15mm GdA - The French retreat from Waterloo through Genappe, pursued by the Prussians

Robin organised a 15mm General d'Armee scenario game based on the French retreat from Waterloo. This took them through the village of Genappe and over the 'bottleneck' bridge at the rear of the village.

In this scenario three battalions of Young Guard (Napoleon's unused reserve) plus a cavalry brigade were used to delay the pursuing Prussian cavalry, light infantry, and a British heavy cavalry brigade.

A very good game with some awful dice-throwing (and a couple of schoolboy errors) which meant the French were handed a marginal victory having successfully marched seven of the required eleven battalions over the bridge, with the Prussian light infantry hot on their heels. Lots of laughs, and thanks to Robin for umpiring as well.                                           

                    

                         The French stream towards Genappe in the distance

                           The Young Guard and some cavalry act as a speed bump

                           The massed Prussian cavalry in hot pursuit

                             Getting closer

                            French battalions crossing the bridge to safety

                       Prussian light infantry getting in behind the retreating French

**STOP PRESS** British blitz the French away from Hill of Arinez - GdA 15mm

 A scenario game, based on part of the Battle of Vitoria, Peninsula War 1813.

The French army were deployed and set-up to to defend the village and hill of Arinez, complete with cavalry reinforcements should they be needed.

French were Adrian, Steve K, and Bob, British were Robin, Norman and Guy.

The British moved forward quickly with infantry on the two flanks, and an artillery battery in the centre.

The British strategy was to advance quickly with the heavier force up the British right, push back the French, and then turn into the village and capture it, before moving on to the actual hill of Arinez.

Norman's infantry stormed forwards and quickly made contact with Bob's French left, using skirmishers, artillery and volley fire to force the French back, including a number of well-timed charges. This eventually meant the French lost two brigades.

Robin's smaller artillery and infantry centre, backed-up with some reserve cavalry, had slightly less initial success, but eventually forced Ade's French brigade to leave the table, and as the sun started to set, occupied the village after a short battle with the French occupiers.

Robin also saw-off the French cavalry.

On the British left, Guy's two brigades of veteran light battalions and 95th advanced through trees to the edge of the Hill of Arinez, and then up the rough slope to commence skirmisher and volley fire against Steve and Ade's defending infantry and artillery. Accurate and concentrated fire meant the British destroyed the French artillery batteries and all their skirmishers, and were preparing for the final infantry assault as the game ended.

The British won the game, having achieved three 'sauve qui peut' results and occupied the village of Arinez.

Thanks to Robin and Ade for organising the game, Steve K for his baking, and the rest of us for bringing along food. Lots of laughs and a great fun game.

Robin's battalion takes the village of Arinez

The British veteran light battalions inflict damage on the French skirmishers and artillery on the Hill of Arinez

Normans infantry brigades rush the Bob's French in the distance, while Robin's brigades prepare to face a French cavalry charge in the centre.

Steve's central brigade defends the village of Arinez

Norman's brigades get stuck into Bob's French.

Adrian and Steve's defenders on the Hill of Arinez await the British advance

The British light veteran battalions climbing the rough slope of the Hill of Arinez

The village of Arinez early in the game when all was quiet

Norman's forced march approaches Bob's French defenders

Yet another shot of Norman's battalions

British Grenadier and the impending deadline...

Blinking Flip!

I have only just realised, much to my chagrin, that we are actually in October, meaning that Targe is now less than a month away, and I still have "some" (many!) AWI Brits to paint. Adrian asked me the other week if everything was ready and I casually said "yeah, yeah, everything's in hand..."

How in the name of Christmas did I manage to lose a month...? In my youth I could, and did, regularly lose big chunks of time - there was that time when a weekend in Glasgow for a comic convention turned into a (somewhat hazy) month long stay (but that's a story for another time)

What to do, what to do!!!? first off, I think some kind of panic is in order:

"Aaaaaarrggghhhh!!"

Panic over.

Time for a pep talk, replete with the inevitable chastening cliche (or two): I've got to grab this problem by the scruff of the neck! There's no point in crying about spilt Lilt! That particular ship has not only sailed, it has reached its destination, unloaded, been re-fitted, re-loaded and is now on its way back...!!

That worked, I feel much better now!

Right, the plan.

First off, buy some more figures; nothing focuses the mind more than adding yet more lead to the unpainted Eiger of AWI goodness I already have! Robin has kindly agreed to pick up whatI need at the show in Derby tomorrow, so all being well I should have that on Monday. In the meantime, I have a free weekend to make considerable in-roads into my existing lead. The Hesssian Jaegers are just about finished, with only some detailing to do so I'll get them out of the way first. The 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers all have their basecoats, so a few highlights and a wash will sort them out.

Later Today... The army roster, and a list of everything to do..

