Salamanca at Warfare 2024

Last weekend found the OWS team at the Warfare show in Farnborough, UK. This is one of my favourite conventions. It used to be in Reading, which was more convenient, but I suppose the move to Farnborough means we get to meet some new people from further afield.

Our chosen participation game this year was Salamanca. We'd run it at OWS a couple of weeks earlier for our esteemed US guest, Vincent Tsao, of the Corlears Hook Fencibles, so we knew it was a good fun scenario. (See Vincent's write-up here.) It's also famous, colourful and eventful, making it a good choice to run at a show.

So indeed it proved, generating plenty of interest from show visitors. We were only able to tempt one player into actually rolling dice with us (we only attended on Sunday, which seems to be the day when people do a quick lap and buy stuff, rather than leisurely lingering to enjoy the games). But we still got to have good conversations with a lot of good folks, whether about the history, the game, the BBB rules, or the figures and terrain.  I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who stopped by and helped to make it such a good day out.

As for the game: 

This classic battle will be familiar to many readers of this blog. In a nutshell: the opposing armies have been marching parallel, Wellington retreating towards Portugal, Marmont trying to race past and cut him off. Wellington stops retreating and attacks the French army while it is strung out on the march.

(The scenario is by Dr Mark Smith and will be one of 16 in a planned Peninsular War scenario book for BBB. Half of these battles are Spanish vs French; one Portuguese vs French; the other 7, British and allies vs French.)

In my usual format, 11 captioned photos tell the story below, followed by a few modest reflections.

A full battlefield panorama to get you oriented. It's the end of Turn 1. The French are in an 'L' shape on the hills along the left and top edges of the picture, with a division on the Greater Arapil (the single hill at the start of the stream, upper left). Thomieres' division has boldly continued its march to capture the village of Miranda de Azan (top right corner), earning the French an irretrievable Objective (Mark's cunning scenario device to encourage - but not compel - the French to replicate the historical risky French march). The Allied right wing (commanded by me) has responded by advancing onto the Pico de Miranda (the hilltop next to Miranda de Azan), while the bulk of the Allied army masses in front of the angle of the French 'L'. 

All figures, terrain and paraphernalia from Mark's collection. Figures are Baccus 6mm. White rectangles are location nameplates that we did for the show. Little red and blue ones are unit labels, ditto. White counters are objective locations. The French need to hold 3 at game end for a draw or 4+ for a win.

A closer view of the Allied left and centre (commanded by Mark). On the left, the Light Division (including Sharpe's Rifles, of course), supported by Bock's KGL cavalry, sits behind Campbell's division. They will spend all game trying to capture the village of Calvarassa (an Objective) from the French on the opposite ridge (the pipecleaners indicate that it is a steep slope). 4th Div is on the Lesser Arapil (centre right), waiting for the right moment to storm the Greater Arapil. Clinton's division (bottom right) will eventually move right to support our attack on El Sierro.

Closer view of the Allied right. Bradford and Pack's Portuguese occupy the village of Los Arapiles (centre left), anchoring my line as  it wheels forward. The yellow label denotes the one Spanish brigade present.

Zooming right in on Miranda de Azan and the Pico de Miranda. D'Urban's cavalry have crested the hill, supported by Power's Portuguese. Unfortunately, the bulk of Pakenham's 3rd Division (bottom left) was slow to move out. 'Slow' became something of a theme at this end of the battlefield ...

... as it took another 3 turns or so to wipe out Thomieres and capture the village (upper left), making time very tight for Pakenham to join in the final assault on El Sierro at the other end of the pitch. The Portuguese won't make it - they are about to drive off the French cavalry (bottom left) and pursue them off the board.

Here's how it looks from the French side of the hill. Two French divisions (bottom left and right) with artillery support are trying to stop the French left being rolled up by British heavy cavalry (left edge) and Hope's division. My Portuguese are still poised in Los Arapiles (top centre), about to support Hope by advancing against the lower right French. French fire was proving deadly, though - black counters denote French units with Low Ammo after delivering a deadly salvo/volley against Hope.

Meanwhile, on the French right, the Light Division (top right) is working its way around their flank but French artillery fire has deterred the KGL cavalry from supporting the Lights.

Pakenham's men taking an unconscionably long time to dress their ranks ...

