Rezonville (or something like it)

Allied forces approach Rezonville.

 

Scouting ahead of the Allied main army, two squadrons of the South African Mounted Infantry approached the village of Rezonville, which they found already occupied by Imperial Hussars and Lancers, whom were also scouting ahead of the Imperial army. 

Starting positions - Allies to the left, Empire to the right. Imperial cavalry is already in the town.

As the Allied army approached from the ridge which tapered off just outside of Rezonville, the South African scouts decided to engage the Imperial cavalry immediately.

Cavalry clash in town.

In the resulting melee neither side seized a significant advantage, although the lancers escaped with a single casualty. Both sides withdrew their cavalry as the infantry approached, in what was shaping up to be the largest battle in the Empire-Alliance war thus far (70 infantry, 10 cavalry, and 2 guns per side).

Cavalry clash as seen from the church bell tower (which needs a bell!).

With the majority of the Empire infantry in position to occupy and take cover in the village, the Allies planned to move their artillery to the end of the ridge and shell occupied houses until they were useless as cover.  The Empire, however, countered these moves by advancing the Guards on its left against the Allied right, tying up a gun.  I'll use photo captions to report of the rest of the game...

Allied infantry advances along the ridge.

The cavalry is scattered, with Hussars fleeing down the main street of the town. The Empire infantry advances.

At upper left, the Imperial guard units begin their diversionary attack on the Allied right. In the center, Allied troops start to stream towards the town.

The Guards diversionary attack underway.

French line infantry moves to support the Allied right from the attack of the Guards.

Allied Gurkas and Bulgarians attack the Cheshire Rifles volunteers and West Surrey line infantry who have taken cover in the town.

Allies finally get their other gun situated atop the end of the ridge...

...while the Empire has got a counter-battery gun set on a small rise just beyond the town.

The Guards now taking intense fire from the Allied defenders on the ridge, while the attack on the town heats up.

The West Surreys and Cheshire Rifles defending the town.

The Guards continue to advance and pour fire upon the Allied gun on the ridge, reducing it to just 1 crewman, but at a dreadful cost...

The Allied Zouaves and 2nd Bombay infantry units crest the ridge to join the attack on the town, with the Zouaves pausing to rake the Guards with flanking fire, 

With this volley the Scots Guards go understrength and begin to fall back. The Irish Guards keep shooting away.

Hoping that the Guards will push through and create a gap or a understrength target for easy pickin's, the lancers move into position to charge.

Instead, the Irish Guards are reduced to half strength, then charged by the 1st Turkish and overrun, while the Allied Mounted Infantry moves up the flanks. The Imperial Lancers move back towards town as the Guard's diversionary attack is decidedly broken.

Meanwhile, the two Bulgarian units and the Gurkas have been heaping fire into the houses occupied by the Allies.

But the Gurkas are redued to half strength by counter-fire, and the Lancers are able to charge them from the rear and overrun them, and then crash into the weaker of the two Bulgarian regiments.

The Bulgarians hold their own though and they remain locked in combat into the next round.

While the Bulgarians do defeat the Lancers, they are reduced to half-strength and begin to fall back. The Allied French and 2nd Bombays join the attack on the town.

2nd Bombays exchange fire with the town defenders.

Since the Allied Zouaves had managed to approach the town at full strength, they risked a full assault on the West Surrey line infantry occupied one of the houses.  They are successful in carrying the house and the West Surreys are completely overrun.  However, on the Royal Rifles counterattack and retake the house and push the Zouaves back out.

Meanwhile, the Welch Fusiliers are able to scatter the other Bulgarian infantry unit, then combined fire from the town and the Fusiliers scatter the 2nd Bombays as well.

The "third wave" of the assault, constituting the Turks and French, now comes to the front. They chip away at the Cheshire Rifles some more and disable the Imperial gun assisting in the defense of the town.  Meanwhile, the Zouaves are able to break the Imperial Bengal infantry.

Casualties are very high for both sides, in excess of 40 figures on both sides!  The battle balances on the edge of a knife!

The Royal Rifles keep up a furious rate of fire...

...as do the volunteer rifles.

In the end, however, it is another round of fire from the Zouaves that causes a casualty on the Bengal that ends the game with a narrow Allied victory.

This game was played using the gridded-Charge! variant used previously, and after the flurry of 28mm games in late November and earlier this month I was a little rusty! I had to mulligan some shooting attacks because I was counting long range at -1 to hit when its really just supposed to require 3 hits instead of 2 to remove a figure.  Some of the cavalry vs. infantry melees were also messed up because infantry needs 2 hits to remove a cavalry figure but cavalry only needs 1 to remove an infantry figure.  

Artillery rules might need some work - does an artillery unit start withdrawing when it has been reduced to half strength like infantry and cavalry? If so, this is harsh as artillery are only crewed by 4 figures, and an artillery unit with 2 crew figures would only be throwing 4 dice to hit anyway.  The Allied plan was to shell the town with the aim of simply reducing the efficacy of the cover as opposed to actually causing casualties, but the crew of the gun which was in range of the town was rapidly reduced and then destroyed by counterbattery fire of from an Imperial gun.  Silencing an enemy's guns via artillery duel is certainly realistic enough (there's a particularly futile scene in The Debacle by Zola where French artillery is annihilated by more modern Prussian artillery), but there's a gamification threat where players could start tending to resolve artillery superiority before anything else, which feels more WWI than the Wells-ian toy soldier feel I'm aiming for. 

