Peninsular War game, 28mm, Black Powder.

[Jabba]

Last week three of us at New Buckenham got together for a game of Black Powder using a fictitious scenario set during the Peninsular War around 1811 ish.

An understrength Portuguese brigade found itself manning an old hill top fortification overlooking a river crossing. The rest of the allied line had pulled back from this river but the orders hadn't reached the Portuguese. When a strong French force arrives to their front they send an officer off to seek instructions/support.

Table layout and deployment areas (grid is 2' square)

For this game I had also allocated the brigade commanders with individual attributes for Aggression, Decisiveness and Independence as per the main rule book. We also decided to use 50% distances, a mistake in hindsight we should have stuck with our usual 66%.

The French objective was to capture the hill fortification and destroy the Portuguese brigade.

The Anglo/Portuguese objective was to prevent the loss of the Portuguese brigade by either defeating the French or withdrawing the Portuguese over the river under British cover.

The British relief force would arrive one turn after a Portuguese mounted officer had left the west table edge.

The Portuguese await the French onslaught.

The Portuguese prepared to defend the fortifications, the French advanced rapidly on their left flank in columns with their centre more cautious in Ordre Mixte behind the artillery battery. The French cavalry hung back on the right flank near the bridge.
By turn four the British arrived to the west of the river and began to engage the French right flank.

The British arrive.

The French centre and right turned to face the new threat to their flank and a sharp cavalry action was fought between a regiment of French hussars and British light dragoons. Meanwhile back on the hill I had succumbed to the usual wargamer's error of forgetting the game's objectives, doubly embarrassing as I wrote them. Instead of withdrawing the Portuguese under cover of the supporting British, I held them at the walls to try and repel the assaulting French, which they did, for a couple of turns anyway, before the walls were breached and some poor command roles led to bad positioning and the breaking of the brigade with one unit forced from the table and another destroyed. Oops!

French assault! "Deus nos preservará"

The game was called at this point as a French win with the Portuguese brigade broken and the hilltop in French possession.

More on this game including unit rosters on my blog at Jabba's Wargaming

Tony.