The Polish Brigade

So there are my 1812 poles, Poniatowsky and the great duchy of Warshaw provided 75.000 of the 400.000 soldiers that formed the invasion force, the polish regiements were in fact an army into the army, that had showed their colness and independence during the 1809 war against Austria, hoding firm against superior numbers of kaiserlichs. They were very capable troops and their incredible victory at Fuengirola (when 300 poles routed a much larger force of british and guerrilla) will remains as an eternal remainder of this. They also constitued a cavalry model for the french, who coppied the wargear of the lancer.

http://napoleonistyka.atspace.com/polish_army_2.htm

the current polish anthem composed by those who fought alongside Bonaparte and Dabrowski in Italy avenging the austrian invason of Poland  in 1795 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nmFHUbVQtA

 I wanted some international troops for the french; according tho the fact that the poles had been only ones who conquered Moscow previously (in the XVII century) and also fought with Napoleon since his Italian campaign, what option could be better? I bought a box of waterloo 1815 polish infantry, some artillery and to paint!. Here is the result.

 

Behind the smoking battery, Prince Poniatowski awaits for the appropiate moment to launch the assault.

6th regiment of infantry (note the dying russian on the window)

The 12 regiment closes in with the enemy

What is an army without his massed drum band?

battery ready!

Chef de Batterie

And here Prince Poniatowski himslef, descendant from one of Catherine's russian generals (what an irony)   was the victor of Razyn and the one who lead the poles into the Kremlin for second time. Made with a zvezda's lancer and italeri's french etàt major.

The brigade in it's full splendor.

feu d'enfer 

hammering the foe

 

l'aigle de la Vistula

1812 camapaign system

Bicentenary

Each turn roll in the events table, and  each week move and tale car of supply lines and staving armies.

Movement:

each week the genrals in chief gives orders to his subordnietes and specifies to them the routes to follow mentioning cities and geographic points, the normal practice in this is that each player writes his orders in a paper and all show them at the same time or if not you can set a system of  rotative turns.in this phade you can divide your armies but each new separation of the main body must be lead by one of it's generals and of course be noted in a paper it's composition.

each turn they will move 150 km, 300 if the army is composed exclusively of cavalry, each river slows you 20 km. Once two armies clash there is a battle. You can give ordres to build redoubts to stand the enemy assault, in that case the soldiers will ned a day of time (20km of march) to raise the entrenchments taht will appear on the following battle.  If you wish to quit you must lesft a wuarter of your bases behind to cover teh retreat, that quarter must fight a rarguard action to win time for the rest of the regiment.

Food: each army must be abe to draw a ininterrumped line from city to city to his supply lines, in case that the enmy would be cutting it the army will loose a 20 % of it's bases by hunger. You can sack the cities in search for supplies, the russians can also sack but with a -1 tot the dice and in case of rollin 1 they never lose bases. Also a retrating army can burn the cities lefting them unsuitable to further sacks. once sacked a city never produce more supplies.

Despoling table1d6 

           

1 ambush. 0 supplies and you loose 2 bases at the hand of the angry peasants.

2 - 4 1 turn supplies

5  2 turns           

6 3 turns

Note: the cossacks units do not need supply lines

Events 2d6

2. Dissentery: a random army loose 4 bases ob your choice
3. Typhus: a random army looses 2 bases
4. Syphilis: a random general dies
5. trapped in the mud: choose one of your armies, it will move just 80 km this week
6. floods: minus 50 km for each river that you cross
7. Pontoons: cross the rivers as open terrain this week
8. Explorators screen, you can change the movment of one of your armies
9. sacking specialists: you can roll for despoling in a burned city
10. Messenger: you can change the orders of a certain general
11. Forced march: you can move 100 km more with one army
12. Deceiving: you can move one of your oppenents (choose wich) up to 100 km