee. 

Scott is hoping that this will inspire me to get some more Russians done.