State of Play: Commands and Colors: Napoleonics – La Grande Battles: Vimeiro

  

Feeling emboldened by last week’s foray into the world of la Grande Battle (sic) last week with the even-more-epic-then-EPIC La Grande Battles: Austerlitz, T and I treated ourselves to the slightly more manageable Vimeiro scenario, and on a school night, no less. The two mentioned La Grande Battle scenarios feature in the Commands and Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010) EPIC Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2016), the sixth expansion for the game, but the next expansion for C&C Napoleonics, appropriately called The Grande Battles (GMT Games - currently available for preorder, and slated for release this year)  I still find the conjunction of French and English jarring, but I can understand the impulse to avoid confusion with Marshal Enterprises/Clash of Arms’ La Bataille series of appropriately Napoleonic games.

Grande Vimeiro set-up.

Vimeiro is a smaller action than Austerlitz, and the Victory Banner target is somewhat lower – a mere 15 banners. It’s still a difficult fight for both sides, with complicated terrain negotiate and few opportunities to really get an upper hand.

T stuck to his usual tactic of trying to take out my Light units as a priority. The British Light regiments are nightmarish at range, getting +1 die on their already augmented five block weight of fire, for a six-dice (standing fire total). On one occasion early on in our C&C playing, I took out two French Line units in successive turns with a single Light unit as they came into range; that’s a tough lesson to ignore. While only three blocks in strength, the Rifle Light can also play havoc against the slow-moving French line with their three-hex range, giving them two bites of the cherry before a unit can engage them in melee.

Probing advance by the French on the British Right...

The play of a fortuitous Grand Manoeuvre card gave T the opportunity to get four units – two Line, two Grenadiers – adjacent to my right-flank Light and Rifle Light units, denying them their range advantage. Carnage ensued in the following turn; the Grand Manoeuvre allows no combat to follow the movement of troops, but puts them in the catbird seat for the next round, which in this case happened to be an Assault Left Flank. Over that and the two successive rounds, I lost a total of six units on my Right.

Pressing the advantage: French troops take the heights overlooking Vimeiro..

My right practically undefended, I expected T to march into Vimeiro itself and claim an easy four Victory Banners, two for each occupied hex and the beginning of the turn, but I suppose he’d used up the Left flank orders the Fates had allotted to him. We’ll come back to the British Right for the finale.

Meanwhile, I’d been edging my forces forward on my left. I managed to take Praganza at my extreme left, and to get troops up to Ventosa (gaining two Temporary Victory Banners, and pulling ahead, also temporarily), and to occupy the hill between the two towns. After some initial success against individual French line units probing my defences, an Assault Right Flank order for the French brought a wave of Line and Heavy Cavalry to the fore. T tried to distract me in the centre with a less-than-consequential Cavalry Charge in the centre, pushing up nearly to my baseline, but I was sure that if the battle wasn’t won on my Left, it would certainly be lost there.

The early push on the Allied Left.

We traded blows, units and banners around Ventosa, each taking copious damage but neither side managing to place the decisive blow. Ironically, it was what should have been a decisive action by the French that cost them the game, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. With the French at 14 Banners taken to the Allies’ 13, needing only one more to take the battle, T played a Scout centre card, and chose to have Thomiere – who had joined the fray the hill several rounds earlier - with his remaining line troops (two blocks) press his advantage of numbers against Fane’s remaining Light Cavalry (now down to a single block); the two units were still doggedly facing off on the hills above the anonymous town on the brook between Vimeiro and Toledo. Garnering no hits with either die on their initial strike, the French took one infantry hit from Fane’s Light (as the survivors now thought of themselves), bringing the scores to fourteen banners each. It was here that Atropos saw fit to cut Thomiere’s thread at this point; on his leader check, T rolled two crossed sabres, mortally wounding the French commander, and handing me a fifteenth banner and victory.

The Fates intervene.

It was a hard-fought battle on both sides, and but for an unlikely roll, it could have come out differently. The close-run things are always the most satisfying.