Blucher - Austrians vs Early War French

Last night I got to give my almost finished Austrians a run against Geoff's French.

All the figures are from Lancashire Models except the generals who are from Old Glory.

Lancashire figures aren't the greatest, but they are priced very well and it paints up OK.

I've painted my using a lot of Army Painter base coats and dipping, which works well for my style painting.

The Austrians didn't do too well though, Geoff is very good at the pre battle map system, Scharnhorst.  This left me in the position of having to completely break him to have a chance.

Anyhow, I got my new toys on the table and it was all good.


Turn 3

Geoff has redeployed his troops behind the river while waiting on his flank march to arrive.

I'm  pushing towards the BUA to get some points.

The French line

The Austrians advance supported by artillery.

The Landwehr advance to the forest where it's safe.

The Austrians engage the BUA defenders while trying to keep their left flank intact after the flank march arrived.

It looks good from here, but the Austrian shooting is ineffective.  I think I managed to cause one hit in all the shooting.....

Blucher - Austrians

Curse new rules that are fun to play!

I've gotten into Blucher for my Napoleonic fix and decided to build a 2nd army.

As I seem to have a preference for Germans, I went with the Imperial Austrians as my 2nd army.

I picked up the bulk of the army at Salute this year and have been busy painting it.

Here are some of the first units

Veteran Infantry

Cuirassiers

Sub General

Commander in Chief

Blucher one day event at Oxford

Alasdair from the Oxford club has been organising a series of one day events at his club.  The idea is to have a whole day to play one big game with lots of players.  I've done a couple of modern games with him and this was the first Blucher event.

We had 16 players on the day with the French attacking the allies.

It was quite impressive to have over 5000 troops on the table and a few newbies joining in.  The game ended up with a minor win to the French, having cleared out 1/2 the battle field of Austrians, Russians with the Prussians pinned down.

The table.  I was playing on the table closest to us.  I was a French Sub commander with the task of clearing out the table Austrians.  To my right, the French were against the Russians.

To my left, Paddy, the supreme commander (and we use the term loosely) had a few Prussian cores to deal with.

 

Interesting basing for Blucher.  Rather the FoGN basing of 32 inf per base, Paddy has gone for 12 figures and a general.  It still looked rather good and makes a new army a lot cheaper.

Paddy has been busy basing up lots of spare units for Blucher.

Paddy's french division advancing to support me.

Andy's French supporting my right flank.

Paddy realises that he needs to hold back the Prussians as multiple divisions advance.

Brian and I get stuck in, a solid line of Austrian infantry and cav advance on my French.  Quite a few of my units are already damaged by some very good artillery shooting.

My French Veterans finally clear the river and advance on the Austrian infantry.

My French having cleared out the left flank move to clear out the last of the Austrians.  Little did we know that Russian reinforcements were to arrive shortly afterwards.

My battered French cav move to engage the Russian reinforcements, discovering Russian artillery is quite good.

A mess!

Brian's Russians and what remains of the Austrians engage my French.

We discovered that prepared infantry can hold off mounted for quite a while.

On the far left flank, my remaining infantry pushed off the Austrian conscripts and advance on the Russians.

Blucher - French Civil War

I'm quite enjoying the Blucher rules.  They are straight forward, play well and have enough detail to allow some evil.

Adam and I had a game recently, with both of us fielding 1809 French armies.  Adam went for a different flavour of French, with lots of Poles, Italians and Swiss troops.

We didn't use the Scharnhorst campaign system, since both of us are still learning the rules, so we deployed the traditional style.

The game ended up a draw with both of us breaking in the same turn, lots of units broke in one turn.

I was the attacker and moved first.  Charge!

The French Dragoons supported by infantry advance on the flanks, with just a cav unit trying to slow them down.

French line advance onto Adam's Swiss and Italian regiments.  The village makes for a nice safe flank.

Adam's Polish shock troops come over the hill, very keen for a fight.

Adam's Polish Cuirassiers appear on my flank, causing quite a lot of damage

The Polish Cuirassiers debating wether to charge my Dragoons on the flank. I charged later on and it didn't go well.

1st game of Blucher

Geoff gave me a run of the Blucher rules a few weeks ago and I was well impressed with the rules.

 

We managed to get a convincing result (I lost), but it seemed to work and not too much rules checking.

 

I brought my 1815 French and Geoff had his Prussians.

 

Geoff won the initative and the mini campaign (I had no idea what to do) and the table was set up very differently to the usual line up and charge.  Troops deploy hidden on the table, all you can see is their card, which gives you an idea that someone is there, but not what.

 

Geoff's troops had the nice shiney cards, mine are the plain white ones.  I managed to deploy with one column to my right, centre and in Geoff's centre.

 

I'm going to give this game a lot more focus in 2016, I like that it's not just a classic line up and shoot and it plays well.  It gives you a feel of the period without being too "Napoleonicy", ie anal retentive.....

 

I've got some more troops in the cupboard and will paint them up over Xmas.  I'm going to base them up for Blucher, but use the FoGN sizing, so, will be 80mm wide by 60mm deep, all on one movement square.  Much easier to move.

 

 

Geoff's troops move and take the village.  My Arc de Triomphe looks on.....

 

 

 

Geoff and I start pushing one Geoff's left flank, my Old Guard and up for a fight and ignoring the thrashing I'm getting on the other side of the table.

 

 

My conscripts learn to fear artillery, .......

 

 

The old guard move in, taking fire as they advance

 

 

Breakthru!

 

 

Hmm, that breakthrough didn't last long, got charged in the flank and my troops running over the hill got beaten pretty heavily.

 

 

 

All over except for the shouting

 

Blucher Napoleonic rules

My club has gotten behind a new set of Napoleonic rules called Blucher from Sam Mustafa.

We tried to play FoGN from Slitherine, but they didn't gel with any of us and proved to be too cumbersome to play a game.

These new rules read a lot better and all the games played at the club have gone down well, so, I have bought the rules and will be getting my first game in the next week.