Getting Pushed Around on the Peninsula

My French opponents

(Yes, it's true, I played a GAME! It's been a while...)

I finally got around to taking up my buddy Jon's standing invite to come down to the FLGS for a Black Powder game. I've never played, and for that matter tend to avoid Napoleonics. No need to get into another era, one filled with a dizzying array of troops, nationalities, colors. The research alone scares me!

But this was interesting.

Jon has collected and painted an impressive number of British and French from the Perry plastic line for the Peninsular campaign. And he's scratch built a superb looking Spanish village as well.

Check out that ship and that church!

On to the game.

I was given the right wing of a British attack force, including rifles, some light infantry and some elite highlanders. And I failed. Miserably.

Actually, the plan wasn't too bad. Put the rifles in the woods on the right, light infantry in the building on the left, and let the highlanders charge right up the gut and let the following unit follow through to the objective.

The British

Unfortunately, my dice rolling must be rusty. After a good start, and getting everything set up, the dice gods abandoned me. For the second portion of the game, my guys pretty much stood there and said "shoot at me." Before they all ran away, that is.

The left wing crossing the river. They didn't get far either.

Still, an interesting game. I must admit I was a bit distracted with some Elite Eight basketball going on, but I hope next time I can pay greater attention. :) I did like how the order system works, with a dice roll compared to a leader's rating determining how many actions a unit can take. And the concept of a roll fail ending a leader's turn makes one think about the sequence you want to do things. That's a neat twist.

Rifles in the woods. I think they got off one ineffective volley.

The concept of leaving all stands on the table was a new one for me, and can take some getting used to. I'm still not sure how I felt about that. It's nice in other games to tell at a glance a unit's relative strength. But maybe that's the point - you're not supposed to know.

I hope to try it again, and we're already talking about expanding it to the War of 1812. And of course there are still all those ACW figs in the pile. (That's going to take a big table, I can tell.)

This is as far as I got. It was looking good at this point.

And my 15mm South American Liberators... It's endless!