Australian Napoleonic Kreigspeilers Congress 2011

The 'Gong posse was invited by Matt Bluewillow of the Goulburn Valiant Stormers wargames club to reprise our Albuera game originally featured earlier on this blog at their Napoleonic Congress. This was a great honour for us but personally I wondered if my rather functional terrain was up to it! Fortunately Mark offered was 'volunteered' to do the terrain, and as you can see did a great job, attracting many admiring comments.

My other worry was lack of players, since so many of our small group seem to be developing lives outside of wargaming these days, the ingrates! Didn't they realise the pinnacle of recognition that an invite to the Goulburn centre of wargaming excellence represents in New South Wales? Clearly not!

The consumption of fine wines did not noticeably detract from the standard of tactical thinking exhibited....

However Chris, aka the Cardinal of Hawkwood, kindly offered to participate, and fortunately a further 3 kind gentlemen from the more exclusive quarter of Sydney also joined in, and, moreover, provided lashings of fine Australian wine to boot! How good it is to wargame with the quality!

Since the game set up, scenario and orbat were similar to our previous game, we won't go over old ground. One difference I was glad of was that rather than use my old Minifigs Austro Hungarians as the Spaniards, Matt was happy to lend his beautifully painted Front Rank Spaniards to led a touch of class to the game.

Matt's Spanish, led by the good Cardinal, hold the line.

Other than that the game went very much as before, albeit rather more slowly as we used the opportunity to introduce the Cardinal and the Sydney gentlemen to the mechanics of the Black Powder rules.

So once again I played General Girard, attempting to execute Marshal Soult's outflanking move, ably assisted by Richard, Ralph, and another thoroughly nice chap, whose name, in the heat of battle, I am embarrased to say I forget. Still, yet another camarade gained in the service of the Empereur!

Across the battlefield we faced Bryan, now something of a Black Powder veteran, at least by our standards, assisted by  Mark in his favourite role as cavalry commander, Chris commanding the doughty Spanish, who once again fought as stolidly as their historical counterparts, and Gary leading 2 of the British infantry brigades.

I think it speaks volumes for Black Powder rules that these newcomers to the rules picked up the play very quickly and were able to think and act tactically very early into the game, for example setting up assaults, or organising defences, with the optimum number of supporting units whenever possible.

Evidence below that Bryan, CinC Anglo-Portuguese, who arrived and would be leaving by motorcycle, stuck to coffee. Certainly some clear thinking was exhibited by the allied players who rapidly stablilised the shaky start to the battle they had been placed in by Soult's outflanking move.



Further images of this game, and the ANC weekend in general, which featured several interesting and visually stunning games, can be found on the good Cardinal's site here:

http://wargameraustralis.forumer.com/the-congress-weekend-photos-t2174406.html

A Spot of FIBUA!

Warlord Games Plastic 1812 Russians - 2nd Bn First Smolensk Regt.

Today some of the 'Gong posse and I got together (ain't flex time a wonderful thing!) for a Napoleonic bash, the main purpose of which being to introduce Bryan to Black Powder rules. Bryan is a dab hand at Hail Caesar, BP's stablemate, but is something of a Napoleonic newbie, so I wanted to put together an interesting and fluid scenario for him...The second motive was to show off my latest painting efforts, the recently released Warlord Games 1812 Russians. 

A third object of the game was to test BP's approach to fighting in built up areas, which back in the day used to be known as FIBUA, although its probably called something different now...

So it is Spring 1813, and the Coalition of Russians and Prussians are attempting to find and fix the French, and vice versa. Overall the Coalition have a slight edge in both Infantry and Cavalry, but across the table width two smaller forces meet equidistant from the village of Kleinbierdorf, while much larger forces are approaching along the narrow table edges (these two forces don't get to join in until move 3). Thus the aim was to have a series of occupations and assaults on the village as more forces arrived to join in the stoush...

Relieved Calpe Prussian gunners relax a little as their Minifigs Russian main forces shows up in the nick of time

As far as national characteristics goes, for 1813 the French were limited on cavalry, and the young conscipt infantry would be unreliable in line. The Prussians had similar characteristics, and again both shared excellent leadership values for their commanders, averaging about 8.

Doug's Prussian Bde - Calpes augmented by the 2 Warlord Games Russian Bns

The Russians, however, had poor leadership values, averaging 7, some rising to 8 when giving Attack orders. To my great surprise however, Mark managed to overcome this disadvantage to move his masses swiftly to the aid of the Prussians in the village. Clearly the Russian staff had gone easy on the vodka the previous eve - the advantages of playing mid-week! In order to reflect the Russian Infantry’s legendary toughness and ability to absorb casualties, we tried John’s idea of giving them a +2 bonus when taking a Break test.



Horny handed sons of Holy Russia's soil - Well 'Ard!



As the game progressed, Doug’s Prussian smaller detachment on the table width beat its French opposite force across the table to reach and occupy the village, and easily beat off my early and uncoordinated attempts to evict him.

It would take a coordinated approach by Bryan, John, and James to mount an assault of the village with a real chance of success. Black Powder gives troops defending a built up area a +3 Combat results advantage, as well as the usual cover and morale bonuses, so it was clear that for an attack to succeed, an assaulting Bn would need to have all three possible supports in place, not an easy thing to achieve while losing casualties and order to constant canister and musketry fire! Nevertheless, at the very last move, #9, the French team managed it - so would the assault succeed?

No, despite a fierce fight the French failed to fight their way into the village, and Mark and Doug won the game.

So I succeeded in showing off my Warlord Russians, and the lads all made suitably appreciative noises! As far as testing BP's FIBUA characteristics, not as open to sweeping attacks and counter attacks as I had hoped, but this is probably more down to inexperienced tactics than the rules themselves, Bryan and John were confident that an attack on two axes would have done the trick. As for whether Bryan was impressed with the rules, we shall have to wait and see, but I think we all had a lot of fun....