Hammfest 2024 - GdC Battle of Friedland (pt 3/end)

 

 The Russians have been surprised by the timely arrival of the Corsican Ogre. What looked like defeat in detail for the French has turned into a bit of a pell mell dash for the safety of the far side of the river. While this initial picture makes things look well in hand for the Russians, it's a bit more nuanced. The crossing goes through the town of Friedland, which restricts the speed and capacity of movement. There's going to be bunch up and the French will have time to engage. Furthermore, despite there being fixed movement, units moving anything other than mostly forward, do move slower so that it's possible to have them be caught. 

The Russians are down to 2 cavalry units (1 fresh) versus at least 3 fresh french ones in a unified cavalry corp. Once the Russian infantry are forced into square it's a safe bet that formation is doomed. Morale is brittle so there are real risks to sacrificing units.

To the Russians benefit, their cannon emplacements across the river have been doing great work. To avoid cannon fire entirely would delay the pursuit, so the French have been forced to weather the storm. If I recall correctly the Russian artillery dice were a bit hot.

We know see the rush hour traffic building up at the bridge. French are in close contact with the Russian rearguard.

Not great, but probably manageable. Doctorow's reserve corp is doing exactly what they need to be doing.

Ah crap. The continued fallback of General Peter (RU) on the right and general attrition of cannons there has freed up the French under General Kevin again. 

The pressure is developing for a move across the river into the rear guard flank. Stress!

 

Command ranges and low rolls for pips to move troops I think stymied the french a bit. The hot russian cannons didn't do them any favours. It's possible they failed a morale check and fell back for a turn (about 30 minutes real time). 

That breather essentially cinched the rest of the game.

The forces consolidate back towards their lines. I believe we called this one a minor or marginal win for the Russians. Mostly as Napoleon failed to deliver a punishing blow to the Russians when given an opening.

 

 

Another fun game of GdC. While we keep thinking the rules are in their final shape there is some contemplation of having units that go to 0 strength not leave the table. This would mean

1/. they would continue to be traffic problems. 

2/.they would require commands to evacuate (so command of the corp doesn't improve as you lose troops, which is kinda a thing that happens right now....I'm not pip starved when I have no troops to command!)

3/. Exist on the table to continue to use as a punching bag for the enemy to incur further moral losses and tests (so it's more likely for the whole corp to go poof. Currently it can be hard to attrition the corps enough and force enough tests to make that happen).

2+3/. They are a liability to have around and thus make a more interesting set of decisions for the players.

UPDATE: Play testing has shown that keeping troops on the table is less fun. There's a proposal to requires some PiPs to make them disappear, so that they are still a (more limited) liability, but won't be a continual fun draining hassle.

Hammfest 2024 GdC - Battle of Friedland 1807 pt 2

In our first instalment we saw the Russians aggressively move on the 'isolated' French corp and attempt to destroy them in detail (on the Russian Left). The Russian Right demonstrated in front of the French Left while slowly moving back behind the river (because general Peter is wise). Our cliff hanger moment sees the arrival of some French on the Russian Left.....the cavalry (also infantry) riding to the rescue of the beleaguered french corp under General Seth. 

 

 Indeed there are so many french it's going to take some turns for them to march on . We dickered a bit about the teleporting french and just how close to the Russians they could arrive. The Russians felt it was unsporting to have them be within one move (i.e. move into contact on arrival). This was acceded to. 

The main challenge we see is the Russians are grossly outnumbered now, and have a long CIRCUITOUS route to return (the ford is the town in the bottom left, and the river to the left is otherwise unfordable. Thankfully the Russians have some covering artillery from the safe side. My scant command of grenadiers and some cavalry moved up the middle to support General James. We have a classic Napoleonics traffic management problem, under enemy pressure, and needing to choose who to sacrifice. Don't run men, there's plenty of bridge space for you all (cough cough).

