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| The battlefield |
Once again I played the British with one other player while three players took control of the French. The British had two brigades of infantry, one of light dragoons and one of heavy cavalry including household troops. The French had five brigades, a grenadier brigade with guard, dragoon brigade inc foot dragoons, infantry brigade, mixed cavalry brigade and guard cavalry brigade.
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| Location and Turn of Brigade arrivals. |
A bit of a slow arrival for the British saw the French almost get the positional advantage near the bridge although we did manage to get a tiny unit of rifles into one half of the central objective.
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| About turn three |
The arrival of both sides heavy cavalry saw some sharp engagements with initial success going to my household units before they started to come under french artillery fire and my recent poor run of save and break test rolls reared it's ugly head again.
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| British heavies arrive |
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| The heavies get stuck in |
In the end both sides heavy brigades ended up broken which left the French guard cavalry brigade and it's lancers free rein on this side of the table.
The final British infantry brigade to arrive also did so slowly but use of the "Follow me" command allowed us to get a light battalion into the other half of the objective.
The French grenadier battalions made short work of the British lines to their front, eventually, and together with the arrival of their dragoon brigade in the British flank soon saw this brigade break. This was despite a line battalion surviving three rounds of melee, alone in line, against supported charging French dragoons before withdrawing. This left the Grenadiers free to turn their attention to the objective. Initially they were forced into square by the British light dragoons and two battalions were destroyed by artillery and rocket! fire before they shook out and assaulted the tiny unit of rifles who found themselves evicted from the town into the path of some Red lancers.
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| The objective under assault from both sides. |
At this point the game was called, the British had two broken brigades with a third, the light dragoons, hanging on by the skin of it's teeth. The other infantry brigade was intact but it's light battalion was now cut off in the town.
The French had one cavalry brigade broken and the grenadier brigade was close as well but that still left them three intact brigades.
So overall another French win.
So overall another French win.
A fun game with the random entry points giving some tactical problems, especially for the British.
Nice fun looking game. I’ve had BP for ages but have never played it. How were the entry points determined? What’s in a brigade actually?
ReplyDeleteHi Stew, the entry points were determined by dice roll. First a roll to see which brigade was to come on then another for where. The umpire had predetermined points on the table that were allocated a number.
ReplyDeleteA brigade varies during the Napoleonic times depending on nation and period.
A typical British infantry brigade would be two to four battalions with maybe an attached rifle company or two and sometimes an artillery battery. A British cavalry brigade would be normally two regiments maybe with a horse artillery battery.
A French infantry brigade tended to be larger as they tended to be groups of up to three regiments each of which could have up to three battalions. Cavalry again two to three regiments. Both usually had attached artillery.
In terms of a result, I mean?
DeleteAnother nice-looking game Tony, although it seemed like an unfortunate end for those British rifles being evicted from a safe village into the path of some lancers. Did you call the game in the end?
ReplyDeleteThanks Lawrence,
DeleteIt was called as a French win, post edited to include this, as at best we couldn't see the British breaking anymore than two french brigades before they themselves lost a third and suffered a broken army result.
That's a true meeting engagement - organized chaos! :-)
ReplyDeleteYes it was a bit of a challenge.
DeleteHi Tony,
ReplyDeleteA good read. I was thinking about the my next scenario for my slowly (snails pace) growing Napoleonic stuff. It's a long time since I did a random entry point game. Thanks for reminding me, that'll be perfect for quite small forces.
James (olicana)
James
No probs, now back to painting some British engineers to use in your scenario.
DeleteSplendid photos and great looking game, impressive heavy cav vs heavy cav charge!
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Delete