1809 Napoleonic Battle Report Part 1.

....or the day the Dutch blogger MiniMike turned up for a 15mm Napoleonic game with Posties Rejects and survived.

The invitation to come and game with the Rejects is open to all, we just need a little notice as we're old.

Mike follows myself and Rays blogs and he blogged that he was coming to the UK (Broadstairs, an hour away by car) for a holiday with family and friends and Ray invited him to a game that Postie organised and I catered for (we still don't know what Ray did) and what follows is a little batrep and a lot of pictures of the day.

It's 1809 and the Austrian empire is on the ropes after several major defeats at the hands of Napoleon and a French (Lurker) and Saxon Army (Dutch Mike) has been commanded to finish off the remnants of the Austrian army (Surjit and Ray), the game was set up and deployed before we turned up, dicing for reinforcements along the way. Both sides were of similar size and similarly deployed and battle commenced. Would have had more detail but Ray took the sheets with the details of the battle and units and has lost them and mislaid his camera, Ray will be eventually doing a batrep on his blog tomorrow from the Austrian side.

The Rejects with Mike at the far right, not a lot of Rejects as the richer ones were on holiday.

Initial set up, French and Saxons on the left.

My line regiments move forward, the white marker denote first fire (a +1 to your firing dice, only allowed once).

The Austrians and Surjits arms await.

Contractual Postie shot with evilness and maniacal laughter present.

Tried to be a bit windswept.

Artillery had to roll for ammunition as they had not been resupplied, so a 1 got you 2 shots and no cannister for the game or a 6 got you 10 shots and 2 cannister (I didn't get anything near a bleeding six).

Postie the git made me roll 3 times until I got a 6 for this wood and this number and then it turned out to be nothing (I was expecting militia and deployed accordingly).

Austrian elite cavalry try it on with my column, they would eventually break, disperse and the attached general would be shot from his horse.

Saxon cavalry and elite Austrian cavalry clash.

If a general was attached to or within 2 inches of a unit that took casualties, you rolled a D20 to see if the general was a casualty (usually a 1 or a 2) we took 4 Austrian generals out of their saddles.

Things are not going well for the Saxon cavalry.

In fact going really badly.

Classic French deployment, 2 columns protected by a line unit for the assault.

Saxon reinforcements getting lanced.

4 Saxon columns attacking.

Nothing better than a bit of artillery, more ammunition would have helped.

The blue marker shows captured colours from that Austrian cavalry unit.

Doing a bit of birds eye, the Saxons (Mike) were an aggressive lot and should have paid a far higher price but Mike was a lucky guy with the dice at the right times.

French birds eye view.

We stopped for lunch, it's called "Marry Me" pasta.