Borodinette - Valour & Fortitude, 1812

 

 Played in glorious 25mm on a 12 x 6 table. Russians on the left, French on the right.

Borodino refought using Valour & Fortitude rules, with about 1/3rd of the battalions / cavalry regiments actually used. Biggest game we have tried so far with V&F, c 20 Brigades on table for each side. Scenario plan & layout was adapted from a Command & Colours one.

It was maginifcent, and it was (model) war!

Rules flowed very well. At this scale it becomes all about retiring units and entire brigades before they collapse so you can reform them in the rear, and anticipating where pressure will come in advance. You also really undrstand the value of heavy cavalry, as you can move them around the field quickly to solve problems.

 

In the game, the Russian error of over-egging their their well-protected right flank (bottom left in picture) was really noticeable. This was pounced upon by the French, who did not copy Napoleon's error of charging up the centre in the face of 2 hilltop fortifications but instead mounted a huge assault on the Russan left flank (top left of picture) and a big feinting attack on the right flank.

 

With the home fronts calling we had to stop after c 6 hours of hard pounding. But it was already clear that the main Russian objective in reality, of killing enough French to seriously damage their campaign, was being achieved and in fact at this point in reality the Russian army started to retire to achieve their 2nd objectve of keeping an army in the field.

 

Historically Napoleon refused to commit his Imperial Guard and (maybe) destroy the Russians at the end of the day, which some of his generals and many armchair generals and historians see as a big error. If our game was anything to go by, with parts of the Guard already committed and the Russians still a viable force, Boney may well have also wanted to make sure he also kept an army in being!

 

Fortitude before Valour, and all that.... 

 

 

Valour & Fortitude in the Peninsula

 

Valour & Fortitude game, 25mm Anglo-Portuguese vs Franco-Spanish on 12' x 5' table

2 Corps of a Franco-Spanish-Italian-Wurttemburg-German army attacked 1 1/2 Corps of an Anglo Portuguese army (complete with Brunswickers). And when we say Corps, we mean each battalion on the table is 16 - 24 figures. None of this 1 stand = 1 battalion stuff....

 

The British were on the Heights, but they had to take the town - only problem was a French army had arrived, and - worse luck - its Spanish allies arrived in bound 1. 

 

Though outnumbered the plucky British were doing quite well - until a Spanish priest saw a vison and incited a bunch of peasants to attack a Portuguese gun battery, which they destroyed and they then proceeded to sweep down the line helping destroy a Portuguese infantry battalion and a British Hussar regiment, which set off a domino like collapse of the Portuguese Division, and then the British right flank. (Lesson - do not ignore Spanish Guerillas that dice 6 on their "Unpredictable" score….)

 

By day's end, (literally - took us c 11am - 6 pm to play) with Spanish cavalry pouring into the British rear and nearly all the Britsh brigades wavering or worse, it was all over and the Britsh ran for the hills.

 

This game let us try out the British and Spanish army lists which we havent used before, as well as the new French & British Allies list with Portuguese, Brunswickers, Italians, Wurttemburgers / Germans and Guerillas - and a Congreve rocket!

Very happy with the V&F rules, they handle these big battles well, though I think they may need to expand the 4 pages of the rulebook with another page to add a bunch finesses

Valour & Fortitude Napoleonic Rules

 

 

Action somewhere on the endless Russian steppes!

We've been trying out the Perry Valour & Fortitude rules for our big battle obession, and they work pretty well. They are a 6 page free ruleset and each army also has a 2 page ruleset (see page here). 

This is the entire Austrian Corps in Russia, 1812 fighting equal points of Russians, c 600 points.The armies are built up from battalions / cavalry regiments / gun  batteries, which are then organised into brigades, each brigade has a commander and these brigades are the main operating elements of the game.

We used ground scale at 2/3 the Perry rules scale, it worked well even on the 10 x 6 table we were using.

Because shooting happens before you move, and often you can't move after you shoot, we used cotton wool to represent unts that had shot, which gives the table a realistic-ish look (see pic above). You also need also need battalion casualties, shaken and wavering markers.

Shooting and combat are handled very elegantly, but the game really runs off the morale rules ("Valour" is the degradation of a battalion in action as it moves from fresh to shaken, and "Fortitude" is what the Brigade commander needs as more  of his battalions become shaken. Bad things happen when already shaken battalions are hit again, and wavering brigades have to deal with these new shocks. Units then disappear quite fast, and ditto brigades break and run quickly too. 

The main role of artillery and skirmishers is to degrade units, if you can put a first casualty on a unit it is no longer fresh which impacts its ability to take more shooting, and its melee capability. Small skirmish foot detachments and cavalry vedettes using carbines are also quite useful for this reason, and they are hard to hit but need to be dealt with, wasting time and resource. 

This is great as a big battle ruleset, as individual unit actions are quick to resolve and disappear quite quickly, so it plays well to armies with lots of units on the table. You have to start thinking about reinforcements, about retiring units etc - the battle starts to resemble the books that talk about how senior commanders saw the battles.

Also, little touch - you have to have gun limbers to represent moving/stationary and direction of travel. Just makes the battlefield look more complete.

The game at present only has one general, and he has an influence range of 4' (at 2/3 ground scale) so on a 10 x 6' table we used a simple CiC + Sub Generals structure, each sub General counting as a V&F General, so we could command brigades over the whole table, and we played you just handed over reseve brigades from one general to another as they moved (mainly the cavalry brgades). It worked well, we may make something a bit more structured (maybe handovers need a messenger test) but this level of simplicity sort of fits the high level view of the rules.