Rolling up the French left is slow and bloody work. Most of Hope's division is gone, as are the two Portuguese brigades that advanced out of Los Arapiles. Hope's Portuguese brigade remains, supported by the heavy cavalry (bottom right corner), and will continue to drive back the French division in front of it. We had hoped that Clinton's division could join an attack on the Greater Arapil, but Mark has been obliged to commit it here (top left corner).

Late in the battle, Mark's attacks develop against Calvarassa (top left corner) and the Greater Arapil (top right). On the final turn, he mounts assaults against both these Objectives. Currently, the French hold four - enough for a French win. We need to retake one to draw or 2+ to turn defeat into victory.

The final act on the final turn. Both of Mark's assaults are repulsed. Everything rests on Clinton and the heavies, which have just smashed through a spent French division. All they need to do is overrun the French battery holding El Sierro. It's a fight at good odds - but not quite good enough! The French guns are forced to limber up and fall back, but we haven't driven them off the heights yet, so we can't claim the Objective. The French have won, damn their eyes!

Reflections:

Clever Victory Conditions. In my post last month about Cold Harbor, I reported how I had tried to be too clever with the victory conditions and departed from the tried and tested BBB formula. Mark's victory conditions for Salamanca are very effective: a typical formula of 7 objectives spread around the table, typical victory target for the French of 3 for a draw or 4 for a win - but with one important tweak, namely that the village of Miranda de Azan provides a 'highwater mark' objective that the French can never lose once they've reached it, even if the Allies recapture the village. This worked very well. (As did Mark's special rule for Marmont being wounded and replaced, as happened historically.)

Players Should All Use the Same Dice! When I run a game, I have a set of dice that are all the same type, and everyone uses these. If the dice are biased, at least the bias should affect everyone equally. Mark does similar but his dice are different colours: blue for the French, red for the British, yellow for the Austrians, green for the Russians ... having fought Salamanca twice as the British, I am convinced his blue dice have more sixes on them than the red ones!

Time I Bought a Battlemat? My plain green felt cloth has done good duty for a couple of decades but Mark's battlemat looks better and was part of the reason his layout attracted well deserved compliments. I feel a terrain investment coming on.

Colours 2024 - Borodino

 

The Colours wargames show in Newbury is probably my favourite show these days. For a start, it's one of the closest and easiest to get to and therefore the one I get to most regularly. But also it's a nice venue - Newbury Racecourse - with loads of parking, decent refreshments available, and enough space for games and traders and everyone who wants to see them.

We (Oxford Wargames Society) always lay on a participation game. Last year we did Isandlwana, which proved very popular. Everyone knows about it and wants to say "Zulus, sir - fahsands of 'em", and Bruce's gorgeous 28mm figures and terrain drew plenty of people to the table. This year we went to the opposite extreme, from a battle of a few thousand men represented in 28mm, to a titanic contest with a quarter of a million men on the field in God's own scale (6mm): Borodino. This is one of the scenarios from the newly published scenario book, "Napoleon's Bloody Big BATTLES!".

Borodino is just as famous as Isandlwana, of course, so again there was a lot of interest. Numerous people joined in to command a corps or three for an hour or two. Best result of the day was a Warhammer 40K player looking to get into historical gaming, who we tempted into playing on the Russian side mid-morning and who then fought through to the finish (well done, Bart!).

Interestingly, there were two Borodino games at Colours - at the other end of the hall, Dave Brown was running a General d'Armee game focused solely on action around the Raevski redoubt. Hopefully a few gamers appreciated seeing these complementary games offering different approaches to the same battle, one "zoomed-in" and the other "zoomed-out".

I was on my feet for seven hours, talking virtually non-stop to all the folks who stopped by our table. Thank you to everyone who came by to get their ears bent. It was great as always to catch up with a number of old friends (let's give a special namecheck to Steve Johnson, since he's already done his own report from Colours 2024). I was so busy chatting that I wasn't able to pay much attention to the actual game (let alone do much more than a swift lap of everyone else's beautiful tables). Apologies, therefore, to Alan Millicheap, who'd asked me to take lots and lots of photos of the battle's progress. I did manage a dozen snaps of it, which I offer below with commentary for those interested.

In summary: a great day at a great show, highly recommended, many thanks to the organisers, and see you all in Newbury same time next year!

Most of the Grande Armée arrayed at the start. Eugene's corps on the left; Ney and Davout on the central heights; Poniatowski's Poles on the right; Junot about to arrive. The Imperial Guard will show up later. Figures are Baccus 6mm from Mark Smith's collection. We don't normally bother with unit labels as they aren't necessary, but we made the effort for the show.

