Napoleon's Battles Practice Session

Last Wednesday at the club I attempted a couple of things with Napoleon's Battles as part of the preparation for doing Waterloo with these rules.

The first was using troops with different basing.  The Austrians are Stephen N's and based for Empire.  They are just resting on thin card templates, however I am in the process of perfecting some better looking movement trays and a prototype can be seen in the lower right hand corner.

The French are all mine, however I took command of the Austrians after the challenge of trying to distribute labels and organise commands.   The OOB was from Marengo.  

Apart from trying out the Austrians and their basing the aim was to get some practice with the rules before the big event.  Here we see part of Stephen trying to master the unit roster aided by a tape measure and some amber fluid.  Stephen was Napoleon and Mark B was Desaix (on the French left).

On the Austrian side I had Greg assisting me in the role of Ott (on the Austrian left).  

Desaix advanced well and was soon in combat.  The French cavalry had advanced against the Austrian centre and found itself decimated by their artillery.  Actually it was a lot worse than decimated, losing a quarter of its strength.  It took Murat the rest of the game to get them back.

On the Austrian left things were a little slower, but as the night came to a close the French had started to slowly turn around a difficult situation.

Running a game tends to diminish the photo opportunities.  The game played well with the French just getting the better of the Austrian grenadiers before we decided to call it quits.

As Marengo is scheduled for the next game day I need to perfect movement trays and labels for the Austrians.  The skills and observations from this will aid in how to better facilitate the Waterloo game (I hope).

One challenge with players new to the rules is reminding them that the units that look like battalions are actually representing brigades.  Now, if I was doing 6mm...