Quatre Bras at the Club, Part 2

 

Last night we finished up the Quatre Bras game.  Tom and Ed returned to command the Allies.  For the French we had new commanders in the form of Greg and myself.  The ruleset was General D'Armee.  Since I was playing, I didn't take any pictures except at the end.

The game resumed at turn 8 and the French attack continuing with the Allies getting ground down.  Last game Josh had effectively formed a grand battery of all the French Artillery and it continued to pound the Dutch troops.

Greg sent in Jerome's Brigade, which had the best French troops in a series a attack columns and punished the Dutch the Dutch in the center.  At the same time both Ed and Tom launched calvary attacks on both Flanks - one forced a French brigade to retreat while the other was me by French Cavalry and pushed off.  Their two British Infantry brigades deployed along the cross roads and became a formidable defensive position.

After a few turns of trading blows, the French managed to break the 2 Allied cavalry brigades on either flank.  That brought our broken Allied Brigade tally to 4, which was enough for a French victory.  It was kind of a cheap way for us to win but there you go.  Taling on those British brigades would have been difficult as the French infantry was pretty chewed up by then.

Greg did comment that the club has played Quatre Bras a number of times with the "Age of Eagles" ruleset and every game resulted in a resounding French Victory.  It's a tough scenario for the Allies to win.  Our game was a little closer run but the French moved with a bit more alacrity than they did historically.  Perhaps a better way to balance the scenario is to put some limits on the French command dice.  I really like the overall scenario and will run it again with some tweaks to make it a little more fun for the Allies.

Quatre Bras Using General D'Armee

 

Last night at the club, we re-fought the Battle of Quatre Bras using my 15mm Naps and the General D'Armee ruleset.  I was the GM with Steve and Josh playing the French and Tom, Greg and Ed commanding the allied forces.

I used the scenario for the excellent 100 Days General D'Armee scenario PDF which you can get from TooFatLardies.  The scenario started with 7 French Brigades on the board against 2 Dutch brigades of questionable quality.  The allies will receive a brigade or two per turn.  The French have a heavy Cavalry Brigade coming on mid game and by then the sides will be "evenish" with a troop quality advantage to the French.

The French attack got off to a slow start given some bad luck with ADC rolls and a good number of resulting Hesitant Brigades.

Finally the French made contact Bylandt's Brigade - one of Bylant's battalions managed to form a square and the other, well, didn't.  Lancers and Infantry don't mix well.

On the other side of the table Steve's French finally started moving and began enveloping the Dutch - to their rear there are two British Brigades coming on the table and none-too-soon.

We got to turn 8 of 18 last night and will continue the game next week.

This will be a hard one for the Allies to pull off.

Historicon 2019: To Catch a King - A Retrospective

 I was more than a little nervous with my game "To Catch A King" at Historicon this year for a number of reasons, one of which which was the scale - there are over 2,400 mini's on the table.  The following photo's show the initial setup.  I did tinker with it a little bit over the course of the con, but no material changes where made.  The objective of the game was for the British to get the King's carriage across the map and onto a waiting ship.  The French wanted to prevent that.  In the end, the French won 4 out of 5 games but it was a lot closer than that tally appears.

 The French Left flank consisted of Soult's single division on the shore and Lannes corps of two divisions (in the center of the picture plus a reserve force of a Guard infantry and heavy calvary divisions under Napoleon.  Soult's smaller division had a chance of maritime reinforcements over the course of the game.

In the center was Davout and his III Corps of two divisions.

Finally, on the French right flank is Bernadotte and his I Corps of (yet again) 2 divisions.  Opposing I corps is a similar sized Austrian Corps.  Austrians?  During Napoleon's invasion of Britain?  Well the given reason is that they're British Allies.  The real reason is that I ran out of time painting British and had to augment the force with some Austrians!

The British center is held by II Corps which has two divisions deployed between the bridge and around the central village.

