Today I tried out the '45 campaign in the Last Argument of Kings supplement. We used it to do an imaginary campaign in Vizcaya. The campaign starts with a Carlist commander rallying local Carlist forces to him to face off against the local government forces.
If he loses that might put the poke in the party pig as far as the rebellion goes, but if he wins he might be able to manuever the government forces out of the area and even take the fight into the rest of spain. So it happened tonight.
The first game involved the Isabellino forces (which consisted of 3 units of Freshly Raised infantry, one unit of regular infantry, two units of cav and a light artillery piece) deciding whether or not they wanted to wait for reinforcments or march on the rebels. They decided to march.
The Carlist, meanwhile, had to figure out if they wanted to attack Bilbao or stay in the wilder areas and recruit more troops. Being bold, lusty men, they decided to gather their troops and get stuck in.
The Carlist commander rolls to see how many troops he gets, rolling a 5 and ended up with 6 units of infantry and 1 unit of cavalry.
The sides were even as far as number of units, but the Carlist outnumbered the Isabellinos 6 infantry to four and were only outnumbered by 1 unit of cavalry. The light gun never fired, which doesn't negate its existence but it certainly wasn't worth a unit of infantry.
The Carlists were a little quicker on the draw, having staff ratings of 9 across the board while the Isabellinos had a general with a 9 and brigade commanders with 8s.
The Carlists had to ford a river and move through a small village to get to the Isabellinos so the governement forces were able to form a pretty solid line while the Carlists were scattered. This went to the advantage of the Carlist though who worked on both flanks leaving only a small force facing the government center.
The flanks were turned time and again on the Isabellino left and were stretched far enough that one of the units in the center finally broke and fled.
The Isabellino commander decided that the situation was too rich for his blood and decided to use his remaining cavalry and his gun to screen his withdrawal.
Back in Bilbao he was faced with a retreat from Vizcaya and had to decide what forces to leave in garrison.
He left one battalion and the gun in Bilbao and retreated south. The Carlists followed them.
Just south of the Vizcaya border the retreating Isabellinos were met with a reginforcing army marching north. They decided that they were strong enough to take the battle back into the Basque territories.
The two forces met and a very unequal contest ensued. The Carlists had been able to draw more forces to their standard but not near enough. Their fearsome reputation caused some trepidation in the hearts of the Isabellinos but their numbers were not enough to tell.
In the end it was a combined BAL/Isabellino force of 13 battalions of infantry, 3 guns and four units of cavalry vs. the Carlist force of 7 battalions and 1 unit of cavalry. One of the Carlist units had been upgraded to Valiant and all Carlist infantry had the Terryfying Charge rule against opposing infantry.
Again the Carlists had the command edge of having a staff rating of 9 across the board with the Isabellino general having a 9 but all of the brigade commanders having only 8s.
Seeing the size of the force opposing them the Carlist almost chucked it in at the very beginning but decided that if they were able to engage the government left they might be able to defeat it before the left could make it into the fight.
They were wrong but it was a valiant effort anyway. The Carlists came off second best in the struggle and were sent packing with the loss of two units of infantry.
They fell back to Bilbao, rallied their forces their, received some support from the neighboring Basque lands and then fell back further into the mountains bringing in troops from every village and town on the way. They were very successful in this and managed to bring in a total of 9 units of infantry and 3 units of cavalry from the two different sources.
Undaunted the government troops marched on, now having taken the Carlists measure they were no longer to be terrified of the enemy.
So the next battle is set.
9 Isabellino units
7 BAL units
2 units BAL lancers
2 units Isabellino cav
4 guns between the two forces
vs.
14 units of Carlist infantry, three of them Valiant
4 units of Carlist cavalry.
It should be a good game but would take longer than we had time for today.
Thoughts:
This was the most fun I've had running a day of gaming in a while. I had a blast and wasn't even playing.
The campaing in LAoKs is worth the price of the book by itself. I didn't change anything except reducing the number of guns in the governement forces in the inital game. We just played it as it is with the Carlist Army lists.
I might run this at a convention at some point. If I did that I think I would modify the initial rebel recruitment table. If they end up with three units of infantry only, which they could if they roll a 1, then they are going to be in trouble in the first game which could squash the campaign from the start. True they can wait and roll again but still. I might do something where they get cavalry earlier but less infantry.
With a 6 they would crush the governement forces, they did pretty well with a 5.
My table woudl probably be more like
1: four inf units
2: four inf units, 1 cav
3: 5 inf units, 1 cav
4: 6 inf units, 1 cav
5: 6 inf units, 2 cav
6: 6 inf units, 3 cav, 1 gun
But that is just something that I'm kicking around at the moment. Surprisingly the campaign worked really well as it was.
The Carlists won the first game pretty handily but didn't do very well with their reinforcement rolls, getting only an upgrade and one battalion of infantry.
It made the 2nd game pretty much a walk over, which was okay. It had a pretty historical feel to it as the Carlist would have to be pretty lucky to launch a raid out of Vizcaya with much success. Either they would have to recruit big, roll well for their winning recruitment rolls and still have some luck fighting or the governement troops would have to have some serious hypotesticulus for them to get through.
I think the best they could do would be something like 14 units of infantry and one unit of cav against the remnants of the first game, which will probably be at least 2 units of infantry added to 13 units of infantry, four units of cavalry and some guns.
But if they do get through the next battle should be a cake walk as they will be facing a weak commander and a few good troops and a bunch of crappy troops.
One of the best things is that it really only took a solid day. We didn't have a solid day as we didn't get started until about 15:30 and had to leave off after 19:00 because one of the players didn't have time to get the last game in. But if we had started around 11:00 and played until 21:00 we could have easily finished the game. We even had time for some serious stromboli eating in there.
All around I had a blast. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it works out either next week or in a few weeks.
I really can't recommend this highly enough for anyone up for trying it. I'll probably do a little more mods to the basic campaign and try it with the Sudan
