Napoleonics

Whilst my gaming and painting mojo has been severely lacking of late, at least I have still been enjoying the hobby by reading books, which I have always loved. With rather poor weather to put it mildly for the past two months, I have been racking up the pages read each day. Come the afternoon however,  I like to spend an hour or so watching tv as a bit of 'me time' before SWMBO returns from work. Nothing in particular and much depends upon what takes my fancy that day.

So a few days ago I was watching Youtube (hedonist I know!) and browsing through the Little Wars TV and alighted upon a few of their Napoleonic episodes, which piqued my interest. This coincided with a few fellow Bloggers putting up some Nappies posts, so I dug out a few books to browse and my interest in this period was re-kindled. Rather nice to have a bit of a 'spark' again after a rather fallow spell.

Now the only downside of Nappies from my perspective, aside from which rules to use, the column vs line debates, the uniform police etc, is really which Armies to go and which campaign? In contrast the Seven Years War is so easy in comparison. The LWTV chaps have a nice little piece on starting out which I found rather helpful as a guide, but it got me no further forward, but 'tis early days still. 

So whilst pondering whether to go for 1813-1815 Prussians (lots of interesting uniforms and troops types) or the Peninsula War (somewhat done to death this side of the pond but again lots of choice) I decided to actually get my butt in gear in play a game whilst this played out in my subconscious. I chose  a simple scenario that Norm Smith had put together to kick things off to get me back into the swing of things with Shadow of the Eagles, the excellent rules from my good friend Keith Flint. The game was set up last night and in a quiet moment this morning I actually got to roll some dice, which was great!

The Prussians are defending a small village with the French preparing to attack.

The Prussians line the edge of the village, which should prove to be a good defensive position.

Artillery cover the road and troops line the hedges.

The French come on in Column of Attack with a skirmish screen out in front.

The Skirmish Screen closes.

Firing erupts across the front.

Things are fairly equal on the right flank.

The same on the left flank.

Things quickly change and the French begin to suffer.

The French continue to suffer from Prussian firing, but dish out some punishment back.

A French unit routs and the commander is killed in the process.

The French right is on a parlous state, due to some excellent Prussian musketry.

It's all up for the French as...

...another unit Routs.

The Prussians pulled back from the hedge to help recover some hits and to avoid French fire.

Post Game Thoughts

It was great to get a quick little game in to get to grips with the rules and the period again after so long. All-in-all it probably took less than an hour to play. A few thoughts on the game:

• This is a perfect little tester scenario that Norm has created, with not too many nor types of unit, which speeded things up.
• I thing the new skirmish rules are a big improvement on what is in the book. I want to try a Light Battalion in the next game to see how they play compared to Skirmish Screens. The only thing I wasn't sure about was when shooting at the Skirmish Screen, whether those hits count towards the unit as a whole. I re-reading of the book will probably provide the answer I need.
• The BUA proved to help the defenders due to the -1 to hit, which certainly helped. 
• Both sides had above average shooting, with the Prussians edging it allowing them to get the upper hand. Even the Inferior Landwehr got the better of the French!
• Both sides made good use of Morale Saves to reduce hits, with honours pretty even.

What next? Well a few more games to get the basics sorted is the plan, alongside adding in a few more unit types and maybe an all Cavalry action to try charges etc. Then of course there is the question of do I add to the lead mountain with two new forces or just carry on with my MDF figures? Certainly the latter for the moment given my other projects, but I can see some purchases in the future, once I can decide upon a campaign and force to fight the French.