Close-up of Davout's 1st Corps and the grand battery set up to pummel the Russian redoubts, backed up by some of the cavalry reserve. Right at the back we see Murat, facing the wrong way for some reason ... waiting for Napoleon and the guard to turn up on Turn 4 onwards, perhaps?

Aerial view of the whole battlefield (bar a few more inches either side). The labels show clearly which side is where: the French tidily divided into a central mass and two wings; the Russians grouped around their redoubts, with a flanking force in Utitsa and the woods behind it, a large central reserve, and a refused right wing behind the river.

Attacker's-eye view of the Russian fortifications: the Raevski redoubt left of pic, the Bagration fleches on the right.

Close-up of the defenders of the village of Utitsa. This brigade of regulars is backed up by some fragile cossacks who quit the field on Turn 2, some beefy grenadiers (the column on the road with two flags, our code to indicate a veteran unit), and a lot of pike-armed opolchenie militia.

Utitsa and the fleches from the Russian side. Lots of tough veterans defending the vital fortification.

The Russian central reserve. This is a mix of veteran grenadiers (two flags), trained regulars (one flag) and raw militia (no flags).

Russian view of the French centre and left wing. Lots of 2-flag veteran units and Skirmisher bases!

Battle is joined. The Russians are about to be emphatically booted out of Utitsa, having suffered severely at the hands of French tirailleurs before the assault. A different story on the adjacent heights, where an early French assault on the fleches is about to be repulsed.

On the French left, Eugene has cleared a Russian delaying force out of Borodino and is working his way around the flank of the Raevski redoubt. The Russian right wing is not allowed to move in the initial turns of the scenario. Malcolm has a hand in matters on the Russian left.

Protracted tussle on the Russian left. Grenadiers counterattack at Utitsa but are forced back, while the French hammer away at the fleches. Ding-dong see-saw action here all day.

The Russian right wing starts to rumble forward to counter Eugene. By the end of the game, the French (actually, on this flank, mostly Italians, I believe) had been forced back far enough for the Russians to retake the village of Borodino (the grey patch by the bridge upper right).

There are nine objectives on the battlefield, representing key terrain, lines of communications, flank positions, etc; the French needed to take five to draw, six or more to win. I'm not 100% sure how it turned out but I think it went like this: on the last turn, three objectives were vigorously and violently contested (Borodino, the Raevski Redoubt, and the next line of heights just behind the Russian fortifications). All three results were possible: French victory, draw, Russian victory. And, of course, the last dice of the game decreed it was a gloriously bloody draw. How very historical!

Stitched up at Salamanca

After last week's pride at Kliszów comes the fall ...

Mark has pretty much done a whole set of BBB scenarios for the Peninsular War. See, e.g., Colin's report of our Vitoria game in February. This week Mark treated us to another biggie and a battle I know reasonably well: Salamanca.

'Geometry' is a word I seem to use increasingly often in describing the shape of a battle. For all their undoubted subtleties, the one-dimensional straight-line battles so beloved by our ancients tournament-playing comrades at OWS do not excite me. I want angles, salients, open flanks, divided forces, depth, and the resulting complexity and variety of tactical decisions and manoeuvre ...

Salamanca gives us all these things, and that's what makes it such an interesting battle. You could characterise it as an 'L' facing a 'V' that turns into a 'W'. The plan view below helps to explain.

The historical situation saw Marmont's French trying to march past Wellington's right flank to threaten his line of communications. Wellington responded and caught the French extended. In the pic above, the French have come from the top left; their lead divisions (Maucune and Thomières, top right, plus Curto's cavalry) are trying to press on to the Pico de Miranda and the village of Miranda de Azan (just out of shot). Other French divisions have occupied high ground to confront the arriving allies: Foy and Ferey on the heights around Calvarassa; Bonnet on the pivotal Greater Arapil, backed up by Taupin. Together, these form an L-shaped line spread across a large distance.

Wellington's army has arrived in the middle of the L and formed its own V, with its point on the Lesser Arapil and cavalry on each flank. This gives Wellington the advantage of interior lines: it is much easier for him to concentrate his forces against the widely separated French.

The stars indicate objectives: red for British-held, blue for French, white for no initial control. Miranda de Azan is unique in that if French infantry ever hold it, it becomes a kind of high-water mark for them - the objective cannot be taken away from them even if they are expelled. This is Mark's clever game device to represent the fact that the French wanted to advance in that direction and gives the French players an incentive to do so. We French needed three objectives to draw and four to win. 

