Further Adventures in the Nine Years War

     Both Joe and I had an evening available so I once more imposed on his good will for further testing of my rules. The scenario was a follow-up to the previous one; with the success in the last battle the French were able to force the Allies to turn and fight a major action. Unbeknownst to the Allies the wily French had dispatched a force to turn the Allied flank. Discovering this threat at the last moment the Allied commander sent a brigade of foot and a couple of guns with the intention of slowing the French enough that they would arrive too late to affect the outcome of the main battle.

 

a quiet looking bit of north-east France

 

the Anglo-Danish force

 

the French force

 

the English deployment; fusileers pushed forward into the bad-going

 in front of a solid line backed by the cannon and the lone cavalry squadron

 

the French sledgehammer; three Line battalions fronted by skirmishing fusileers on the right, on the left we see two more battalions and all three cavalry squadrons, 

the CinC held the center by himself

 

first blood went to the French fusileers, downing five of the Englishmen

surprisingly their return fire inflicted even more casualties and drove off the French light troops

 

but the French skirmishers had done their job 

and the French line now drove off the English light troop

 

the British fusileers failed their steadiness check 

and were forces to retire well away from the aggressive French troops

 

on the other flank the British guns were doing fine work against the French line infantry

eventually driving off the foot that were screening the Horse

 

this may have been a bad decision, 

when the Foot failed a morale check and fell back behind the Horse 

the bold French cavalry now advanced at full speed 

take a moment to look at this picture,

 it was the last moments of the Anglo-Danish brigade as a fighting force

 

 

the flood-tide of French horse now threatened the British right, 

the gunners hurriedly rammed home a double-shot of grape to welcome Louis's horsemen 

I issued a "Stand Ready" order to them but then rolled horridly in the Command Phase 

thus  allowing the French to act first

 

the wily French charged the British Foot instead

 

the doomed Foot got off a steady volley and dropped four French cavalry

Joe, of course, passed his morale check with flying colors 

and inflicted a shattering eleven casualties to the Foot who replied with a feeble four

 

blasting through the retiring foot and evading gunners (who all took shelter in the woods)

 the French Horse followed-up into the end of the Danish Foot

 

suddenly my commander was in charge of little else but a gun!

 

unable to fire, the Danes took a blistering ten figures in casualties 

while doing only four in return to the frothing Frenchmen 

the Danes found that discretion was the better part of valor and retired

 

in the space of one turn the entire Anglo-Danish force was thrown into disarray and only the magnanimous gesture by the French Commander of allowing them the Honors of War

saved them from extinction

     This game was intended mostly to test the Light Troops rules. After due consideration (i.e. Joe and I talked about it over a couple of beers) we decided that the shooting of Skirmishers was too effective and we are changing it to one die per three figures instead of one per two. In other respects they seemed to work well enough and we will test them further before other changes. The game stood out with Joe's uncanny ability to roll very well in the Command Phase on the turns when he needed the initiative  giving him the option to act or force me to take my actions first, on several occasions it saved his Foot from further pounding from my guns and at the end he was able to deliver the crushing cavalry charge unhindered by my laggard command staff. Jolly good fun all around, and done start-to-finish (not including the beers) in under two hours.