Napoleonic G-de-B

Period: Napoleonic, Rules: General de Brigade, Players: British - Adrian, Prussian - Guy, Saxon - Rupert, French - Robin. Held on: 8th Feb 2010.

The French with their Saxon allies decided to stand their ground after occupying a village and a farm and the land inbetween to face the British and Prussians from a position of strength. Dense woods effectively split the army in two, but with plenty of space behind to join each other if the attacking Anglo-Prussian force focussed the point of attack on one or the other.


The French guard brigade deployed to their left and the less-prestigious Saxons to the right. The British infantry with a battalion of Portugese faced the guard, and advanced quickly, expecting the French to remain entrenched with their three-gun battery in support. As usual, the French defied expectations by advancing in three flying columns to meet the British, and after some swift skirmisher interchanges, all three columns charged at the British, deployed in line. Only the central guard battalion passed the test to charge, the other two being shot into retreat by the disciplined British volleys of musketry. The lone column charged home and and sent the British battalion backwards into retreat, from which it subsequently rallied. Testing for friends retreating then forced a morale check on the spearhead French guard unit, which, having taken significant musket fire, then broke and routed to cries of 'La Guarde Recule !'.


On the other side of the battlefield the four battalions of Saxons with a three gun battery and a small unit of cuiassiers in support faced the massed Prussian cavalry. After some manoeuvering on both sides which included the lead Prussian hussar unit being forced to retreat through skirmish fire, the leading Prussian units charged at the Saxons, the lancers getting home against the Saxon artillery without taking any casualties as the battery was low on ammo, and the Cuirassiers and an attached unit of Cossacks crunching into the lead Saxon infantry battalion, which managed to form square before the charge hit home. The unfortunate Saxon artillery battery were wiped-out to a man, but the subsequent pursuit test forced the lancers (fortunately as it later became obvious) to retire to their lines and re-form. The cuirassiers and cossacks won their melee, but not by enough to break the staunch Saxon square (second line at that !). Although they inflicted six casualties on the Saxons, the cavalry bounced-off and also retired to their line to re-form. The Prussians decided to keep up the pressure and sent in a smaller unit of heavy Dragoons against the Saxon square, but this lost the melee and also retired to re-form.

The consensus at the end of the night was for an Anglo-Prussian victory as all three French guard battalions were either retreating or routing.

Another really great game for all concerned, a lot of fun, and with quite a few double-sixes and double-ones to spice things up.

Words: Guy
Photos: Ian

New Venue Photos

That's Adrian (standing) and Guy (seated) by the way. They are playing a General de Brigade game.

Update

I had to write a little infill piece tonight because it has been a week since our last one.
A few things to report:

Napoleonics in 15mm: We are continuing our enjoyment of the General de Brigade rules this coming Monday by introducing a few version 3 rule suggestions (see the GdB site).

AWI in 28mm: Not sure how Bob has gone on this week, but I should finish the last 2 American casualties this weekend.

More Napoleonics: Rupe has started an interesting (and inspirational) blog here... http://napoleonicwargamingprojects.blogspot.com/
Well,that should be enough for now.

Cheers
Ian

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