Quatra Bras with Asquith's Big Wars

For quite some time I have loosely chatted about flying down to the bay area for a day to play a game using shiny toy soldiers with Nick (who posts occasionally at PMCD Mobilisatie).  More recently this turned to having a remote game via Zoom, and Nick was kind enough to set up and host a game on Sunday morning.  At his suggestion we used Stuart Asquith's Big Wars, which I had never played before, and a scenario based on Quatra Bras from One Hour Wargames (hilariously, the scenario took a little over 3 hours to play).  I have never played Big Wars, and I will say that it does an excellent job of sticking to a lot of the nuance of HG Wells' Little Wars, although they are not terribly well organized, with somewhat key rules tucked away at the end of sections where you would not expect to find them (infantry in line can offer closing fire is noted at the very end of the melee section rather than the beginning, for example). Additionally, after the end of the game, I noticed a sentence that for small arms fire you are supposed to lay down casualties and then count them in counterfire (as in Charles Grant's The War Game) which might have change the game quite a bit in feel and outcome (although I don't particularly like that mechanic). 

I played blue (the French) and Nick red (the British).  My entire army came on board right away,  Red had 3 units on table at the start with more arriving on turns 3 and 9. Blue has to cross the entirety of the board and tag a crossroads. 

Army Blue coming on board, with Zouaves leading advances on the farm and the woods. A great collection by Nick!

I thought I played well at first, clearing out the farm and the woods with lots of artillery and small arms fire from my numerically superior forces, while taking few casualties myself. My heavy cavalry cleared the woods of the enemy light infantry.  But despite many, many attempts, I could not knock the Red horse artillery guarding the road down a notch, and it shaved off a figure here and a figure there for the whole game. 

Having cleared the woods and the house, I put my infantry in columns and sent them up the sides of the board while my artillery dueled poorly against the Red horse artillery in the middle.  At turn 9, Red got its final reinforcements, but my flank-marching troops were still 18-24" from the cross roads, which left them with little choice but to advance right up into close range fire. There was a little bit of one-for-one unit losses, but in the end Blue ran out of units.  Pics are mostly Nick's, except for a few screenshots I took that turned out okay.

This farm is a French card toy kit.

That pesky horse artillery!

Poor quality screenshot. Nick is measuring range.

Another screenshot.  Nick had two cameras which was very nice.

Blue heavy cavalry attacks the foot artillery but only drew a tie.

Nick moves my line infantry into attack.

This the end game.  Nick's cavalry (center) has just routed the Imperial Guard (lower left, in the California sunshine).  The Red guard infantry at upper center has just routed Blue line infantry.