28mm Napoleonics

Another great day at the Wyre Forest Gamers, played entirley with one of the members collection of both French and Austro Hungarian forces. The pictures don't do the figures any justice, they were a labour of love, and extra care was given to the facial expressions so that no two in each battalion were the same. I now have my work set out to complete my own 28mm Napoleonic forces.

A fictitious battle was fought with each side having to allocate points to strategic positions which the opposing side knew nothing of, with the exception of one position being marked as a supply column. This represented the fact that each force would have its own objectives within the battle and the opposition would have to guess their intentions and change initial orders to re-act later, at a cost of initiative / command points. The Austrian supply column held more value than the French and this helped to show the fact that the French did not need to rely too much on supplies as they were trained to forage.

At the beginning of the game objectives were assigned and initial orders and movements sketched on to maps. I played the part of the Hungarian Infantry with a brigade of cavalry in support, along with another member who controlled an Austrian Brigade with another Grenadier Brigade in reserve protecting our supply column. As the French supply column held little value we decided to allocate remaining objective points to a cross roads and the larger of two hills in the centre of the board. We assumed the French would feint an attack through the cross roads being the shorter route to our supply lines and throw cavalry on a wide flanking charge down the valley between the two hills.

The Austro Hungarian forces deploy

Ready and waiting

I rapidly advanced the Hungarians on to the crest of the large hill and deployed, while deploying horse artillery on the smaller of the hills my cavalry were deployed in waves the other end of the valley. The Austrian brigade moved to cover the cross roads.

French Suffer to our guns

French cavalry are halted

Unfortunately it did not fair well for the French, with the exception of the feint their overall plan was a large arc flanking manoeuvre with their cavalry brigade against our supply column while taking both hills to cover their advance. Thinking the smaller hill was of importance to us they through a whole brigade against our horse battery, the remaining infantry attacked the lager hill where our Hungarians were deployed waiting.

The horse battery caused initial damage to the advancing French brigade who had lost their guns to a successful charge of one of my cavalry regiments. We later retired from the hill with no loss of objective; the French Cavalry were stopped by a charge of the remaining cavalry combined with lancers.

A hard fight

The larger hill was a hard fought contest we lost our guns to skirmishers but the French were pushed of the hill by accurate volley fire and losing the Melee to uphill detractors. The cross roads remained secure and uncontested at this point so the Grenadiers began to move forward to support the hills and carry the victory home.