Day 2: A Day At The Beach.

The second day was in a different location, right on the coast, within earshot of the Atlantic and a 3 minute walk to a popular beach. A few decades ago I used to enjoy the sea and the ...umh...view! at the beach on a sunny weekend but these days the table full of toys was more appealing. 

I had designed the scenario for 2-4 players and we were 4. Since the players were not familiar with my "With MacDuff To the Frontier" rules, I decided to act as GM instead of playing. That gave us a British player landing at a little fishing village at the far left hand table edge from the camera ( NE), and a Breton Royalist (Chouan) force moving on from the corner to the right of the camera (SW), a French force defending a cliff top battery (SE) and a French column starting off table, entering along the road in the far right corner from the camera (NW) on a die roll equal to or less than the current turn number. (Turn 3 as it turned put.)

The British had 2 victory conditions. The first was to hand over a mule train carrying gold and munitions to the Royalists, the  other was to end up with a secure spot from which the Royal Navy could pick them up. It being a fairly rocky shore with reefs at sea, there were only two places, one was the fishing village at the far end, the second was a small wharf under the guns of the coastal battery. Their force came ashore in three waves: the Marines and a naval landing party, two companies of Emigres and one of Hessian Jaegers, and lastly, the convoy. Each wave took 1 turn to land, and 1 turn to clear the wharf of troops and empty boats. 

The French also had two victory conditions. The major one was to prevent the delivery from happening, preferably by capturing the convoy so they could make use of the money and munitions, the second was to destroy the British force and/or the Reactionary traitors.  The Royalists only had one objective, get the gold and arms and get it safely off table and to do so with enough force to discourage a cavalry pursuit. 

 

About mid game: the British are all ashore, the Marines first attack was bloodily repulsed but they had rallied bravely, the Royalists are skirmishing with two separate battalions of French infantry while the French infantry are making headway on capturing the port while their Hussars
are threatening the convoy. Things were looking iffy for the allies.

A few turns later... the French Hussars swept away the emigre infantry and charged into the mule convoy which was apparantly being managed by either tough sailors or fanatic Royalists (or the dice were prejudiced) because the convoy (rolling for 6's) tied the pursuing cavalry (rolling for 3+'s) forcing them to rally back. The next turn was British and the convoy high tailed it to safety.

With the convoy well on its way, and French infantry fighting in the streets of the fishing village with an eye to cutting off the British escape route, the Marines took another bit between their teeth, stormed up the road to the battery and overran it without losses to the amazement of all. (Dice! Never trust them!)
(The white flag the battery seems to have found was also impressive, I mean, it certainly couldn't be a paper napkin the GM had been using to wipe ummh, salt, vinigar and fat, or something, off his hands.)

After a few more turns of manouvres and firefights, it was the final turn and the French drew the initiative and were going first. The French Hussars were finally in range of the mule train again with only a few skirmishers in the way, while their infantry was in position to clear away the Royalists and cut off the wagon's escape route but.......... alas for them,  it seems that all those Royalist priests and the White banner of the king being wielded by a monk played a role afterall. In any case, the cavalry got tied up in a hedge (or rolled really lousy movement dice) and the veteran White coats, who charged the Royalist pikes and scythes, rolled low and were thrown back.  The convoy was clear while the Brits still held the wharf in the village and also held the wharf below the now spiked battery.

A clear win for the British and the Chouans but it had been damned close at various points.

___________

That was it for the gaming that day, the rest of the afternoon and evening were spent eating, drinking and talking. Knowing that my wife was not feeling well, I opted to drive the hour home rather than sleep over, expecting to return the next day to play the multiplayer board wargame, Brittania. When I awoke though, every muscle in my body ached and my brain felt like oatmeal. (No it was not an alcohol hangover, I'd only had one glass of beer and that in the afternoon so as to not interfere with the return trip.)  Reluctantly I sent my regrets and took the day off for napping. 

Still, despite wiping out on the last day, it was a great couple of days with old longtime friends and two most enjoyable games.