FOGN 2nd game: Rommel you magnificent bastard. I read your book!

I'd written out an entire battle report and Firefox ate it.

This was written for the Something Awful Historical wargame thread, so please excuse the very bad formatting. Also, I like the groups, but Hate Facebook because Facebook Hates Everyone. My apologies. :(

If any of the following is incorrect, it’s my faulty memory and imgur’s fault for uploading the pictures out of order.Dave Inglis please feel free to correct any mistakes.

I played my 2nd game of Field of Glory Napoleonic’s (2nd edition). My opponent was Dave Inglis, who literally wrote the book on how to win battles in FOGN (it’s on the Facebook group).

This battle will therefore be referred to as: Rommel you magnificent bastard. I read your book!

Dave let me use his (very old, 1970's?) Prussian army to stand in as a British Peninsula war army vs his Russians. Clearly, Napoleon had out done himself, and got the Czar to attack Britain in a place they wouldn’t expect it- Spain! (I won the dice roll on where the battle was to take place).

FOGN gives you the choice of 6 different missions. You can deny your opponent some of them. I choose Probe, and he chose Frontal Assault (to take it easier on my he said).

I had a division of Veterans (with an extra 100 points for a Guard unit, which never came up in the battle). Veterans are really good in FOGN. They were my reserves.

The division I had on the table was a good unit of drilled troops with the corps Royal Artillery.

I had a division of Impetuses British Hussars and Heavy Shock Dragoons on my right flank.

My last division marching to the sound of the guns was another drilled infantry division.

The Russians had a division of conscripts with the traditional Russian Heavy Artillery[, a drilled infantry unit, an infantry unit with Jaegers and a cavalry division with Cossack's, Light and Heavy cavalry. Cossack's are really annoying. If you charge them they run away. Unless they are really stupid and get pinned against some terrain You can’t catch them. They can kill infantry if they don’t get into square and are fast enough they can hit the flank or rear of anyone else.

In FOGN, after you choose your mission, you choose the terrain to deploy on. Exceptional or skilled Generals can choose the ground they fight on. We ended up with all the terrain on my side. My left flank was anchored by a village. In the centre of my line was a hill I could deploy on in the traditional British fashion (though I could not use the traditional British strategy of being on [i]the reverse slope [/i] in a Probe mission). My infantry’s right flank had a forest and marsh, but I should have had the Forest in front. The marsh gave me no cover from firing and made my Hussars useless in it. In FOGN, cavalry can’t do anything in difficult terrain. I would have thought LIGHT cavalry could, but nope, unless you have some attached horse artillery. 40K rough riders apparently use illegal tactics to fight in rough terrain. Perhaps that’s why GW has banned them :(

In the middle of a table a steep hill made moving cavalry difficult and forced the Russians to attack in a smaller area – their infantry could only flank me if I created a hinge. Which I did. Whelp.

(There was an impassable river in bottom right corner that played no part in the battle).

(The unit marked as Guard infantry is incorrect, it was just a large infantry unit. The heavy cav on the right also included a brigade of  Impetuses British Hussars).

The armies at the start of the battle, looking east to west. Russians are coming from the North.

The Russian army. The conscripts are closest to the camera.

As it was a frontal assault, the entire Russian line advanced.

The British army, looking west to east.

The village and hill defence line

My artillery banged away at his, but didn’t do much. The Russian artillery was disordered for a turn but were otherwise unaffected.

The Impetuses British Hussars and Heavy Shock Dragoons  watch the approaching Cossack’s.

The Russian Conscript Division approaches the Spanish village. To me, villages in FOGN are traps . It takes 2 turns to move in to defend (one to occupy, one to defend), you can only have one unit defending it(!!??!), you can’t fire very well out of it and if you take it, you can get thrown out easily by a counter attack before you can prepare to defend it. They are very hard for the enemy to move through it if you have a unit to defend it…and they don’t have artillery. And you can’t put a unit of artillery AND infantry in it – only a battery attached to an infantry brigade.

I do think Dave over committed to having a large conscript unit try to shoot their way into it. He never supported it with his guns, preferring to shoot my guns or my infantry on the hill.

The other two Russian divisions were coming into my weak point. Unless my reserves came in here, I was going to be in trouble.

Fortunately, they did! I placed my Large Superior Veteran Guard unit there. And discovered I’d made an rookie mistake in Napoleonic warfare-  I’d created a hinge. . The marsh to the right prevented me from having cover on that side, and the Russians had light troops who could flank me that side. My  Impetuses British Hussars  couldn’t do ANYTHING in the marsh and moved slowly to the other side of it.

The rest of the reserves (Veteran troops) came in act as a 2nd line and allowed me to CHARGE my 1st division down the hill into the Russians!

Gunfire rippled across the line and despite wavering, the British infantry charged home! Despite being outflanked by an entire Russian division the Guard barley wavered! Being a large unit of Superior Veteran meant they could take this fire all day. They were sitting on rough terrain under the road so lost some ability to shoot out (which I disagree with. If you have a road going through terrain, the road should override that, but those are the rules).

However, the charging British infantry were repulsed! The units behind them were completely unfazed by this and let them rally behind.

(This picture was from later, but it was uploaded out of order. Curse you imger)

On the right flank, my Impetuses British Hussars and Heavy Shock Dragoons  had been duelling with the Russian Cossack’s and completely failed at catching them. Blast those Cossack's.

However, both light units had changed and counter charged, and force the Jager battalion to form square, slowing them down

I had to do something dramatic. The Russians were about to flank by infantry line and even the Guard couldn’t hold back two divisions by themselves. And I saw something.

]I had a line of reserves and the Russians did not! And that meant I had to commit now!

I sent a 2nd unit down the hill, and this time with support from the Guard and Royal Artillery, the charge succeeded! It routed the enemy infantry brigade and went on to destroy the Russian Heavy Artillery! The wavering Russian infantry in front of the Guard disintegrated!

Meanwhile, in the cavalry battle to my east, the horseman had done nearly equal damage to each other. The Cossack’s had been able to outflank the Impetuses British Hussars but even with the support of 2 other brigades, could not finish them off.

The battle had gone for 3 hours and time was up! With the destruction of nearly one division and the rest of the army wavering (beyond some Russian cavalry who had played no part in the battle) the Russian’s retreated and the British held the field of battle. Several units had taken casualties, with only one unit routed.

BRITISH VICTORY .

FOGN is still overly complicated for me. Dave knows the rules off by heart so can tell me with ease where units can move and where they can’t, and knowing how many dice too roll, to target what (splitting fire is overly complicated I think), to need what to hit and then roll what to keep going, and telling me where I need to commit my ADC’s. He gave me several advantages (an extra 100 points for a Guard unit, using a frontal assault with little infantry tactical niceties) but the battle still performed like a Napoleonic battle should. He over committed attacking the village and didn’t’ have any reserves able to attack my defensive line. The side with the last reserves often wins in Napoleonic battles....

Or in other words  "They came on in the same old way, and we defeated them in the same old way." . YEEEEEEEEEEEEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

After all, I’d read his book. When my dramatic infantry charge down the hill occurred, I noticed something later. Dave didn't have any cavalry supporting the assault. If he'd had, I suspect my defensive plan would have failed to pieces immediately, even if I had kept one of the Hussar brigades with my infantry. A classic mistake in Napoleonic warfare I'd say. And something he mentions in his own strategy guide!