First Carlist War, The Fight For The Ford

For our first outing for the First Carlist War collection of 2016, I decided to use Neil Thomas's "One Hour Wargames Rules" with a few tweaks to suit the Carlist Wars.
The Isabelino Forces must deny the Carlists the ford, the river could be crossed all along the board but at much reduced speed, so although tempting to use the whole of the length of the river and avoid a choke point at the ford, the Isabelino commander knows that the small force of three Carlist battalions will be reinforced, can the Isabelino commander afford the time?

 The Carlists await their adversary 

The Isabelino forces attack, skirmishers to the fore, three battalions to the left of the ford, the slower moving British Auxiliary Legion cross at the ford with the Rifle battalion on their flank, for this game armed with muskets but are faster moving than their line fellows.

 The Isabelino skirmishers engage their Carlist counterparts.

 The British Auxiliary Legion begin their crossing of the ford. 

 Isabelino cavalry bring up the rear.

 An aerial view of proceedings.

 Carlist reinforcements begin to arrive.

 An example of the bad luck throughout the game by the Royal Marine rocket battery, one on target at last! but its a dud! 

 The Isabelino cavalry having failed to break the Carlist infantry are in turn engaged by their Carlist counterparts.

 Choke point

 The British Auxiliary Legion engage the Carlists.

 The Isabelino cavalry, shortly before being repulsed by the Carlists. 

 The Carlist reinforcements begin to turn the tide.

A hard fought game that lasted a little over two hours, not a hour, but due more to the table and forces being a lot bigger than in the rules. The game was set at 12 turns with a D3 deciding the number of additional turns in this case two, a winning draw for the Carlists was the declared result.

Rules wise I adjusted the movement to reflect the looser order used by the Spanish troops, I adjusted the firing for over half range and if a unit was reduced to two bases, though not for skirmishers they have a firing minus anyway. I also let columns fire requiring a 6 to cause a casualty, the rules do not have base removal, when a unit has received 15 hits it is removed, I changed this, most of my units have five bases so when three hits were received I removed a base. I also introduced a morale test, there isn't one in the rules, when a unit was reduced to two bases it rolled a D6 on a score of 4+ it carried on but would need to test when receiving any hits there after, if it failed it would retire the difference in the score in moves and require another test to advance again.

I would recommend picking a copy of the book up if only for the 30 scenarios, though I would encourage you to give the rules a try.

Next up over at GHQ a French Revolutionary War game, next game at OHQ to be decided.

TTFN