We played a scenario of the 1808 battle of Bailen, wherein the hapless French discover two Spanish divisions barring their escape route. Rick's dice earned him the sad role of the French commander Pierre Dupont. Bill played the Swiss-Spanish Teodoro Reding while Tom was his subordinate, the French ex-pat Coupigny.
The scenario needs work and is heavily balanced against the French, although in fairness the actual battle was also. The first mistake was having both sides start with only one card. As Tom pointed out, the cards are much of the fun in the game. So Rick not only got a hard row to hoe, but he only got three cards during the game. Not much fun there. I'll change it so that players draw a card every turn, and players should start the game with a full hand, unless there is really some excellent reason to do otherwise, like one side caught sleeping. Since the game played in less than two hours, in the future if we have what seems an unfair scenario, we should play it before dinner and then again with players switching roles after dinner. But on to the game.
Rick spent the early part of the game trying to deploy his forces (with a small number of pips) as they arrived at the bridge over the Rumblar. His first brigade advanced towards his left, drawing artillery fire and taking hits. Then Reding's troops came off the hill and attacked, driving the conscript French Infantry back and over-running a battery of guns. Next the disordered Spanish fell back to the hill and reorganized.
Once most of his troops were on the table, Rick came forward again on his left and attacked the Spanish right. His attack was driven off. The Spanish counter-attacked with their conscript cavalry, causing some loss before being driven back in their turn. French cavalry now fell gently (with lousy dice) upon the Spanish cavalry and were repulsed. The Spanish cavalry were badly disordered, so Reding (hearing Coupigny's voice) ordered them back behind Spanish lines.
One more French attack by cavalry and the late-arriving Marines of the Guard went in but was repulsed. At this point the French opened negotiations for surrender, since Castanos' Spanish army closed on their rear. We had the historical result. Dupont missed the retreat from Moscow.
The scenario is mighty hard for the French. I think the Spanish army is a little too spry and need their pips cooled off a bit. The French could use more early on, perhaps when Dupont arrives. And as said before, everyone should start with a full hand of cards. We played 15 turns in about 110 minutes.
There was only one look at the rules, when the reserve rule was used for the first time. One feat worthy of note: the lousy Spanish cavalry got into the fight, caused some losses and survived to fall back. We'll see if that happens again.
paints the Dogman from the Flintloque starter set.
