After last month's basing exercise, we finally got to grips with a relatively small V&B game (it still took 4 hours though), based on the Allied / French battle of 1760 during the 7yw, near Wesel.
Again, the elegance of V&B shines through, and we had many reversals and nail-biting finishes to melees.
Some refresh and ref to the rules was necessary during play, of course.
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| French units line the river, but there not enough of them to avoid leaving a gap for Allied units to exploit. |
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| The Allied/British centre |
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| There would be a cavalry flank action on the French left. |
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| Advantage for the French, as they adopt stationary positions on the bank - doubling fire dice |
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| "ze thing about ze small buildings, is zat I can not fit inside when ze shooting starts..." |
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| The French right, which would see a stalemate until near the end, when French units were urgently required at centre |
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| The cavalry action does not go well for the French |
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| British troops ford the marshy stream and start to hit the open French flank |
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| ...even shooting off some cavalry |
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| The main event happens, as fronts change, in the centre |
Things were looking to go the way of the Allies as we finished, though they still had a number of brigades to rally. All in all, a great game.
I also saw the beauty of the fire-counterfire system at work, in line with turn sequence. Said sequence does mean that there is a lot happening in these rules as the units numbers increase - although getting used to things again does make things go remarkably smoothly.