13 Vendemaire revisited

 Another trip to Table Battles this week, presented by Tim. This one covers the Royalist uprising on 13th Vendemaire (by the Revolutionary calendar), which was put down by a little known General Bonaparte with 'a whiff of grapeshot'. We've done this one before, but after Russells recent visit to Paris, it just had to be done again.

This is a pretty simple scenario. The Republicans have Bonaparte, 12th Chasseurs and artillery, while the Royalists have an unnamed military unit labelled 'Royalist forces', General Denikin and 'The Paris Mob'.

As ever the complexity comes in the interplay of the units between each other and the special chracteristics each one has as defined on its card. The Royalist oddities were that the Paris Mob inflicted hits on itself when it attacked (!), and Denikin could only support attacks or provide reinforcements. The Republicans special power was the artillery, which would cancel attacks and inflict quite heavy losses, but needed quite special dice (a triple straight) to prepare for action.

As I've often commented before, I can't imagine how to even start designing a scenario like this, so I'm very glad someone else has done the hard work. This scenario is off BGG.

Jerry, Russell and I were cast as Royalists. Our guys are on the left. The Mob has (lots) of green SP blocks, while the Royalist forces have 8 red SP and Denikin has 5 support SP which can reinforce the Royalist forces.

John and Mark were the wicked Republicans, both Bonaparte (yellow) and 12th Chasseurs (blue) have 5 SP. The guns are in reserve until turn 3. Initially the Chasseurs fight the Royalists and Bonaparte fights the mob, once those wings are defeated, they can attack the other units, a bit like Dominion of the Spear.

Our guys may be numerous but aren't that great. We are quite restricted where we can place our command dice, and the mob in particular is very hard to get moving. By turn 3 the Republicans have chipped away at us and now the guns have moved up but aren't activated yet.

By now the Mob are looking a bit threadbare as Napoleon keeps attacking them, and we used them to soak up artillery fire (!). Denikin has reinforced the Royalists and we've bult up a big four dice attack against 12th Chasseurs. 12th Chasseurs are down to two SP after heavy fighting.

And the Chasseurs are routed. That gives us a morale chip, so we are three to the Republicans one now. We've got another big attack lined up but annoyingly the Republican artillery is ready to receive us (that big red marker on the artillery card).

A few more turns fighting and the Mob are gone. Bonaparte is down to 2SP, while we have 4SP left. Morale is even again but if we can rout Bonaparte he is worth 2 morale chips. Sadly the Republicans have a fully loaded gun line (two blocks) which precludes us attacking. 

We do manage to get Bonaparte down to 1SP at the cost of all but 1SP to ourselves. There was a brief moment when we might have pulled it off, but the Republican artillery is up and running again, so Bonaparte attacks resulting in mutual annihilation, but as we are unable to attack in our turn, we lose.

It doesn't get much closer than that, 1SP each.... that was actually really tense and exciting, with lots of decisions each turn. Shame we lost, but it was glorious!