A Napoleonic love affair on Valentine's Day..

                       "Napoleon and generals accompanied by the old guard"

On Sunday my dad and I travelled up to Robbie's house to have a rather large game of Blucher using Robbie's lovely 6mm French and Austrian armies which he has been busy rebasing over the last few months. Even though Robbie still has vast amounts of Napolionics to rebase we still comfortably had enough units for roughly 500 points aside. Paul traveled over from Whitly Bay to join in the game and took command along with with my dad of the Austrian army, while Robbie and myself took command of the French.

Day light shines across the battlefield as the opening exchanges of gone battle unfold

Our Battle plan was for Robbie to advance and hold the Austrian right left flank along the ridge while I pushed forward a large attack in the centre, this was to be supported when required by the French reserve heavy cavalry, I was also going to engage the Austrian left flank to stop the Austrains from being able to reinforce  their centre to easily. We kept the guard Corp in reserve just in case any cracks appeared in our battle-line.

The first wave of French brigades march towards the Austrian centre....

Throughout the game Robbie managed to throw a succession of low Momentum dice for the Austrains  so Paul and my dad struggled to really get any kind of attack launched against us handing us the initiative. As the game progressed,our centre after getting the better of the earlier fire fight charged into the Austrains and started to push the Austrains back in consecutive moves,destroying a couple of brigades in doing so.

The Austrian right flank retreats under pressure from the French assault as a massed battery is over run by a French line brigade.

The French right flank under attack from Pauls Austrains, the action around this area sees some hard fighting around the woods and town.

My French Corp in the centre breaks through the Austarain first line and engages the supporting Austrain brigades
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Paul and my Dad study the battlefield, deep in thought wondering if they should have another biscuit with their coffee:-)

Austrain Currasiers and horse artillery move around the French left flank

The Austrains hold the town as the French fail in their attempts to dislodge the Austrian garrison.

With the Austrain centre under sever pressure as Robbie committed the reserve French cavalry, my dad was forced to send his reserves over from his right flank,across the bridge and river to stop the centre from collapsing.

The French currasiers and lancers go to support the attack on the centre of the wavering Austrain line.

A brigade of Bavarains garrison the town 

The fighting on the French left flank continued all day with neither side being able to make a telling break through.

The Austarin reserves cross the river to support the centre.

A grand sight indeed as the French Guard corps moves into the action.

The Austrain centre has now been pushed right back as the French line brigades move into the positions once occupied by the Austrains.

With my dad having to commit the reserve infantry to stop the centre from completely collapsing I activated the guard Corp which advanced quickly to engage the now weakened Austrain left flank. With this and the arrival of the French cavalry in the centre, my dad and Paul both felt the game was beyond the Austrains now and all that remained for them to do was to form a final defensive line to start to withdraw. We had managed to play for around 4hours with a break,for lunch (cheers for the chilli Robbie) with very little interruption for the need to check rules. This is the first time we have played  a multi player game using Blucher and I felt that the rules worked excellently, especially as we seemed to get a lot of moves and action in the time we played, and visually the game looked fantastic! I hope everyone else enjoyed the game as much as I did although the dice certainly favoured the French in this game (I've never known my dad miss so much with his artillery). Hopefully we can have some more  multi player games in the near future. 

The battlefield at the conclusion of the game.