Attack of the Old Guard Redux

 

I had my third game of GdA in a couple of weeks yesterday, this was with another new player (I am pretty new myself), so I again left out skirmishers. I think I have a pretty good understanding of the rules now and when I reviewed our game this morning, I only found one error (dispersed units cause the parent brigade to falter) and I have had to ask one point of clarification online.

I met David through the Stratégistes FB page, he had commented on one of my previous posts that he had an interest in playing some Napoleonics so we set up a game yesterday. We had initially planned to play at the Abyss but there was an enormous Age of Sigmar tournament planned for yesterday which we found out about 2-3 hours before our planned game......quick change of plans had David coming to my place. It actually worked out because I had the table set up before he arrived (Napoleonics is pretty complex and I find to set the table as well as to organise the troops takes over an hour), so we had more time to get introduced and play the game. David is mostly a skirmish player but had played grand tactical Napoleonics using the L'aigle ruleset as a boy with his grandfather.

I had used the Attack of Old Guard scenario from the 1815 source book as I had with P-Y. The only thing I changed aside from the skirmishers was to make all units line and to remove the casualties. This again worked well and the game went quite quickly, David grasped both the tactics of the Napoelonic Age as well as the ruleset quite naturally. So well, that he actually gained a marginal victory in the game. My third loss in 2 weeks to novices!

I took the Allies and David took the French, we got in 8 turns and had lots of action. I will not bother to post the OB, but I can highly recommend you purchasing the source book from TFL to get all the details. Some photos to follow to document some of the action.

The Set-Up

The battlefield, with the Allies to the left, with most of the troops out of LOS on the reverse slope.

The Emperor's daughters

The Brunswickers

The French  centre

French cavalry brigade on their left flank

Halkett's Brigade with attached RFA

The Nassau brigade 

The Game

A wholesale French advance.

Crumbling French brigade.

The Brunswickers smash into the Old Guard.

These 2 cavalry regiments wrecked havoc on the Allied right flank.

Successful Infantry Assault

Ending positions, I believe the French had 2 brigades on Infantry Assault and 1 brigade on Forwards Tasking, while the Allies had 1 brigade on Infantry Assault. we had been at it for 4 hours, we got in 8 turns which is quite good for a teaching game. The allies had lost 3 battalions, while the French had lost 2 battalions. A marginal victory for the French!

Another enjoyable game of GdA, I will look forward to the next with the skirmishers.