Black Powder: Single Brigade: SYW

[nikharwood]

Keith Flint's great post on using single brigades in Black Powder - here: http://keefsblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/black-powder-minimalist-approach.html , particularly the second battle described by him (with a lovely map), inspired me to try something similar - but mine, of course, in 10mm  

Played solo last weekend, again on my nice little 3ft x 2ft [ish] mat on the end of the dining room table: the Austrians are defending the village from the advancing Prussians - both forces similarly composed but the Prussians have some grenadiers (who start off-table)...

Deployment:


Austrians:






Prussians:




The Austrians decide (randomly) to take the fight to the Prussians and advance:






The Prussians form their lines in response - the cavalry charge into contact & the Grenadiers wander on:








The Prussian cavalry force the Austrian Hussars to retire - and press their advantage:


...which was only ever going to have one outcome:


The infantry begin firing at each other:


The Prussian cavalry manoeuvre to threaten the Austrian rear while the Grenadiers continue their ramble:






And into melee:






A bit of re-manoeuvre:


And the battle is done - the Prussians take the field:






This was a great little scrap, proving that - as Keith says in his excellent blog - that BP works perfectly well with a minimum of fuss with smaller scale battles; the attraction for me of fighting in this way is that I can game whilst still being in the vicinity of the kids etc rather than having to lurk in my games room (garage). Top notch - and I can see many more BP games being fought in this way - probably ACW this weekend...

It also means that, with Pendraken figures, you can game Black Powder nicely with 4-5 packs of figures per side...hmm...

[Steve J]

A nice little scrap their Amigo . I can heartily recommend the single brigade approach to games (see my comments on Keith's Blog which is excellent). With the Pendraken Army packs you have pretty much everything you need for these size actions which is great. The only problem is deciding which period to game .

[Hertsblue]

Great little battle. How long would a game like that take to play out?

(Did I notice the Austrians attempting the oblique order against Old Fritz's men?) 

[Bishop Lord]

Nice looking report , Ive not played BP, but after my game of HC last night I can see BP and HC becoming popular for 10mm gaming.

Jason

[DFlynSqrl]

Very nice Nik.  I've been looking at using BP for some future genres.  Glad to see you can start small and build your way up to larger battles.

[nikharwood]

The only problem is deciding which period to game .

That's no problem...the solution = all of them 

Great little battle. How long would a game like that take to play out?

That took about 45 minutes I think...

(Did I notice the Austrians attempting the oblique order against Old Fritz's men?) 

Nope - from this:




what happened is that the left-hand Austrian unit was mullered [unsurprisingly] whilst the right-hand Austrian unit mullered the Prussians [surprisingly!], leaving this:

Glad to see you can start small and build your way up to larger battles.

Absolutely...'cept that I did it the other way round 

[Arsenus]

As always...
Nice sceneries...
Nice miniatures
Nice BatRep!

Very good work, Nik!