"Seeking play-tested battles for Volley and Bayonet" Topic

Hi All!

I am looking for small, play-tested historical battles for Volley and Bayonet with Napoleonics using the Road to Glory rulebook – can you help?

The key issue is that I am trying to find historical battles which have been played and found to be interesting for both sides rather than something historical but huge, or dull and/or unbalanced.

Most of the battles in the excellent Volley and Bayonet books I have are splendid affairs, but on the larger side – and I want something smaller to use to introduce a friend.

Ideally the battles would have downloadable label sheets or orders of battle (V&B rosters) too if possible.

The Road to Glory book contains Quatre Bras and that is an example of the sort of size which would be preferred.

I've got plenty of troops, but I don't want to introduce a newcomer to a game with 40 units on each side.

Again – I am looking for V&B scenarios which have been tried and tested, as opposed to raw battle information which could be used as a basis for scenario design.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks

- Jeff

I cannot say that these have been play tested, but here are some napoleonic scenarios for battles.
link

You can also play the flank or center of a larger battle if you want to reduce the number of units.

From Keith McNelly's site (linked above), I would recommend Teugn-Hausen, 19th April 1809:

PDF link

Although the scenario information was updated as recently as July 2020, the basic scenario details are similar to one put togther for VnB quite a few years ago. I recall it being described as an even fight on the old Yahoo VnB forum.

There are 12 units (plus artillery) per side, so very manageable.

Sacile from the "Austria Stands Alone" book is quite good.

Marengo is also quite good… both the old scenario using massed stands for the Austrians and the new one using Linear stands. Please be advised that the new scenario is missing the Austrian reserve artillery. The newer scenario using linear stands does have a lot more units for the Austrians. Both scenarios work well however.

We have repurposed "Villa Costa" from Napoleon's Battles as a small V&B game. (It was actually published in "The General" magazine.) It works very well.

You have of course mentioned Quatre Bras… it is excellent.

I have not tried Raab or the fight on the Piave.

We have done Mockern several times… but it is somewhat larger, though not huge.

Keith's Teng-Hausen may be good as well, though I haven't tried it.

Joe Collins

Second the 1809 and 1815 books. The Teugn-Haussen is a good small game too.

Villa Costa is a great game to try different rules for. It has been used for Empire, Napoleon's Battles and I adapted to Age of Eagles. A nice small game with 2 small French Corps

Many thanks to all! This is great. A lot of ideas and Teugen-Hausen and Quatre Bras are already looking like candidates.

I've often wondered – what do folks generally use for hills in historical V&B battles? I've made V&B battlefields for Waterloo and others (in V&B cm scale) with expanded polystyrene and a hot wire cutter, but of course that is a lot of work.

Stock wargame hills can be placed here and there of course, but that diminishes the historical accuracy massively. Are contour lines marked with masking tape perhaps…? (Unattractive but accurate).

I hate to say it, but if your contour lines are available in detail you could resort to artistic use of chalk lines: also useful for marking ridge lines and extents of wooded areas.

For a game of Lobostitz I cut the ridge and hills contours out of artists mounting board. Looked OK.