No French Napoleonics

Saturday I loaded my Bavarians, Russians, and Prussians into Electrical Pete's KIA and with Handyman Huw, we trekked south of the 401 for a Big Napoleonic game at Scott's. This is hopefully going to be an annual thing.

Scott's Austrians joined my Prussians and Russians to fight his Wurttemburgers, and Italians, who were seeing dice rolled in anger for the first time. The Wurttemburgers and Italians were assisted by my Bavarians and Curmudgeonly Don's Dutch.

Russo-Prussian Grenadier Brigade 

Italian division

Wurttemburger Brigade 

Dutch Brigade 

Allied Light Cavalry Brigade 

Allied Reserve Artillery on a ridge with Corps Commander 

L-R: our host Scott, Handyman Huw, Curmudgeonly Don, and Electrical Pete. Huw and Pete are totally new to Napoleonic gaming after years in 40k. But they are building armies, so I thought they'd like to be in a big game.

Prussian Divisional Artillery

Italians assaulting the village on my left. My battalion of Fusiliers threw back four assaults before they needed to be relieved

Italian Artillery 

Prussians holding off Italian assault

Austrians arrive. Cavalry reinforces my left. Infantry move up in the center behind the big building.

Imperials moving forward 

Imperial Cavalry Brigade has pushed back my Prussian Reserve Brigade. The Bavarian Cheveaux-Leger did me proud putting in a good charge, even if they were fighting against me that day. 

Bavarian Division assaulting my center and making a dangerous hole, but I've been thrashing the Bavarian columns with fire from three batteries

Austrian Division arrives. Brigade of Grenadiers and brigade of infantry.

My Allied Dragoon Brigade hovered about menacingly, keeping these guys from sweeping around the village

Huw and Don contemplating options

Womp womp! Used two scarce ADCs to put "Artillery Assault" on my 12 pounders to roll abysmally and put a fatigue on myself. Instead of trying for other brigade orders our few ADCs (because we kept duffing our ADC availability rolls) were allocated to command rerolls to keep as many brigades as possible from being hesitant. So this was rather disappointing.

You can see the Austrian Grenadiers on the flank of the big building stopping the Imperial Cavalry from going any further

A view of the right. The skirmishers are potting at each other. The Allied Light Cavalry Brigade has retired behind the hill to get away from the Wurttemburg artillery.

My Prussian battalion on the flank of the village has been bundled back, attacked in front by Italians and in the flank by Bavarians. Fortunately they rallied.

We called it at 7 o'clock. The Bavarians were in bad shape having been hammered by the Allied artillery and the Italians had shattered a brigade against the village, so the Imperial side had two brigades on the cusp of collapsing. My Prussians were still holding on by their white knuckles, although it would only be because the Italians and Bavarians were going to break first.

So, maybe a winning draw for the Allies? Schwartzenburg will herald a mighty victory, Napoleon will blame one of his Marshalls, we went and ate pizza. Fun had been had.

It was a grand spectacle, if somewhat slow moving. General d'Armee is very detailed but the command and control really only starts to shine with a couple of divisions per side on the table. Unfortunately, I think the rules really need a dedicated club with big collections who can play it a lot to get the most out of them. I wonder how this game would have played if we had used Shako II? I am also contemplating the feasibility of making sabot bases to use my 28mm miniatures for Blucher.

This was my 22nd game of the year!

Operation Getting To Know You

At Hotlead we've always thought of ourselves as the friendly convention. I gladly make the effort to help people connect after each show. So last Hotlead, a fellow approached me. He's moving to Stratford when he retires after working in the US for 30-plus years. He's coming up to visit family in June and could we get together? He'd like to meet some of the local gaming scene since he'll have to rebuild a hobby life when he moves.

We email back and forth, compare calendars, and settle on Sunday afternoon to get together for a little bit of dice rolling and meeting some of the guys. I send out an invite and gather some of the gang. Don't want it too big, but not too small either. A happy throng would be welcoming. Fortunately Sunday was cold and rainy anyway, so a good day to spend the afternoon inside wargaming.

