Nap Campaign: Naval Battle of Watervall Bay

I apologise for the lack of photos. Unfortunately I took very few at the time. This will therefore, be mainly a text based AAR.

THE BATTLE OF WATERVALL BAY (NAVAL)

British v French

Royal Navy: 1 x Ship of the Line (74); 2 x Cutters (8)

French: 1 Ship of the Line (74); 1 x Frigate (36)

Model Scale = 1/2400

11th March 1808

The Location of the Battle N3 v N3

Plans for 2018

With 2017 coming to a close, it is now time to look at what I intend to do in 2018. 'Intention' of course is not necessarily what I achieve and it will be interesting to see at the end of next year precisely what I have completed! I will break it down into 'Battles', 'Campaigns' and 'Painting'.

Nap Campaign: The Battle of Cape Youngsport

This campaign is primarily for land battles. However, I wanted to include a naval element to add a little more flavour and I have always had a soft spot for the wars at sea. I did not want huge fleet on fleet actions as it would be too much of a distraction from the land campaign. Therefore the naval lists for all nations are rather modest in size, designed primarily for squadron v squadron or ship v ship actions, but the occasional fleet v fleet action may still occur. 

All nations with a port of some sort are allocated an initial fleet. They are then able to order more ship builds depending on the capacity of their shipyards and ports. Gradually, as the campaign progresses, these ships become available as they are commissioned into the fleet.

Before I provide an AAR of the battle I provide a brief overview of the rules used and the amendments I have made. The rules are 'Trafalgar' by Warhammer Historical:

Napoleonic Campaign Early Map Moves

As a reminder, this is the situation at the start of the campaign with a date of 1st March 1808. 

Napoleon starts to move his forces towards the French borders. He has split his army into 3 commands:

Army of the East (or the Grande Armee):

CinC Napoleon - Old and Middle Guards, Heavy Cav of Guard, Guard Arty, 2nd Corps minus 7th Div and 3rd Cav Corps.

Army of the West:

CinC Marshall Grouchy - 1st Corps, 4th Cav Corps, 7th Div, Young Guard, Guard Light Cav.

Army of the South:

CinC Marshall Soult - 6th Corps, 3rd Cav Div, 5th Cav Div

Napoleonic Campaign

I have said that I would probably not add this to my blog due to the time involved, but then I thought what the heck! So here goes for my Napoleonic Campaign:

I have always enjoyed playing out campaigns which add a whole new dynamic to fighting battles on the tabletop. An important consideration is losses which can have serious implications for future battles if a commander is reckless. When amassing my figures for my Waterloo project I decided to create a campaign which would provide encouragement to get figures painted. This also extended to a Peninsular war project. By using the 100 days campaign orbats in my campaign it meant that all those units could be used outside the limitations of the former. There was not much need for Dutch/Belgians, Nassauers etc. in my Peninsular War project for example. I started this campaign in March 2015. So far there have been 17 battles of various sizes including two naval actions. A couple were fought in 15mm as they were smaller actions but the rest was in 6mm. This campaign has barely started and in reality I am not sure that it will ever finish. It is my little indulgence and mostly fought solo although my sons occasionally dip in.