Boxing Day Game…2022.

Greetings…

Here we are… another Boxing Day Game.

As I had painted enough toys to have a game, Mharaid and I decided to have a 40mm Napoleonic skirmish using the  Song of Drums and Shakos rules…

The action takes place when Malchanceux and Rust were young Captains fighting each other in the Peninsular.

I came up with a fairly simple scenario…

Captain Blunt and some Guerrillas have made their way into some woodlands known locally as… El bosque de la perdicion.

They have positioned themselves atop another local land mark known as La colina de La muerte.

Here they are waiting for Captain Rust and his men to meet them to collect some important (secret) documents and escort them safely out of the woods.

A view of the table… La colina de la muerte is in the middle…. 

Malchanceux has been pursuing Blunt and his men and will arrive at a couple of corners of the table… he also has some Paris Municipal Guard who will attempt to move to the sound of the guns if and when the action starts.

Blunt and his men take up position and wait for Rust and company to arrive… as well as looking after their souls Diogenes and Socrates also shoot French soldiers and (most importantly) cook all the food.

(I know…. unusual names for Spanish monks… see if you can work out why?).

Malchanceux and Sgt. Baptiste arrive with their men…

Yup!… my first attempted activation dice… a double fail… my turn ends….Sigh!

Rather surprisingly when Malchanceux regains the initiative his men actually hit someone…

Israel is stunned…but Blunt is put out of action… the Guerrillas clearly didn’t like him as they continue to fight on as if nothing had happened… Sigh!

Sgt. Baptiste and his men make their way towards the hill… this may look simply like hiding to some people… but what you are seeing is in fact field craft in action…honest.

Rust and his motley crew arrive…

The Paris Municipal Guard arrives… they like this position so much that they hardly move from it for the whole game… Sigh!

Malchanceux uses some field craft…

Captain Desespere finally gets his men to move… Hurrah!

More field craft from the French… Crazy Louis (the Sapper) will soon give up on this and do something… well… crazy.

The Guerrillas continue to hold their own on top of the hill…

Henri , Jules and Edgar lay down some effective fire on Rust and his men as they make a break across open ground in an attempt to reach the defenders on the hill… at this point Georg was hit but I didn’t catch it on camera.

Malchanceux, Theo and Hugo indulge in more field craft as they try and get around the side of the hill.

Hard to imagine… I know!…. Mharaid actually rolled some rubbish dice…

Unfortunately on the next activation Captain Sweet manages (only just) to form what will become known as the Mobile Firing Squad… Eek!

Juan makes a dash from cover to hand the ‘secret document’ to Captain Sweet… he could have walked if he wanted because it turns out that the Paris Municipal Guard couldn’t hit a barn door from anywhere…Sigh!

Rust thinks that this is a perfect place to do some field craft… and remove some of the musket balls that have lodged in his shako… 

Clearly their field craft isn’t good enough as Dick goes down to a shot from Henri.

Unfortunately the Mobile Firing Squad takes its first victim.

The shock of seeing his beloved Sergeant laid low causes Antoine to run off…. The cowardly dog.

With a cry of ‘Choppy Choppy Time’ Crazy Louis does his crazy thing and attacks the hill… alone… with an axe!

I think we all saw that coming… but wait!…. He is only stunned.

With divine guidance Diogenes puts Pierre out of action.

Antoine finds his courage and returned to the fight… What a hero.

Crazy Louis gets to his feet and prepares for Choppy Choppy…

Alas he is forced back by semi accurate fire from the panicked occupants of the hill.

Henri takes another shot and blows Harry’s brains out… he will no doubt be blowing his own trumpet over this for weeks.

The sight of this causes panic among his comrades…and they flee for their miserable lives…past the out of action Georg ( obviously a man of Hanoverian descent).

Rust does some field craft.

The Mobile Firing Squad turns its attention on the Paris Municipal Guard.

Dave and Tom make it to the cover of the woods…

Where Tom finds his courage and returns to seek revenge…

Henri shoots him down… and…

Blows his own trumpet… 

At this point in the game I actually thought I was going to win… Sigh!

Crazy Louis makes yet another charge up the hill… Choppy Choppy.. ( he had caught sight of Rust who is using more field craft behind one of the trees on the hill.

Bang Bang…

Yup! That will be that Mobile Firing Squad again… Sigh!

A shot rings out… Desespere hits the ground with a dull thud…

His men respond by screaming and running away like frightened chickens…

Sigh!

At this point we decided it was a good time to call the game…

Yet another victory for Mharaid, but this time it was a close and bloody thing.

If only all my men could shoot like Henri…

The Mobile Firing Squad was actually a group shooting action… it limits your movement choices but gives an excellent bonus in shooting, that combined with Mharaid’s dice throwing made it rather formidable.

We increased Crazy Louis’s combat abilities but reduced his shooting… if he had gotten to the top of the hill it would indeed have been Choppy Choppy.

Rust returned to headquarters with his secret package and of course claimed credit for everything…

Rumour has it that the package actually contained an early working sketch of a certain notorious painting of a Fallen Madonna.

Rumour also has it that most of the better forgeries of this painting started to appear during the Peninsular War.

Malchanceux returned to France and started writing his memoirs… which many modern researches consider to be some of the best fiction to come out of the Napoleonic Wars.

What fun… we took our time playing the game and had a break for food and various nibbles… what the pictures don’t show are the ridiculous amounts of activation fails both of us had… often leading to only one man moving in that turn…much to the amazement of both of us…

Another excellent Boxing Day Game.

All the best.  Aly