I commanded the French centre with Luke taking our left and Matt our right. We were facing (allied L-to-R) Phil, Crispin, Dave and Ben. Our initial plan was to hold the three objectives we'd got, plus try to take the Lesser Arapil, but this sort of went out of the window straight away. Just four photos below capture the critical elements of the battle. Reflections follow as usual.

The village of Arapiles, facing our centre-left, the junction of Luke's force and mine. This was immediately occupied by a small Portuguese brigade. Luke decided to send a division to eject this, which it did, but was ejected in turn by an allied counterattack. I found myself obliged to commit two divisions to support Luke. More allied troops were likewise sucked in. Assault and counter-assault raged here for most of the game, until Ben's allied right wing arrived in the French rear to doom us to destruction.

(6mm Baccus figures from Mark's collection, on suitably arid bases for Spain.)

Here we see Ben's and Luke's forces heavily engaged on the French left. Ben had first occupied Miranda and the Pico, then swung left. (Phil and Crispin were doing something similar on the opposite flank, turning the allied V into a W.) Luke's attempt at driving the allies back went awry when his cavalry failed to back up his infantry. It was downhill from there - as in, the French were driven off the ridge, lost all their cavalry and artillery and were seriously battered ... 

Things went a little better for us on the right - but only a little. Matt responded to an allied advance by coming off his ridge and hurling the foe back across the stream. However, he then had to send some troops back to recover Calvarassa from sneaky outflanking Brits. The unit in left foreground is my last division, which I had to send off the Greater Arapil to protect Matt's flank - which unfortunately left the hill unguarded when Crispin was able to march up it.

Last rites: Marmont on the Greater Arapil in the centre, flanked by the remnants of two French divisions, about to be crushed by overwhelming numbers of allies. Another allied brigade is out of shot below the bottom of the pic - it has taken the Greater Arapil and is about to take El Sierro as well. All we have left is Matt hanging on to Calvarassa on our right. Result: emphatic French defeat.

Reflections:

It's a Stitch-Up! Their extended initial deployment inevitably makes the French vulnerable to having their left rolled up, as happened in our game and historically. We couldn't have won anyway!

Make a Plan and Stick to It. Actually maybe we could have won, or drawn at least, if we'd planned and executed better. We didn't need Miranda, the Pico, or Arapiles - we could win without them - but we let ourselves be tempted to chase them anyway, despite our initial discussion about the four objectives we wanted. In retrospect, jumping into Arapiles may have been ill-advised; so may sending troops further left to try to delay Ben's advance; moving off the Greater Arapil didn't work out great either. By contrast, our opponents seemed to have a clear and effective plan. Perhaps it could go better for the French next time. (It couldn't go much worse.)

Upping the Ante. From where I sat, things clearly went from bad to worse in distinct stages. We would attempt something; it would go a bit wrong; we would then have to make a bigger gamble to try to restore the situation; that would go wrong in turn; and so the vicious spiral went down and down. I suppose games (and battles) often go that way, but it has rarely struck me so starkly.

Borodino = majestic

What Napoleonic wargamer worth his salt doesn't aspire to refight Borodino? The emblematic battle of Napoleon's doomed invasion of Russia is as grand and glorious as Napoleonics gets. (And as grim and horrible: some 70,000 of the 250,000 on the field were killed or wounded in this sanguinary contest.)

We last tried it in 2018. After that playtest, Mark revised his scenario. As if his Tyrol game were not enough fun for one Christmas holiday, he then rolled out Borodino for us last week. (Having also played it with Colin in the interim, per Colin's blog post here.) "Us" was just 2.5 players: Mark as the Russians, me as the French, with Crispin commanding the French left for the first half of the game. Despite being short-handed, we rattled through and finished in about four hours of play - and most excellent play it was.

The short summary is this. We started with a big right hook around the fleches and a pinning attack on the Raevsky redoubt. We shifted pressure to the centre to distract Russian reserves, then stormed the fleches from the south. Poniatowski and Murat got far enough round on the right to threaten the Russian line of communications, but endless Russian reserves eventually stalled them, while more Russians menaced our own LOC on our left. The climax saw the Garde Impériale committed to counter that and attempt to storm Borodino for the one more objective needed for a French win. They came within a moustache whisker of getting in, but Russian artillery made the difference. Result: an epic, tense, gripping, see-sawing, honourable draw.