Two brand new heros in combat? Oh dear, this will be interesting.

Then I'm overthinking; what to put on? Snorkers? Midgard? Something else? There's a time limit so it can't be too involved. Fantasy or historical? How does Ed feel about fantasy? Of course I didn't know if two of the guys were available until the day before which affected the chosen game as well.

I eventually settled on Midgard and sorted out my 3rd century Romans. Over lunch I learn that Ed is a big Roman history nerd. (Yay!) I also learn that he's a big Tolkien fan and has all the expansion sets for the War of the Ring boardgame that I've played a couple of times with the Mad Padre. (More Yay!)

So we had a furiously bloody and swift game. I helped Ed, and our Gothic feoderati overthrew the cavalry of Cohortes IX Britannarium. Who really have never done very well. I must think about how they are used and maybe buff up their leadership.

Big Pat on our other flank was meanwhile hammering the opposing infantry. My Gothic foot warriors had a big opening in front of us and wheeled to start taking the Roman infantry in the flank.

Big hole where the Roman cavalry used to be

Duplicitous leading his cohorts to crash into the enemy line.

Duplicitous won 6-0 this, my eighteenth game of the year, so his march on Rome continues.

Big fun was had. Dice were rolled. Some beers were drunk. Chins were wagged. Freindships were begun. 

Yay! New friends! 

Medieval Midgard Massacre!

Dan has been building a large number of angry peasants for his German Medieval armies so he wanted to do an 11th-12th century feudal era battle. So we met to decide who's candidate would be Pope, or Holy Roman Emperor, or Chief Dog Catcher of Altdorf.

His army at 450 points and 11 Reputation was pretty huge. He didn't add any upgrades to anyone and he had 8 or so horde units of peasants.

My cavalry foreground. Sergeants in the van, which was a fatal mistake.

My army was 442 points, 12 Reputation and had a lot of expensive knights. I outnumbered his cavalry 8 squadrons to 3.

Dan's cavalry

Dan's foot sergeants

Some of Dan's archers, peasants, and his thematic dice tray.

My center. three units of foot sergeants and two units of crossbows

Dan had his peasants massed on his left, but the frontage was constricted by some woods and a mountain side which wouldn't give my cavalry space to effectively smash into them, so I put the bulk of my cavaly on my left, opposite his cavalry.

I lead with my sergeants hoping to wear him down so my knights could then overthrow that flank. Instead my sergeants were defeated and thrown back onto my knights, which gave Dan's cavalry the impetus.

The Red Knight tries to stem the tide and dies in the melee

In the center my crossbows didn't do badly against Dan's foot sergeants, but it wasn't enough.

With my squadron of knights destroyed my army commander, Count Raymond the Good was on his own. Dan's cavalry commander challenged him to single combat and rolled four hits to my one. Ouch. My Reputation plummetd to -2. Troubadours will sing of his tragic fall for many years.

Count Raymond (R) in red cloak dies in Single Combat

The White Knight also found himself alone and fighting a squadron of Dan's knights single handed. 

A squadron of my knights charge Dan's hero hoping to kill him and knock some of his Reputation down.

My right wing, two squadrons of Knights tries to squish some peasants. They do, but it's not enough.

In the center I try and launch a counter attack with my foot sergeants but fail some Command Tests and it doesn't happen.

At the end of the turn we were at -1 Reputation for my army and 6 Reputation for Dan's. A mighty victory to be recorded in an illuminated manuscript or bawdy ballad. Or perhaps a bawdily illustrated manuscript.

Dan (L) likes thematic headgear and had to show me (R) his new nasal helm

This was my seventeenth game of the year! It was great to return to get these figures out again. I just love the early medieval period. There's something about knights in chain hauberks, kite shields, and nasal helms with lots of flags and colourful shields crashing about scaring the livestock and disturbing the peasantry.

Obvioudly I need to edit the army list though....