Back to First Carlist War AAR

 So, being my turn to put on a game I thought it might be nice to organise a First Carlist War game, its been a long time since we had one.

Its probably the only collection I can say is finished, I have all I planned to get plus the start of chum Chris's collection more than enough for a 6 player game, so barring new releases from Perry this should be it, although as the Isabelino's have 7 squadrons of cavalry and the Carlists only 3..........

Funnily enough being a War few of our gamers know much about nobody is particularly fussy about rules for a change, Black Powder it is with a few house alterations.

For some time we have played firing before movement but we have found the below can give less extreme results.

For our Game an Isabelino Division has been dispatched to destroy a cache of Carlist Powder hidden in a church, the Carlists were always short of of most things. A brigade of Carlists are defending the area and, getting wind of the attack, Carlist reinforcements are being rushed forward. 

The Isabelino Army commanded by Steve was as follows

The Carlist force is slightly smaller and commanded by Chris C.

Chris has the first brigade in light cover in front of the church whilst the second is on table marching to support, the third will enter move 1 from table edge.

Steves Foreign Legion brigade is a move on table whilst his Militia , line and horse brigades are deployed tale edge ready to advance, the Guards brigade enters as support move 2.

Steve deploys his cavalry brigade on the left with a view to flanking Chris's slightly smaller force.

Chris's supports are strung out on the road, in the end they would take a little too long to get in position to be decisive.

Chris is quick to get his reserve lancers forward and blunt Steve's cavalry advance. This proves a bit inconclusive but the Carlist horse do their job buying time for the foot to deploy.

The Militia brigade has also got forward fairly quickly on the left and the Carlists pull back trading space for time.

The Legion are getting forward but the Carlist supports are quicker to get into position. The Royal Guard are really slow though giving Chris too much time to get prepared.

The first battallion of the Legion charge home on the Carlists and push them back without breaking them.

After two failed advances the Royal Guard are almost near enough for musketry.  Hopeless!

Whilst winning the Legion are now pretty exposed with Carlist units on both flanks and unable to break the unit they are engaged with.

Having bolted forward the Militia brigade is now quite happy to sit things out failing move orders.

The Legion cavalry trys to support the foot with a charge, not a great idea on formed foot. The charge home but fail to break the Carlist foot.

Both flanks were engaged but not fully due to an inability to activate troops that had average Generals, the centre unfortunately never really fired a shot so we didnt end up with much of a game.

A shame we never really got to a point where either side had a clear advantage, although Steve's Isabelinos probably had the edge, there was still a great deal to play for.

Not an issue we have had before with Black Powder but lots of confusion and looking up of rules. Mainly I think because we use Hail Caesar too and this is very similar but different enough to confuse things.

As our lack of progress was a little disappointing and I had left my collection at Steve's, the week after we decided to try a Carlist Wars game with Valour and Fortitude.

I played a game of Sikh Wars at Partizan with them but never really got to grips.

Steve assured me we would fly through a game so didnt need much time, leading us to  squander the evening chatting and chomping Jamaica cake with tea. Need less to say we ended up running out of time!

Still they were quick and I did enjoy them.

We did get stuck in so to be honest I didnt take as many photos, However, despite this being a larger game than the week before the rules certainly allowed us to get stuck. Within 3 moves we were hand to hand on the left flank.

I particularly like that the first unit you try to activate, as long as its in command range of your general, will automatically activate. So as long as you choose wisely you can always get the most important unit for any particular move to do its thing.

Also interesting you get a suit of cards and each one represents something that is specific to the Troops you are commanding, one card randomly drawn each turn.

In the centre one Brigade pushes forward whilst the Guards brigade fails to advance at all. Even with this fast paced game its still possible to have whole brigades not get a move.

The Isabelino Marines charge Carlists who already have a number of casualties and are shaken.

The Carlists break, although the Marines are now faced by a fresh Carlist battalion, this time veteran Guides, these were eventually broken in turn.

This game has left me quite intrigued and I am keen to try another Valour and Fortitude.

Hopefully more soon, thanks for stopping by.

Mexican Adventure Workbench

So the Butterfly has me all over just now, with no particular game to work towards I am just painting what takes my fancy, this week Mexico.

Same photo different lighting, not entirely happy with either really.

First Mexican irregular horse is a Knuckleduster Bandido, never seen these before but picked up a  bunch of them off ebay a long time ago, nice figures. Reckon I have about 10 of these. Undecided how big the cavalry units will be though as they operated in squadrons typically.

These Foundry Mexicans were bought painted to a poor standard but worked well as undercoated saving me lots of time. Painted as Conservative/Imperial Mexican troops.

Three Republican Mexicans, you can see the size difference between the Gringo 40's charging figures and the firing Foundry regular. These will need to be kept in units of single manufacturers but both still lovely sculpts.

Meanwhile a couple more Woodbine Turks and a Perry plastic Afghan, just because.

