Battle of Blue Mountain (or Blaauwberg 1806 re-imagined)

This battle was an exercise in combining 4 things I am really keen on:

1 - The Napoleonic scenario books by Michael Hopper.

 

 

2 - The style of scenario design of Neil Thomas.

3 - My "C18"-themed armies.

4 - The Polemos rules of Chris Grice.

 

So, having recently completed some Dutch troops for the War of the Spanish Succession, I was looking for an appropriate horse-and-musket scenario to try them out on, and I settled on re-theming the Blaauwberg 1806 scenario from Michael Hopper's Perfidious Albion scenario book, which covers early Napoleonic Wars British battles, with engagements from South Africa, South America, Scandinavia and Spain - and rounded off with some scenarios featuring Sicilians...Although obviously set in the Napoleonic Wars, I didn't think I would do too much violence to the logic of the scenario by setting it a 100 years earlier, and so it proved.

Those who have been following this blog recently will know that I have been taken by the simplicity is best approach of Neil Thomas to scenario design. Blaauwberg isn't complicated to begin with so it was easy enough, but the underlying idea is that with quite constrained choices of troops and terrain, one can produce both a recreation and a game broadly as good as a much more complicated offering (not always true, but often). So I took the original scenario, and then derived this version from it - admittedly pretty close on this occasion. 

I have been playing a lot of the Polemos Ruse de Guerre rules recently, but I hankered for a more period-specific set, rather than the more universal aims of RdG. So I picked - wildly enough - the Polemos set actually designed for the WSS. I have the first edition rather than the newer one. I have played several games, but it has been a while. So anyway, I made a few notes, layed it down, and had at it...

The Forces:

The British:

C-in-C: Gen Johnson, Duke of Carlisle

1st Brigade: 4 bases of Trained Infantry (Dutch School)

2nd Brigade: 4 bases of Trained Infantry (Dutch School)

Artillery: 1 base of Trained Field Artillery

 

The Franco-Dutch:

C-in-C: Gen Janssens

1st Brigade: 3 bases of Trained Infantry (Dutch School), 2 bases of Trained Field Artillery

2nd Brigade: 2 bases of Trained Horse (French)

The Set-Up:

The British force approaches from the top of the board, the Dutch force is defending the bottom. The hill on the left is supposed to have a ridgeline in the centre, so it is quite disruptive to walk the length of the hill

The British have their lead brigade in line, with their second brigade split between their right flank and a reserve of 2 battalions. The artillery is supporting the first brigade.

The Battle:

The British leading brigade advances, supported by their artillery; they outpace the flanking force on the hill

The flanking Duch battalion recoils from the effects of musketry and artillery - however the rest of the Dutch artillery and infantry holds

The unshaken Dutch battalion in the centre seizes the initiative and charges - as does the French cavalry

The infantry attack is somewhat successful - their British opponents stagger back from the effects of the volley fire

The British brigadier gets his line back into order

Now the outnumbered Dutch infantry are feeling the pressure, as casualties mount - the British then charge the guns!

the guns are seized and the crews killed, captured or drive off...and mounting casualties finish off the centre battalion...and one of the Horse regiments breaks too!

A wider view; the Dutch line is looking shaky, and the British flanking attack has finally reached the enemy too

The last Dutch battalion in the centre grimly holds on...

But the French cavalry is done for the day

A twist in the tale: the Dutch infantry rout one of the British battalions - can they achieve something very improbable here, and turn things around?

The other Dutch battalion, on the hill, is just about holding on too...

Then suddenly it is all over: Dutch morale collapses, and the last two units flee

Game Notes:

All good simple fun, it could have gone either way but the odds always favoured the British in this one. But it was quite a good work out for the rules, since there was enough of everything on the table to test most of the systems, bar cavalry melee. The scenario translation to the 'Neil Thomas standard' worked fine. What that meant in practice here, and in other recent games, is that some mild constraints on terrain types and unit types made it a much more 'playable' scenario in that the requirements to model very unusual unit types or very specific terrain features went, so it became a much more 'out of the box' affair.

The rules worked pretty well and I did really enjoy the game; it was quite nice to get back to some period-specific rules after quite a while using more generic horse-and-musket rules. The central mechanic in Polemos:WSS is how the different forms of infantry training encourage slightly different tactical options, with the importance of seizing the right moment to advance and fire. Like the Polemos Napoleonic rules, this central combat system is just great, whereas some of the other elements feel a little under-written: not enough to prevent a good game, but just enough to make you feel that you have to 'feel the force' a bit whilst playing. A lot of this stuff used to get teased out on the old Yahoo! group, but whereas I made plenty of notes for the Napoleonic, SPQR and ECW sets, I didn't for the WSS set. Maybe I need to get around to buying the next edition...

Figures by Baccus 6mm.