"The Battle of Belchite June 18th, 1809" Topic

A couple of weeks ago Alan and I got into another of Brian North's Spanish/French scenarios, this one based on the Battle of Belchite, June 18th, 1809. It follows up chronologically the battles of Alcaniz and Maria, which we had played previously. From Brian's introduction:

"Belchite is the third and final battle in the duel between the III Corps of Louis-Gabriel Suchet and the Army of Aragón y Valencia of Joachim Blake for control of Aragon in 1809. It takes place a mere three days after the Spanish defeat at Maria, which had thoroughly demoralized the Spanish army, filled up as it was with thousands of new recruits. In fact, when he paraded his army at Belchite, Blake discovered that he had lost about 2,000 men who had disbanded to return home, in addition to the heavy losses at Maria. As a result, even after incorporating Areizaga's division that had not fought at Maria, Blake was only able to put about 12,000 men in line. For the first time he is at a numerical disadvantage to Suchet, who had called in Laval with his first brigade (2,000) in addition to the reinforcements (3,000) that Robert brought at the crisis of the Battle of Maria. Suchet, in his memoirs, claims that Blake received reinforcements of 4,000 men from Valencia on the eve of the battle, but both Spanish accounts and Oman consider this the usual exaggeration by French marshals. Historians therefore have difficulty understanding why Blake chose to risk battle again with his army's morale shaken."

Tell me about it! As the Spanish commander things could only go badly for me, although the Spanish started bravely enough. The game was played on a 6' X 10' table, using my 1/72 scale toy soldiers and the Over the Hills rules.

The full report with loads of pictures can be found here:https://tinywarsplayedindoors.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-battle-of-belchite-june-18th-1809.html

And here are a few pictures from the fight, including a massive ammunition park explosion that turned the tide!

Wow! What a GREAT looking game! The painting is excellent, the buildings and terrain are 1st rate!!!!


It's also in my favorite scale.Clickable link to the site.
link

How long did the game take? Can you tell me anything about the rules? I'm not familiar with them.

Thanks

John

Thanks John, for the kind words AND the clickable link to my blog.:0) I hadn't noticed that it was an unlinked URL.
The game took much longer than it should have, especially after the artillery park blew up and a third of the Spanish ran away, as the Spanish were super tenacious, pulling a lot of good rallying and firing rolls out of their assorted bicornes and top hats. I would say maybe three sessions amounting to about 12 hours.
The Over the Hills rules are a battalion level game handling battles up to about this size, e.g. three divisions per side or so. Lots of add on rules you can incorporate and, what I like, games that mostly play out looking like real Napoleonic battles. Skirmishers play a role and can be represented on the table if you like, good order rules, units vary in size depending on numbers. A lot of people will find the rules too fussy – as always, it depends on what one is looking for in a rule set. I tend to like the complications if they lead to an interesting game narrative and am pretty fond of this rule set, although we have added a number of house rules.