The following photos give a bit more detail. Skip past them if you want to get straight to my reflections at the end.

La Grande Armée: Davout's corps contemplates the Rajevski redoubt and the fleches.

Figures are 6mm Baccus from Mark's collection.

The battlefield is dominated by the high ground crowned by the Raevsky redoubt (left centre) and fleches (right centre), flanked by the villages of Borodino (across the river to the left) and Utitsa (in front of the woods to the right). Russian opolchenie militia hold the woods, while massed reserves are on the high ground to the rear and lining the river top left. French in the lower half of pic, L to R: Eugene, Ney, Davout, Poniatowski, backed up by Murat's cavalry and with Junot about to arrive. From these starting positions, we broadly advanced everything at 45 degrees to the right, leaving just one division facing Borodino, so that we could weight our right hook through the woods on the south.

Attacker's view of the fleches. That gun on the left looks worryingly like an 1870 Krupp, manned by Bavarians! (This big game stretched Mark's collection a bit.)

The garrison of the Raevsky redoubt. We had three or four goes but never managed to take this.

Opening clash on the right. We clattered unceremoniously into the Russians, ejected them from Utitsa, and smashed the militia back. This set us up nicely to wheel left and outflank the fleches.

Less success in front of the Raevsky redoubt, where Crispin's pinning attacks took painful casualties from murderous Russian cannon fire.

Our right hook progresses. On the far right, the militia are being pursued through the woods. Top right of picture, the two units nearest the road are Poniatowski's and Murat's men taking the line of communications objective (white counter on the road). Left of pic, that big solid line on the hill is Davout's and Junot's corps, about to storm the fleches. Top left corner, the units with yellow cubes are French as well, in post-assault disorder having punched into the Russian centre. Looking good for Napoleon!

Same turn as the previous pic: Eugene and Ney balked in front of the Raevvsky redoubt. Top left are the first waves of Russian reserves approaching to spoil our fun. By the stream confluence lower right: Napoleon himself overseeing our punch in the centre.

And now we skip forward a few turns to see the climactic assault by the Imperial Guard. The division on the left has been repelled with loss; that on the right, supported by the guard cavalry, has fought its way across the stream but not quite had enough impetus to get into Borodino (top right).

Reflections:

Majestic! This was a larger game than normal. Our typical BBB scenarios have maybe 15 units a side. This was more like 25 a side (plus artillery). That meant the whole game felt grander. When you need to shift a corps from the centre to the flank, moving two units rather than one somehow makes it a more momentous decision. Similarly when multiple Russian reserve units were released, it was more daunting than if it had just been one or two. The ebb and flow of the battle happened in great waves of units. It really captured the magnificent, epic, majestic feel you want for such a major battle. I wrote a brief essay on granularity in wargames. Borodino is evidently a case where extra granularity enhances the flavour. Hard to believe that 6mm figures on 6'x4' could provide such a sense of grandeur, but just ... wow.

Reserves. This is something I covered in a recent "Reflections on Wargaming" essay. They were an important feature in this game. Half the Russian force was not allowed to move for the first few turns, representing Russian uncertainty over where the hammer was going to fall, while the French received reinforcements most turns as troops arrived on the battlefield, culminating with the Old Guard. This helped to give the battle a definite shape and ebb and flow and tell a story.

Have a plan! Crispin and I conferred at the start, formulated a plan and stuck to it. Having a clear concept of operations made the decisions each turn easier. It worked well enough to give us a shot at victory on the last turn.

Lulls in the battle. In real C19 battles, it was very rare for every formation to be moving at once. Either because of fatigue considerations, or because of limited information, or command focus and command and control issues, in C19 'impulse warfare' some formations would sit passively while others were attacking, etc. Some rulesets try to represent this with mechanisms such as command points, initiative systems, cards, etc. By comparison, you could criticise BBB in this respect, in that theoretically you could move every unit every turn. However, in this Borodino game at least, it was notable that a major lull arose entirely naturally. There was a point in the second half of the battle where the French right had extended as far as it could, had taken some objectives, and had established itself in a line along high ground. The Russians there had been driven back behind a stream, where they too established a line, brought up reserves, and recovered lost bases. Although each side could have attacked to gain or regain further objectives on that flank, neither was inclined to do so. This felt very real (and looked good on the table).

