Naps on the Table : Valour and Fortitude

The first of a flurry of games to be played over the next few days. Erik came for his first visit to the dungeon with a desire to test out the Valour and Fortitude rules with Napoleonics. Well that’s not a problem 😀

Rather than a historical battle the British and French forces, fairly balanced in size, would meet to contest an important village spread along a valley. There are three designated strong points along the road which would act as objectives to force both sides to get stuck in.

The french are able to activate slightly quicker with their light infantry capturing the Cross roads quite quickly.

As the battle unfolded it became clear the British were focussing on the other two objectives so the french gradually moved their artillery to the cross roads and then beyond to outflank the redcoats.

British light infantry capture the second objective, but are then assaulted by two Battalions of Swiss infantry, beyond them are two attack columns of French infantry driving the rest of the British light brigade backwards, but they are about to be flank by the British light cavalry !

After a few turns both sides receive reinforcements

The British reserves make it to the church, whilst beyond them French dragoons chase off the British Hussars.

The french cavalry takes a pummelling from the British horse artillery.

With time catching up the dragoons charge the artillery and are able to drive it away, but the french centre is beginning to struggle as the third British brigade including the Foot Guards and highlanders advance on the central objective. The Swiss put up a fight but are ultimate knocked out of the battle.

We had great fun and it was a close battle, hard to call a victory, the British had two of the three objectives but had lost a lot more in the process. That said the french cavalry was pretty much blown and their first brigade was done for. We called it a draw in the end.

Always fun of course to get the Naps on the table. If you look closely you will see the recently painted shaken markers getting plenty of use !

Thanks as always for popping by 👍

Matt ❤️

Battle of Leominster 1052 (no dogs hurt during the refight of this battle)

We moved back to the Welsh borders for our next battle. The Anglo Saxon chronicles have a fairly brief entry identifying that Llwellyn ap Gryffydd brought an army across the Welsh borders to raid. This force sacked Leominster in 1052 but was then attacked by an Anglo Saxon force led by Ranulph Earl of Herefordshire, supported by ‘mercenary’ French troops from a nearby castle. The welsh often employed Dublin Vikings in his raiding forces. Almost nothing seems to be really known about the battle although apparently there is a marker in the town of Leominster indicating the battle took place near to a bridge possibly over the town defensive ditch ?

The location of the battle from my recently purchased Anglo Saxon atlas (I knew it would come in 🙂)

The Normans in their castle, possibly Comfordt Castle ?

Dublin Vikings with some loot 

Llewelyn with his main force of welsh

The Anglo Saxons have positioned themselves to block to road back to wales, nominally the scenario was for the Welsh and Vikings to escape with the three items of loot, in reality both sides sought to slaughter the enemy !

The Vikings on the left are hampered by the ditch which is effectively a stream

The Norman’s with crossbows push out of their defensive position

Everybody rushes forward 😀

The Saxons head for the high ground to try and take the small wood

The Dubliners unleash packs of wild fighting dogs but they have little impact against heavily mailed Norman knights who unceremoniously dispatch them with axes 🙁

The welsh have the numbers but as to be expected are generally lighter troops

The Vikings advance is constrained by the stream

Welsh light cavalry get up into the woods and exchange missile fire with the Saxons

In the valley the two armies come head to head

Overkill by the Normans as their heavy cavalry chase off some more fighting dogs

The welsh have managed to break though the woods and threaten to outflank the Saxons

The Norman cavalry is restricted by the terrain so they send in their infantry who are bad treated by the Vikings 

Saxons and welsh, in this case one of the few mail armed welsh units protecting the baggage clash

The Norman cavalry looking for some space choose to cross the bridge

Crashing into some of the light welsh troops holding their left flank 

The slog of battle continues, in the distance on the hill the Saxons are retaking the woods

Eventually the Vikings ferocious of course beat back the Norman infantry claiming a victory on the left

But on the right the Saxons have pretty much overwhelmed the welsh and captured the baggage. The battle ends with almost nobody left to tell the tale !

A fine run out for the Dark age collection and an entertaining period we will return to in the future.

I’m still behind on posts but have done some painting……

Finally completed an army command stand for the British in Spain.

Thanks as usual for checking in

Matt 😎

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