Spring in Artois

 At our monthly f2f game, Lloyd put on a vast (800 figure!) 54mm Funny Little Wars game. This covered a hypothetical engagement between Prussia and Great Britain over Belgium in the 1880s.

Some of the assembled Prussians. Each brigade had 4x20 figure battalions plus HQ, sappers, and a couple of artillery pieces.

John, Dave, Andrew and Russell took the Prussians.

The British hordes. We had a Highland brigade, Naval brigade, two Guards brigades and an entire cavalry division with a Heavy Brigade and a light Brigade. All in 54mm....

Pete, myself, Graham and Tim took the British.

The Naval Brigade was garrisoning this village already, the rest of us had to march up and support it.

Naval artillery. These troops are Tims.

They also had a Marine band marching up and down inside the enclosure. Very good for morale.

Our hordes set off across the Masonic Lodge carpet in columns.

The Prussians came on in much the same formations.

First clash was (inevitably) the cavalry over on the far flank. Our Heavy Brigade came out on top.

Meanwhile our cavalry scouts had spotted the Prussians, and my brigade shook out into open order with the Brigade artillery deployed to the left. Petes brigade was moving to occupy the town, and Tims Naval types are to my left.

My job was to occupy the left hand side of the large wood to our front.

The lead Prussian battalions also shook out into line.

View from the Prussian lines, our chaps are in the distance.

Lurking inside the wood was our other Hussar Regiment, operating dismounted as a skirmish screen. They took the Prussian jagers under fire at close range and inflicted heavy losses before falling back.

Another Prussian brigade skirted the far edge of the woods.

The fighting in and around the woodland was intense and bloody. Having got my chaps deployed, they could basically just stand and shoot as the Prussians came marching towards them. As they advanced piecemeal, I just shot each battalion in turn into bits. Weight of numbers eventually told and one my own battalions collapsed, but when the smoke cleared, there were hardly any Prussians left here as the Naval Brigade to my left provided continuous artillery support which tore into their ranks.

In fact I'd been so focussed on my immediate front that I didn't realise the Prussians had mostly vanished! The only ones left were skulking in the other end of the wood. View from the naval Brigade position. 

The British divisional CO surveys the scene.

The Prussian attack was clearly hopeless at that point as we had a firm hold on most of the towns, although one was only held by a handful of dismounted cavalry, so we called it then.

My chaps still hanging on to a corner of 'Guardsmans Wood'.

That was a really great game. Once we'd got everything out of the boxes (which took quite a while as there was so much of it), the whole thing rattled along very well. Using movement trays was a huge bonus as although it took a while to put the figures on them with blu tak, it was so much faster moving the units and a real time saver. 

It was standard FLW, so lots of opportunities to fire matchsticks out of cannon, and the toys were gloriously colourful. Most importantly, the good guys won!