Tuesday 25 March 2014

Foul-mouthed French furiously flounce from field

Having acquired a copy of Neil Thomas's book (below) John decided to run a game using the Napoleonic rules therein.  All 15mm toys from his own collection.  Above can be seen the brave Austrians advancing to the front in accordance with their gifted leader's master plan.  Can you guess which side I was on?

An overview of the Austrian deployment.  Management of the battle was largely left to Mark and Kayte while Martin led the French and Jerry heckled from the sidelines.
 Grenzers head for the woods.
 The Ogre (for it is he!) leads his troops forward.
 Both sides had favoured their right flanks.
 The Guard leaving their emperor by himself.
 'Gun Hill' - the anchor of the Austrian right.
 This all looked quite positive.
 Although the Frenchies seemed to be rather active on our left.
 While our chaps were deployed in proper lined, the garlic munchers 
clearly favoured the new-fangled column.  It'll never catch on.
 The (mostly Hungarian) troops on our left soon took a battering.
 Our right easily repelled a French assault - including cuirassiers and Guards!
Endgame - a desperate attack by a battered single stand infantry unit (top left) managed heroically to overcome a similarly weak enemy unit and clinched a famous victory!
Martin's dice rolling was very unlucky and did lead to a most uncharacteristic stream of profanity.  
It was very funny.

So, what was it like as a game?  Well OK and rather fun and with a few nice mechanisms but frankly I'd rather stick with Command & Colours.

Incidentally, the title was the headline from the following day's Wiener Zeitung.  Other headlines from this day were as follows:
"Heroic Hungarians harass horrid Hugenots" - Magyar Nemzet 
"It's all over on this flank..." - Tribune de Geneve
"Nous a été volé" - Le Monde

12 comments:

Mark Hides said...

Who ate a vole? :)

tradgardmastare said...

I have his 19th century book as well as his ancients one- well worth a look I say!

Archduke Piccolo said...

Angry austere Austrians aimed accurately and advanced admirably - an augur of additional ascendancies?

Conrad Kinch said...

Outstanding outcome.

I quite like NT's books - though I generally end up cannibalising the ideas for C&C.

Martin Rapier said...

I really enjoyed it, despite my slight lapses into Anglo Saxon.

I thought the treatment of squares and close assault against artillery was very clever.

Hoping to put on a game using his nineteenth century rules at some point soon, although I might start with a mini game as this had quite a lot of kit and quite a bit to take in.

Paul Foster said...

I just came for the alliteration.

Tim Gow said...

Mark Hides
It was delicious.

Tim Gow said...

tradgardmastare
Word on the street indicates that the 19thC book is rather good.

Tim Gow said...

Archduke Piccolo
We did aim accurately but there wasn't much by way of austere advancing...

Tim Gow said...

Conrad Kinch
Obviously the result was down to my inspired leadership...

Tim Gow said...

Martin Rapier
I hope that the Austrians' mocking laughter conveyed the correct degree of love and respect.

Tim Gow said...

Paul Foster
The Archduke and I are happy to oblige.