The Battle of Grudge Bridge - A Napoleonic Batrep

 The initial setup

As I mentioned in my last Batrep, The Battle of Fort Joseph, we managed to squeeze in a short but memorable game in after Fort Joesph, we still had a couple of hours to kill before I had to pick up the brats from school, so most of the terrain was cleared and a quick game made up.
Fran wanted to stay as the Brits, and wanted revenge for his mauling at the walls of Fort Joseph, his thinking was the Brits can't lose twice or can they, so I was stuck with the French!
All it boiled down to was, I had to get onto the bridge with my two stands of Pioneers and Fran had to stop me.
Now Fran will agree here, I did whinge a little that I needed another unit on my side, as I was doing the attacking and he'd be standing still firing at me. (typical Fran gameplay!) Postie gave in after much of the said whining and gave me an extra unit, unfortunately, all that was available was a Portuguese unit, (which must have deserted and came over to the French en masse!!)

I knew I'd be in for a hammering, so I decided to sacrifice my right flank and 

steamroller Fran's right flank to try and get to the bridge.

I moved full move forward and kept my artillery limbered, hopefully

Fran would chose the gun to fire at rather than my Infantry, after all it was 

only a piddly little light gun.

Fran  threw well and blew my gun to pieces and moved out around my right flank

It was a weird game rather like a game of chess, I moved forward blocking Fran's left

and bunched in column ready for the charge.

We both made a hash of it now, I moved forward and fired, completely missing 

the line regts and Fran only scored 2 hits! Phew!

So with luck on my side I charged in.........

The tit for tat continued on my right flank, while my sacrificial line unit 

was pushed back in disorder.

I won the melee quite easily and Fran's troops routed,through their own tents.

While my unit carried on its charge into Fran's other unit.

But even though I won the melee, I went down to 50% causing a morale 

check which I promptly failed then I threw bad for the result and ended up routing as well!

Meanwhile, we continued to shoot the sh!t out of each other on my right!!

So onto the charges, the follow up charge worked out in my favour, as I tonked

 Fran's troops who then routed! But we had the reverse result in the next melee.

for the first real time in the day my dice let me down, I should have won on averages, but them 

dice gods reared their ugly heads and kicked me in the crackers!!

Routing my unit!

Now we both didn't expect this, two routing units on each side!

So it was time to test morale for the routing units, now we're not quite sure what 

Postie was upto here, because he tried to give Fran a +1 for the commander next to the routed unit!

What bloody commander??

"That commander" pointed Postie

Postie "its a bloody pot of soup you blind git!!!!"

He then denied even saying it???

Disaster!!!!

For us both as all 4 of the routing units fled off table!!

But?

Miraculously we both passed our divisional checks!

I placed 2 d6 on the table showing 6's for mine, You should have heard the roar from Fran

You cheatin' bastard!!!! Throw them properly Gods wills you a double 1 for cheating!!

I then threw a double 6, Fran's face was a picture!

But after all that, at least it left it open for me to get to the bridge

Which I did!

But then Postie changed my winning goal, wtf??? 

Now I had to throw a dice to see if i blew the bridge up

All I needed was a 4+ on a d6 to blow the bridge and end the game as a win

I threw a ......

3

Sod it!!

Donnybrook Skirmish Rules - A Personal Review

I swear I’ll never buy another 25mm period…………. ever heard yourself say that??

But my hand has been forced by Messers Harrison and Hilton, of the League of Augsberg/Beneath the Lily Banner fame. As some of may be aware I’m quite partial to the floppy hat and frilly shirt period, infact  I’ve been collecting 15mm figures for the NYW for some time now… don’t you know??

So when there were murmurs of a new skirmish set of rules from Messers Harrison and Hilton on the Fighting Talk Forum, I was instantly hooked, although a bit miffed, I haven’t even finished the 15’s yet, do I really need to buy more figures and 25’s at that???

That inner voice (you know him) kept goading me, you know you want to Ray, yeh but?, just get them, treat yourself, but I haven’t finished the 15mm NYW or my FIW or my Flodden figures?? Really??

