Napoleon's Rules of War First Game of the 2nd Half

Well, it didn't take long to get the first game of the official 2nd half of the season in the record books. Played a game of Napoleon's Rules of War at a club game night the other night.

Great game put on by the rules designer - Charlie.  The scenario was the battle of Bailen.  I was one of the Spanish players commanding a division on the southern flank.  In this battle, the Spanish had seized the town of Bailen with one force while two other forces moved in to help reinforce them.  The two moving forces were also slowly encircling the French forces.  While the Spaniards held the town, the French were trying to retake the town whlile preventing the Spanish from encircling them.

The forces were pretty equal in that the Spanish had superior numbers while the French had a slight advantage in quality.

Here are some photos of the game:

My division deployed along the river just south of the French attempting to attack into Bailen.

My Spanish light and militia troops attack from the West into the flank of the southern French attack.  It ended up being a pretty successful spoiling attack.  It was never going to stop the French outright, but it did slow them down enough to hold out until night fall.  

The French in the south had to face south in reaction to my division at the river as well as north to attack into Bailen.  It was not an easy tactical situation.

The French move on Bailen from the south.  A small Spanish brigade attacks from the west.

Our valiant French foes! (l to r) Kevin and Byron were commanders attacking from the North. Charlie, the GM.  Ralph, commander here on the southern sector.

Overall, I had a really good time playing the game.  Charlie is making some changes to his rules to help make them a bit easier to play.  I think he is getting very close to finishing all of the edits for Version 2 of the rules.

A Game or Two of ‘Not Brother Against Brother’

This weekend I played two games of ‘Not Brother Against Brother’ with my friend, Ed M.  The first game was a practice affair with Ed's excellent Prussian and French figures.  The second game we used my British, French and new Spanish Guerrilla figures.  I have not completed basing of the French Foot Dragoons or the Spanish, but we used them anyways because we wanted to try out some new troop qualification stats in the game.

We used Ed's Napoleonic adaptation of the very fun Brother Against Brother rules system.  He has really tweaked the base rules to give it more of a period feel and to also clean up what we find to be some inconsistencies within the rules themselves.  These two games gave us reasonable results with no game situations running outside of what could be 'expected'.

The results of the games were both a draw, but we were playing more to test new rules than to really try and gain a clear cut 'victory'.

Here are some photos of the first game:

And some pics of the second game featuring the new troops:

All in all it was a great couple of games.  I am looking forward to playing some additional games with my Napoleonic troops in the near future.  I also am looking forward to maybe tweaking the rules for my War of 1812 collection.

May Game Night

   I played in a great Napoleonic wargame last night at our game club monthly game night.  The rules were written by my friend Charlie and they are called "Napoleon's Rules of War".  The scenario was Barrosa, 1811 and pitted French troops against a combined Anglo-Spanish force.  The game was really pretty close.  Unlike the historical battle which saw the Spanish fire one volley and run away leaving the British to defeat the French, our game saw the Spanish do almost all the fighting.  The French pushed the Spanish hard and they were just preparing to develop a major attack on the British position when we had to call the end of the game.

Overall, the rules play very well for a tactical Napoleonic game.  In our particular scenario there were about three divisions (six brigades) on each side and we got about seven turns in a three hour game.  I think the rules are very realistic in the game results.  They definitely favor a player who tries to use combined arms and deploys lines, columns and elite companies in the proper manner.

Here are some photos of the game and troops.

One of the French Divisions

The British Division including the 1st Scots Guards and Coldstream Guards

Two divisions of Spanish troops - The heroes of the battle!

The Spanish Cavalry detachment - never did get to charge!

French and Spanish troops duke it out in the major woods at the middle of the game board.

The French try to turn the British division off their strong position on a hill.

More of the combat between French and Spanish in the woods.

Charlie's troops are very well painted and the organization markers are very clear to the players.  I really had a great time playing this game and I look forward to the next game.