Monday 15 June 2015

Plancenoit Bat Rep 1815-2015

Right so our big battle fell on my only day off in my long week so I'm only getting around to the final bat rep now. I also wanted to say sorry for not getting round everyone's blogs, I just seem to be swamped at the moment however I'm off for a full week from tomorrow! I made a wee video of our days gaming and if you want to see more of the pics you can find them on my Facebook page under: paulalba

So here is the video for anyone who would like to watch it:


And if not here are a small selection of the pics:

Young David taking some shots at my advancing troops.

The 1st lot of my reinforcements arriving.

The main part of the town is my target.

AB French artillery making themselves heard.

The storm approaches.

Some of my newly finished landwehr were on their 1st outing, usually a bad omen!

Young David checking our interpretation of the rules, thankfully everything ran very smooth on the day.

Heavy fighting around the village.

The church and main area of Plancenoit cleared of French.

All 3 sections now in Prussian hands!!!

Entry of the young guard ( you'll see AB Swiss standing in for YG in some of the pics).

As they approached I double 6'd the lead unit with my jäger (jammy git!!!)

Well into the battle at this point, the Prussians are holding off the YG however they are being worn down by the attackers. It was great fun throughout!!!

Prussian reinforcements threw themselves into the battle at times getting thrown back but they made a good account of themselves.

The 2nd YG arriving on the table . . .

The YG target the middle section of the town trying to split the Prussian forces.

A sturdy defence of the Prussian right as the French bare down on them!

Chaos in the centre as I rush my reserves to far forward and they are caught by a YG battalion and a rout is begun with a couple of units being lifted from the field however the remaining battalions formed square and the fleeing troops flowed round them and their morale rolls were high, the advance continued!

The table at the end of the game, a YG battalion finally pushed itself back into the centre section however the Prussians most certainly fought them down all the way with a few battalions on assault orders ready to hit the unformed unit in the village.

We had a superb days gaming and it surprisingly went a lot smoother than we had thought it would as we hadn't played GdB in a long while.

David's AB legere being used as YG for the day. I believe AB will be doing Bardin uniformed YG soon so we will look forward to them! 

Old Glory YG fighting their way into the middle part of the village pushing back AB Prussians.

Some close ups of the troops, my newly painted Silesian landwehr making a good account of themselves in the battle. 

They managed to take and secure the church after some hard fighting.

Some recently painted Von Lutzow troops mixed in with some fusiliers from different battalions to make the 24 man battalions of the 25th regiment (I have only 1 battalion of the VL painted at the moment) Looked good to me as for 1815 there would be a few interesting uniform combinations if all the sources are anything to go by. I even had Saxons standing in as Westfalian Landwehr! Worked fine for me.

So all in all great fun and loads of inspiration for us to get more troops painted. I need a few more command bases and a good deal more landwehr plus jäger and maybe another artillery battery? I hope you enjoyed the read/video. Please remember we are not experts on the period and it was just a fun day out for us. I know there are a lot more qualified gamers out there who may require to see a more accurate battlefield and better looking terrain. I'm afraid unfortunately at the moment we don't have the time or space for that however we will try to improve over time!

Happy wargaming
Paul

40 comments:

warpaintjj said...

Hi Paul,
it really pleases me to see you two getting the toys out for a game finally - all your hard work has paid off as it looks great. I'll watch the video this evening as we are considering Maraudervision at some point, might be excruciating though!!!
I don't think you need to apologise for anything here as you two had bags of fun and that's what really matters in this hobby - I know the crowd you mean though and they never seem to actually enjoy gaming in the slightest.
More please! Best wishes,
JeremyJ

Paulalba said...

Thanks Jeremy,
Yeah it was great fun. Just passed your blog onto a chap building 28mm nap armies at the moment. Was wondering if GdB could be played with 28's so I sent him you and Carlos link.

Look forward to your vids. They are very enjoyable to do and there is a good crowd of gamers on YouTube. Nice community.

Ken said...

Looks like fun game. Always good to see figures out on the table and throwing dice around!

Sgt Steiner said...

Hots Mon yon twas a braw video n pics :-)

Nice long days gaming nothing beats it !!

Been trying out GDB myself lately

Cheers

Anonymous said...

Great looking game. Looked like a lot of fun.

Jonathan Freitag said...

Outstanding game presentation! The battlefield and troops all look fantastic. I always enjoy seeing your beautifully painted troops and with this, I got a chance to see many of them in action. Well done!
How long did the game take to fight to conclusion?

MurdocK said...

BRAVO!

GaryA said...

There are so many differences between maps of many battles, the 'accuracy' of a wargames representation is as valid as any. Even the top flight display games have a 'fudge factor', so don't worry about it. Years ago we refought Austerlitz on a 6'x4' table with 25mm figures, but had a great time of it.

Best of all, from my paint of view is that it actually looks like a wargame. I get a bit tired of the artistically posed, stage designed layouts. Beautiful though they ar, they're not what gaming is in reality. If this had been my game, I'd hae been well pleased.

