Britain and Sweden Go To War!

Over the weekend Wayne and I managed to get together for a game of Napoleon at War – a fun set of Napoleonics rules made by a small Spanish company. The rules themselves feel like they have a bit of a Flames Of War influence and are quite fast. Evan and the Palmerston North guys play them a lot and have nothing but good things to say about them (okay, they have a few not so good things to say, but more about that later).

 

I dusted off an old British army that I am in the process of giving a little bit of a tidy up, whilst Wayne brought his Swedes. We had pretty similar forces with a few Brigades of infantry, a Squadron of Cavalry in reserve and some artillery (Wayne had 3 Batteries to my 2, as well as an extra gun in one).

We both deployed centrally, with our reserves to fill in the flanks. The short version of the game is that I managed to grind out in the centre, where my infantry battalions shot the Swedes off the table, but on my left flank Wayne’s extra artillery battery took out my 95^th Rifles and Portugese Cacadores, allowing him to start enveloping me. On the right flank my Cavalry came flying on, only the fail in a series of tests resulting in them standing around in front of another artillery battery. Eventually they got their act together and overran the guns and some of his Cav, but the damage was done and Wayne won the right flank. At that point we called then game a win to the Swedes, a very close win, but a win none the less…

 

The game was fun but one of the biggest frustrations was referencing the rulebook during the game (this being the main complaint that I’ve heard from players) and finding rules at the right time. We’ve downloaded the FAQ and are planning on having another go soon, in the meantime we are both going to need to read the rulebook another couple of times to try and get it to sink in!

Holding the Centre

British Cav sitting in front of the Swedish guns

Before finally getting it together and breaking the Swedish lines