Gunfreak's Historty of War: portuguese

So after years of playing with my self, I got to game a propper game, well wasn't totaly propper, non of us knew the rules that well, only one of us had the Deluxe Rules of General De brigade, I had ofcourse some knowlage since I had the original game, and played it a few times, but there are a quite a few new things to the rules. It was a slow start, but the turnes went faster and faster. We were 5 guys Three on the Allied side and two on the french, most of the figures were mine, but a good portion was suplied by briefspite. The french devided their forces into two "brigades" it was mixed cav infantry brigades, The allies, were devided into 4 brigades, I controled British cav and two protugese battalions on the left flank, the british inf was commanded by another in the center, he also controled the C&C and artillery, and on the right a third player controled the prussians, in a mixed brigade.

The Allies were on attack, but didn't take long for the french to start and advance, mostly becasue the table was only 4 feet deep and if they had to retreat, they would end up off table. So saftey in the middle of the table.

I ofcrouse did splendely I was perfect, Infact I only had 3 castualties the whole game, it might also have something to do with that my flank was dead space, except for one of my portugese battalions that got to fire a couple of volleys I didn't do anything exept march my cav and figures forward. The center ended in a slugfest, with french and british shooting eachother to pieces. It all came down to the right flank, first the badly painted french hussars crushed the nicely painted prussian hussars. Leaving the prussian flank in the air. The landwehr surived a massed charge by 2 battalions and the hussars, but only one battalion actualy made contact, the gave the landwehr a licking. The hussars charged the fleeing landwehr, destroying them, this mean a brigade break test needed to be taken, they failed and so the right flank was no more.

We ended the game there. I was about to charge my heavy dragoons into a french square, hoping for double six, and then rolling up the whole line of french. But that wasn't really a realistic option. So in the end my three cav regiments did NOTHING, ABSOLUTLY NOTHING.
Neither did the French cuirassiers or french dragoons.

We did fiddle around, my two brigades got suport order, so I just moved them to suport the two other brigades, we then failed order change meaning we lost a turn when we did nothing.
We also did a few bad order, like the order was to move oblicly right, but we ended up going straight ahead.

This is the table at the start. A ok, table, not as lush as I like but keeping it simple was a good idea, only forest were rough terrain, and mostly we just moved our units around them, the hills and fields had no effect on movments, but the field were used to block line of sight.

Also to keep things simple, everything were middle class, all unis were line, all generals were avrage. It did mean a little boring fights, but it did helt ALOT to keep track on stuff. So the two hussars fighting were down to dice, since they were carbon copies of eachother. British did get thier +1 in line when fireing.

We also learned that it sucks to move lines around, they don't move that far and they are hard to wheel and stuff. On the other hand, having a firefight in column also sucks, so Basically, The allies hard problems moving, while the french had problems shooing, because it took A LONG Time for them to get room to deploy into line.

As I said the center became a bloody firefight, the British did ok, untill the French got their artillery with canister zeroned on the Highlanders, then the casualties went up fast.

Most of our firefigt was long range and with skirmsih screens, once the screens went away and we got into close range firefights with canister, bases started to have to be removed.

The table was about 8x4, so we had a decent length, but it was very shallow, so we had no reserves.

Lost of mesuaring, and we ofcourse had to check the QRS all the time.

It was a gentelmently game, no body were cheating or trying any shortcuts, we talked we laughed. And we scrached our heads. We should really have had a small table for the rules book and dice, it's not propper game with rules on the table and dice flying all over the place pooking out eyes and such.

Also since I'm a lazy fuck, and havn't botherd to paint any skrimishers, we had a shortage of them, we did have like 25 jegers, that protected the british and prussians, but we only had 6 french, so we deployed a full legere battalion as skirmishes, but simply moved the bases apart.

The French feel a good defence is a strong offence.

Here we see the prussians try and get their unwhealdy lines to move right, with a mix of obliqe and wheeling moves.

Here they british try the same, our master plan was for me to hold the left, while the center and right moved more right, mashing the flank of the french and winning. This didn't go well as I said the British just ended up in a firefight.

And the prussian advance stalled and actualy went backward becasue of EVIL BAD DICE, that crushed my nicely painted prussians. Briefspite suplied the dice to it's totayl possible that he loaded them, after all he looks shifty, I woudln't put it past him. But no I think we were just very unlucky.

So now two prussian battalions faced 2 french battalions and a badly painted french hussar unit.

The brish made good targets for the artillery, bunching up like that. the back battalion got sevral casutalites with out even firing a shot, simply by bounce through.

Here the french are closing on the prussians

Still in colum, they simply planed to charge and bash thier way to victory, and it worked, so who am I to say anything.

Firefight all along the center, here is the only thing my brigades did all day, on the far left of the picture my portugese unit did get to fire their muskets.

The french on our left had been in squre most of the game, a good idea concidering I had 36 cav just on the other side of nomans land.

The french almost won right, here, two battalions ready to charge and a cav on the flank, luckely only one battalion passed the charge test. But it only posponed the end by a couple of rounds.

I'm still stuck, my order was to suport and not move further then that lump of trees.

And finnaly the order is changed, the protugese are still stuck, becasue we simply forgot to change thier orders, but my cav is moving. But it's not all fine and dandy, there is a square infront of me, and if I chage it, the cuirassiers will do the same to me, chances of beating a square with cuirassier suport is close to nill.

For some reason I didn't take pictures of the collaps of the prussians.

This is why you should never trust the germans, if you take your eye of them for a second, they loose the battle or start a world war or something.

Well that was it. At the start we problebly spent like half an hour pr. turn. At the end we were probebly down to 10 minutes even tho alot more happned in the later turns.

So it only took 4 years from starting with 15mm to get a 28mm half game done. we are planing on having a game every 7 years like Vulcans do. We don't want to overdo it.

Now I've only painted 330 of them have been painted by me. 208 were ready painted by Reinforcments by post, I still got atleast 194 unpained,

The 330 have been painted since June, so about 5 months.
538 would have been a huge division at 1:20 if it was all once force at over 10 000 soldiers, infact it would be to big, I have found that my max is 400 figures pr. side in 28mm, and even that will be a full table. Had I stuck to one force I would have finished it, and still be over 100 figures into the other side, close to having a gameble force.
Instead I jump, first it was easy british and french with most of the figures bought ready, then that plan went to hell, so now I'm basicly doing all 5 major powers, Austrian, British, French, Prussian and Russian and minor powers like Poland, Bravaria and Portugal. As explaned in the pervious post I will make a rag tag division of Russian, Prussian and Austrian.
But the overwhelming figures here are Allied, so I need to get my but in order and paint some of those french.

Anyway here they are, 538 28mm figures on about 3x2 feet of space.