AAR The Battle of Foz d'Arouce 15th march 1811

Just before Christmas Barry and myself were expecting to get a game in but he had to postpone then Christmas got in the way. Then New Year.... Then... well you get the idea. All the work was really done, we just needed to get together and play the game. Well we finally got the chance to play last Friday. The scenario is taken from the French boardgame supplier VaeVictis and the title is Fuentes De Onoro 1811 and comes with a dual language rule book.

The scenario starts toward the late afternoon, I take the rll of Ney as I try to get my VI Corps over the swollen stream Rio Ceira. Unfortunately I am already half successful in this endeavour. Wellington on seeing my forces split orders an immediate attack, neither allowing his officers to deploy nor Nay to either withdraw or reform. About 50% of my troops start the game disordered so I spend a lot of the first two turns just trying to re-organise on the spot. Not ideal when really you want to be taking advantage of the Anglo-Portuguese being somewhat out of position. The ground we are to fight over is quite full and will not allow easy movement and impacts a fair amount on Barry's greater numbers. I start the game with a strong hold on the main village of Foz d'Arouce but have not got any troops in the hamlet of Poisao close buy. This will allow the Portuguese easy access to the plains before my main force. The stream, acting like a river after heavy rains is to the back of the best part of my force South of it and as only two crossings are available, the bridge next to Foz and a ford passable only to Cavalry further to the east I really have no choice but to stand and fight with what I have to the south. Making matters worse, the troops on the North bank are under orders not to cross the river, they are there just to stop any Allies from crossing over.

Initial positions. I used a huge ziplock bag to make the river and stole my daughters crayon for the bridge and village outlines. Later I will make the effort to build terrain but at the moment it's all figure painting, but they worked! Have you spotted the lone Infantry regiment on the far right with only a few guns for support? Barry has!!!

A nice concentration of French troops, unfortunately the ones on the right will do no more all battle than reposition so as to make crossing the bridge impossible, whichever side you belong to!!

Over the hill and not far enough away! This is the right hand side Regiment I was talking about. In the distance is 5 regiments of foot and behind them to the left 4 regiments of horse. Now this is the first outing of these figures (all of Barry's army has been recently painted by him and he has done a great job on them and the speed he has done them in was fantastic. I believe he has found his scale). Aside from that back slapping, I would hope that these guys being new to the job would be a bit lax at coming up the hill. Well it seems not as he was soon challenging my position.

Their left flank (right hand side as we look at them) was no less impressive, both from a point of painting nor quantity! This force would have to try and win the hill off me. As Barry commented "You always get the hills!!" In the background is yet more troops awaiting their chance at the French. Seems I will have a busy day.

Back to the right hand side. This poor regiment is well out of command and started disordered which is exactly how he found himself several turns later as the Brits closed in on him. The guns could not fire in all directions and whilst they gave the one regiment something to think about they ended up being the first unit to be removed from the game after being hit in the flank. Barry is rather good at getting you into positions you don't want to be, but here he was handed the unit on a plate. I just knew I could not pull all back but had saved the foot regiment at the cost of the guns.

The next showdown was sure to be for the Foz, Barry was loath to attack it as the defenders get a +2 against most rolls and whilst I did not have the troops in the quantity that Barry had I was hopeful that this +2 and the guns supporting directly and across the Stream would help bloody the Brits nose.

Foolishly I had hoped Barry would drag his feet in the centre as both the above flanks engaged but he thought I was making for the hamlet of Poisao so quickened his pace. This meant my only reasonable sized force was really out of position on the plains. Suddenly it was defending itself from 3 directions and just as the British horse had set up on the flank. I was in trouble all right. To my surprise Barry through in less than everything he could. In the first attack he had managed to push back a regiment that in turn disordered two other units as these were forced sideways by the original target. As I was not the player with initiative I did what I could to re-order my troops then I bid high to be the tempo player. This worked and whilst I could not reposition I was now not disordered. This is a poor wrinkle in the rules, I go from one stage off rout to ready to receive whilst the winner of the action sits disordered in front of me. Well as I said he now had cavalry and declared a charge. This as could be expected failed to achieve more than throw me into square and the musket fire did plenty to further disorder the cavalry, these fell back with two shaken levels. However this was no problem as it allowed Barry to again charge in with yet another regiment. Now the Cav came in from the flank so the follow on attack was from the original front, a quick debate about can I fire? The rules don't say I can't but would I be able to re-load? We both said no but miracle of miracles neither am I in square, I take them at the halt without firing a shot but throw him back in disorder. This was really to much, I should have penalties of some kind, but the rules do not cover this. Another strike against the rules as they stand I am afraid.

So my right flank stood when it should have been crushed, stands to reason then that the original attack on the left should carry the day when it should have been repulsed. Both separate attacks forced the defenders back with two levels of shaken! I really did not see my holding out and with the stream close behind I expected to loose the lot. I had charged my Hussars (newly painted and not yet sent to the painting comp for scoring no less) but these were bounced back in some disorder. Again I was looking at the probability of trying to swim back to Spain.

