AAR; Napoleonic (Sharp Practice), 15Mar2020

My Napoleonic rules odyssey continues, this time using Sharp Practice. I played used my Peninsular French against Ian using Spanish. A simple encounter game fighting over a small village with 55 points aside. In the opening moves Ian deployed and moved 2 groups of guerrillas in to woods on his left flank, whilst advancing with a formation of 2 groups of line troops between the woods and village, and a 3 group formation of line troops in column moved down the village main road. I opposed his main column with a group of voltigeur skirmishers, and on the other flank another group of voltigeur skirmishers held off his guerrillas. Between these forces I had a line formation of 3 groups of fusileurs, and a group of mounted dragoons were to move around the Spanish left flank.

I have noticed a peculiar phenomenon when playing Sharp Practice where the opening movement dice always roll low numbers, and the same happened in this game; my dragoons seemed to be cantering through quicklime and Ian’s columns were equally slow. I soon found out that irregular guerrillas in cover are not easy to shift, and in no time my voltigeurs were running for cover (in fact they never returned to the action). My other voltigeurs were happily taking pot-shots against the slow Spanish column, and my fusileurs got a couple of effective volleys at the other Spanish line formation. Suddenly the Spanish C-in-C motivated the column moving through the village to ‘step out’ and rolled high dice, so they plunged into fisticuffs with my voltigeurs who thought they were safe. The voltigeurs were wiped out but they did manage to wound the Spanish C-in-C, rendering him unconscious. Next turn he recovers, leaps back into the saddle and leads his men in a charge on the end group of my fusileur line! Luckily I hold and the round of fisticuffs is a draw, but the Spanish are now at 50% strength and the C-in-C gets killed. The resulting second round of fisticuffs was very one-sided, the Spanish are thrown back in to the village street and mill about without any leadership. My fusileur line formation is fragmented, but could be recovered. This was very much the turning point of the game, if the heroic Spanish leader had survived then victory could have been achieved. The loss of the Spanish leader effectively ended their aggressive moves and, finally, my dragoons were in a position to charge the recoiling Spanish. This they did and quickly destroyed any opposition, tipping the game and reducing the Spanish force morale to zero. So, a French victory!

A fun game that neatly fitted into an afternoon club meeting. The randomised leader activation mechanism works very well and introduces the right amount of uncertainty. The game turned on the performance of the heroic Spanish general; if he had survived then a glorious Spanish victory could have been achieved. I also learned that once irregular guerrilla skirmishers are established in cover, they are a very tough nut to crack. Cavalry can be devastating if they can get into a position to charge before they take casualties from firing.