Proper Napoleonic gaming : Medina de Rio Seco, 1808

Last week I was lucky enough to have a session of 'proper' ( i.e. 'in person' ) gaming, courtesy of old buddies Tony and Reg, and hosted by Tony at his lovely home near Whitstable. We played a Napoleonic game using Black Powder rules and 15mm figures, and Tony's chosen scenario was  the battle of Medina de Rio Seco  (14th July 1808).  This was a clash between French and Spanish forces during the Peninsular War - Tony had based the game on a scenario from the Shako rules system,  I  took a slightly dim photo of the map:

 According to Wikipedia  a combined body of Spanish militia and regulars moved to rupture the French line of communications to Madrid. General Joaquín Blake's Army of Galicia, under joint command with General Gregorio de la Cuesta. 

The Spanish are divided into two distinct forces, with Blake's units [ in the scenario, Blake does not appear on the table, and Cuesta is Spanish C-in-C ]  on the hill centre-left,  Portago's brigade  on the Spanish baseline at top right,  and Cuesta with reinforcements coming up later. The lack of co-ordination between Cuesta and Blake opened up a gap which the French commander Bessieres spotted, and moved to exploit.

The French baseline is at the bottom, with two brigades  along it facing the hill and Lasalle's cavalry entering on the road, while a further formation under Mouton  is at centre right, threatening to get between the two Spanish contingents and sweep away the Spanish left wing.  The French also had reinforcements - a brigade of the Young Guard, due to arrive on their right.  

Reg and I divided the French between us, with me commanding the troops facing the hill and Reg leading  Lasalle's and Mouton's formations and the Young Guard, while Tony took command of the  Spanish. Here's a picture of the starting positions from my point of view, with my chaps in the foreground, Reg's force at far rght beyond the road, and Tony's Spanish atop the ridge in centre  and straddling the road, top centre. 

Most of what follows will inevitably be from my point of view and my memory of events, and I admit I took a slightly random set of photos during the game, but I hope I can give an idea of what transpired. 

I'm no Napoleonic expert, but of course I had the 'conventional wisdom' to know that Spanish infantry can be a bit rubbish ( their Militia units especially have weak morale ) , and looking at all my lovely French infantry lined up in assault columns with voltiguers out at the front, it seemed a no-brainer to order a general advance to sweep the Spanish off the hill.  But I had reckoned without a few things. First the wooded area, which slowed down the battalions trying to move through it, and thus disrupted co-ordination of my attack - obviously  I could not charge home all along the line at the same time.  Second, Tony had carefully lined his infantry units up in two lines,  meaning that when charged by my units, the front rank of Spanish units  would get combat bonuses for having friends in rear support. Suddenly the attacking elan of my French (in only a single line of units ) began to look like it might not be enough. And finally, I had no cavalry, but  Tony had a unit of Spanish heavy cavalry, who promptly charged downhill and crashed into my left-hand brigade. 

Spanish Heavy Cavalry coming down the slope (centre)..

    

Zut alors! Here they come!

I should point out that the French infantry unit in the above picture had succeeded in a die roll to hurredly form square when charged ( they only have 3 bases, so making an actual square formation on the table can't happen),   I should also mention that the figures are 15mm scale,  mostly from AB Figures  which are rather nice and very crisply well-detailed.  Many of them were painted by Stonewall Figures / Capitan, and some by Tony himself - Tony's work included those bicorne-wearing Spanish Heavy Cavalry in the picture, and I think you can see what a good job he did with them! 

A nice feature of the Black Powder (2nd Edition) rules was the handling of French attack columns and skirmishers - the 'Attack Column' formation makes the unit more likely to pass its orders dice-roll and advance, the skirmisher base out front causes a reduction in enemy musketry die rolls, and when 'contact' is made the skirmish base is simply removed, simulating the voltiguers 'merging back' into the column as the charge goes in.  I thought that all worked pretty well and looked 'right'.  

What didn't work so well was my attacks - what with attacking uphill, trying to fend off the Spanish cavalry, the woods breaking up my line and the well-supported Spanish first line, most of my attacking battalions made very little impression on the enemy!  There was hard fighting, and the Cavalry were eventually destroyed by my musketry ( I think Tony allowed them to 'charge home' against the square as a test of how the combat rules handled the situation, which probably weakened them ),  but losses mounted up, several of my units reached 'Shaken' status, and all too soon my left-hand brigade under Merle had 50% of its units Shaken, thus 'breaking' the brigade and forcing it to retire. Not a good start!

Meanwhile on our right, Reg was having troubles of his own, in particular with Lasalles' two cavalry regiments, which he repeatedly tried to order to sweep onto the end of the hill and take the Spanish line in the flank and rear, only for them to repeatedly fail their orders rolls, and stay pretty much stationary for most of the game!  One of those quirks of the Black Powder orders/initiative mechanism, we can only assume that the cavalry commander  weras sick (or drunk!)  on the day, and/or that all messengers sent to them with orders were incapacitated and didn't get through! We realised that we probably should have sent Bessieres himself to see what was going on and urge them on ( C-in-C can re-roll orders dice ), but he was too busy elsewhere, it seemed! 