Hammfest 2024 GdC - Battle of Friedland 1807 (part 1)

 The main event on Saturday for Hammfest 2024 was a General du Corp (fast play corp scale convention rulseset) game of Friedland. Historically Friedland sees a Russian force under Bennigsen spotting an isolated French force (under Lannes) and deciding to beat it up. Sluggish command sees a slow/poorly developed attack which is well held off by the french while the Corsican Ogre marches to relieve Lannes. Then a great smackdown of the Russians ensues as they have (the opposite of) cleverly placed their forces with their backs to a river. 

 

James, Peter and I played the Russians and decided to attempt the historical attack...but better. With 20/20 hindsight (and warning at the start of the game) we knew that a kickass level of French were going to show up. We were hopeful we could break the French corp quickly. The Russians had a number of static artillery batteries stuck on the East sides of the Alle river....perfect to offer us good covering fire when we decided to conduct a fighting withdraw. As we would. Seth, Ron and Kevin (and eventually Doug himself with the Imperial Guard were our perfidious opponents.

GdC Battle of Occana - Enfilade 2025 Napoleonics Game

 At enfilade this year my friends managed to host games in all slots so snared a table all weekend. It made setup breakdown and storage a lot easier. Saturday midday we ran Ocana with Guard du Corp rules (a convention ruleset made by Doug and Seth). 

Ocana is a rare battle where the Spanish fight the French in large numbers with no support. The Spanish have taken strategic initiative and are advancing on Madrid from North and South. The French don't notice the Southern approach at first and a mere 35 miles from Madrid there are some initial encounters that have the Spanish counter march and daddle. Soon the French have raced reinforcements to counter this thrust. 

The day before the battle sees a huge cavalry action where the Spanish come off poorly. This is important as the right wing of the Spanish army is a VERY brittle cavalry formation facing enthused and strong French cavalry. The line of defensive was well chosen as on the right was a gullied river that blocked the Spanish from advancing on the Left wing. 

 

Napoleonic French Young Guard & Guard (Empress) Dragoons

I realized as I was working on my New Year post that I don't have any (*ANY!*) pictures of stuff I painted this year. Mostly I haven't painted much, the stuff I have done was mostly prep, or partially complete. I did finish a whack of napoleonics for Enfilade back in May that I never documented. I hope that means I finished other stuff but didn't take photos, but who knows...




These figures were part of a mystery lot I got off TMP that were aggressively priced. Conveniently they ended up being a mix of elite and regular line. The elites I peeled off to use as young guard, mixing in the last 20 figs from a victrix box of guard (the previous 40 parceled out to old and middle guard).






I only needed 4 units (~10 men each) for the convention game, but I decided to make 6 bases to future proof my young guard for other campaigns.








I had most of the other figs I needed but was short some empress dragoons (guard dragoons). I already had a box of perry french dragoons but the saddle furniture and braid is different so I attempted a conversion with green stuff putty and some suture material for the braid.



 I wasn't super pleased with the result...looking closely you can see that the 'scales' at the front of the saddle furniture and a bit too variable, and that the 'lay' of the braid loops is a bit too flouncy. I was under the gun and it meets the 2 foot table top standard so good enough.
It also helped with the excess number of dragoons I'd probably otherwise have.

Enfilade 2019 pt 2 Saturday Morning - Battle for Dresden GdC

Saturday Morning has the big battle of napoleonics that Doug organizes every year. There is a pretty usual roster of guys who agree to paint parts of the OOB in order to guarantee a spot at the game. There's usually another 2-6 commands for those who haven't painted a force. This year Ian and Craig (?? I'm gapping on his name) BoB were late to arrive and didn't have a game to play so they took over the Russians and Prussians facing my forces on the french left flank.

Dresden sees the allies trapping a large french army and preparing to crush it with numbers. Suddenly Napoleon shows up and throws the allied command into indecision about whether to attack or not (the plan to attack everywhere that Napoleon wasn't had been agreed upon earlier). It sounds as though the attack went in as there wasn't enough time/organization to stop it.....but the allies held back a huge amount of their forces. Good for ensuring a french victory historically.