Steve h said...

Hi Paul
Looks fantastic! well worth all the effort you have been putting in over the last few years.
I'm hoping to do something similar on thursday the 18th using GdeB in 28mm ;)
cheers
Steve

James MacCraggs said...

Glad you guys enjoyed your game! Lack of issues with the rules may have to do with the players involved... Or not involved ;)

Ray Rousell said...

Loved the video, what a cool idea!

Paulalba said...

Yeah it was great fun Ken!

Paulalba said...

Lol Cheers Sgt, how you finding them?

Paulalba said...

Thanks Neil, yeah it was. There will be some of the prussians you sent up in this lot somewhere.

Paulalba said...

Lol you hit the nail on the head there Jamie! If you watched my Vietnam video you would have got a better insight.

Paulalba said...

Thanks a million jonathan you are far to kind!!! It took us from 9am till 10pm with maybe 2 hours of breaks. A long day and should have been done over 2 days however David and I are pushed for matching days off.

Paulalba said...

Thanks MurdocK!!!

Paulalba said...

Thanks Gary, your comments are very much appreciated. It was never meant to be a masterpiece of terrain as we simply set it out as best we could with what we had. We were well aware that there would be inaccuracies all over however our time is short, I spend weeks painting figures and terrain isn't our focus at the moment, might well become you never know? It was nice to have the chance to push the wee guys about and I'm lucky enough to be doing it again in Edinburgh this weekend with the pros!

Paulalba said...

Thank you Steve, I hope we see a bat rep on your blog with your lovely figures in action!

Paulalba said...

Thanks Ray, you should give it a go. The youtube wargaming community is very pleasant.

Phil C said...

Awesome Paul! A brilliant display of painted figures/units, great looking terrain and having fun wargaming......marvelous!

cheers,

Gonsalvo said...

Wonderful looking game, magnificent troops, and a great, full day spent actually playing a game and having fun. Doesn't get much better than that!

Rodger said...

Outstanding Paul! Wonderful looking game and great vid too!

Stefan (aka. Monty) said...

Excellent looking game. Sounds like a great time though.

Ben Fiene (Ansbachdragoner) said...

Looks like it was a brilliant game, lovely terrain and your Prussians and David's french look wonderful - what wargaming is all about! Very inspiring stuff, in fact I was inspired to start an 15mm AB french army largely thanks to your blog.
Looking forward to what you've got coming up next

Ben

P.S, AB have a range of bardin french young guard, but that's the only bardin figures they have (as yet).

Paulalba said...

Thanks Ben, that's really kind of you to say you were inspired to start AB's I'm part because of us. Glad you enjoyed the video. The bardin uniformed french from AB will be released late summer I believe. Mr Barton left a comment on the GdB forum that they are ready to go with plenty of variations in the units.

Paulalba said...

Thanks Monty, yeah it was a lot of fun. We had a great time. Glad you enjoyed it!

Paulalba said...

Thanks phil, it was great to get them out in the table. Exactly why we spend hours upon hours painting them. Need to give them a run out when we get the chance!

Paulalba said...

Thanks Peter, with all the years you have spent putting on games at conventions over the years that means a lot. Glad you enjoyed our wee run out!

Paulalba said...

Thanks Rodger,
glad you enjoyed it! The video was a lot easier for me to put together than try and put everything into words on the blog.

Christopher(aka Axebreaker) said...

Excellent looking game Paul!

Christopher

John (VonBlucher) said...

Good looking game, sorry I'm a little tardy but a hectic week all around. Nice to see your sizeable and well painted Prussian force hit the table for a game.

I'm interested in seeing what else AB is going to sculpt in the next year or so.

On a sad note a friend from Canada had a heart attack at the reenactment yesterday at Waterloo and died later on. We were contacted by my closest Canadian friend who passed on all the details to us.

Paulalba said...

Hi john, really sorry to hear about the passing of your friend. I know you guys go way back travelling across borders for your annual hobby shows. Take it easy with work! Hopefully catch up soon!

Paulalba said...

Thanks Christopher, and thanks for your support of my painting over the years!!! You've been encouraging me from the start of my blog, very much appreciated!!!

Rank Bajin said...

What a great looking game - must have been carnage both on the table and in reality!

chris said...

Looks fantastic Paul. Great eye candy.

Paulalba said...

Thanks RB, it was great fun, yeah just have been!!!

Paulalba said...

Thanks Chris, glad you enjoyed it. Was great fun for us!

Earnest said...

Fantastic pics of a great battle! I've been looking for wargame pics of the Plancenoit fight for inspiration as we'll be finally adding Plancenoit to our Waterloo game here in Finland this summer. Thanks for some good insights!

Paulalba said...

Thanks Earnest,
Glad you enjoyed it. Terrain needs a bit of work but we are getting there!

Mind share your own plancenoit battle!