I ran a Retreat from Moscow game at our big end of summer convention on August 31. I ran a similar game in December 2018 in which the French had to cross the table while being attacked by randomly positioned Russian forces. Dirk suggested fighting a rear guard action instead and I thought that was an excellent idea. I wanted to try the new Osprey "Rebels and Patriots" rules which cover the 1812 period, but are meant for small force skirmishes in North America. This is the third time I have tried the rules for European Napoleonics and they are satisfactory, not great. But they are easy to learn and good for a convention crowd. In my game the French had one unit of Old Guard Grenadiers, one unit of Young Guard Light Infantry, one each of lancers and cuirassiers, two units of line infantry and one unit of dismounted cavalry. The rear guard had to hold off the outnumbering Russians while five wagons carrying wounded, officer's sweethearts and plunder made it across a bridge. Each wagon had to roll 2 D6 each turn and if a double one came up, they had to reroll a D6 and that was how many turns it took to repair the wagon. That happened once, on the next to last wagon, but by then the rear guard was out of harm's way. As it turned out, the Russians were hampered by poor activation dice, being mostly undisciplined Cossacks and green regulars. The Old Guard suffered the most casualties, but being elite, they made all their morale rolls. The French artillery suffered badly by waiting too long to retire and lost both their guns. Otherwise they made it pretty much unscathed and had the wagons across the bridge by the end of the twelfth turn. I would like to try this again using "About Bonaparte", probably in December for the club Christmas game.