I rallied back the Hussars to just one level of Shaken but with Foz about to fall I could not see how I could do more than make for the ford and write off 50% of my force. I.E. all my units South of the stream except two regiments of horse.

Barry had played well with his troops and had not the rules helped me out with a chunk of rules not being present he would have been looking on a field of wrecked French.

As for the scenario, it ported over well to a figure game, though not as an equal fight. It's not a battle the French can win as such, but this is fine if you approach the game in that frame of mind. We did have points for various objectives and I am sure if I had played it out differently I could have done better that send my best formation into it's destruction. I would be happy to set that one up again but possibly with a few tweaks.

The rules themselves Polemos Napoleonic General de Division did not stand up so well. Don't get me wrong, whole sections really work well, and for me bring a good feel of Napoleonic warfare. But it's what is missing as much as anything else that stands out in these rules. Where is the canister? sure I get the lack of stand off musket duels but so little exchange happens it's as if none did happen. This has lead me t have a crack at putting a set together using Polemos as a starting position but removing the Tempo stage and replacing the command system. I know what I want, now I have to try and get it down on paper.

Thanks goes out to Barry, it was a fun game as always, we just now have to learn to get our noses down and play faster to get right to the end as this could have gone on for a couple more turns to give Barry a total victory rather than an obvious one.

Polemos General de Division out for a test drive.

Having bought the rules and painted up enough French units to give my Prussians a game all progress with the Naps seemed to grind to a halt as I shifted focus to painting the 15mm. But with Barry building his Brits up it gave us enough of a push to get round to getting a game in. In fairness both of us have wanted to play but with both of us busy this last three weeks we have not had the chance.

At last we now had time, figures and rules, so what about venue? As we were both free in the day we decided to use one of the tables at a local shop. More on this in a future post once I get their permission to advertise the fact. What I will say though is that the tables are all set up and you have free use of any terrain you could wish for (though they have little in the way of 6mm they have plenty for 15+mm) this was not a problem as I had took plenty with me. All this for no charge, what a great service.

I had already had a short few turn primer play with both forces and this put me at a rather large advantage for the day. I had set the minimum number of units at 24 which I hit on the nail for the French and went over by about 6 for the Prussians. This just tells part of the story though as troop type, quality and number of formations can make the smaller force more powerful. I as the French had just three commands to the Prussian 4 which in real terms means the Prussian has a 1 pip advantage pre-roll (1D6) each Tempo round. Something that came into play later. Rather than plan out battle lines we each just placed as we felt fit and then looked at what the other guy was doing. After all this is supposed to be all about learning the rules as both of us had reservations regarding parts of the rules and another rather more experienced Naps player had played them once and threw his copy away, though he is prepared to try again.

Ready to go, Prussians to the left are spread in an almost single line along the whole frontage whilst I was using the two woods at each end of the battlefield as flank protection and had units in reserve to counter any move around them. The rules will reward a reserve as they should and Barry did start to generate one as the game progressed.

The tricky bit (and bit I liked before the game and loved after) is the Tempo Points. Nothing moves without Tempo and you get a single point per sub-general + 1D6. Given that I had three and Barry four sub-generals this meant that D6 could really swing it and indeed it did. But it is how you deal with the swing that makes the difference. Once you have your Tempo you then bid some of them for the honour of moving first. Early rounds mean nothing but later on you may really want to go first, especially if you went last on the previous turn. Who ever had the first move the previous turn wins a tie so once Barry had the initiative he sat effectively on a two point cushion. But on the other hand Barry had spread so wide that he was forced to pay double Tempo to order his flanks. Not an issue early on but as the battle developed he had to choose which flank to leave hanging. The great thing is early on you seem to have plenty to go round but once the battle fragments suddenly you just never have enough. This will reward the player who keeps a reserve of fully formed units and the player who will take the time to re-form groups of units back into linked units (groups of three are most economical). So with all set up in we dived.

