GdA-Mt St Jean Redux

This past weekend Graham held one of his gaming weekends. Scheduled for Saturday was a GdA game put on by myself; while on Sunday we had 2 Congo games, but more about those two games in my next posts.

Some months ago now, I put on this Napoleonic scenario at the Abyss to introduce the ruleset to some new players. It did not work too well as it was too large a game as an introductory game and it just did not work on a 6x4' table. I also had some a problem with a couple of the players, as they were not just that receptive to a novel ruleset. Three of the 4 players this weekend had played at least 3 games of GdA in the past and all were keen to play. Graham has also set up a 8x4' table which really made an enormous difference. I had travelled out to Beaconsfield on Friday to set up the game so we were all set to go Saturday morning at 1000h.

I used the same process for this 4 player game, with alternating the CiC for both sides. The CiC had to give at least 1 ADC to the other player on his side, unless he had 5 ADC's and then he had to give at least 2 ADC's. This works quite well, as each player gets to be the CiC throughout the game. Here is the OB, I added an ADC to each side and you may note that there is a lot of substitutions in the OB as I put in the actual units that I have.

So after a bit of chit-chat we got the game underway, I will explain the rest with photos.

Here are our players in mid-game. On the left side is Graham and Jean-Jacques playing the Allies and Iannick and David playing the French.

The French starting position with the Grand Battery in the middle. 

They were quite eager to get started.

More keen French.

The British from their left flank, they started most of their troops in line.

The French left flank commanded by Iannick, the multiple red beads indicate that they are charging on Infantry Assault. One of the Allied Objectives was to hold La Hair Sainte.....

.......which came under immediate threat from Donzelot's Brigade withe the famous 13é légére leading the charge......

....and was taken quite quickly, the French left 1 battalion to hold the farm (the maximum allowed by the rules for a strongpoint) and advanced their other 4 veteran battalions to drive the British out of the sandpit.

and that went pretty successfully as well. By now the Allied right flank was  starting to crumble but they now had Lambert's Brigade coming into bolster this flank. As you can see in the far ground two other French brigades were advancing up the centre, one commanded by Iannick and one commanded by David. The fire from Napoleon's Daughter was pretty ineffective, as they were anchored at long range. As you can see the British centre and left decided to hold their positions on the high ground. Also in the far ground you can see the two brigades command by David on the French right flank were advancing, they did need some encouragement as they went Hesitant in the first several turns.

The French centre is starting to take some fire and the appearance of Ponsonby's Heavies caused them to form square. As happened in the actual battle though you can see the French Lanciers coming from right of the photo ready to take advantage of reckless British cavalry charges.

Several charges in the centre resulted in melees.

The French did get beaten back at certain points in the game.

Good use of the Forwards ADC.

The French right flank advance

Lanciers

As usual few photos get taken at the end of the game, but by now Kempt's Brigade was dispersed and the British left flank was also started to crumble with another Faltering Brigade.  The French had suffered minimal casualties with all brigades in good order. Six hours had passed, it was pretty clear that the French were going to prevail so after 11-12 turns the game was called with a French Victory.

Well I had a great time running the game. I am hoping everyone had a good time, certainly I believe that the rules are now firmly entrenched. we had very few questions and we probably went through every possible mechanism the game offers. This will be the last GdA game I will put on until version 2 arrives which sounds like it has some quite substantial simplifications with a focus on increasing command complexity. I  am putting on a GdA game at Huzzah in Portland, Me in May, I will probably go with v1.