On the right flank the British I corps is deployed along a hill and into the port city.  One of the divisions, commanded by the upstart Wellesely has deployed on the reverse slope of the hill awaiting the French.  To the rear of the formation is the British reserve - a heavy cavalary division of three brigades and a horse artillery battery.

Finally the British right flank is anchored by a single division but they have mixed up their orders and deployed to far forward,  Oops....

The sides are fairly balanced with the French having a slight advantage in numbers 32 infantry, and 11 cavalry brigades plus 9 artillery batteries opposed to 28 infantry and 10 cavalry brigades plus 8 artillery batteries.  There were 2,417 figures on the table.

The setup was intended to allow some initial skirmishing on the flanks to help teach rule mechanics and then have everyone in some form of contact by turn 2.

 "To Catch a King" was played 5 times over the course of the con, with the first game being Thursday afternoon.  Both the French and British CiC's were experienced General d'Armee players and from the same gaming group.  That fact was really helpful in managing the game.

 The decisive point of the game came when the Austrians launched a spoiling attach against the French as they were trying to move part of I Corps across a ford to reinforce the main attach in the center.  The attack was more costly to the Austrians in losses but threw off the main French attack as reinforcements were rushed to fill the gap and away from the key objective.  Game 1 was a resounding British victory.

The players from Game1

 The Friday morning game resulted in a French victory and they were able to capture the King at the bridge crossing.  Davout's reputation has been further enhanced.  The French did have an unfair advantage as they had a Priest on their side.

 Furious fighting on the shoreline - lots of casualties on each side but no breakthroughs.

 Davout's main column breaks through and captures the King!

 There just weren't enough British in the areas to mount a counter attack

Lesson from Game 2 - always have a priest on your side of the table.

 Game three was perhaps my favorite on the con so, of course I forgot to take pictures.  I had fantastic players including a full family, the Green Viking and Josh from the club.

The fighting was furious and this was the only game the French heavy cav really was decisive as it charged over the hill and cut the road.  Victory to France!

The game three crew!

Young Andy commanded the extreme British right flank and managed to hold off elements of three French divisions with his single and batters British one.  For his bravery and coolness under fire he was awarded a Victoria's Cross much to the exclaim of his gaming participants, especially the French.  It was a good day.

That's correct, Master Andy is the recipient of a genuine replica Victoria's Cross.

 Game Four (Sat am) was a really hard fought affair with fighting all across the front.  This game played out as close to what I had imagined the game to do

 It was another French Victory, but just by the king of their teeth

 The last game on Saturday was also fun but I was really tired - running big games can be a bit taxing.

 Good friend Mike P commanded the Austrians.  His turn 1 dice rolling was red hot - two box cars in a row.  His turn 2+ dice rolling was not red hot.  Mike is a great guy and a pleasure to have at the gaming table win or loose.

 This was the first game where the king was caught before crossing the bridge!

The Game 5 crew.  Another French Victory.

I was really pleased with how the game played but there was a lot I can do to make the game better.

As I indicated at the beginning of this post, I was more than a little nervous putting this game on as I was using a somewhat detailed set of rules (General d'Armee) and its scope was pretty big.

General d'Armee - the rules actually worked well and players picked up the key concepts by turn 2.  I do think the 4 pages of QRF sheets are hard to process for a new player and I need to make some custom ones that reduce some of the complexity.  These remain, by far, my favorite Napoleonic rules but do need a "lite" version for convention play.

Naval Aspect - My original game concept had a naval aspect with frigates and house rules.  After seeing how big the game really is and the noise in the convention area, I decided to just focus on the land battle which was still a bit of a bear to GM.  For future games where I want a naval aspect I think I'll go with the format I used for "Decision in Delmarva" in 2015 where a morning naval battle sets up the afternoons land battle.  The ship's did serve as nice eye candy!