Due to setting up to far apart the early turns zipped by in a series of moves, this was good for two reasons, first it got us used to Tempo and the bidding (not to mention how each of us bid) but also allowed for us to make changes to plans etc. I was expecting the Prussians to come out and fight to use their greater numbers and when they were slow to do this I moved my left flank infantry off the hill to try and temp the Prussians down off theirs whilst moving my 4 regiments of Hussars from my right, across the front of my whole army to join the forces on my left. Meanwhile the extreme flank force was moved behind the wood to attack the Prussian right flank which was now using the same woods as myself to pin a flank.
The idea really was just to get Barry to weaken his forward force by forcing him to react to this force as all I had up front was a couple of raw Battalions. Due to the slow running of the game to this point though I decided it was worth closing especially as I had two more fresh units to take over once the fight had started and Barry just had these two units in position. On the other flank I had offered up a lone Battalion to the Prussian Ulans but Barry was at first refusing to engage then as the opposite flank was under attack he just did not have the Tempo to react.
Mixed results on the first engagement. Barry closed to firing range as the second player then won Tempo and blastered off with his muskets. I had really made a mess trying to get Tempo and did not have the two required to attack anyway (I was out of command radius) so not only was I shaken by his first volley but unable to fire back!! Barry gets Initiative again and blasts away again but by now he no longer has the first shot bonus but scrapes a second shaken. I drop back and have his commander join them to steady them. Meanwhile I had failed to have any effect with musket fire back and so threw in a charge at my next opportunity routing his raw regiment and setting off in hot pursuit which had the effect of getting a very lonely Batt behind the Prussian line but not half as lonely as the now surrounded French Batt that had been successful to this point, now Barry was falling back with these guys as fast as possible, his flank was now turned.

The price of failure, a Prussian Batt is routing away, routers never come back in these rules and with only two levels of shaken you need to consider pulling back units with one level if it's likely they will receive more levels in the coming rounds.
By this point I had by Cav in the middle and charged just one regiment, the idea being once it had been repulsed I could charge the same Batt with a fresh regiment breaking the first line up and follow up with the Infantry and by then recovered Cav. Well it did not go that way, the Infantry rolled badly in reaction to the charge becoming shaken. The shaken level made their fire ineffective (by the one pip for being shaken!!) allowing the charge to go in. The Inf Batt broke, routing through another Regiment causing this to become shaken but somehow my Cav did not pursue (rolled a 1). I still lost Inactive the following turn but with nothing but the shaken infantry able to fire Barry was not able to harm my Cav who then charged the shaken Inf Batt.

The Inf on the left turned to be able to fire on my Cav but my charge went home before they could fire hitting the shaken Batt and putting this unit to rout. I caught up with them and dispersed them on the field. The centre right of the Prussians was now looking a little ragered as I was still poised for more attacks.

By no means was the game over, Barry had plenty of troops to plug the gap but he was outflanked on his right and his lack of a real reserve would effectively have caused him a few problems which was compounded by my being behind his right flank and able to reduce his ability for that wind to withdraw. In the picture above the one Regiment behind the long line is French, as is the units in small clusters. The long line is Prussian and is likely to be very badly mauled. We called it at that point as we had got what we needed from the game.

The rules seem to work right and gave a flavour of the game. I would say 24 units is about right for this part of the rule book but jumping to the larger battle rules seems to triple the required figures which is a big jump. I still have issues with the fact that units are on the rectangular strips and long to see French columns and would be happy to rebase all to the larger square bases and just allow lines on some columns on others, but that is for another day I guess. The rule concerns were for the most part smoothed out with play and we will certainly give them more goes and I think stick with them unless someone shows us something better. On the flip side of the coin the figures I have yet to paint most of the infantry will go on double bases as I feel I have enough infantry to fight under these rules but given Lee has a massive Allied Army I can see the need for some double bases added to the collection.

Next up Barry and I plan to try out his 20mm Roman V Dacian or Gaul using Impetus Light, stay tuned.

Rules Rule RULES!

OK close to the end of my playing days I bought a copy of D.B.M and the army lists. Well I would say a few years before I stopped playing but only right at the end did I base up an army for them (and then sold it one Partisan, many many years ago). Well what I am trying to say is that for Ancients we played 6th Edition and for the Naps a rather poor set of computer rules. The one thing all our rules had in common was that they had scant illustration (mostly line drawings) and cost well not a lot. Now I am back into the painting habit and wanting to use what I do paint I have started the rather difficult job of sorting out rules to play by. This is easier said than done, it seems we have a wealth of rule sets to choose from and each set has fans and detractors.

The first set I purchased was for my 6mm Napoleonic armies. Being able to look at part of them on line and in the flesh at The Other Partisan helped me decide to try them. The rules are fairly straight forward and come in two parts, one for small actions and the main set for really big games. Well having read through them a number of times and tried a few turns I have yet to be convinced they are for me but neither am I put off them. I have an old wargaming friend who was around the other day who hates them having just used them once. The main problem is that they don't really feel over Napoleonic, kind of lacking enough flavour but again it was a basic play and we will see after a few more plays, we hope to get a game in in the next week or so.

Next up was a set of rules for Ancients, Field of Glory has loads of supplements which some see as an evil others look at is as a strength. I saw a copy on E-Bay for a song and saw it as an opportunity. I got the rules yesterday and have had little chance to read them given I have started to paint a 48 figure Phalanx! What I can say though is the style of writing is very much like talking to a child, a small and rather dull minded child but maybe I can come to love that child, who knows? I have though ordered the army list book covering the army I own and the army I am building. I guess I may need to give these rules a good go.