Friday Night Napoleonics...Valour & Fortitude

 Just the two of us - Julian and me - on Friday for our first ever try of Valour & Fortitude. I brought along some of my Napoleonic Austrians and Julian used his historic "Willie" figures, purchased and painted when he was a mere lad -50-55 years ago!

This was a simple "meeting engagement" (or "line 'em up and charge"!) game, with two very similar forces opposing each other. Julian was already deployed when I arrived and sorted out my forces, so I had a slight advantage - I concentrated on my left with an idea of partially refusing my right flank and overwhelming Julians right and then pivoting on the hill to come at his second brigade from right angles.

Initial set up with the French on the right. The French hussars were in the centre, whilst the Austrians were on the extreme left flank (top left)

Some gratuitous eye candy shots follow - Sash & Sabre 25mm Austrian infantry

Old Glory gun and crew

Old Glory Brigadier

Three battalions of grenadiers in the woods.

My other brigade consisting of hussars, horse artillery and three battalions of infantry. The infantry all Sah & Sabre, the cavalry and artillery are Old Glory.

Overall CinC - also Old Glory 

As is my second brigadier!

French infantry in columns opposite my second brigade

The hussars made up the French first brigade

 

Line infantry and gun of the second French brigade

Two regiments of "Legere" in open order in the woods.

Above and below are the two French brigadiers

And these two gentlemen represent the French CinC.

Most of the French (less the Legere to the left), with all the Austrians deployed opposite.

I thought I would include a couple of views of the very civilized gaming area chez Julian!

The French got the first move, drew their "fate" card, had no shooting, and advanced.

I pushed my hussars forward straight away and forced the nearest French column into square - as intended! The following turn, the hussars charged into the adjacent unit, who were still in line.

An excellent start - the hussars beat the infantry, who failed their tenacity (I think!) test and routed off the field, causing the whole brigade to become "wavering" and take one hit each for any unit within 12" of the enemy - which was all of them bar the cavalry!

The Austrian first brigade, led by the hussars, move forward on the left.

The French reacted with a counter charge by their unbloodied hussars.

Amazingly, the Austrian cavalry was victorious once again - you need a 4 to hit.

A turn or two later and the French hussars had also failed a tenacity test and departed, but the Austrians were dominating this flank, with three battalions plus horse artillery facing only two remaining French battalions.

This is all very well, you say, but what was happening with the second brigade - to which my answer is - nothing! In V&F, you get a "free" activation on one brigade each turn; for any other brigades, you need to test. Basically, anything but a 1 is a pass, but I managed to roll THREE 1's in a row for my first three turns - shades of the archers in our previous Lion Rampant outing!

Eventually, however, the second Austrian brigade got into action - by the time I took this pic, the entire French first brigade had been removed from play, and the second was advancing towards the Austrian right. Meanwhile, the Austrian first brigade pivoted on the hill, as the three battalions of grenadiers emerged from the woods to form a crescent shaped wall of musketry, supported by two batteries of artillery.

A unit of grenadiers moves "at the double" to replace the rather knocked about battalion on the extreme right of the Austrian line.

The exchange completed, the battered unit withdraws. In V&F you can use an action to try to rally off hit markers - you roll 1 D6 per hit carried and need mainly a 6 (or 5 & 6 if a decent distance away from the enemy) I very luckily managed to roll 3 sixes for this unit and dropped their hits back down to 1!

We were reaching the climax of the battle after only about 90 minutes of play - outstanding value for money! The French (particularly the two line battalions forming an L shape) were taking a real battering from infantry and artillery fire. The light infantry too, had taken some hits from Austrian musketry.

Another French unit failed a tenacity test and routed from the field. Once again, a round of Austrian fire crashed out .....

And the casualties were enormous! Both the Legere above and line battalion below had to test - and both again failed one of their tenacity tests, leaving one single solitary French light infantry battalion and a battery of guns facing EIGHT Austrian battalions and two batteries!

Well, surprise surprise, I really enjoyed that game and these rules - LOL!! 😉😋 Not sure about Julian, he had to go upstairs for a lie down!

The rules did what they are designed to do I think - give a simple, fast game that provides decisive results quickly - hence a unit can go from perfectly good order to losing a melee, having to do a tenacity test, failing the test and routing off the field in a couple of minutes! It happened to Julian several times, whereas I only lost my hussars that way. I started with one extra battalion of infantry - but managed to keep them all on the field, whereas Julian .... well ......didn't! He was a good sport about it all though and I think he also appreciated the relative simplicity of the systems, because he is certainly keen to play the rules again. 

A very enjoyable way to end the working week and nice to have my Austrians on the field without numerous disadvantages piled upon them, like a lot of rulesets do. Given an equal footing, they performed very well indeed - I am not sure I have ever had such an overwhelmingly one-sided victory in a game.

Off to Barrys tomorrow for a WW1 game put on by Mark - so expect lots of lovely terrain and figures in my AAR, probably out on Monday evening here. Thanks for stopping by to read my ramblings and look at the toy soldier pics!