Above is a view from Reg's side of the table -  the two recalcitrant cavalry units on the hill  (upper left) - to add to the annoyance, they had stopped close to a Spanish battaltion which was forced into square but was able to keep sniping at them for several moves - us French commanders became rather obsessed with trying to kill that single unit! In the centre of the picture, the Young Guard  faces off against Cuesta's rather mixed quality  Spanish infantry.

Also on Reg's side,  here are ( I think)  Portago's Spanish brigade coming into contact with Mouton's French line infantry - who could have done with some help from those cavalry too! 

Reg managed to break Portago's brigade, but Cuesta's reinforcements arrived in numbers and had to be countered by the Young Guard, and there was long and hard, but good-humoured  fighting between regular opponents Tony and Reg, who know each other's tricks pretty well after many years!  Below we see the Young Guard doing battle with Cuesta's infantry - the number of casualty marker  figures and 'smoke puffs' denoting Disordered units are testament to the ferocity of the combat. 

Back to my side, and it all got very touch-and-go, my largest brigade (Verdier) could  not fight its way onto the hill, and took so many casualties that it was very close to breaking - which would have destroyed my entire wing. I became a bit more sensible at this point and pulled the most battered units back, and got Verdier busy rallying the shaken units, while a couple of less-damaged  units traded volleys with Spanish infantry.  The dice went in my favour at the crucial moment, with Tony unable to shoot up my chaps much more, and failing a couple of orders rolls which might have allowed his infantry to pursue us down the hill and finish off Verdier's brigade.  I guess the Spanish units felt comfortable holding that hill, and decided to stay there!   As you can see in the picture below, my chaps had pulled back quite a long way fron the hill.  

In the distance you can also see how Reg's wing has progressed despite hard fighting, with  the Young Guard toe-to-toe with Cuesta's men at top right - it had been an epic fight.  So epic in fact that having started the game after lunch, breaking for dinner at the local pub, we went back to the table for an hour or so after dinner - I think play only paused for sleep about 11pm - and back again after breakfast the following morning for a last hour or so!   The victory condtions depend on the number of 'broken' brigades on each side -  in the end I think I had lost Merle's brigade, Reg had lost Mouton,  but we had broken the Spanish brigades of  Portago and Masseda, and the final blow came when my battered brigade under Verdier managed to finally break Tony's brigade ( Cagigal ) on the ridge.  Three-two to the French, which the scenario defined as an honourable draw,  and that felt about right.   Tony and Reg are hard-bitten old campaigners and played a great game, though the dice weren't always with Reg - especially regarding those cavalry, still resolutely stationary on the hill to the end. I think I was much too confident of the abilities of the French infantry and nowhere near cunning enough - I should have split my infantry either side of the woods and attacked in two waves for rear support, hopefully crashing into the Spanish at two points simultaneously (mind you, still not sure how I would have dealt with those Spanish cavalry! ).   My first Napoleonic game in many a long year, so I'm chalking it up as a learning experience, or that's my excuse at least!  Here's a post-game picture of my fellow commanders, with the French cavalry still rooted to that hill at centre left..

Tony (left) and Reg : beach hut prices unknown, sadly

 

Many thanks guys,  especially Tony for excellent hosting and scenario planning, and to Reg for putting up with my beginner's command style!  

I thoroughly enjoyed the game, and great conversation across the table and over dinner etc. My second game with Black Powder and  I enjoyed playing these rules - I do like the simplicity of the combat and firing rolls with simple D6s and straightforward modifiers, such that after just a few turns you can pretty much remember the dice rolls you need for hits and saves.  The 'orders' rolls I think are good too,  even though they can throw up unusual events such as those French cavalry refusing repeatedly to move! We should have got our C-in-C to go and give them an earful and re-roll...  As discussed before, a slight downside is the plethora of 'special rules' used to tailor the basic rules to the specific period and different troop types,  which  can lead to an awful lot of paging back and forth in the rulebook and the relevant period supplement.  The game threw up an interesting discussion on the timing of infantry going into square - in the rules this only must occur when they are actually  charged by cavalry, not simply when within charge range, for example.  That means an infantry unit in line can advance towards a cavalry unit and try to shoot it up, which seems a pretty 'brave' ( in the Yes, Minister  sense ) thing to do! Tony and Reg have been discussing a 'house rule' modification to that one, perhaps to vary the die roll required to form square depending how close the enemy cavalry start from, which seems a reasonable idea. With a whole bunch of optional rules already there, adding one or two in-house variations seems entirely OK. 

Final shot - those Spanish cavalry causing mayhem on my left wing.. huzzah!

 Once again many thanks to Tony and Reg, that was a great game and a great day! We might manager another get-together later in the year, we think, and that would be very welcome - some talk of ECW? that would be interesting! 

Meanwhile one or two other hobby things to get back to after a lot of social and domestic 'real life' over the Easter period - for example, orders are being drafted for a big battle around Prague in Chris 'Nundanket's Bohemia 1757 campaign. It will be fascinating to see how our orders translate to action on his gaming table...   And still lots of scenery to be painted for my 'Risorgimento' Italy 1859 project. So, I hope plenty to write up in future posts on this blog. Until then keep well, everyone.