Soldiers of Don Carlos

For this week's game I gave the First Carlist War collection another run out. For this game we would be using the Soldiers of Napoleon rules, I knocked out some troops stats based on on what I have read about the forces involved, gleaned mainly from Conrad Cairns articles in WI and his book published by the Perry brothers and Edward M. Brett's "The British Auxiliary Legion in the First Carlist War" I should also mention that Mr. Cairns has a Wargamers guide to be published by Helion, due out in the New Year.

As we are still getting to grips with the rules we did not use the tactical advantage and deployment faff prior to the game. We did however use the How Went The Day part of the rules to determine who had the initiative, this went to Dave commanding the government forces, who also gained two Victory Points due to rolling triple the Carlist score.

I unfortunately didn't take enough photos to do a coherent annotated picture report, here are some photos anyway, and if you are not bored, at the end of them a brief description of how the game went.

On the Carlist left flank both sides cavalry brigades faced off one another for most of the game, with the tide turning against the Carlists elsewhere in the field the Ontario hussars attempted to charge the Isabelino line cavalry and failed.

In the centre both sides advanced cautiously while over on the Carlist right their newly raised volunteers hotly contested the advancing British Auxiliary Legion advance, both sides losing battalions a calm came over that side of the field with neither having the strength to attack one another further. While this was going on the Royal Marine rocket battery was giving the Carlist cavalry some nuisance fire, I should really have dealt with them. After the break for lunch the tide turned in the Isabelino 's favour, the Carlist hussars finally charged and came off worse and the Carlists fruitless attempts to rally gifting the enemy victory points. The disruption points piled up breaking two Carlist battalions in the centre in turn five giving the government forces victory.

Until next time........

TTFN & KBO