Dipping my toes into Napoleonics

The French army pressed onwards into the hail of Russian fire and deployed their Guard infantry, who had been marching in column of route along the road, to an attack column. Thus they hoped to reinforce the 1st Line infantry regiment, who had been taking a dangerous amount of cannon fire. The 2nd Line Infantry deployed to line, hoping to pepper the approaching Russian attack columns with enough fire to discourage them in their steady advance. They let loose a volley with support from the Polish sattelite regiment, but barely hit the Russian 3rd Line infantry regiment and Guard regiment, who kept advancing, while loosing an ineffective volley of their own.

On the flanks the French cavalry again charged the opposing cossacks. The cuirassiers, while being able to drive the Russians back, found that their warhorses could not keep up with the nimble cossack steppe horses. The chasseurs à cheval on the other hand managed to cut down some of the cossacks as they pursued them.

The 2nd Cossack regiment briefly fled in panic before reforming at a distance and took another literal shot at the French cuirassiers, with several bullets bouncing off the Frenchmen’s armour, leading to no casualties. Although the 1st Cossack regiment had taken more cusualties than their comrades at the South flank, they managed to keep their head cool and also went back to keep the French Chasseurs occupied with their carbines.

Things were heating up in the centre, as the French 1st Line infantry regiment and artillery fired on the 2nd Line regiment opposite them, managing to wound the Russians only slightly. The Russians retorted with a furious barrage from their own cannon, supported by musket fire from the 2nd Line regiment. This caused enough casualties on the unfortunate French 1st Line regiment, that they were driven back before reforming again. The Russian 1st Line regiment fired true into the French Grenadiers, who had been taking their time reforming. Although they took quite a pounding, the Old Guard managed to stand firm, true to their reputation for tenacity.

Thus ended the second round of the Battle of Derevushka.

Having played two rounds now, I thought I’d make some remarks on the ruleset.

First of all, there are very specific rules as for who may charge whom. For example, artillery may only be charged if it has no nearby friendly close order infantry or horde units. Line infantry may not charge cavalry (except tribal apparently) and other close order infantry units and hordes may only be charged if the attacker has more bases remaining than the defender. This latter rule is meant to simulate that close quarters combat is terrifying, unless you feel that you can win it. This means that you have to weaken the enemy through musket and cannon fire before you can crash your attack columns into them.

Thus you see that the French Northern centre is now vulnerable to a Russian charge, although luckily for them the Russian infantry is pre-occupied more to the South.

I also hadn’t really considered how bad heavy cavalry would be at attacking cossacks (tribal cavalry). The latter cannot charge anyone and can only fire ineffective close-range carbine fire. Unit types have varying attack dice for close combat, however, depending on their opponents. In case of cuirassiers (heavy cavalry) vs tribal, the former only get 1 die per base, making it difficult to wound the nimble Russian rabble!

I have no idea how standard these rules are in terms of Napoleonic wargaming, but I really liked them. Those are my thoughts for now. I might do another section like this in a future post.