Field of Battle Napoleonics

Brent is desiring to run a short campaign and has done some great work in getting a few things pulled together. He’s created some maps and worked out some simple rules to “create” a handful of games.

So, last night was game 1 – 1808 in Spain – Britain and her allies against France. We used Field of Battle Second Edition for the game. I and Chris and John played on the French side while Greg (R.) and Greg (C.) played the British. Terry, also on the British side, could not attend.

A neat aspect of the campaign is that Brent secretly rolled the total number of Army Morale Points each side has for the entire campaign – then we as players decide how many such points we wish to take into battle (within a range). So, we decide our risk levels. Cool. In this fight, we each ended up risking about the same amount. The French played with 25 and the British played with 21.

I won’t go into all the gory details here, as you can read Greg C’s account here: http://wargamehistory.blogspot.com/2012/02/british-victory-another-fob-2-game.html. Brent will no doubt post something soon as well.  Let us suffice it to say that my force utterly failed at protecting the flank of the French army. Greg R. was as ruthless as he was masterful in his attack! I tip my general’s bicorne to his play Saturday night! Note that ruthless does not indicate that he was anything less than a perfect gentleman!

At add to the defeat, my commander was killed at a critical moment of the battle, leaving his men somewhat at a loss for guidance. Sadly, he was a well-rated commander – although a bit of a drinker (the model is sculpted drinking from a flask!). His eventual replacement was certainly not up to the challenge, though I doubt that even Davout would have been!

The overall French command for this battle was rated as Abysmal, so we can hope that the Emperor assigns more qualified generals! Perhaps he himself should come to Spain!

I

t was – yes, in spite of the inglorious defeat – a wonderful evening with good guys. Next month, as can be said with Piquet – is a new deck of sequence cards and a new bag of Army Morale chips!