Rivoli at the Broadside Show 2025

Another year and another excellent Broadside Show.  This year the Rejects took the Battle of Rivoli to display.

The motley crew.  I'm sure some of these are on the police's most wanted list!

This post is mostly about the game.  I was umpiring and barely had a chance to step away from it all show.  For other excellent reports on the show and the game I refer you to fellow Rejects Lee's Broadside Wargames Show 2025: Show Photo Review and The Battle of Rivoli 1797 - Posties Rejects demo game at Broadside 2025 and Ray's Broadside 2025 - The Rejects on Tour - The Battle of Rivoli 1797.

Surjit carefully eyeing up the table and weighing his options.  Having led the Austrians to the Osteria Gorge twice and failed, he was determined to crack this toughest of nuts.

The Austrians advanced towards the Trombalore Heights threatening Joubert's troops deployed there.

French reinforcements start to arrive while Postie can't quite believe whatever he is seeing or hearing.

Surjit launches cavalry quickly up the gorge and clears the deployed artillery and turns to face the French light cavalry.  The Austrians have already got off to a better start.

To add to the Austrian joy, Vial's troops are being pushed back from San Marco.

Hoping to maintain pressure and hold the initiative, the Austrians rush to climb the gorge and gain access to the Rivoli plateau.

Meanwhile on the Trombalore Heights, Stuart outflanks the French defences and sends the 85th reeling off the heights.  The rest of the French position is looking precarious.

French army reserves are quickly required to form a new artillery line.

The Austrians throw cavalry into the fray.

With troops being thrown back from the heights and San Marco, the French command is trying to form a new line using reserves and Massena's arriving reinforcements.

Alas, the French guns stall the Austrians at the top of the gorge.  However, San Marco is clearly in the hands of the Imperial troops.

Caught in the act!  What sort of lunch break is this?  Ice cream guilt is written all over their faces.

The view over Rivoli shows the French beginning to form their defensive line on the plateau.  All the while, the heights are being heavily contested.

Uh oh!  Austrian troops led by Lusignan have arrived in the French rear.  Fortunately, Steve commanding Massena's division had two units to turn and face the unwelcome threat.

Massena's fresh troops steady the position at the foot of the Trombalore Heights.  With the front line units exhausted and approaching exhaustion, matters are finely balanced just as Surjit launches his best infantry at the French units trying to hold the plateau.

But with an established artillery line supported by steady infantry, the French were able to repulse the Austrian grenadiers.  With that disaster, the Austrian efforts to break out further onto the plateau ended in exhaustion.  With further French reinforcements due to arrive later, the game was called a French victory.

That was both the closest iteration and the one that most resembled the events of the actual battle.  Some slight tweaks improved the scenario and made it a game where the French really had to expend a lot of nervous energy and thought in holding off the Austrians.  Thoroughly enjoyable.

A lot of interest was shown in the game.  Especially in the 6mm MDF figures from Commission Figurines, and the 2mm buildings from Brigade Models.

With so much of my attention on the game, I barely saw much of the show.  Here are a couple of pics just to prove that I did have a quick wander around.  However, I didn't get the names of the games.

I really liked that the terrain was entirely from carpet tiles.

This one was using Lego.  I think it was called "Brickskrieg".

I also managed to come away from the show with some goodies.

I was actually given these by Postie in exchange for doing some future painting for him.

A couple of dice trays.

The rest were bought at the show's flea market.

Hussars to add to my 28mm Revolutionary Wars collection.

A box full of painted 15mm FPW. Mostly French and some Prussians.  I don't know which manufacturer. I will certainly have to rebase them.

All in all, an excellent day.  There seemed to be a lot of people there, including families and young couples.

Well done to the Milton Hundred Wargames Club on putting on another superb event.

A Naval Encounter - Rejects as Guinea Pigs

Having painted a French squadron for the Anglo-Dutch wars it doesn't look like the Rejects are getting anywhere close to playing with these toys...

So, I decided to ignore the rules we'd planned to use (Mad for War by Barry Hilton) and quickly scribbled an easy fast play set to try out with the Rejects remotely during our usual online paint and chat evening.

The rules avoid a lot of detail for simplicity of play via Zoom.  I expected them to be rubbish and openly shared with the players, Dan and Steve, that they were guinea pigs for the night.  I sent them a copy of the rules as they currently stood... untidy and barely legible.

The rules as originally written. The work of c.20 to 30 minutes... and it shows!  Once they have been tested and refined I may type them and share them.

Each player started by taking command of one ship apiece, both classed as 2nd Rate ships of the line.

Their starting positions.

They were quickly at each other.  However Steve, commanding Le Saint Philippe, got into a position at close range and able to deliver raking fire.  It was devastating.

Dan, captaining La Therese, desperately tried to keep distance to try and make some repairs.

However, Le Saint Philippe was never far away and continued to harass Captain Dan.

Until eventually, Steve manoeuvred onto the rear of La Therese (!) and delivered the coup de grace with another raking shot.

That was the game over in just under an hour with poor Dan never able to recover from the first raking broadside.  We had a little chat about the rules and set about a second game.

This time, some islands were placed as terrain with the opponents placed behind each.

Perhaps having learnt the rules, the two commanders were slightly cagier in the manoeuvres.

Regardless, Steve managed to get into a position for another raking shot. However, his devastating dice from game one were now starting to obey the laws of probability.  La Therese got off lightly.

The cat and mouse sailing of both continue as each sought position.  Both having to contend with the wind and islands.  Steve was a little abler in handling running repairs compared to Dan.

Each sought to gain wind advantage.

Eventually closing...

...to deliver broadsides at close range.

The battle had to end there.  Steve and Le Saint Philippe were able to claim a victory by virtue of having inflicted more damage on La Therese.

After Thoughts
The aim of the rules was to abstract a lot and keep things really simple.  Each rate of ship starts with a number of dice with which everything has to be done.  So the principle is that commanders have to make decisions about their priorities for the turn.  With hits, these dice are reduced.  The reducing dice makes the decision making both challenging and critical.  Pleasingly, this seemed to be how things played out.

With the players' help, some, but not many, rules were tweaked.  The general opinion being that the rules played very well and were "fast and fun" (Dan's words).  This was exactly what I was aiming for.  We all agreed that the next test would be try them out with multiple ships per side.

My other aim for the evening was to test the remote gaming set up.  With no dedicated space anymore, I have to use the dining room table.  My concern was principally lighting the gaming area.  Happily, Dan and Steve said that my arrangement (two cameras and a special lamp borrowed from my son) worked well.  Whilst I won't be able to keep games set up over a number of evenings, it does look like single evening games are a possibility again.

It was a fun evening with turns that whizzed by.  Thanks to my guinea pigs Dan and Steve and their feedback.  I'm looking forward to the next encounter.

Italian Wars Gendarmes

Just finished painting and basing some Great Italian Wars Gendarmes.

They are Wargames Foundry 28mm Renaissance figures.

The banners are from the excellent range from Pete's Flags.

I did originally paint one of the gendarme's lances with spiral stripes. I used masking tape wound round the lance to provide a sharp finish. However, it was a bit of a performance so I decided if I do stripes they will be horizontal and repainted.  Bearing in mind that such fancy lances were generally reserved for the tournament lists, I'm not going to get too exercised about it.

One thing that you may realise is that I have not used the heavy lances provided by Foundry.

I took the decision of practicality and resilience over aesthetics. I've seen too many knights and gendarmes in blogs with bent soft metal lances, hence the metal replacements. Better speared players than bent lances!!

More gendarmes are on the painting table.  I also want to start gluing together a box of Perry light cavalry.