Wednesday 1 November 2023

Wellington marches on Madrid

The campaign map turn (we are mid way through the deck of turn 6 now) saw a whole lot of marching going on. In Catalonia, Suchet moved to consolidate the vastly improved French position there and prop up Macdonald's army which, because it has been doing all of the fighting, is somewhat reduced in numbers. Blake moved quickly east on a prearranged course to link up with a possible move, by Wellington, on Madrid.

Wellingtons march was astonishing. On two almost back to back  activation cards, he stormed Badajoz (which fell without resistance), then marched quickly onto Valladolid before turning south to Madrid where he attacked King Joseph. His move was so astonishingly fast that King Joseph was unable to fall back (when Wellington attacked he played a 'Surprise Move' card which prevented him withdrawing).

Now, vastly outnumbered by a much better army, Joseph can only hope nightfall will save him from almost certain annihilation.

This is Wellington's hard marching force, less Hill's 2nd Division in immediate off table reserve.
Joseph's army, God help it! The French chose side of table side deployed first.
To my mind the British, having seen the French deployment, have deployed in the wrong place. That right wing has a long way to march to get into the fight. Perhaps Graham has a cunning plan.

BTW. I realise that the last campaign reports have been a bit 'underdone'. I've been pressed for time but, I hope to do better going forward.

3 comments:

Rob said...

The British deployment is a puzzler, perhaps they didn't see Joseph's pathetic little band huddled in the corner and trying not to get noticed, there's so few of them they'd be easy to miss.

Chris Hahn said...

JR,
You might need to get some scissors, so that you can cut yourself a little slack.
Though Napoleonics has not been my period of interest for some time, I am following your campaign (and your spectacular scenarios) with interest. One wonders if the one or two of the player-generals could be asked to contribute their perspective of the proceeding? Given your recent purchase of a whole new collection (the boxes upon boxes of Colonials; the mind reels), one also wonders how you manage. Anyway, looking forward to the AAR of this presumably one-sided contest. Then again, no campaign generated battle survives contact with the tabletop, so something like that . . . Thanks for posting.

daveb said...

What a nightmare for the french. Even if Wellington fails to win, it doesn't look like he has any threats to his supply lines or flanks.