Sharp Practice 1812 Wurttemberg v Russians

Dave and I attended a 'Lard Day' at Chelmsford at the weekend. I'd never been to one before, the basic idea is that the organisers arrange a number of Lard rules games and the attendees play them. I opted for Sharp Practice 1812 in the morning and Charlie Can't Surf in the afternoon.

For some reason I'd anticipated a retreat from Moscow game but in fact the game was an attack on the Redoubt at Borodino by Wurttemberg troops from Ney's third corps supported by Marshal Murat himself!

Wurttemberg Jaegers advance on the redoubt to rescue Marshal Murat from Russian Jagers. In the distance a single group of French infantry hold the Redoubt:

The Wurttemberg Jagers open fire:

Remarkably they are fantastic shots and all the Russians are casualties!

Wurttemberg line appear, in the distance a line of Russian infantry has arrived:

More Wurttemberg troops, this time the Light Infantry. In the distance the Russians have brought up a cannon to threaten the Wurttemberg line:

Fortunately the Wurttembergers form line before the cannon can fire: 

Wurttemberg Line exchange fire with the Russian Line and artillery. They wipe out the artillery but take a lot of damage themselves:

However, the Wurttemberg Light Infantry and Jaegers are almost ready to join in the firefight: 

The extra firepower slowly overwhelms the Russians though their special Russian ability to rally off extra shock with a priest keeps them in the fight longer than expected:

The Russian formation breaks and runs reducing their Force Morale to zero. However, as the Russians still held the redoubt (some Russian Jagers had entered it and wiped out the defending French earlier in the game) the overall result was a draw:

A fun game with the Redoubt being an excellent feature for the game (though unfortunately the Wurttemberg commanders failed to actually attack it!). For the Russians they had a group of Cuirassiers that they seemed rather reluctant to commit. Our plan was to clear the flank of the Redoubt then attack it which would have been fine but for the fact that a) we ran out of time and b) Russian morale collapsed before we could take the Redoubt!

One other interesting thing was that all the figures had been 3D printed, they looked nice but were apparently quite hard to print and a bit fragile. 3D printing seems increasingly popular but, for me, far too much space usage, effort and mess to contemplate at the moment.