15mm Napoleonic Figures used on the New version of Napoleon from Columbia Games

While this wasn't the reason I acquired my new 15mm Napoleonic armies (I'll be posting about that in the next blog post), it seemed like a great opportunity to break in the new version of Napoleon from Columbia Games that just showed up last week. My friend Uwe Walentin was visiting from Germany and when we weren't hiking in the Cascades, we were war gaming (1775 and this).

The idea was to use the 15mm figs instead of the blocks.  Less secrecy for sure, but a really cool way to use the miniatures.  And then, when a battle occurred, we would fight it out on the tabletop with my 28mm armies and my homebrew Command & Colors rules.

The Napoleon setup looked like this:

Figures painted by 15mm Napoleonic specialist Ron Redworth out of the UK.

Uwe was the French and he maneuvered aggressively toward Liege, threatening the Prussian Supply Line.  He took it with a lone Cavalry Division after some hard force-marching. I drove them out with three Cavalry Divisions, and was then driven out in turn by a medium sized mixed force.
During all this, I was able to unite my British and Prussian forces and push Napoleon out of Charleroi.  The Prussian army would eventually disintegrate from lack of supply, but the time that would take would ensure that the French would lose the campaign.  Therefore, Uwe marshaled his forces and attacked Cherleroi with a small force of Imperial Guard troops as a vanguard, supported by a much larger force entering the battle slowly as reinforcements.

I gave up the advantage of the riverline defense and deployed forward to batter the vanguard before the rest of the French army could come up.

28mm units fight it out on the battlefield at Charleroi.

It was a bloody affair for both sides, especially for our cavalry forces, which charged repeatedly to keep the enemies infantry in square. The losses were very high.

Here a British force stands in square in an orchard as French Cavalry run free in this part of the battlefield (they had entered behind the main action as reinforcements).

Here waits my remaining cavalry reserve on the other side of the field.

The battle ended in a bloody draw, which meant disaster for the French campaign. Time ran out and the French were forced to retreat back to France to defend their borders from the converging allied armies.