Battle of Montmirail : February 1814

Looking for an opportunity to get the Napoleonics back on the table Martins came up with the Battle of Montmirail, apparently based loosely on a Blucher scenario on the battle but without the Prussians as we don’t have them (yet)

Our battle is focussed on the Russian attack against the French, who have an isolated Brigade of poor quality troops needing urgent support. This comes in the form of the Old Guard and potentially later the Middle guard. Napoleon and Ney are both on the table. V&F would provide the rules.

The French are holding the two small villages, the nearest held by a brigade of ‘Marie Louise’ infantry the second held by some heavy cavalry who are not ideal for holding a defensible feature in V&F the Russians come on in force all along the edge.

Heavily out numbered the French send out some skirmishers and open up but they are poorly trained and have limited shots. The stream does slow the Russian advance.

Having abandoned the village the french heavy attempt to throw the Russian Dragoons back but despite having the advantage the french are knocked back.

As the Russian infantry develop their attack and now holding the second of the villages Napoleon arrives with the Old Guard !

The battered french heavy cavalry tries to rally whilst Ney arrives leading a unit of Heavy cavalry

The first assault by the guard goes in on the village now being held by Russian grenadiers a tough fight !

Heavily out number by the advancing Russians !

The Guard have brought some heavy artillery which with Napoleons special rules is effective at slowing the Russian infantry 

The first of the Marie Louise units has been driven off but the remaining two are holding on despite being shaken. Using a fate card the unit in the village is boosted to improve their resilience and tenacity. But can they hold ?

The two villages become the focus of the battle. With the french holding on by the skin of their teeth.

On the right wing, the french cavalry having now rallied charges back in and throws the Russian cavalry back

Still the Russians are holding the second village

But after several rounds of combat and two or three assaults the old guard finally break into the village

Against the odds, the French are still holding on despite still being shaken for much of the battle

The french cavalry have broken through and are threatening to overrun the Russian artillery and at this point the Russian general halts the attack and decides to wait for the Prussians

The hero’s of the battle are without doubt the Marie Louise infantry who despite repeated attacks and against the odds have held the village for the whole battle. A splendid battle with lots of close run combats, when the french initially lost the cavalry battle it didn’t look good at all but the stubborn infantry saved the day for Napoleon.

The weather has return to a heat wave but thankfully we are now up north which is considerably cooler and perfect cycling weather

We haven’t had a bike picture for some time

And with mountains in the background

In a slight change of plan today George hosted me for another run out with his lovely Italian wars collection. I played with the French who seemed to have a lot of advantages both in numbers and quality of troops over the Spanish.

Given the advantages it seemed rude not to just advance all out, my Elite Swiss got excited as did some of my heavy cavalry.

As the two lines advance to combat……

Crash the fight begins……

Wonderful stuff and I will leave George to recount the details of the battle, of course what no scenario can allow for is a ridiculously, no crazy, above average dice rolling by one side, enough said 😀 but it may take some years for the Spanish to rebuild their army ?

That’s it for now, another Napoleonic game planned in for Saturday if it doesn’t get too hot

Thanks as always Matt ❤️

4th July AWI Celebration Battle : Chatterton’s Hill

Given the date yesterday it seemed appropriate to dig out the AWI collection. With a slight limit on gaming time I was looking for a smallish battle Chatterton’s Hill is a scenario straight out of the BLack Powder Rebellion book, the battle for the hill was part of the larger White Plains battle. To speed things up  we used V&F for the first time downloading the latest army lists form the Perry Website.

The American ‘Rebels’ are defensively setup on the Hill, they only have two brigades, McDougall with regular continental troops and Douglas with a much less dependable brigade of Militia. These have a low tenacity of 2 compared to the regular British infantry of 4 so they are fragile and could easily flee if the British can get to grips with them ?

The first British brigade arrives under Maitland, they have artillery setup on ‘Wolf Pit Hill’ scary for the Americans but in the end they have little effect on overall battle.

Maitland with his light troops advance on the right, Leslie’s British brigade of regulars can be seen in the distance and beyond them a Hessian brigade under Colonel Rall

As the Allies advance towards the hill the Americans rather than pulling back move up to take advantage of the various stone walls, looking to blunt the advance before the British can fully deploy.

Given the space and the numerical advantage the British really need to get stuck in and not surprisingly they chose to assault the weaker militia units holding the wall either side of the road.

 Not surprisingly the Militia unit taking the brunt of the attack turn and run, but the brigade holds and the second line pours volley fire into the advancing British.

