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Saturday, 5 October 2024

Another trip to Nigel's

Last Wednesday Tony and I were fortunate enough to be invited to another wargame hosted by Nigel in his fabulous wargame room nestling in the Cumbrian hills. The scenario involved an alternate history of the Waterloo campaign where Napoleon was trying to pass Wellington's flank to the west forcing a battle at Mons.

I was given the Allied force comprising The Prince Of Orange and 'Daddy' Hill's commands, Dutch-Belgians, Nassauers and an awful lot of Highlanders. Tony had the French including an intimidating number of old Guard infantry and cavalry. Nigel umpired and carried out numerous mental arithmetic calculations to keep the game flowing using his house rules.

What follows is not a detailed account of the fighting but hopefully enough to give you a taster of an excellent game.

A general view of the table at the end of turn 1. Tony and I both elected to move everything forward. The barn in the foreground and the house on the hill in the distance were both victory locations.
Tony and I immediately did our usual cavalry thing of drawing sabres and rushing into action. Here you can see the Guard cavalry advance. The Horse Grenadiers to the front eventually went on to win the man of the match award.

Some classic looking ordre mixte here by the French. Most of the units in Nigel's forces are an impressive 30 figures strong.

Lord Hill advances his (mostly) Highlander division. These are a mixture of Qualiticast and Hinton Hunt figures.

The view from the French right-rear. My Nassauer's are defending the woods from the advancing French columns.

The French troops come on in the same old style!

But my lads are coming on too - not in the same old style!

General Perponcher rides forward to encourage the Dutch-Belgians - hurrah!

The cavalry fight in the centre of the field was to last for the whole game but eventually the French got the upper hand.

My Highlanders prepare to counter-attack the Old Guard. Meanwhile the Sailors-of-the-Guard have occupied the house and are very unsportingly firing down on us from the windows.

My centre holds firm...

...but things don't go quite so well on my right. We called the game after 7 turns and it was a victory on points for the French.

It was a visually spectacular game as well as being great fun to play and it was nice to get to use Nigel's lovely British and allied troops. Hopefully one day we'll get to see the Archduke's Austrian forces!

Thanks to Nigel and Tony and also to the Archduchess for her hospitality. 

16 comments:

  1. A splendid looking table fill with lovely looking toys…
    The big units are particularly attractive…

    All the best. Aly

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    1. Aly, it was a good looking table and the bigger units do make quite an impact.

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  2. Great that you got to play in another beautiful game! And good to see you posting, too!

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    1. Thanks Bob, we’ve been away for a bit but hopefully I’ll be back to weekly posts!

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  3. What a great looking game! That collection is superb.

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    1. Matt, Nigel’s collection is huge and mostly made up of Hinton Hunts!

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  4. Superb looking game, the big units look brilliant on the table, great collection.

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    1. Donnie, the table was groaning with figures although I did manage to thin out the French ranks during the course of play!

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  5. Most impressive looking battle, wonderful Napoleonic eye candy.

    Willz.

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  6. I agree, it’s a fabulous collection!

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  7. Very nice photos and report Ian - it was indeed a grand day out!

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    1. Yes it was, particularly so for the French!

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  8. Columns everywhere I look, I'll have to go and sit in a quiet room and arrange some soldier in nice straight lines, but that's just me. Impressive set-up though!

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    1. There were quite a few allied columns I must confess however at the end of play I think I did have about 8 units in line!

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  9. What a visual treat! Those big battalions certainly do look the part, especially the cavalry and the French in l'ord mixte, of course I am a bit biased in that regard. Keep these posts coming!

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    1. David, Nigel’s collection is a thing of beauty, not shiny but still beautiful!

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