The Napoleonic Wars, Republic to Empire, 28mm

There’s always something spectacular about large “Napoleonic” games, where the table groans under the weight of the lead. Well, this was one of them. The excuse was the playtesting by ther Edinburgh club of the forthcoming Republic to Empire rules. The plan was to refight the Battle of Quatre Bras (16th June 1915) – which as you all know was an encounter engagement fought between the Duke of Wellington’s Anglo-Dutch army, and the left wing of Napoleon’s French army, commanded by Marshal Ney.Well, we didn’t have nearly enough figures of the right type, so most of the British were wearing “Peninsular-style” shakos, Americans were doubling up as Dutch, Portuguese and Poles as Frenchmen, and I’m sure there were even some Prussians there, pretending to be Brunswickers. Still, the aim was to put on a large game, not to satisfy the “Napoleonic” purists!To win the game the French had to capture the Quatre Bras crossroads, which  at least at the start was just thinly held by a small Dutch-Belgian division. The French came on in three large divisions, one heading straight up the road towards the crossroads form the south, while the rest of the army hooked round to hit the Allied position from the east. My force was the 6th Division – one of these flanking groups. Unfortunately the terrain and the timetable of reinforcements didn’t work in our favour. Although we saw off any blocking forces with relative ease, by the time the large French columns reached Quatre Bras, the Allies had been heavily reinforced, and the crossroads was firmly held by British troops.After some six hours of gaming (which was roughly fought out in real time) the French finally reached the line of the Quatre Bras to Ligny road, and were in a position to storm the flank of the Anglo-Dutch army. However, by that time night was falling (outside it was 7.30pm on a cold, drizzly Edinburgh night), and the time had come to pack up. In other words, my damned troops never got to roll a dice in anger all game! Grrr…On the French left, Bahelu’s 5th Division had been suckered into an unsupported attack on the crossroads from the south, and consequently had been chopped to pieces. A ragged line of Dutch-Belgian and Nassauer militiamen then advanced towards the left flank of the remaining French force, but despite claims to the contrary by the Allied players, this never came close to a grand sweeping hook. Militiamen don’t really do “sweeping”.However, it did demonstrate that the French were no longer masters of the situation. The Anglo-Dutch army had been reinforced, and by dark it  enjoyed parity in numbers. With the dispersal of the 5th Division it had the numerical edge over the French attackers. Faced with the inevitability of a doomed assault (and the fact we’d been playing all afternoon and into the evening), Marshal Ney decided to call it a day. That means that Wellington and his chaps won a rather convincing defensive victory.As for the rules, they worked well enough, although they were a tad ponderous. Without the author there we would have had problems getting through half as many turns as we did. The system of allocating command pips (a bit like DBM) made the rival commanders think hard about what they wanted to do, and how to do it. Similarly the orders system (a bit like General de Brigade) prevented the units themselves from acting implausibly.The firing system was a little dice-heavy (a bit like Warhammer) for my tastes, but it seemed to work. The only real quibbles came through the fact that while infantry plod, cavalry races around, and light cavalry can charge up to 42″ if they want to, without having to declare a target when they launch themselves forward. This makes them incredibly effective, and difficult to counter. The rules are still being tinkered with, sop perhaps this will change between now and the next playtesting session. Despite a few misgivings, most of the players were reasonably impressed with the rules. By the time they’re published the bugs should have been dealt with, and so they might be a little more fast-paced and enjoyable. Tho knows – they might even be as good as General de Brigade…