First Blood: Whitmarsh Wood

Gunfire shatters the still morning air.

Advance cavalry of the French foraging parties caught their first sight of the enemy at seven of the clock, just south of Beccaville.  A small unit of Spanish Guerillas, surprised by the appearance of French to the north, fled Beccaville, leaving their uneaten breakfast behind.  Making for the safety of the British lines, they quickly realized evasion was impossible and took to the refuge of a small woods east of the road.

 

Alerted to the presence of heavy foot traffic too early in the morning for this corner of Spain, the French hastened through the streets of Beccaville, soon to burst out into the open land beyond.  In the distance, they caught the flash of color and gleam of steel of men running through the meadows.  A glimpse was all they needed to confirm the presence of enemy guerillas waiting there in the shadows.

The guerillas waited in the shade, hoping the French would pass them by, a hope too quickly dashed.  The French commander refused to leave the threat of fifteen well-armed and hostile locals lingering in his rear, and steered his troops, six lancers and six dragoons, off the road, and into the hot maw of battle.

Yes, these are Vendeean Royalist figures.  You go to miniature wars with the miniature armies you have.  They might look like French loyalists, but here they represent Spanish Guerillas.  Taking to the woods failed as it turns out that holding a terrain item with figures prone to letting their emotions get the better of them is a terrible plan.  In Chosen Men, the Spanish Guerillas have a special rule called "Hatred (French)" which allows them to reroll missed hits against any French forces.  Unfortunately it comes at a price - they must pass a leadership test or charge any hated enemy that closes to within 12-inches of them.  

After digging in deeper into the security of the woods, the guerillas fired a single volley that only managed to injure one French hussar.  For this scenario, and based on the figures available, the GM designated the guerillas primarily a melee force.  Five with muskets leaves ten with much more effective melee weapsons such as pikes and axes.  Feeling their oats, the guerillas followed up their volley with a pointless charge into the Hussars.

Which negated both the advantages of the terrain, and the advantages of their weapons.  Not only that, it exposed them to a counter-charge by the French Lancers.  Cavalry attack first in this game, so the guerillas had to suffer through a total of nearly 40 attacks!  Each cavalry figure gets two attacks, one each with pistol and sabre, and the charging cavalry unit earns an extra d6 attacks for the charge.

Not a single guerilla survived to 'with my last breath I spit at thee".

Which is not to say that it was a total loss.  The guerillas did slow down the French Cavalry by a full two campaign turns - one for the fight, and one for resting and binding up the wounded.  As you'll see in the next post, this allowed the British defenders to find much better terrain on which to counter-attack the French cavalry force.