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