Wednesday, August 03, 2022

Murat Playtest

 I was asked by a fellow Napoleonic game player to go over a set of tabletop rules they have built and have some commentary for them.

I decided to use the battle of Quatre-Bras to run a game in, as the layout is reasonably well known and the history well known.

You will see the die rolls in the images, along with the turn counter (d20), red & blue dice are combat & morale AND the initiative dice
the white one is for luck or morale or firing
the green one for morale and movement

deployment
(the French light horse still to arrive)

initial positions

artillery fire was wearing down the opposing batteries

'smoke puffs' can be seen in front of the guns
they will drift across the field to the west
as it was determined wind was from the east

Allied troops arrive (top left)
while the melees are joined in the woods
(both left and right)

Dutch troops are falling back in both woods
French Cavalry (center) is pushed out to the right

now artillery has begun hitting the Brunswick forces hard

close range fire had run out of ammunition in the woods
(double 1's)

snake eyes also ended ammunition for the British
troops before Quatre Bras

the ensuing melee went REALLY BAD

now across the lines the French were pushing back the
Anglo-Dutch allies

more artillery fire was massing against the black
clad Brunswickers

the Brunswick force had fallen back into QB
while British guardsmen came forward
the Dutch in the woods (left in image) had been
fully pushed out now

British guards fail to stem the French tide
(right side of image)

the Dutch outside the woods fail to rally at all
continue to fall back

the Brunswick forces in QB are being encouraged to hold
via Wellington and his staff directly

the French left had broken out of the woods

in Quatre Bras, firing goes well for the French

then a melee causes the Brunswickers to collapse

Wellington is killed in action

the whole force had only a few guards to hope to re-take
Quatre Bras

This quickly failed

the French sent guard horsemen to open the right flank
only a force of Hanoverian conscripts were in the way

they lost the die roll of the exchange by 14 pips!

the Anglo-Allied force was now routed
Wellington was dead

The system allowed for good employment of combined arms and I really liked the one page QRS.

There are some changes I have suggested via an email to the designers.

Thank you for reading this quite delayed AAR.


2 comments:

Archduke Piccolo said...

Intriguing. Is the game intended for blocks, or were they just for convenience in this test action?

MurdocK said...

Hello Archduke Piccolo, no the game was not intended for the blocks, I just had finished them and wanted to put them to use. The rule-set is more for larger scale battles, two corps or more per side. Since I do not have the 15mm or smaller minis that easily simulate this and I did have the new blocks (meant to work out kinks in ACW / WWI and WWII sort of rules sets) I thought it was the perfect first 'test run' for the blocks as well.

You can see in the images I did use some of the 15mm Napoleonic troops I do have (for a DBA version) since I did not have enough of the 'command' base minis for all of the allied troops or French side.

I have done more of these command stands for each army now and also some armor, anti-tank artillery, as well as a skirmish/mechanized converter pieces.

More to come from these blocks.