The Battle of Vitoria

Today I traveled to Fremont to play the Battle of Vitoria with the East Bay Historical Wargames Club using General d'Armee. This would be our last game of GDA1 before GDA2 comes out next week, which most of us have already preordered.

 

The Battle of Vitoria, fought on June 21, 1813, was a decisive victory for the British, Portuguese, and Spanish forces led by the Duke of Wellington against the French army under King Joseph Bonaparte during the Peninsular War. The battle marked the end of French control in Spain as the allied forces successfully outmaneuvered and defeated the French army, leading to their retreat and eventual expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula.

I took my brigade to the center of the table, on my left was Alex with his own force of British, and Miguel was on my right with a Portuguese force. Our goal was to capture the hill on our left, and the village in the center. Alex and I wasted no time advancing on those positions, while Miguel, who commanded the largest force, kept pressure on the French positioned  on our right.

 

         

 

On the British left, Alex advanced his line, skirmishers, and artillery within range of Gil's French on the hill. The shooting was fairly even, but Alex was able to gain a slight upper hand. I believe he was able to rout a unit of skirmishers and an artillery battery. Alex was still outnumbered though, facing infantry from both Gil and Matt. 

 

Matters were made even worse for Alex when, on the 3rd turn, Gil deployed his cavalry reinforcements, and moved 1 battalion of cavalry to charge at Alex's unformed infantry.

        

     

        

        

 With his other battalion of cavalry, Gil noticed my own cavalry was within charge range and in column formation, which would've given him an edge in combat as he was already deployed in line.

Unfortunately for Gil, the dice was not on his side, his first cavalry battalion was defeated in melee and forced to withdraw, taking significant casualties, and his second cavalry battalion was blasted by canister shot before he could reach my own cavalry, also taking several casualties and being forced to retreat. Alex and I got very lucky, losing those combats would've been very critical for us.

 

         

 

In the center of the table, things were less exciting tactics-wise, but just as bloody. Once we reached musket range, we just dumped dice at each other turn after turn. I lost my entire unit of skirmishers early on, which caused some morale issues, but they had done their job of protecting the line infantry's advance until they got within range.

However, I only had 4 battalions of infantry, against both Keith and Matt's brigades. They were able to get more guns on line against my infantry, and although most of my battalions were able to stand until the end of the game, several of them were 1 or 2 wounds away from being destroyed.

      

        

 

On the British right, Miguel fared much better. He had the largest brigades, with the most infantry, and opposing them were only about half of Keith's force because the other half was busy fighting me in the center. Despite Keith's best efforts to delay them with a fighting retreat, Miguel was slowly able to advance his line, and position them on the far right to roll up Keith's flank.

         

 

The game went like this for a while, with Alex being stalled trying to advance on Gil and Matt's position on the hill, my own advance towards the village in the center barely hanging on to a thread ready to collapse at any moment, and Miguel inexorably rolling up the French left.        

        

        

    

At around turn 14, it seemed like Alex needed help, so I decided to try to break the stalemate on his side of the table. I took my fresh cavalry and charged them into Gil's badly mauled cavalry. Defeating his cavalry would open up the French right flank, allowing me to further charge my cavalry into Gil's infantry, or force them to form square, which would make them easier targets for Alex's artillery and musket fire.

The horse melee went very well for me and I was able to rout the entire cavalry brigade, now I could set into motion the strategy outlined above.

 

 

           

 

In the center, Keith and Matt searched for an opportunity to break my badly wounded infantry battalions with a well timed charge, and made several attempts, but I was saved by the British superior musketry rule, which made it easier to force the enemy to take Discipline Tests, spoiling several charge attempts. Still, the French center continued to advance and I moved my battalions back out of range to keep them in the fight as long as I could. 

       

 

 And on our right, Miguel continued rolling up the French flank. He had managed to get several battalions on-line and was now severely out-shooting Keith's battalions. 

The battle had been extremely close thus far, with both sides seemingly being on the cusp of victory or defeat multiple times. With our center being so badly beaten, I thought our team was in real trouble, but now with Miguel almost taking the right flank, and my cavalry causing havoc on the left, we were actually close to snatching a victory from the jaws of defeat. 

 

By the final turn, we failed to capture either objective, but we were very close to causing enough damage to the French to force them to retreat. At the top of the last turn, due to Miguel's effective shooting, the French had to pass 2 morale tests, one failure would cause a brigade to rout, which would lose them the game. Despite allocating an ADC to re-roll failed morale tests, Keith rolled poorly and his brigade routed, forcing the rest of the French to retreat, and thus end the battle with a British victory right before our turn limit! That was bloody close.

I had a lot of fun playing this game, it was a real nail biter, with victory ping ponging back and forth between both sides constantly until Miguel's ocean of Portuguese and a lot of luck managed to save the day. 

 

Alright, that's all for this post. I will see you guys the next time I do something wargaming related, which will probably be a tutorial on making jungle scatter terrain. Until then, folks!