This unit of Turco's is a mix of Foundry and Perry. Bought painted and touched up so it will match my painting style, I will need to add 8 more figures for a 20 man regiment. Pretty pleased with these.

Further progress and again an eclectic mix for Mexico, bit more natural light means the colours a bit better in these pictures.

Two more Chasseurs D'Afrique, the neck cloths are green stuff as the figures actually from the Perry Franco Prussian range,

Giant Gringo 40s figures, very nice but very big, these will be in separate units to the others, they dont mix.

This Gringo 40s Legionnaire is massive, as big kneeling as some of the Foundry figures standing, sanding the base down to hopefully get a mill off and then he goes on a base of all Gringo 40s so he's less obvious.

These Foundry Camerone range will do nicely for Mexican Conservative troops, Re-painted after buying them painted at a  show (Thanks Chris) they came out OK and were very quick to do using the original paint as a base.

I am making good progress with the Mexican project just now so keep an eye out for more.

Thanks for stopping by.

A Battle for Ireland AAR BLB2

Another BLB2 play test as we try to get the best from this set specifically designed for the period.

This time a divisional sized meeting engagement in Jacobite Ireland. 

The key grievance up to press has been the very short movement rate meaning that much smaller tables are required and no real pre contact manoeuvre as there is simply no time when moving at 4 inches per turn.

We have tried doubling movement which worked reasonably well. This time Chris wanted to try strategic movement so units could move 16 inches a turn until they were within 16 inches of the enemy, allowing a lot more manoeuvre pre-contact. Then drop back to 4 inches for foot as per the rules.

Fairly equal forces, Steve as the Jacobite had a Brigade of Irish Guards and a brigade of poorer troops with two regiments of horse with blade, he had a light gun as support.

I had two brigade of drilled troops, one all shot Danes the other regulation Huguenots. I also had one gun but with a master gunner and two regiments of horse, one blade and one bullet.

Rolling for initiative both Steve and I got a 1, no movement at all from either side, not an ideal start. I do like some command and control restrictions but I do find that BLB2 can be too widely varying.

Next move Steve gets a 10 and moves his whole army, I get a 5 and move just half. We close on each other fairly quickly with the extended movement but the table is too tight for us to do anything except march straight forward.

I roll another 5 and the other half of my army can catch up. Again not ideal

Steve pushes his cavalry slightly further forward and I angle my horse to charge his.

Too late Steve charges my Huguenot's, my volley is poor only causing one casualty, Steve wins the first round of melee and I stand so we go straight to a second round which Steve wins again and my foot leg it, the Jacobite horse pursue and cut the unit down to a man.

Not the best of starts.

I now have Jacobite cavalry rallying to my rear, whilst Steve has the worry of Williamite Cavalry to his rear.

Having taken two turns to move my gun into effective range and another to deploy it, the Irish guards have advanced to effective musket range. I fire my first shot, being cannon even though its very short range I am minus 2 for my first shot and do very limited casualties. In return the Irish guards volley the gun getting a plus one for first fire and wipe it out. Not ideal.

Steve reforms his cavalry to face mine and I do the same, I have also reformed my rear foot unit allowing me to volley Steve's cavalry in the flank and reduce their already low number.

The majority of our foot are now in range of each other and halt to engage in a sustained firefight. Its almost impossible to fail morale from casualties inflicted from musketry which is weird because most of my troops cant charge home with Steve's due to their quality. So it becomes a case of who will die to the last man first.

I try an all or nothing charge on Steve's horse, I win as they have already suffered lots of casualties but I am down to half strength on both squadrons so now of limited use.

My right hand Huguenot unit has been under sustained fire from a battalion of Irish Guards and another of average quality foot. I have my other foot unit in line but these guys are down to one third of their original strength and still passing their morale.

Steve now has 2 foot units down to half strength but they cant fail their morale so its ok. Still feels odd. My own very badly mauled unit is now very much at risk of failing so I attach my commander in chief to stiffen them.

I push my horse into the gap where my gun was to give the Irish Guards something to think about, not that they can do much against them but I cant use them for anything else.

My almost gone unit has passed its morale with the plus three provided by the C in C, it is down to three D6 needing sixes for firing, so whilst still on table should be pretty useless, except, I manage to throw a triple 6!

Awesome but again as the Irish Guards cant really fail a morale from musketry it doesn't really change anything.

The return volley kills the remaining French down to the last man.

So the game is not lost yet with my right flank holding its own but the left flank is well and truly shot.

The game has highlighted that strategic movements can speed things up and allow us to use a bigger table, although that didn't work with tonight's battle field it could in future, but it has also really made us scratch our heads at the morale structure. Steve's view is that we abandon BLB2 now as there is too much that doesn't work for us. I am still on the fence and Chris feels they still work for small games but not for the larger ones we need for Great Northern War and Ireland.

I am tempted to see what we rescue with changes to morale but these would have to sit with changes to firing and ranges too alongside the changes already to movement so........

We will see what the new edition of the rules bring but may decide to start from scratch.

Watch this space. Thanks for stopping by.