Fuentes de Onoro

 

This weekend it was time for the 4th Rose Hill Wargaming Group annual wargame, and our 2nd in the Peninsular. We had over 2000 20mm figures and a playing surface of around 20' x 14', split into 3 tables. The rules were our in-house Steady Lads Steady, played on a 10cm grid, and whilst there are always tweaks to make everyone seemed to be getting along with them nicely.

Following the superhuman performance of the Spanish at Talavera we decided to start implementing some decent Command and Control rules, beyond our use of ADC cards. Two main changes were made:

• Instead of rolling dice each turn for initiative each side now had a set of playing cards and bid for the choice of initiative each turn - so they could have some attempt at control of the tempo of the game. After a few turns we made the bids completely secret, all they knew was whether they had won or lost, not how much the other side had bid. All worked really well.
• Each Brigade now had an orders block. One the face-up side it gave the type of order (eg stay, advance, move) so that the opposition could police its general behaviour, the face-down side showed essentially the level of aggression/commitment to the order (e.g. assault, defend at all costs etc). Order cards were needed to change orders, and there was a dice throw based on the Bde Comdr command rating, and the CinC could keep cards between turns so as to build up orders ready for a big change. Worked better than we could have hoped for.

Along with the use of blinds at the start for almost all troops there was far more of a sense of the CinC playing a CinC level game, whilst the rest of the players fought their Corps as instructed. 

In terms of how it played the British pulled out of Fuentes de Onoro before the French even got there! The French pushed for the gap between Poco Velho and Nave de Haver, but didn't want to get caught in a confused mess as they passed through the defile, but did get caught in a confused mess as the British extended a very thin red line all the way down the ridge to level with Nave de Haver. There was then essentially fighting along the whole length of the 20' table - a grand sight - and eventually the line provided a little too thin and the French not only turned the S flank but also split the line in two - which would effectively have caused 1st and 9th Divisions to surrender!

One of the really nice things was just there shear amount of space to manoeuvre in. We have about the same table area as Talavera but only about 2/3 rds the troops.

A great game, played in a great spirit by everyone. A few more tweaks for the rules and we'll hopefully be back for Albuera in 2025.

Photos in reverse order, so end of the game at the top!

STARTEX - Almost all the troops on blinds - some are dummies!

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