The Battle of Soria - A 15mm Napoleonic Batrep

 

 Or The Battle of Why do the Dice Gods and Postie hate Ray & Lee!

When we entered the Shed o War the battlefield looked superb, loads of 15mm French and Spanish laid out on a 10x6 table. Then Postie announced a few rule changes........more on those a bit later!!!

Me and Lee were unlucky and picked out the French, now usually I don't mind playing the French, especially as we were up against the Spanish, who in Posties rules are a weaker force in both morale, numbers and melee.

Lee's command above had to cross the river, there was a ford between the red bushes.

The  French centre, mine on the left, while Lee, who was our CnC on the right, he had 4 units of Elite Legere!!! We faced a weak Spanish army, on the hill, with reserves behind.

On our left, there would be a big cavalry scrap. The Spanish had 5 units of Heavy Horse while my French were made up of 7 units, 1 Cuirassier, 2 Dragoons and 3 Chasseurs/Hussars.

First move I moved up my Horse.

We both moved up our infantry in the centre. Lee moved the Legere to push the gap between the marsh and mountains.

On our right we soon realised there was no chance in hell crossing the river. Steve's Spanish were aligned in an arc, meaning he would get multiple shots on any unit crossing. That includes 2 artillery pieces!!!

It was about now that Postie told us the rule changes, he had included opportunity fire, which we took out of the rules many years ago, because the French columns could never make it into contact, because any and every unit available would fire at it! This used to cause soooo many arguments in our old games

We weren't very happy about this news!!!!

The second change, which wasn't really a change, but something Postie does now and again. The winner would be decided by who killed most casualties, Now I don't like games like this, it makes people play a different way than they really should, but hey ho, lets see how we get on.

For the French to charge, to try and make sure you win you need to try and get 2 columns onto one enemy unit, now that would be difficult in the game as the Spanish only had 12 figures instead of 16. Which meant only a 6 man frontage. Now fairs fair, I didn't think that would be a problem, but the opportunity fire would be.

I manged to squeeze a third unit into my front line. My plan was to only charge the right most unit of Dragoons, to offer my flank to the Spanish, but Chris moved up as well, kinda blocking what could have been a flank attack.

Even though we outnumbered the Spanish, it was still going to be difficult to take the hill.

We won the first turn which meant we get the first choice of charging. So I tried to charge across the front line, unfortunately the middle unit didn't like the colour of the Spanish Dragoons and refused to charge!!!

So Chris got to charge me at the halt while the other 2 units met their Spanish foe in the middle of their moves. 

Now here's were it started to go tits up!

Meanwhile in Soria itself a mob of men appeared. I thought they were Guerrillas, but was told to guess again????

Surg started to move troops into the fields next to Soria, to threaten our left flank as we moved forward.

With the movement to our left, that made our main attack a bit less forceful.

I think the french can handle this problem.

But not this one, Lee was getting battered, Steve hit with every artillery shot!

Now back to the cavalry!!!!

I lost each of the 3 melees, only by 1 each time, but I lost 2 colours in the defeat and 2 units actually routed, well that's what you get for throwing 2 2's on a D10!. Not only that, but each of the routers disorganised the units behind.

At the start of the next turn I had one chance to save the 2 routing units, I threw 2 D6 for each unit needing a combined score of around 6 to save them, so a 50/50 chance. I threw Snake eyes on one and 3 on the other, so both units were removed from play counting as casualties. The third unit was caught in the rear and destroyed to the man!

So 4 melees down and I'd lost us 36 figures!!!!

Lee charges on the right of the hill, everything else is still to far away.

Hang on, where did they come from?

2 large units of Spanish Guerrillas appear on the mountain and rain down shots on Lee's columns.

Now this will make you laugh, you know what I said about dice gods earlier on?

Lee managed to get 2 units of French in column onto 1 unit of Spanish on the hill, Lee will smash the Spanish into the ground!!!!

Errrr, Surg threw 5 D6 needing 5's and 6's and scored a 1 hits. Lee had 20 D6 and needed 4's 5's and 6's......guess how many kills he got?

1.

The laughter and merriment from the Spanish was hard to swallow!!

Then as the melee was a draw they had to fight again, Surg remarkably hit with all 5 dice, Lee had 18 D6 and scored 2 bloody hits!!!!

The air was blue and the French morale plummeted to an all time low.

My cavalry capitulation was bad enough, but Lee's 38 dice and 3 hits just one us in.

I wanted to quite the game there and then, the dice gods not only left us, but took a massive dump on our heads!

But we carried on, trying to get something back, our luck would surly turn around???

After a turn reforming I moved up and charged in with one unit of Hussars.

This made us feel better, a massive charge across the hill.

We won some and lost some.

And I won the Cavalry fight as well, I wanted to carry on the charge but failed the test to do so.

We were nearing the end of the game as time was running out. We hadn't quite taken the hill, but would have done the next turn and the Spanish centre collapsed.

Lee's Elite Legere punched a hole between the marsh and mountain.

But Steve was immoveable on our right, we couldn't get near him.

So there the game ended, with a massive 31 points to 13 victory for the Spanish.

What a massive pile of steamy doggy doo's that was!!!

Conclusion

Why Postie added in the Opportunity fire I'll never know? Yes it gave the Spanish a chance, but really didn't work, just like in the first versions of Posties rules. Steve, Surj and Chris's dice were on fire......mine and Lee's weren't,  in fact if it wasn't for the crack and laugh we all had, most of it at my and Lee's expense, it wouldn't have been worth turning up!

I think we need a drastic look at the rules we use for Napoleonic's, just gotta try and bring that subject up with the Evil one?