Shot And Shield Supercast OK, I just had to smuggle this in. Scott Van Roekel, Grand Duke of Florida and creator of the Shot And Shield podcast on imperial-era wargaming, kindly invited me back, this time to talk about BBB and how it makes epic games like our Borodino one feasible and enjoyable. Scott is a great host and I like the style of his show, so I encourage you to have a listen yourselves and tell your friends if you enjoy it.

Before you ask: no, the scenario isn't in the BBB group files, but you might be able to get it soon. Mark has compiled a set of all Napoleon's biggest battles, which we plan to publish as another BBB scenario book. 

A nuanced slugfest? Borodino

BBB was created to make it practical to wargame the largest battles of the nineteenth century. My original focus was the latter half of the century - Franco-Prussian War, Austro-Prussian War, Russo-Turkish War etc - but of course the rules work for the Napoleonic era as well. We've already fought Waterloo and Leipzig, and some smaller Napoleonic actions. One of the team, Mark, wants to work our way through all the largest battles of the 1st Empire.

Last week he therefore unveiled his first draft of a scenario for that classic monster: Borodino. Now I'll admit I'm no expert on this battle, but I had a fair idea that it was mostly a frontal assault in which the French had to storm a Grand Redoubt and some Fleches. I was therefore apprehensive about the game and feared it might be a sustained slog with little scope for creative maneuver.

 Panorama looking north along the Russian defensive line

Well, I was right and also wrong. I got allocated to the Russian side in the role of Bagration and charged with defending the earthworks. Suddenly, examining the ominous force ratio and the weakness of my flank in the woods around Utitsa, and the feeble quality of my militia reserves, the French task looked rather easier than mine.

I mention troop quality. Especially by this late in the Napoleonic period there is a degree of sameness about the armies as everyone is using broadly similar weapons and tactics. Column, line, square; infantry, cavalry, artillery. For some gamers this has a special purity and beauty; it strikes others as limited and dull. But of course within those categories there are gradations that add subtlety. Some troops are better at skirmishing; others better in the assault; some can endure hard pounding, others are brittle and crack easily; some commanders are bold and dynamic, others, well ... not.

So it was with our Russian and French armies. Our French opponents had swarms of tirailleurs, while we had only a few jaegers. On the other hand our line troops were determined and loved the bayonet. Napoleon's Polish troops matched ours for aggression. He was also well endowed with heavy cavalry who were a more potent shock weapon than most of ours, and our militia were not only raw and fragile, many of them did not even have muskets but were armed only with pikes.

Consequently, while the scope for grand manoeuvre was fairly limited, with troops lined up almost from table edge to table edge right from the start, at the tactical level there was plenty of thought required to make best use of each unit's qualities. Let's put jaegers in front to screen the line troops and to fight in the woods. Tough line units can hold the redoubt and the fleches, and also stand ready for immediate local counterattacks. Larger scale counterattacks? Best use my cavalry for that. What about the milita? Well they may be rubbish, but there's a lot of them and they might look daunting ... let's post some on the flank and others behind a threatened sector, where they can deter the enemy without too much risk of actually getting into a fight.

This latter tactic worked out well. My opponent's best troops, his Poles, stormed Utitsa on Turn 1. However, after that, perhaps discouraged by the swarm of useless militia and cossacks in the woods in front of them, he was content to waste them garrisoning the village and its hill. Meanwhile he committed his regular troops to repeated assaults across a stream, up a hill and against the front of the Fleches. Unsurprisingly, and with the help of some judicious vigorous local counterattacks, these were repelled every time.

However, attrition eventually created gaps either side of the Grand Redoubt that we could not fill in time. An impressive number of French cavalry poured through on either side and swarmed over it in combination with another frontal assault by the infantry. The Redoubt was overrun. The Russian Guards moved up behind it in time to stitch a line together, and were bracing themselves to retake it; but by now the French Imperial Guard were on the move to exploit the breach.

We ran out of time with a couple of moves still to play (a rare event with BBB, but then it was a first playtest of an ambitiously large scenario). Despite the limited room to manoeuvre, it was a thoroughly absorbing contest, one which you might characterise as a kind of nuanced slugfest: an enjoyable game which did feel like two titans slugging it out, but where we still had enough interesting tactical choices to make.

Mark is revising the scenario in the wake of our playtest to make it even better: reorienting the game map to provide some space on the flanks, and adjusting the orbat so that there are fewer units to handle, which should speed up the game to fit the usual BBB 3-hour window.