Peninsular War : Soldiers of Napoleon Take Two

Seem to have a lot of battles booked in at the moment as we slip towards Christmas. Yesterday saw a second run out for the Peninsular using Soldiers of Napoleon. Learning from last weekend it was a more modest setup with two infantry Brigades each side with a supporting cavalry brigade. We randomised the arrival of reserves as per the rule book. With lots going on I didn’t take too many photos.

The first British infantry brigade arrives in March column, seeing the french in the distance !

Nearly all the reserves arrived quite quickly, this shot shows the position after several turns (in fact lunchtime) the British have formed out into line, skirmishers are trading shots together with artillery from both sides

The french begin an advance down their left, in attack column again supported by artillery

Both sides have sent cavalry down the road and for some time they stand off against each other.

After lunch we made a few changes to the rules see thoughts below. The British guards are ordered forward to open up a volley on the french supported by skirmishers from their Portuguese colleagues they break the leading regiment. 

Cavalry on the British left continue to spar with each other but the British light dragoons fail to charge in on three occasions leaving the Hussars to fight on their own. 

The British are now pushing forward on the right as well, shrouded by skirmishers

I didn’t take many photos until we called the battle to an end. The British are winning on their right, but their central Brigade has been completely broken

The cavalry fight remains a stand off.

A fun battle and once again a real joy to get my Peninsular collection back into battle. We kept a record of VP’s really just to see how this worked out 32 vs 11 if favour of the french ! 

So some thoughts on the rules as we played them. Firstly the rules clearly work well for this scale of battle rather than the larger affair last week. I like the card activation and the fact that each card has three potential uses/activities works well giving lots of options. The mechanics of game seem pretty straight forward and easy to master, you won’t be rolling more than a few dice with perhaps 2 or three modifications which increase or reduce the number of dice you roll rather than the target so simple. The gradual collection of disruption seems to work until units break and flee the field, we do need to get to some form of conclusion after all. Stats for units are pretty easy which again makes picking up the rules easy. The cards would definitely allow interesting solo play if you were that way inclined.

What didn’t quite click for us….the ability to only order each unit once per card seems to create a slightly stilted game. No moving and shooting no sweeping advances etc… and this is what we amended for our afternoon session which seemed very sensible and created a more dynamic feel to the battle. The only limitation we placed being no more than two shots. Secondly the cavalry formations whilst probably historical don’t feel right, so we would in future swop the lines column of attack bonus around for cavalry. This may be an issue with the size of my units which are six bases but it makes cavalry totally unwieldy when you want to make the most of a charge to order them out into line. Victory points don’t really work in this sort of battle for me, obviously if you like that sort of competition that’s fine, but there is a slight danger of becoming ‘competitive’ as can be seen from the result we had the British were thrashed on VP’s the bulk of these came from an objective card being played gaining 6 points and the demise of the British infantry as the french rolled very high whilst the British rolled very low when french units were removed. Finally issue was the ability to roll off hits on a simple discipline test for most units this is a 4+ so effectively 50% chance. Our feeling was to give a little more dynamism to only allow units for ‘save’ excess hits over 1. Ie when you take one hit you take it when you take 2 or more you might be able to save one. We found units just stayed around too long saving skirmish hits rather than these potentially building up slowly, forcing the unit to either withdraw or get stuck in.

There are a few clarifications I need on the rules, and things which feel a little odd for example cavalry still being able to charge when they are disordered but it kind of works both ways. All in all we enjoyed the battle and the rules and they work as a set of rules for smaller battles, giving a good feel for the period, we will certainly use them again, but it will be something else for those larger battles.

Thanks as always for popping by more than happy to answer questions on the rules. We didn’t use the terrain generator or tactical position stuff.

If nothing else the pictures are ok 👍