002 Roliça (French Second Position) (17 August 1808)
29 %
71 %
ROLIÇA (French Second Position) - 17 August 1808
Historical Background
Delaborde expertly withdrew his force near Roliça to a second defensive position before the British flanking columns could encircle him. The new position was extremely strong and could only be reached frontally by four rugged gullies.
Wellesley quickly repositioned his forces to repeat his double envelopment for his afternoon attack, but his plan was preempted when the Lieutenant-Colonel Lake of the 29th Worcestershire Regiment prematurely forced his way up one of the central gullies. Wellesley chose to support Lake’s effort and the entire British army surged forward. The French battalions advanced to meet the British before they could emerge from the gullies, but were repulsed. De Laborde once again drew off his troops in good order.
Ultimately Roliça was an indecisive action. Although Delaborde did slow the British advance, Wellesley forced him to retreat before he was reinforced.
The stage is set. The battle lines are drawn and you are in command. Can you change history?
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Set-Up Order
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Battle Notes
British Army
• Commander: Wellesley
• 6 Command Cards
• Optional 5 Tactician Cards
• Move First
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| 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
French Army
• