Peninsular Napoleonic Battle : V&F (plus more)

Several things to catch up on this week 😀

Firstly following the recent V&F French Russian battles it seemed time to get my British onto the table with a Peninsular battle. Surprisingly I seem to have painted almost as many British as I have french ? So they are fairly well balanced. Steve would take control of the British as this was his first run out with V&F and he could defend, the French would be tasked with assaulting.

The French are assaulting from the two long edges, the British holding the higher ground which is cut by a ravine in the centre. Forces are roughly equal with five infantry brigades  and some supporting cavalry. Reserves for both sides are marching to the sound of the guns but will arrive randomly both in terms of timing and potential location.

A view from the other side of the battlefield, showing the British on the high ground

The main french army moves quickly to assault before the British reserves can arrive, opening up with their heavy artillery.

A smaller french brigade takes the church to protect their flank

They face the British light Brigade coming down the ravine.

The British see an opportunity to outflank the french and move off the ridge , the black watch leading the way

Playing a devious fate card the French light cavalry surge forward, catching the British light cavalry in march column and send them fleeing off the ridge.

The main assault pushes forward towards the ridge where the British foot guards await the onslaught ! On the left French dragoons arrive

In the same turn the British cavalry arrives and is sent to protect the rear of the British line from the marauding Chasseurs

The Foot guards don’t waver and prepare to receive the charge

The British ‘lights’ form into square to prevent the Chasseurs attacking them

The rest of the light brigade push forward supported by the Highlanders

Another fate card for the French Vive L’empereur sees the leading French brigade rush up the hill into the foot guards, needless to say the hold the first charge

Worryingly for the British the french dragoons are now on the move !

The Black watch are overly confident and get too far ahead of the rest of their brigade and take a serious volley they are quickly shaken and have to withdraw from the field (technically rout but we can’t have the Blackwatch rout can we !)

The British heavy cavalry charge along the back of the British lines to chase away the french Chasseurs it’s no contest

The headstrong British cavalry have to charge through and hit the french infantry, but they are tired and somehow (poor dice roll) fail to break through and are pushed back

More British reserve brigades arrive from the right

But they are matched by french arriving as well

The cavalry skirmish continues behind the lines with the French dragoons who are still fresh charging the British heavy cavalry 

At this point we reached our end time, the French Cavalry have broken through and the french infantry after a tough fight have seen off the Foot guards and captured one half of the ridge. Plenty of fight left in the British but a French victory on this occasion. With one British brigade broken and several shaken.

A good battle, great of course to get the British out on the table. I had reread the rules since the last game so attempted to remove the few errors we made. What this did mean is the brigades were actually much tougher than before even when they started to lose Regiments. We had started with 3 brigades each side and although by the end we were moving through turns quite quickly we both had reserves who didn’t really make it into the battle. For future games I need to ensure the initial troops get into battle quicker and the reserves arrive earlier. One option would be to implement a brigade collapse rule which might speed things up ?

I also played down at George’s  new delux gaming palace. We played what proved to be the last in our Smolensk campaign. George has already down a write up of the battle so really I will just share a couple of shots I took of his lovely Russian terrain.

The Russians would be attacking from the left, and if they could secure a win the campaign would be a major win for the Russians. So the fight was on !

Cautious Russian deployment as they need to overwhelm the German defenders not go in piecemeal

Costing 8 points it is expensive but the KV1e is a heavily armoured mobile machine gun even with an antitank gun the Germans struggled to knock it out

Ready to the assault the Russians have carefully brought up all their troops

With concentrated firepower the Russians got the upper hand slowly driving the defenders back. For one moment the Germans came back with a counterattack and suddenly it was  very close but the Russians pulled through for the win

The battle saw the return of Anastasia my Russian sniper girl. Here she is being awarded a medal for her performance.

So a campaign win for the Russians , thanks of course to George for setting up and hosting the campaign, very enjoyable and looking forward to the next one 👍

Been out and about in Penrith and visited this Iron Age site just south of the town

Only one standing stone remains in the centre.

The site is called Mayburgh Henge, the embankments were created by carrying river cobbles from the nearby river !!

That’s it for now, next up some painting progress and some castles as I’m currently touring wales visiting some of Edward I’s famous creations

Thanks for checking in Matt