Black Powder at Nick's

Leigh's Austrians v. Mark's French

We continue Nick's survey of Napoleonic rules by playing Black Powder RAW except half distances for 15mm figs on a small table.

 The French are on the left.

The French have attacked in the centre.  One division has advanced through the hamlet & is yet to charge.  The division on their left has charged home, but the fight is tied.  The 3rd division has been brought across from the left to support.  The French artillery is firing ineffectively at long range.

The infantry division in front of the hamlet has been disrupted by musket fire & is getting nowhere.  The adjacent division has been beaten off and the 3rd division has gone in, but not before the Austrians got fresh troops in the front line.

The attack through the hamlet has been beaten off.  The French now have 3 columns fighting one large unit, but it just keeps on hanging in there. 

The Austrian heros in the cornfield have finally broken, but they took a French column with them..  The French have lost 5 units & half the rest are Shaken.  The Austrians have lost only 1 unit.  The French concede the battle.

The French plan wasn't very subtle, but it wasn't bad.  One would have expected 2 or 3 to one column attacks on lines to break through at least some of the time, even against large units.  But the dice gods decreed otherwise.  One Austrian division of large units with some artillery support beat off 3 French ones.

So how does BP compare with Lasalle?  At this scale of battle, they both work ok, but I think BP would work better with larger battles than Lasalle.  This exercise has reinforced my opinion that Hail Caesar is significantly better than BP - in particular, the HC combat system is much easier to do.  This exercise has reinforced my opinion that our system of using house rules to tweak HC for later periods is the best option.