Stu came over today from Cirencester for our second ever Shakos & Bayonets game with us swapping sides from last time, so I took control of the French.
The scenario was based around The Assault from the book with the defenders starting with a portion of their troops in a fortified position with support on the way and the attackers looking to overwhelm them. One immobile objective was placed in the village and four mobile objectives outside. As I'd just painted up the Spanish gun & crew these made ideal markers for these objectives. Victory Points would be scored for controlling the objectives with more points scored for the mobile ones if they could be escorted to within 9" of the gun.
I formulated two forces of around 500 points which is the recommended maximum for a 48" square playing area. This gave plenty of units per side and a good mixture of troop types.
1 * Centre Company Officer (phlegmatic) 25 points
2 * 10 Centre Company 220 points
1 * 8 Centre Company 88 points
1 * Rifles Officer with Rifle 29 points
2 * 5 Rifles 106 points
1 * 8 13th Light Dragoons 71 points
539 points
1 * Grenadier Officer 27 points
2 * 10 Fusiliers 3rd Company 200 points
1 * 8 Grenadiers Company 90 points
1 * Voltigeur Office with Musket 28 points
2 * 5 Voltigeurs Light Company 110 points
1 * 8 2nd Hussars 79 points
534 points
The British started with 2 units and their Line officer holding the village and the French massed for an assault with both of their Fusilier units in line (and in range) in front of the village.
As we discovered in the first game we played the random card activation method used in S&B means that you can never be sure of when a unit might activate unless you spend command points. So the French had their fingers crossed that their Fusiliers would get into motion before the British could cause too much damage.
True to form the British shrugged off their initial Shaken state (they started the game this way and required a Rally test to recover) and managed two good shots against each of the French lines. This caused the French to become Shaken themselves and in one case retreat.
The French cavalry and Light Infantry cards had come out of the deck so both these elements advanced whilst the British pushed up their reinforcements. S&B uses D10 with a range of zero to nine, so this means the normal excitement of seeing a 0 (normally a 10) is quickly dampened as you realise you just rolled zero.
My Fusiliers did eventually get into the fight and managed a Volley against the units manning the walls of the village. They didn't cause many casualties but due to a couple of poor reaction roles the British abandoned the walls and fled into the square.
Unfortunately for the French just off screen at about this time the British Light Dragoons charged the Hussars who took 2 casualties, rolled a zero, and promptly routed from the table with the whole unit being removed. This left the French right rather hanging in the air.
The plucky French did keep pressing forwards for the walls but mostly via spending command points rather than using activation cards. Command points are generated when you play an enemy card from your hand and can then be spent instead of playing a card during your turn. A very handy one allows you to activate 2 units to move/charge with you paying more CP's the larger the units are.
Whilst the French pressed on the British Light Dragoons had taken one Spaniard to safety and then returned with the French Line troops once again waiting for their cards to come up. This allowed them to charge the Grenadiers. In the ensuing melee both sides suffered casualties and again the French (defenders take the morale test first) rolled very low and the Grenadiers routed from the table.
By this point the game was very much up for the French with their forces having reached the walls but not had the cards/stomach to cross it and take the fight to the British and whilst the Voltigeurs emptied a few saddles of Light Dragoons it was not enough to take victory for the Emperor.
So another interesting game and considering we are very much still learning the rules we managed to play to a conclusion within 2 1/2 hours so I think around 500 points is a good size for our normal games.
Morale proved the downfall of the French with many more men lost through routing than enemy guns/sabres. But this is probably in line with historical battle outcomes as most men just ran away rather than fight to the death. We also made good use of Volley fire in this game to force morale tests, it probably helped that we both rolled pretty low on the resulting tests so that may have given a distorted view of their effectiveness. More games will help iron out that randomness curve and give a more balanced view.
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