Imperial Skies - French fleet (2) - Brigade Aeronefs

The second half of the french fleet that came with my kickstarter. These are two cruisers are a Jeanne La Pucelle class, a Valiant class, and the Battle ship is the Charlemagne class. The latter has since been retired and remastered with some superstructure options and moveable turrets. I suppose this one probably is the 'actual' Charlemagne of the class as it's old and non-improved.

Once again, I'm a little unhappy with the grottiness of the boats and the annoying guy wire ripping up the paint from the lead problem. I also struggle with deciding whether to glue the bases in. These ones have a tiny plastic plug that is hugely annoying when it snaps off in the lead as happens most frequently in any structural failure.

Imperial Skies - French fleet (1) - Brigade Aeronefs

I kickstarted the imperial skies ruleset. It was done by Robin Fitton of Rottenlead blog who also wrote Gruntz so I was easily hooked. Once again, figs delivered a few years ago I'm sure, and they are just getting paint now. *sigh*. I ended up with two fleets so I should get cracking on the other one and then maybe I can actually try the game!




These figs are from Brigade miniatures Aeronef line. I was quite interested in aeronef but reading into the rules it sounded as they they were quite dated and (I supect) clunky. A rules freshen up was just what it took to get me in.

These two squadrons are the destroyers. I think destroyer is as small as it gets for the nefs.


The paint jobs I'm a bit meh on. They look a bit too grotty. Really annoyingly the lines (silk thread) tend to rip off the paint from the bare metal. Cool looking, but I forsee repeat repairs in the future.

15mm French Napoleonic Generals - Old Glory

As part of the "finish that lot of lead you got 7 years ago so you can finally table that force of french" project we have some generals hitting the table. These guys are a single bag of old glory lead. I was a little mystified by some of them (which is not uncommon with napoleonics I find) as they have different head gear and saddle blankets. I suspect that some might actually be ADC (aide du camps) but I wimped out and painted them all as high level officers.

Technically speaking for Napoleons Battles these are all divisional leaders as they are a single model on a 1 inch base. I almost group up some, but I realize I need a fair number of divisional leaders, and I have another bag of 'marshals' which should more than cover the higher level command.


At this point I really only need some heavy cavalry to be able to field all the necessary unit types for my french force. Unsurprisingly I have way more extra units than that to paint, but it's nice to have the choice narrowed for me.

15mm french chassuer a cheval - old glory

Gosh, multiple posts without napoleonics, I was starting to get worried too. Here we have two bags of old glory 15mm chassuer a cheval all painted up nice. The problem with these bags (in my opinion) is that you end up with too much command for most systems. 32 figs with 4 standards and 4 musicians is a bit bonkers.

I decided to go for a bit of colour and did 4 distinct unit colorations (also I had 4 command stands). Though these will be used for napoleons battles, I expect I will use them for other games, and can't say I'm a fan of basing 4 cavalry in a deep narrow base.

I'm getting terribly close to actually being able to field a coherent french force in 15mm. Zounds! It's only been like 7 or 8 years since I got my huge lot of 15mm naps.

Dutch Red Lancers - Perry Miniatures

These guys are colorful and actually a treat to paint. As much as napoleonics are generally considered bright and finicky, sometimes you hit paydirt and get a unit like this. What a color explosion!

I know essentially nothing about these troops. They were part of the imperial guard, so obviously are  fairly elite. The nationality is not totally unusual as there are a number of formations in the Grande Armee that Napoleon simple ported over from their parent army and occasionally redressed. Why ruin a crack unit when you can 'borrow' it? The benefits of empire I suppose.

This jpeg I managed to find online and was totally invaluable in painting the unit. I wish it was easier to find stuff like this, as napoleonic uniforms can be confusing at the best of times.

Russian Dragoons & Officers - Perry miniatures

And now for a big change...more napoleonics! Russians at least. I was 'short' some Russian cav, so I ordered and painted up some more dragoons. The officers I believe were moldering away half finished for quite some time, so I finished them at the same time.

I suspect the officer with the sword high is actually a warlord figure, but I might be confused.

