….while the main infantry battle raged on the left flank, Napoleon sent a brigade of his cuirassiers together with some dragoons and hussars to capture the Russian redoubt of artillery playing havoc with his reserves….
So within the context of the main story, our playtest game of cavalry only Napoleonics using our version of Lion Rampant had French dragoons and hussars to take the redoubt while my cuirassiers were tasked to keep the masses of Russian horse from interfering.
I had the Russian divide up their larger number (but equal in point value to the French) between WillB, JimF and PeterM but roll for their starting positions. This was to simulate, to a degree the Russians sending in troops from various spots of their reserves and some of the positions were made difficult to manoeuvre as a rules test.
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| WillB's Cossacks (Perry Miniatures) Home built Russian village by me. Wheat fields are a cut sisal foot mat. |
WillB’s beloved Cossacks were first to move the attack rounding the village only to stop with numerous failed activations which he explained as the Cossacks suggesting they were not about to make any such charges having the enemy “having guns, sharp swords, and such!”
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| WillB's Cossacks, some still treading on winter ground! |
Kevin with the dragoons and hussars surprised us by using carbine fire (!) to cause casualties upon the hapless asiatic horsemen. The tactic worked well with him making most of the high activation rolls. That could not be said of his dragoons who had a hard time getting around all the limbers and caissons (or so it would appear from his rather numerous failed attack activations!) to attack the near defenceless Russian artillerymen who fought surprisingly well (we gave them a 6 on rolls to cause kills on the attackers)
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| French Dragoons slowly working their way through the Russian artillery |
Meanwhile, Jim with all the Russian lancers charged and counter-charged with the French cuirassiers but found the additional stamina (armor) of the French horsemen hard to gain hits upon. Of course much ‘discussion’ resulted from this >) In the end the talk turned to tactics and with the difference in movement, thus charge and counter-charge dynamics, the heavies were thought to be more vulnerable than it would first suggest.
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| The initial clash of my French cuirassiers (bottom) vs WillB's painted Russian lancers (top) commanded by JimF. Peter with his Russian cuirassiers can be seen in the top left. |
Peter with only two units in the centre but those being the strong Russian cuirassiers, chose mostly not to use the ‘group move’ activation as that “put all into one basket’ but had each unit move independently to have “at least one available…on average” (he is our “Mathematician”). He sat just out of the French heavies movement range content for the counter-charge if needed. At that point the rules had the shot extend out to allow the standing Russians to put a shot into the French (this range would subsequently be reduced as all felt the range was ‘out of scale’ and tactically unfeasible). Well, I guess I could be continually be shot upon or charge, so as a good French cavalry commander, I charged…to rather mixed results.
Nevertheless the boys had fun and gave good discussion on the rules.
