After last month's basing exercise, we finally got to grips with a relatively small V&B game (it still took 4 hours though), based on the Allied / French battle of 1760 during the 7yw, near Wesel.
Again, the elegance of V&B shines through, and we had many reversals and nail-biting finishes to melees.
Some refresh and ref to the rules was necessary during play, of course.
French units line the river, but there not enough of them to avoid leaving a gap for Allied units to exploit.
The Allied/British centre
There would be a cavalry flank action on the French left.
Advantage for the French, as they adopt stationary positions on the bank - doubling fire dice
"ze thing about ze small buildings, is zat I can not fit inside when ze shooting starts..."
The French right, which would see a stalemate until near the end, when French units were urgently required at centre
The cavalry action does not go well for the French
British troops ford the marshy stream and start to hit the open French flank
...even shooting off some cavalry
The main event happens, as fronts change, in the centre
Things were looking to go the way of the Allies as we finished, though they still had a number of brigades to rally. All in all, a great game.
I also saw the beauty of the fire-counterfire system at work, in line with turn sequence. Said sequence does mean that there is a lot happening in these rules as the units numbers increase - although getting used to things again does make things go remarkably smoothly.
