As host Goya gallantly offered to Umpire, a position he most ably fulfilled by keeping a tight rein on the dice and chipping in occasionally with handy advice for the Prussian C-in-C. To help get us in the mood he flipped an ‘Iron Will’ token to decide ends, Tony won the toss and to my surprise chose to play the Prussians which of course meant I got the French and all those Guard units.
Here is my account of this great French victory (written from our Brussels HQ):
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| Initial positions from behind the French right flank (looking a bit sparse for the French who had fewer units but lots of Guard ones). |
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| And the same from the Prussian left flank (there were a lot of Prussians). |
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| My own unit of Young Guard about to occupy the Churchyard which they kept possession of for the whole game. |
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| Blucher and Gneisenau calmly survey the battlefield. "Vorwarts" seems like a good idea! |
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| Unable to attend in person, Wellington sent his tree however this ended up on the French side - a bad omen? |
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| By playing a rather nifty Tactical Card I was able to quickly occupy (and keep) all but one of the town hexes which gave Tony something of a headache and me 2 VP's. |
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| The Prussian tried to push around my right flank (via the woods in the foreground) but were thwarted by my artillery. |
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| Tony had more success on his own right flank by pushing forward his infantry and cavalry (great to see Goya's S-Range cavalry in action again). |
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| As you can see my infantry are in a bit of a pickle - 4 red tokens and they're off. Eventually though by counter attacking with my own cavalry the Prussians were halted and then thrown back. |
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| The 2nd Silesian Landwehr gave a good account of themselves in this their first scrape (the front rank was made up of S-Range figures from Goya's collection as I'm still painting the command group). |
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| There's something wrong with the rules however as these Prussian infantry somehow managed to blow away the 2nd Guard Grenadiers - still can't believe that happened! |
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| And more amazingly the 1st Silesian Landwehr managed this dice roll to obliterate a French unit. Perhaps not so surprising when you think of their track record. |
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| However, despite these isolated successes the French were never in danger of being ejected from Plancenoit and in the end it was a pretty convincing win for the French. |
It was an interesting game that sparked a fair bit of debate during our coffee, biscuit and cake debriefing session. Goya felt that the game was somewhat stacked against the Prussians while I think possibly Tony and I thought we’d need to play another game before deciding on that. It’s a scenario that perhaps we should revisit in the future.
9 comments:
Perhaps it would even it up a bit if the Young Guard have to stay in reserve until the Prussians capture the church (or two other buildings) and the Old Guard if they capture it (them) a second time? It would create a more back and forth dynamic to the game like the real action. A few more close ups of the troops would be nice especially the S-range stuff which I’m not too familiar with.
I would not expect anything less from the Silesian (Guard) Landwehr!
Your photos are always better than mine - we must talk about that. My camera is not exactly an idiot, but it seems to do what it wants, whatever I do, so it's kind of an idiot. I'm delighted that you captured the demise of the Old Guard unit - that was one of my photographic failures. I may borrow that picture for my desktop wallpaper - my people will contact your people about payment.
Rob's suggestion for phasing the arrival of the Guard is interesting - it has the appeal that it means the beggars might not have arrived at all on Saturday, which has a strong appeal, so I'm having difficulty seeing past that. To be honest, I prefer scenario rules which make it unlikely that things happen at the wrong time, rather than enforcing the sequence, but the idea is certainly worth thinking about.
But never mind all that - it was an excellent day, and we should leave the detailed analysis to the historians of the future. The Prussian staff consider that the high spot of the action may have been the iced gingerbread during afternoon session.
I can't help thinking that there was perhaps a little too much Plancenoit and not enough manoeuvre space - this is not what Siborne's map looks like. Nevertheless, what a magnificent spectacle. I love Goya's S-Range Prussians.
Best regards
WM
A splendid looking game... lots of lovely shiny toys ...and that was an impressive force of Prussians
All the best. Aly
Very nice indeed. I noticed there are some Minfig Lutzowers as well.
I have a copy of C&C and I it has got me wondering if I could use my classic Napoleonics on the board game map instead of the tiles My son likes Battle Cry so this my be a way to get him gaming using figures with his old man.
Certainly makes for excellent spectating from afar.
I like these rules. I love the buildings. What is their provenance, as we don’t say in Vienna?
Archduke - the buildings are a mixture of Hovels 15mm and ceramic gift shop types from Tony's collection. The 15mm work well with 20mm figures particularly when your trying to fit them all in one hex!
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