With some pretty lucky dice, the Militia on the right hold and eventually /heroically push back the Hessian Grenadiers

Both sides throw more troops into the hand to hand fighting the militia are on the point of breaking

In the centre Maitland has crossed the river and his light troops are starting to bring fire onto the ridge. The final grenadier brigade has also now arrived and in crossing the river.

The key fight is now very British have been badly mauled with all their units shaken but the militia are thinning out and shaken as well it is only a matter of time before one side breaks !

The British light dragoons charge forward driving the American riflemen away but they come under fire from behind the walls and are shaken

After two further turns of combat the fighting is on the edge, the Militia hold and have to use a fate card to stay in the fight. In the final turn a single volley causing a single wound causes a cascade of failed valour and fortitude tests for the British, this is too much for Leslie’s Brigade which flees the field. Hoorah !

With redcoats fleeing the field and the Hessians beyond now down to a single unit the Americans have held the day. A fun battle with combats and Valour tests right on the edge for several turns. V&F worked well with the recent army lists so we will be using this again in the future. A good way to celebrate the 250 th celebration.

During the week I was also down with George to pick up our 1940 campaign. As always a beautifully setup battle with George’s WW2 collection.

Having won the last two battles this attack by the British was a harder setup (sone might say almost impossible ?)

They gave it a go but the Germans proved too strong. I’m sure George will be posting his thoughts, but fair to say we agreed the scenario wasn’t really balanced, both in terrain and the forces available. That said a fun game.

That’s it for now another battle planned for early next week.

Thanks as always for checking by ❤️

Matt

Lion Rampant Crusading……..

We have arrived back in the North where the temperature is tolerable, after a week on holiday in what turned out to be the hottest June week on record. I’m sure other British followers will have suffered similar. Although the heat meant I had to cancel a planned trip to a couple of battlefields we did manage to see a little bit of history.

But first up before we headed into the SW furnace I squeezed in a game of Lion Rampant. Looking for a quick pick up scenario for ply in. Couple of hours we went ‘Crusading’ we had the Christians escorting their baggage train across the desert only to be ambushed by Saladin and his Moorish forces.

The Christian objective is to get the three baggage items escorted by their infantry diagonally across the table. The dry river will be difficult ground. Those with a keen eye will note the similarity of the basic table to the previous Greek/Italian battle ! As to be expected the Arab forces are generally more mobile but more lightly armed.

In the initially couple of turns Saladin gets the better of the dice and is able to move the majority of his force into blocking positions. The scenario requires the Arabs to deploy split in half. The Christian heavy cavalry stubbornly refuse to activate !

This means the infantry carrying the baggage start to more forward unprotected.

The light Arab cavalry armed with bows and javelins sweep into  attack, skirmishing when they need to keep out of range. For several turns the Arabs continue to get the better of it gradually wearing down the Christian forces who are forced back to use the small building as some cover.

Eventually though the Christian’s start to get some better dice and are able to bring their heavy cavalry forward.

Now it is the turn of the lighter Arab forces to be pushed back but they are constricted by the dry river bed

The Christian King and his bodyguard charge in against Saladin who although not killed is forced to flee.

The game is up with the Arab forces accepting defeat as they now don’t have enough troops to prevent the Christian baggage from getting off the table (eventually), a fun game whoch swung significantly as at first the Christian’s almost threw in the towel when they were seemingly pinned into the corner, but things changed around a it turned into a good win 👍

Just a couple of shots from the holiday with a historical theme, we were staying just south of the Forest of Dean, almost in the epicentre of the heatwave !

St Briavels Castle, started in early 12th Century but extended by Edward 1st with the twin towered gatehouse, used as a centre for the production of Crossbow bolts with iron from the Forest of Dean and now a Youth Hostel.

Chepstow Castle , which I had been to before, a wonderful Norman keep which has been encircled and the castle enlarged several times since.

The last remaining medieval gate into Chepstow, there is a little bit of wall still extant which you can see as well

We visited Coleford several times the scene of a small ECW battle in 1643 commemorated by a nice plaque in the main square.

Whilst the rest of the party were shopping in thrift shops I visited the tourist information where they had a small diorama of the battle. Apparently built by one of the Town councillors who is apparently a wargamer, using Warlord Epic figures which were nice to see.

Goodrich Castle, a *** castle overlooking the river wye.

Besieged and taken in 1646 by Colonel John Birch using ‘Roaring Meg’ an example of which is on show at the castle.

Finally in one of my short cycle trips around the area I came across this pillbox over looking the Seven Estuary/River near Lydney Harbour. I always find these WW2 reminders fascinating when you come across them.

Well that’s it for now, more to come soon as I have several games scheduled over the next week or so.

Thanks as always for following along ❤️

Matt