Then before I knew what I was doing an order had been placed………then the figures arrived a couple of days later!!

Bacon's Rebellion 1676

Any way on with the review of Donnybrook.........

If you’re interested and like any war in between the years 1660 and 1760 and you want to play skirmish games, then this is the only set of rules you’ll need!

For £27 plus postage, aside from the actual rules, you'll be buying 110 pages worth of Faction guides. Scenarios, Period history, great looking photos, some of which are included in this review and an excellent comic strip format example scenario.

Savages attack Scottish settlers in panama

I’ve got to admit I’m quite surprised and very pleased at how simple but effective the rules are. Long gone are the days when I want to play an in-depth complicated set of rules.

I can’t recommend them enough??

French Dragoon's in defence Namur, 1695

The Rules

Donnybrook uses a card driven turn system, one card for each unit and hero or character.

And its time to get out all the odd shaped dice that have been laying unused in a box as well, you’ll need D4, D6, D8, D10 & D12, these dice represent the ability level of units and characters, for Firing, Morale and Melee, needing 6+ to hit or pass your check.

Tangiers 1683 

You’ll need to pick a faction from the Army Lists, your choices are

Army, Civilian Mob, Covenanters, Cultists, Highlanders, Outlaws, Rapparees & Tribal.

I’ve picked Army and Tribal to fight the Tangiers War in 1661-84

You then have to choose which level of game you want to play, there are three levels.

A Basic 4 point force, A standard 6 point force and a Large 8 point force.

The first 2 levels can be played on a 4x4 table, while you may need a bigger table for the larger  8 force army.

For each point of you army you may choose a unit to field from the following list:

12 Recruits or 9 Mounted Recruits

8 Drilled or 6 Mounted Drilled

4 Elites or 3 Mounted Elites.

So as an example, your 4 point army could consist of

1 x 12 Recruits, (who use a D6) 2x 8 Drilled (who use a D8) and 1 x 3 Mounted Elites (who use D10)

No Surrender. Co Tyrone 1689

You also get a free Hero/Character and with each point you spend you can add another lesser character eg: Sergeants, a Standard Bearer or even a Imam, Master of Hounds or Doxy??

Charging Cult Bodyguard

Although the rules are written primarily with the years 1660 - 1760 in mind, I can’t see why they can’t be used for earlier and later periods of history, there’s already talk of the Three Musketeers, the Spanish Inquisition, Cossacks,  Samurai, AWI, Vendee Revolt, Border Reivers and the Scanian War.

So I think your options could be endless??

It will take me a while to get my new 25mm Warfare figures painted, so I’m going to work on the lists to make a FIW faction for my 15mm figures for both sides….....should be fun!!

If you’re interested in the rules pop over to the League of Augsberg site where you can buy them direct!  

 All photos are used with kind permission of Clarence Harrison and Barry Hilton and are from the collections of Barry Hilton and Dave O’Brien.

RP No 154 25mm WWI British Infantry & I won a prize!

My last entry into the Analogue Painting Challenge finally pulled me up the chart above my seemed to be favoured 19th place. With the 210 points Curt gave me for these figures, I've zoomed all the way up to 11th place!!! Which is believe it or not a damn lot higher than I thought I'd get. I know the challenge isn't finished yet, but I'm now hoping for a top 10 place, which will be tough going, but its what its all about after all!!!

The figures are more WWI British from both Musketeer and Battlehonours ranges. They were painted up for  Matt who's got some rather nice French lined up for me to paint next???

Battlehonours figures

42 figures in all....

And while we're on the subject of WWI,  I've got to say a big thank you to Phyllion. Over on his blog Diary of a Gaming Magpie, I won a prize!!

Unusual for me I know?????

The prize in question was this marvellous book shown on the left, The Forgotten Front 1914-18 The East African Campaign by Ross Anderson.
I've only had a quick flick through at the moment but, Phyllion recently did a great review of the book, so pop over to his blog here and have a read!!

Cheers Phil!!!