French Headquarters - Perry Miniatures

As part of a larger Perry order I grabbed the 'Napoleon and Staff' collection. It's fun to have some recognizable figures/personalities on the board. I actually had already painted a napoleon I grabbed out of a box at a convention, so I handed this new one off to a local gamer who didn't have one (and therefore *needed* one).

I probably could have crowded more figs onto one base, but I figured this was good enough. 

French Imperial Guard Cannon - Perry Minatures

More Imperial Guard on parade today. I need two bases for Enfilade but decided I might as well finish the requirements for Waterloo (4). I'm not sure that I will use the horse artillery as horse artillery, but we'll see. I have vague plans to have different colored dice (there's a dice frame on each base to track strength) for horse artillery.

 The horse artillery always looks a bit more glamorous with their extra lace and curved swords.

 My picture setup is a bit lacking right now. So apologies for the terrible 'background'.

Enfilade 2018 - Eylau. Doug Hamm. General du Corp.

Saturday morning at enfilade we played Enfilade. Doug has been organizing these games for quite a few years now, and he sends a group of us an email and demands to know which command we are planning to take and when we will have our troops painted up for it. It's worked very well for my collection and productivity to be honest.


This year I elected to take the Imperial guard in it's rather abbreviated state. Finishing my figs roughly a week before go time. The French were facing an impressive amount of Russian troops....most concerning to use was the disparity in strength points AND artillery. Later in the game I realized that the Russians also had an artillery reserve that was replenishing their depleted batteries. Zut Alors!

 My small command to the left, just behind Eylau. To the right is the impressively large Cavalry Reserve.

Soult was the French left flank, just to my left. He faced multiple waves of Russians and did a very credible job of blunting their attack. 

In the Centre I held back as I was meant to be a reserve. Being a small force it's pretty easy to force morale checks so I tried to stay out of cannon range. As is typical the moment my guard entered gun range, everything that could fire at them did.
The right wing was far away from me so I didn't collect a lot of info. It was the main event of the battle.

Once again on the left flank we see Soult has consolidated further left to try and cut down on the cannon fire and troops able to hit him at the same time. It's opening a gap that the guard shuffled up to fill. Another Russian corp is moving straight at Eylau. 

 The French cavalry reserve is now forced forward and rapidly comes under punishing cannon fire. The guard meanwhile continue to do their best to hold back.

Top right of the photo you can see a fresh french corp arrives. This was handled by Doug himself, who admits to having terrible dice rolls and questionable tactical ability. It's nice to have a fall guy to blame for defeats. 

 On the left we see the guard finally enter combat. They successfully manage to break the Russian morale of one corp. Soult is wavering and very solid rolls keep him in the line.

The centre Russian corp is also close to some critical morale checks.

 The french cavalry has force a number of units into square, which the limited french artillery punish. They are setting up to hit the centre Russian corp and could easily knock it down in conjunction with the guard. Things are looking tough, but manageable.

 A fresh Prussian corp arrives to bolster the Russians. Soult has done great service and stands little chance of even slowing down the german threat. 

A critical die roll is flubbed. The French cavalry reserve throws a 1 on a morale check and begins to break. They have one more chance to avoid complete disintegration, needing a 6 on their check the next turn. Alas, they vaporize as a force leaving a gaping hole in the centre. Soult is a spent force and even the guard strength is running out fast. Both Russian and French corp on the (french) right have been failing to advance or recoiling due to morale effects. Mid top of the picture shows the untouched Russian reserve moving towards the 'rupture point'.....it's clear that the Russians have score a victory, most likely major at that.

Debriefing: Doug takes pride that his scenarios often yield very close to historical results. He was a bit put off by this. Historically the French crashed through the Russians when they engaged with their cavalry. It was noted that the Russians did a lot of standing around and were unwilling to engage due to terrible visibility (snowing) and uncertainty re: french strength.
A number of us felt that the Russians probably had too much strength (each base was on par with the french, but the Russians had far more bases).
Everyone seemed to have a good time. I think the French probably stayed together longer than was expected (Soult in particular had some solid morale rolls), so a bit 'tuning' of the scenario is probably called for. We may see Eylau featured in this blog again.