Valour and Fortitude I

 When I first read through Valour and Fortitude rules my immediate reaction was that they didn’t appear to have much that Black Powder didn’t deliver in game enjoyment terms. On top of of this I had serious doubts about playing on a 6 x 4 table with the corresponding lower unit count and folk saying that they were quite bloody, but then seem to enjoy them, so after all they are free and with army sheets for the periods I game I felt we should give them a try.

This week I put on a First Carlist War game to try them out, Dave took command of the Isabelino forces while I commanded the Carlist forces.

The government forces.

The Carlist forces.

The Carlists win the initiative and begin their advance.

The Isabelino forces move off to attempt to get around the Carlist left flank, this will take time as the terrain is heavy going, it does however pin some of the Carlist battalions who must holdback to counter it.

Dave sends the British Auxiliary Legion in to pin the Carlist right centre and flank.

Meanwhile the Carlist left centre has come to a halt with having to counter the advance of the Isabelino infantry and heavy cavalry.

The Auxiliary Legion lancers having already forced the Carlist Ontario hussars to retreat of table play a Fate Card, surprise attack! They charge headlong into the Carlist remaining cavalry flank routing them.

A simultaneous attack by the heavy cavalry is repulsed by the steadfast Carlist Navarre battalion in line! Dave needing 3+ and rolling 1 and two 2s!

The Carlists were now hemmed in and threatened with two cavalry units and a horse artillery battery plus the approaching battalions from the right they threw in the towel.

What did we think of the rules? Well we both thought there was lots to like, I particularly liked that different levels of troops had different firing, melee and morale values, with BP one has to use separate rules to reflect this and remember to apply them. They are definitely intended for use with large multi player games, do they transpose to smaller two person games? The jury is out on this at the moment but we will give them another run out using my Triple Alliance forces in a couple of weeks time. By the way they do play fast we managed five turns in just under two hours not bad for a first game we thought.

Until next time……………KBO