Bob's Picton Project (Napoleonic GdB) Part II

Hi again,

In a slight change of plan I decided to, rather than just getting the figures for the first 2 brigades, order the figures required for the entire division; justifying this by telling myself that it made sense to have something different to paint, in this case the blue coats of the Portuguese, if I got tired of painting lots of red...
Selecting the British was pretty straight forward, with the only difficult choice being which pose to get! As nice as the firing line poses are, they don't, in my opinion, make for a particularly realistic set up on the table unless they're within musket range of the French, so with this in mind I opted for the, much more utilitarian, marching pose instead. So, on to the Portuguese, which turned out to be a bit less straight forward than I'd anticipated. Looking at the available figure choices at http://www.fighting15sshop.co.uk/ I was confronted with the option of troops in stovepipe shakos or troops in barretinas! At this point the sum of my knowledge of the Portuguese didn't go much beyond the colour of their coats. The lure of an easy paint job had me thinking "hell, just get the figures in stovepipes", but then the (slight) retentive in me thought "knowing my luck some (even more retentive) self-proclaimed expert, at a show will pillory my inclusion of stovepipe hatted Portuguese because they didn't come into use until 1813 , or whenever...." A quick flick through the bumper book of napoleonic goodness (Haythornthwaite) revealed that the stovepipe style shako wasn't introduced until 1811, possibly to regularize the silhouette of friendly troops at a distance (my mind immediately strayed to a drill sergeant holding up a large card with a silhouette of an Old Guard, "No laddie, these are not your friends..."). Anyway, back to the task at hand; it seems that Barretinas are the headgear of choice for my 1810 Division. They have coloured cords so will take more time to paint than the stovepipes but will, along with their blue coats, make them quite distinct from their British comrades. After this "taxing" exercise I was pleased to discover that they were only available in "order arms" pose, so I added 3x 30 man battalions to my order and that was that.

Next time..
I research colour schemes; facing colours, tartans etc..

Bob's Picton Project (Napoleonic GdB)

Hi,

As our group's current focus is on Napoleonics, and the General de Brigade rules, I thought I'd chip in with a bit about what I'm proposing to do, Napoleonics-wise.
Until a couple of years ago my knowledge of Napoleonics started, and stopped, with the Waterloo movie, and it wasn't until a couple of the club members mentioned the Napoleonic Principles of War rules that I actually took any real interest in the period. I decided, initially, just to "dip my toe" into Napoleonics, and picked up a couple of "easy" reads; Mark Urban's Rifles, and Adam Zamoyski's 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow. Both are great books, and I found myself becoming interested in putting together a wargames army for both the British and the Russians; unfortunately, the PoW rules weren't, for me, the greatest and failed to fire my imagination. So, for the time being, that was that!
After the initial interest in PoW had waned, we found ourselves playing AWI battles, using the British Grenadier! rules. Here was a ruleset that grabbed my imagination, and I was quite excited to discover that they were derived from a successful set of Napoleonic rules; General De Brigade. I ordered a copy, read through them, then set to convincing the others in our group that they were worth trying out. Our games so far have involved a mix of nationalities; Russians, Prussians, French & Austrians - with 2 or 3 players contribuitng all of the figures.
Anyway, the rules played as well as they read and I decided, after some deliberation and consideration, to start with a British Peninsular force - I reckoned this would give me a nice mix of troops with the opportunity to field some Portuguese Battalions and some Rifle companys as well as British Redcoats, giving me a nice mix of troop types, grades and uniform colours. From a miniatures perspective I was more than happy to go for Peninsular Brits - the small numbers of cavalry meant I wouldn't have to paint lots of horses (a pet hate of mine) and I preferred the aesthetics of the Stovepipe Shako over the Belgic shako - silly perhaps, but a definite consideration if you're facing the prospect of painting hundreds of figures...!
I managed to pick up Haythornthwaite's Napoleonic Source book - known affectionately in our group as the "bumper book of Napoleonic goodness", and borrowed a couple of Osprey titles - the most useful of which is Wellington's Army in the Peninsula 1809-14 from Osprey's Battle Orders series (thanks Robin). After reading this I've decided to assemble Wellington's 3rd division - The Fighting Division - as it was under Maj. Gen. Sir Thomas Picton circa February 1810. This was to be the core of my force, and I decided I'd research any cavalry and artillery that might have been attached, at a later date.
The organisation is fairly straight forward, and pretty much follows the pattern, as I understand it, of the rest of the Peninsular army.
Anyway, without further ado, here's my interpretation, in General de Brigade terms, of The Fighting Division.

CinC - Maj. Gen. Sir Thomas Picton

Mackinnon's Brigade

1st/45th (Nottinghamshire) - 30 figs
1st/74th (Highlanders) Light Infantry - 40 Figs
1st/88th (Connaught Rangers - "The Devil's own") 30 figs

Lightburn's Brigade

2nd/5th (Northumberland) - 30 figs
2nd/83rd - 30 figs
5th/60th Rifles - 3x Coys - 12 figs? (I'm still having slight difficulties following GdB's Coy sizes)

Champelimaud (Portuguese)

1st/9th (Viana) - 30 figs
2nd/9th (Viana) - 30 figs
1st/21st (Valenca) - 30 figs

I'm still figuring out the gradings for these troops, and the battalion sizes may well change as I do more research. I think though, that this division makes an excellent starting point whilst leaving room to add further units at a later date - For example, I know the Portuguese brigade had some Cacadores, the 12th I think, in 1812.

This division will be assembled using AB figures, and I'm hoping to stay disciplined enough to paint it up a Brigade at a time!! I have 2 battalions worth of figures already, and will be placing an order with Fighting15s for enough to do the first 2 brigades (and officers) over the weekend.

thanks for reading
Bob Mcleish