Headed over to Roy Scaife's house today for a play test of the Battle at Roncevaux Pass. You can see the scenario details posted here. Roy did a great job putting this scenario and game together.
I took on the British left flank with a second line consisting of Spanish troops. Given this is a later war battle Spanish had a good showing. The British right flank was taken by Dan Kerrick and had a backing second line of Portuguese troops. John Lantz ran the French left while Matt Hilzendrager took the French right.
I played a slow advance to maintain a solid defensive line while Dan elected to advanced faster to try to pin the advancing French forces into the gap. As it was the French advanced quickly and managed to expand across the table faster than the British could.
My first line British units did well, but I ended up having to withdraw and bring the Spanish units forward sooner than I had expected. This actually worked out well in the long run as I was able to rally the British units back to a decent level of fighting ability.
Both sides suffered a lot of casualties. The British right flank (French left) fought into what was essentially a draw. I managed to break several French units on the left flank. All my units had taken about the limit of their casualties so things where very tough and go until the very last turn. Despite my generally crappy dice rolling, the one thing I could do well was pass morale tests ... I can think of three that I should have outright failed but managed to pull off a miracle.
I took pictures - the first chunk below is from my phone while the second half are from my "real" (SLR) camera. I pulled out the zoom lens to get some better exposure pictures.
Pictures from my "real" camera ...
And some more pictures from John Lantz's phone ...
Was great to get a game in ... next up will be a play test for McPherson's Ridge ... really looking forward to that one.