Napoleonics - I'm hooked - I think this game looked great and was playable so one can do Napoleonic in a convention setting.  I'm pretty sure you'll see another Nappy themed game at Historicon in 2020.  What's the scenario?  I'm still trying to figure that out.....

I do want thank my club mates who were really helpful over the course of the con.  I find myself very fortunate to count them as friends.  Also thanks a lot to Chris Hecht who drove up Saturday to help - maybe one day we can lure him back to the dark side of Historical gaming.  Maybe.....

A Distinguished Visitor and More General D'Armee

This weekend saw the St Michaels house graced by several distinguished visitors - Ed and his lovely wife Teresa from the gaming club and Peter D from Regina,  the Single Handed Admiral blog, and a "famed" participant in the Challenge.

It was a grand weekend,  I didn't have any pictures of Ed and T as Ed's media people wanted way too much money for any image work.  Ed's now a you tube sensation as you can see in the following video.  Wait till the very end.

The first picture is of Peter arriving.  Oops that's just a local terrapin turtle.  Wonder how I got this mixed up?

Ok - here's a picture of Peter setting up for a quick game of GdA in our basement.  Peter was a wonderful guest and tolerated a lot of driving around.

We replayed the game from the last week at the club - Peter was the French and I was the British.  Each player had four brigades (3 Inf and 1 Cav). The French had their three inf brigades on the board while the British only had 2 and were defending the monastery in the picture

Peter moving his French columns up.  While in column they can move 9 vs 6 inches for line so he was on me a lot quicker.  The increase in speed really offsets the loss in fire power.

The attack is forming up and 2 French brigades are bearing down on the Spanish.

Action on my left flank as my 2nd brigade is preparing to assault the British.

A turn of ineffective firing for me and one of the brigades looses fire discipline.

Disaster strikes - even though I've managed to get my cav on the board (as does Peter) - I fail all my ADC rolls which limits my ability to react to Peters well timed assault.

Peter's French swept my hapless Spanish out of the monastery and I conceded the game.  It was a lot of fun and I'm feeling like I am starting to really understand the rules.  GdA is an excellent Napoleonic system and one that I will stick with.

Thanks to Peter for a great game and for being such a superb guest.  He is welcome in Maryland anytime his jet setting life of academia brings him here.

General D-Armee at the Club

 Last night, Tom, Ed and I ran another test game of General D'Armee at the club.  Tom and Ed's French attacked my Brit/Spanish army.  The scenario was simple.  The Spanish were holding a walled monastery and were supported by another British infantry division unit to the right.  They were attacked by three French infantry divisions.  Both sides had off table reinforcements - I had both a Infantry and calvary division, while the French had a calvary divisions.

The game went A LOT smoother than our first test game and I think we got a majority of the rules right.  The Battle flowed really well and my dice were red hot.

The game was a lot more lively with a fairly open table (terrain wise).  That's a very important lesson for the Historicon game.

Things we improved on were:

- getting the mechanics of charges and subsequent melees correct
- skirmishers - they add both a lot of flavor and are fun
- command dice, the command system is a lot of fun and one of the best things about this game

Stuff were still trying to figure out
- Calvary
- status marker resets

Overall it was a great game and I'm really liking these rules.

Ed's French skirmishers are hiding in these woods - somewhere.

Rather than use on table markers to show unit casualties, we used some tracking sheets that worked well.  These will not win any awards for graphic artistry but they got the job done.  We also decided to keep specific unit status's sort of secret from the opposing player.  When a required modifier was needed, it would be clear but there were not markers on the field.  I found that really fun as I would forget and sometimes attack a unit I thought was worn only to find out oops their fresh.

I'll tweak the format a bit more and then add some period specific flavor but overall it's big improvement to our game play.
EDIT: I've realized that the above casualty tracker is, indeed, wrong as line Batteries have 8 casualty slots and not the 12 depicted.  There are four until a minus -1 and the then 2 steps each to -2 and then disperse.