Napolionic British v French AAR

My Dads British army got its first outing at the weekend as they proved to be a very stubborn army to crack in our weekends game of Blucher. We just fought a straight forward meeting engagement battle using 300 points aside. I choose for the first time from the 1812 army list, in which I pointed Napoleon and a Guard corp, a corp of conscript French line infantry and a corps of Allied troops in the form of my recently painted Saxons and also a Heavy Cavalry Corp accompanied by a couple of Hussar units.

I decided the main attack of my battle plan would be launched at the British centre and committed my young and middle guard divisions to achieving this objective, my Saxon Corp were there to support the attack if needed.

However the plan didn't exactly materialise as I had hoped and after some very effective volley and artillery fire from the British my attack faulted and the first wave of Guard troops suffered heavy casualties. 

Over on my left flank my Conscipt infantry held the flank hoping to invite the British into attacking them

With my first attack halted I had to use Napoleon to get some orders to revitalise the attack, making sure my Saxon brigades got into the action.

The second wave goes into the Stoic British line, although I was wearing the British line my attack for the most part was repulsed again,even my Dragoons failed and lost the combat against an unprepared British infantry unit. The green arrows tell the story as they show which units have been forced to retreat from the combat 

This some up how things were going, I charged my Hussars into the Highland division and been unprepared they had to reroll any successful rolls. This they did as you can see by the dice behind them by rolling 4 sixes! My poor hussars proceeded in turn to retreat away from this very determined bunch of Scotsmen

If you fail at first try again..as a second unit of Dragoons catch the British line infantry again unprepared,however the result was the same and again my Dragoons lost the melee. However I had know committed my final reserves in the form of two brigades of old guard who managed to finnally break the British resistance.

Near the fighting around the towns I managed to lose a two on one combat despite having a flank attack against the Brunswick brigade, Again my dad somehow managed to reroll his successful hit dice and still out score me.

Then things went from bad to worse as the British guards broke a young guard brigade.

 

My last sucess came to a end when my old guard were halted and forced to retreat from a British counter attack.

But not until they had managed to destroy another British line brigade, late sucess.

The British reserve cavalry move over to threaten the isolated French Guard troops.

Picton at the centre of the action on the British right. He proved to be a great addition as he successfully on a number of occasions managed to rally a point of Elan on the British line infantry who were coming under heavy artillery fire.

At the end of the game my attack had completely petered out. The British lines had proved to tough of a nut to crack on this occasion. My dads dice rolling for the first few exchanges in the firing had been deadly and he just couldn't seem to miss when we were engaged in combat. The game ended as a draw as neiher side had passed there break point but the British were definetly on top by this stage and if we had more time to p,at  they would have certainly claimed victory. Another very exciting game of Blucher!