A Gentleman's War in Olympia

I was initially not planning on attending Enfilade this year (I had not been since pre-covid in 2019). My feeling is that Enfilade gets a bit dull after two or three times, as the same games are mostly run over and over again, and that a lot of the time, I ended up with Portland-area people playing in my games. But my good acquaintance and fellow shiny toy soldier nut Nick S. from California was going to be at Enfilade this year, and it occurred to me that this, indeed, if anything, was the true purpose of attending a gaming convention - to play a game with a true fellow enthusiast face-to-face, which otherwise would not or could not have occurred.

Since I lived closer, I volunteered to haul my toy soldier French and British armies up to Olympia for a game of A Gentleman's War. Nick agreed to this arrangement in a heartbeat, and so it was...

I did random draw from my terrain tiles for the table setup. Nick picked the French and I took the British. 

I recall that I won the toss but decided to try and deploy opposite of the town - I thought the hills and woods provided some interesting approaches. In A Gentleman's War you can deploy up to 18" from your table edge, so the French started the game mostly in the houses or in the woods.

My plan was to mostly ignore the French forces clustered in the houses and church, and shift to my right against the lone house (the 'North House') on the French left.

I attached a general to the my gun on the central hill, allowing me to reroll a missed 'to hit' dice, and started chipping away at some of the French regulars neatly standing in close order around the North House.  Meanwhile the Irish Guards would hook around the hill, and advance with skirmishers deployed. They would be followed by a regiment of British regulars and the Hussars.

 

On the opposite flank (no photos, really), a detachment of Nick's tirailleurs in skirmish order clashed with Kings Royal Rifles skirmisher detachment and sent them running. And some good artillery fire took out a full half of my other detachment of KRR.

Irish Guards on the move.

Nick's French line infantry got tired of getting shot at by my artillery on the hill, so they advanced out from North House to face the Irish Guards.

I did not do a very good job concealing my Hussars, and they ended up taking casualties from artillery fire.

The French Dragoons were unfortunately never deployed beyond the cover those woods...

I apparently completely failed to take any pictures of all the action on my right flank. The Irish Guards advance and came under heavy concentrated fire from two regiments of French Line Infantry. The Guards fell back and ran off table.  While the British Line infantry in support tried to get in position, the Hussars charged over the hill and and into the flank of a French Line unit.

...the French Line unit had a commander attached and Nick was able to burn a lot of hold cards, so the French were able to turn to face the charging Hussars and let loose some closing fire. The Hussars still 'won' the resulting melee even though there was now not much of the unit remaining. The French fell back and the Hussars followed up, and again the French were able to turn to face and offer closing fire at point blank range! 'Twas the end of the Hussars.

Having thwarted me on my right, Nick had his infantry advance out from the South Houses and Church (I was close to breaking point anyway, calculated as half of total figures, having lost the Hussars, the Irish Guards, and almost all the KRR as well as some artillery crew and regular infantry here and there)

A maxim gun, the remaining KRR skirmishers, and some Royal Artillery took out some French regulars but as you can see, the British position was not strong...

British left, at end of game.

So Nick won the game, rather handily.  My advice is to not try flanking attacks that cause your units to have their back to a table edge! They have a tendency to run right off the table!

A Gentleman's War continues to be my favorite toy soldier ruleset thus far. I think the only thing we got wrong was at the end of the game we started putting entire 12-figure units of regular infantry into skirmish order. Only light infantry units can be completely in open order - regular units can only deploy up to half their men as a skirmisher screen.

Nick gave me a box of oddball Britains figures, including two bands. I gave him my tirailleurs unit, as I am working on a "second generation" casting of that figure.

Nick and I then got dinner at the hotel restaurant, which was slammed. This caused us to be 20 minutes late to the next game session, for which I was rewarded by my GM giving my seat away to someone else. Phooey.  

The next day I was not signed up for any games, but Pete roped me into trying the Perry Brother's Valor and Fortitude rules with his Minifigs collection, which I always enjoy pushing around.  My opponent was Jesse L., who moved from Portland to Seattle last year (or so), so that was enjoyable to play against him once again.