Last night was my first trail of 'Soldiers of Napoleon', a wargame that other club members at Leighton Buzzard have been using for a while, and to ensure I had a workable list I had finished off Weber's Division that morning for my Austrians.
So, Neil did most of the heavy lifting, taking me through the rules. Thank you Neil, a great game and very enjoyable.
The rules themseles are well packaged and thought out. They contain lists for the Leipzig campaign and the 100 Days, with more promised soon. The fighting mechanics are very simple, 4+ to hit on shooting, melee depends on troop quality, artillery 5+, standardised movement, and the amount of actions decided by your cards, move/shoot or charge (or varient of such as reform, limber up etc). As units become worn or rally or break, you have to give your opponent victory points, plus certain cards also deliver victory points for objectives, which can be changed and fought over as the game progresses The cards you generate each turn is 2+n, with n being the amount of brigadiers on table, but there are only a finite amount of cards in the deck. Where it gets more complex as well as objectives, the cards contain the actions you need, or events you may want, or battlefield objective orders or a chance to rally. So to succeed you need the right combination to fall into four catagories on each card, and each card has three states you can choose one from: objective/special event, action points or rally. The active player has to choose which one they will use and then you may end up with a turn where you could use all your cards as events (it would not end well, but be hilarious), or you might forgo all other actions to rally troops across the table (but that gives away an amount of victory points per card, nasty, and certain cards will only rally certain levels of troops, so your conscripts are going to have a rough day), or you can try and get brigades to use two sets of actions a go (but it comes at a cost for the brigade). Careful consideration of actions is needed each go, but also bucket load of luck and a great deal of panache.
My initial thoughts:
For a first time game, it was obviously a well thought out rules set, with many nice tweaks. Scaled to 28mm in the rules, we played in 10mm with Pendraken figures, this requires a narrower table and measurement tweaks but these are clearly laid out in the rules, so no biggy there! Still great fun. It would be very easy to build a tiny super powerful army (yes, your Old Guard that is languishing in that toolbox comes into this catagory), but you would get comprehensively out played and not keep the initiative long. You could also build a MASSIVE army of Landwehr, but they would not stand up against much, and would fall apart quickly as militia do not get to rally that often on the cards! I tried using a historical formation, based on the 1809 Austrians at Espling, and it felt...
Right?
I particularly liked the random card driven activation, and the way your force is considered part of a much larger fight, so your division is a small, but probably crucial, part of a greater action fought all around youtr table. For my first game, I was at the disadvantage for several reasons, the first three are the old wargamers luck:
1) New army
2) Freshly painted army
3) First time using the rules
All this equates to a mental net -3 on any dice rolls, as an wargamer knows, and when you need 4+ (or 5+ with artillery) this is never good!
I kid. It was my own incompetence and Neil's amazing luck finished me off.
For anyone interested, my force (based round my 1809 formations) was:
(If your are not interested, scoll down a bit)
On the left:
Division FML Weber, IR18 Graf Stuart, IR21 Rohan, IR 28 Frelich, battery 6lbers
In the centre:
Division FML Hoehenloe, IR44 Bellgrade, IR46 Chasseler, IR2 FZM Hiller, IR33 Graf Sztaray, battery
6lbers
On the right:
GM Stutterheim, No.3 Erzherzog Ferdinand Hussars, 6 Rosenberg Chevauxlegers, battery 6lbers horse artillery.
In reserve:
Grenadier Brigade: Hohenloe, 1, 29, 28 and Hahn, 2, 22, 39, battery 12lbers.
plus
Cuirassier Brigade: GM Seingenthal, 2 Erzherzog Franz Cuirassiers, 3 Erzog Albert Cuirassiers
This was where my main mistake happened, as you are only allowed one reserve brigade, but more on this later...
The terrain had fallen as a rough horseshoe of settlements, with on eopen sector on my side of the table, and the rest rather well developed, plus two copses. Terrain is not normally this dense, but we got a
busy table.
I deployed as above to match Neil, he had a four unit brigade to the left, but one unit was jagers, supported by an artillery battery, four units of Bavarian infantry and a battery in the centre with obvious plans to take the settlement and stay there, and then, rather worryingly, four cavalry units with their own battery on the right which my two cavalry were facing!
We started moving, firing, and beating each other up! You can see where cards have already been played, I played two 'stalled unit' cards on Neil's cavalry in an attempt to slow the overwhelming numbers of light horse units until my cuirassiers could join the fun from rwserve, and in the centre and on the left, I advanced. However, to set the theme for the night, Neil had an awful lot of artillery special effect cards in his hand, all of which brought in artillery on my centre left unit (yes, the one with all the markers), which I could not rally enough off. This was AFTER it had tried all three rally attempts you are allowed an actiation. It had retreated, rallied round it's colours AND sacrificed a base from the unit to shake off three disorder markers!!!
Hold on, wasn't there a unit here a second ago? If you have more disorder markers than stands in the unit at the end of a go, your unit hightails it off table and routs! Plus I rolled an awful lot of victory points to gift to Neil as this lot went.
Turn 2, and shocked already, but I took, and held for the rest of the game, the initiative, and if you outscore your opponent's initiative roll each turn by a significant margin, it add to your victory point tally. Most of my VPs would come from this... So, my army's cavalry is set upon by Neil's cavalry. His hussars (3+ to hit on their charge) pile into my chevauxlegers, who are definitely not as good (4+). Ignore the unpainted hussar officer, I only realised I needed him about five minutes before I set off...
Much to Neil's disgust and my joy, my chevauxlegers win, forcing back the hussars in disorder and picking me up a victory point! This allows me to use my card to charge my hussars into the lancers (3 action points, one to shoot my gun, one to charge, one to get my chevauxlegers out the way). It was only now I realised that Neil had paid for 'fresh horses' to give him a plus in combat, and that lances give you 2 extra dice to hit on your first turn of melee in the game!
Leaving the lancers in disorder, my hussars are thrown back in disarray too. 
On the left, I occupy the settlement and eventually clear the two copses, and Weber's division meets the Bavarians. After some (almost completely) ineffective shooting from both sides, I picked up an event that would allow two of my infantry to charge home.
Despite losing, the Hussars on their next turn, rally enough hits to survive, then later in the turn with a useful event card of 'Fierce Cavalry Charge', hurl themselves back into the disordered lancers, causing an awful lot of damage and picking me up some decent victory points again. My Hussars are battered, but they have held off the threat of Neil's cavalry and stall his entire brigade.
On the right, my two charges go in, the left hand unit hits the extended line of the jagers, and does nothing, even with extra dice for being in attack column! They retire hanging ther heads in shame. My second unit clashed with a Bavarian line and forced them back in disorder. As Neils' brigade commander was in range of the melee, Neil lost a card from his next hand (another nice touch, showing generals being too busy dodging traffic to command effectively). Unfortunately, my infantry failed their motivation on the next turn, and refused to follow up on the disiordered and beaten up Bavarians, meaning an easy combat win was thrown away.
However, due to Neil getting lots and lots of artillery events, and having two batteries facing Hoehenloe's division, plus nearly all the 'off table artillery' events, he was able to blow away two more units from the division, sealing my fate. Neil had amazing luck with his artillery all game, while mine were obviously suffereing from dodgy powder as we could not hit anything. The Austrain attack petered out...
"But what of the reserves? You had two elite brigades on call" I hear you ask.
Well, from turn 3, you roll a d6, needing a 4+, so 50/50 each turn they would arrive..
Nope, four turns later, I broke and they still had not arrived, I felt like Canorobert at Saint Privat waiting for Bourbaki! These two brigades totalled 250 points out of my 700, just under a third of my force could not be bothered to turn up! That being said, Neil's artillery would have probably blown them to smitherines too!
Did I enjoy it?
Yes. It was hard work and slightly demoralising to see so many artillery batteries doing well for Neil when I could not his a barn door with mine, but he did say the previous three games they had been all but useless!
Will I play again?
Yes. My force will need a tweak (and stern words said to the reserve formations), but I think I have a force that will work.
"You know the problem in the club?"
"No one has French!"
One of us will crack soon I'm sure, and Xmas approaches...
Very enjoyable read - thanks.
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