French and Austrian Valour and Fortitude AAR Napoleonic 84

 Second game of the year, in December! Well, hopefully get a few games in over the Christmas holidays. Still , we had a go at a meeting engagement with two brigades each, in Des's case his army list was written by AI, seemed to get the numbers wrong a bit and needed tweaking but an interesting excercise, for the French I just adapted a pre existing army list to get to the 250 points. Two French brigades, brigade one had three line regiments, an artillery battery and a hussar unit. Brigade two had three line regiments, an artillery battery, my new French dragoon unit and a unit of cuirassiers. Opposing them were in the first brigade a unit of combined Grenadiers (their first outing also) two units of landwehr, an artillery battery and the dragoons that were the subject of the last post . In the second brigade was the other combined Grenadier battalion, an artillery battery, the Hessen Homburg hussars ,in their first outing, and three battalions of Austrian infantry. We decided to put two built up areas as objectives and put a  river in as a decorative element, rough terrain that cavalry could ignore, in spite of this I ended up crowding the bridges as the attacker?

So that was the set up, my German church Built up area and one of my old half timbered British built up area that I hope to replace with a more Germanic built up area shortly. I sent my left hand brigade infantry across the bridge with the artillery in tow and the hussars careered off in a frankly British manner towards the Austrian dragoons. The other brigade infantry similarily set off for the other bridge and the cavalry led inexpicably by the dragoons headed across the river in the direction of the Hessen Homburg hussars.

Des moved to occupy the church and yard but couldn't reach the other built up area. He moved up his hussars and dragoons but wasn't able to get in charge range. In my turn I managed to occupy the other built up area and charged the Austrian dragoons this didn't end well as the dragoons were supported and unlike other rulesets there is no bonus for initiating charges, so the hussars  had to retreat shaken I failed my activation for my other brigade. My dragoons took casualties from the grenadiers in the church,his hussars defeated my dragoons who interpenetrated my cuirassiers in retreat and were shaken. I got my first brigade across the bridge and the first unit charged the Austrian grenadiers and although they inflicted casualties they were defeated and failed a valour test and were gone, the brigade passed the fortitude test at least but it all seemed to be going rather well for the Austrians,less so for the French.

I'd managed to unlimber an artillery battery to one side of the bridge to target the weakened Austian grenadier unit, prior to launching another assault unfortunately with no result, however the fire from the unit occupying the built up area caused a casuality that meant they were shaken and then proceded to fail a valour test and routed, my assault column then charged the landwehr unit behnd, which was won and the landwehr unit was shaken. With the other brigade I charged the hussars with my cuirassiers supported by my dragoons and this time the unsupported hussars faired less well and were routed. The supported infantry of the brigade made it over the river and into the unsupported Landwehr unit which also lost and was routed. The brigade with the hussars passed their fortitude test, the brigade that had lost two units fared less well and failed, which meant it also lost the other landwehr unit as it was shaken when the brigade became wavering, causing the army to get a defeat counter. A better turn for the French but now it was the Austrians laat go and the last go of the game due to time restraints. The exposed Austian artillery unleashed cannister on the now somewhat isolated French assault column and caused them to be shaken, they were then charged by the newly painted dragoons and even though the results were close, because the infantry unit was shaken it needed a higher score,otherwise it would have been a draw, so with the loss of another unit two more fortitude tests were needed and a fail meant the French also acquired a defeat marker and as we each had an objective each I called a draw, Des said it felt more like a loss as he'd lost four units to my two but it was great fun and just nice to get lots of newly painted units on the table!

Next up? Probably more Napoleonic Austrian cavalry I think?

All the best

Iain