I did use the prisoner rules as currently drafted (roll a dice for an casualty from a melee, on a 6 its a prisoner; if the unit is half strength, a prisoner is taken on a 4-6), but this resulted in only 3 prisoners taken by the Empire and 2 by the Alliance, and meant that the Irish Guards died to the man. Again looking to Wells, perhaps something more formulaic and less dependent on dice would give the desired result?

Set-up loosely based upon on, and name taken from, part of the Battle of Mars-la-Tour, August 16, 1870.

Trimsos River

This game was played via Google Meets, and was my first remote game. Since I've already been playing with larger figures on a grid, it was pretty easy to shift to remote gaming (I added letters and numbers to the grid so orders and questions could be more easily understood).  The set up (the map and the number of units) was based on the Trimsos river game from Donald Featherstone's War Games, and the rules were my Charge! variant (with important updates of (a) no diagonal fire or movement, (b) cavalry can move 5 square, and (c) the two retreat moves for a unit at or under half strength are on that unit's turn only.

Starting setup.

There were 58 figures per side so the game would stop when one side had lost 29 figures.  The Empire (red) (me) won the toss and moved first. Would the Allied (blue/green/grey) (Pete) continue its string of victories?

After the first turn. Action is already looking to focus on the stone bridge on the left, where the West Surreys and Irish Guard are readying to cross. 

Allied artillery. This particular piece was quite reliable and critical in the game.

On the other side of the table, neither side ever seriously contested the old wooden bridge, probably because of lack of cover and exposure to long range artillery field. The Imperials most kept to the heights of River Ridge or behind it. 

At the top you can see the Scots Guards motioning towards the old wooden bridge. After taking one casualty from long range Allied fire they pulled back.

Allied Turkish infantry fords the Trimsos.

The Imperial West Surreys crossed the stone bridge and were able to take up positions behind the walls of an old ruined enclosure, with the Irish Guard following up from behind.  Fierce rifle fire was exchanged between these units and the allied Cheshire Riles and 2nd Bulgarian Infantry, with the Imperial units faring poorly. 

Firefight between Imperial and Allied infantry, Cheshire Volunteers in the foreground.

The Allies having softened up the West Surreys with additional support from from the Royal Marines and the artillery, the Allied charged the Surreys with the 13th Lancers (Bombay), and successfully destroyed the Surrey's entirely.

The situation after destruction of the West Surreys by the 13th Lancers.

As above three photos clearly show, the situation is not ideal for the Empire - the Irish Guards stand quite alone against over half of the Allied forces at the stone bridge.

Meanwhile, the other half of the Imperial army has waited perhaps too long at the western edge of River Ridge to provide meaningful assistance to the right flank... 

On the following turn, Imperial artillery were able to route the 17th, and the Irish Guards came across the Trimsos at full strength and fired a mighty volley at the 2nd Bulgarian - and caused no effect! On the Allies turn the Guards were then subjected to a deadly cross fire from three Allied units!

The Irish Guards under a withering triple crossfire!

Trying to save a poor situation - the Imperial Life Guards have moved to the right flank.  The 6th Dragoons threaten from the stone bridge. 

The Irish Guards were able to get into position behind the ruined enclosure, and the Scots Guards and  from the opposite flank began to shift into range.  The Imperial cavalry tried to keep out of rifle range in hopes of drawing Allied infantry closer...

Imperial cavalry trying to position for a counterattack. The Irish Guards deliver more ineffective volleys from the ruined enclosure.

On the following turn, however, the Royal Marines dealt the Irish Guards the last casualty to put them at understrength and they began to fall back.  One of the Imperial guns also falls back. The Imperial army is close to the breaking point...

Irish Guards begin to fall back. The Allies are now presenting an impressive firing line dominating the stone bridge.

The Allies have dispatched the Governor General's Horse Guard (upper right center) from its right flank to support the attack on the stone bridge.

There were a few more turns as the Empire tried to set up long range fire to soften up Allied infantry for a mass cavalry attack, but the Allied Governor General's Horse Guards were able to sweep across thr bridge and finish off the disordered Irish Guards and end the game.

Situation just prior to end game. The allied cavalry at lower right will cross the bridge and destroy the remnants of the Irish Guards at upper left.  

Despite the lopsided thumping my Imperial army took (the Allies only suffered 9 or 10 casualties to my 29 - whoof!), this really was the best out thus far for my Charge! variant.  Dropping diagonal movement and measuring simplifies things and the retreating mechanics felt better. Cavalry moving 5 instead of 4 makes them very effective for finishing off units which have been softened up a bit.  Concentrating fire from several units and/or guns on a single enemy is the most effective strategy by far, which both feels right and lends itself to replicating a mid-to-late 19th century battle in terms of how the players move and deploy their units.

The remote game went very smoothly although it may have been aided a lot by Pete having played the Isted game earlier and being familiar with the system. Game took about an hour and 15 minutes. Will probably set up a second camera using an old smart phone, which can be down at table level and also to see dice rolling (I did all the dice rolling - the pips were not visible to the single web cam as it was set up on a ladder from the allied side of the table).  The game was also played over coffee at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday so it felt a bit like Saturday morning cartoons, to me! It also made me a little nostalgic for the first period of sleepy gaming on Saturday mornings at Enfilade.