Friday Night Napoleonics...Valour & Fortitude - Part Two - With Epic Figures This Time!

 Firstly, I must apologise to all regular readers of this blog for the incomplete state of the figures you are about to see. Our mate Chris has been on a megalomanic mission for 2-3 years to buy, paint and base several thousands of Warlord Epic Napoleonic figures from all the armies they do. He has even roped in other members of the group to help with the painting of them! The French and British collections are more or less completed, and he was supposed to be at last week's game to try them out with V&F but had a family commitment that got in the way at the last minute - so this week, it was all on. However, despite the YEARS he has been working on these, he hasn't actually finished ANY of the basing - the slacker! 😂😄

So, please excuse the bare mdf bases - everything else about this collection is really excellent, and I am sure one day, Chris will get around to adding a sprinkle of flock to them!

The layout - Brits (nearest) v French - 3 brigades each, (2 infantry and 1 cavalry) 2 players per side - John and me (Brits) v Andrew and Julian - Chris was "observing" - or interjecting with misleading rule comments - it doesn't help that there are two "official" versions of the rules - plus others such as Little Wars TV have their own "house" versions apparently (Chris has a bit of a Bromance going on with the guys at LWTV!). The result was occasional confusion as people consulted different versions and got slightly different answers!

Same initial set up from a different angle - I had command of the Brits at the far end, opposite Andrew, whilst John confronted Julian up this end.

Two brigades of highlanders in line!

One French Brigade in attack columns

An Old Guard brigade moving through a small village

As British C in C, I decided to replicate Wellingtons tactics, and defend the heights in line - and John positioned his command accordingly. On his extreme right, John had a small brigade of the Household Cavalry, who would go forward to make spoiling attacks on Julians French.

The French "coming on in the same old way"!

After some preparatory fire from the attached RHA, my cavalry charged the opposing French - hussars/light dragoons v's Cuirassiers....oh well, in for a penny.... surprisingly, I won the combat and the first of the three cuirassier regiments routed off the field!

Andrews two infantry brigades were stalled by some quite atrocious dice rolling - more than once, Andrew manged to roll 2 or even 3 ones, meaning the brigades could do nothing but fire!

The heavy cavalry of the Household Brigade smash into French infantry in line!

And off they f...... I mean, popped!

View down the table with the Household cavalry in the foreground, as the second French infantry brigade advances towards the hill in attack columns

On the British left flank, line after line of Highland infantry wait patiently for the French to get within musket range!

The French attack columns start to pick up some hits as they move ever closer to the waiting British lines 

Whilst the Household cavalry continue to make a nuisance of themselves on the French left rear flank

Another cavalry clash between The Scots Greys, supported by light cavalry, and the two remaining cuirassier regiments

My Jocks are well and truly ready to stop Andrew's columns in their tracks! It may be a Thin Red Line - but there are three of them in total!

And Johns adjacent brigade was also in a great defensive position

The climax on the British right wing approaches

Had to take a photo of this - despite the cuirassier having all the advantages in the cavalry melee, the Scots Greys and light cavalry pulled off a famous win - 5 hits out of 6 dice rolled v 3 hits out of 8 for Andrew - and that's AFTER he rerolled a couple of 1's because he is heavy cavalry!

A good view of almost all of the table - one of the six French attack columns advancing against John has already been destroyed.

The French CinC was looking pretty worried (note the red markers for failed brigade tests - he had about 4 by this stage)

The Brits displayed normal sang froid and stiff upper lip....

Andrew and I were ready to call the game by this stage (you can see the number of "defeat" tokens the French C in C was carrying in the image above - we Brits had a grand total of .... NONE!) - around 1015pm - but Julian REALLY wanted to put his attack in - he had lots of Fate cards that might help him break at least the first line of Johns redcoats......

But I had a good Fate card too, and handed it over to John - in the end, the two combats saw the Brits rolling 8 dice to the French 7

It was always pretty much a foregone conclusion - but nice way to round off the game!

The British commanders never doubted the outcome for a second!

So that's 2 from 2 with V&F for me - maybe I should stop now, while I am ahead?! The game did not roll quite as smoothly with four players and 12 brigades on the table, and finding some of the rules was a bit of a challenge because everything isn't altogether in the one place and you have to look at one table to tell you your troops are X and Y - then go off to another page to find out how X and Y affect the way they perform - and having 5 new players all trying to figure it out at the same time was more "messy" than when it was with just Julian and me last week - but the rules still seemed to hold up well and if we play them enough, we should start to remember some of the attributes etc, rather than having to keep referring to the rules at every second step.

We have a long weekend here in New Zealand now - Monday is Labour Day - so possibly I will look at doing a solo game either Sunday or Monday - I did not get around to it in the end last week.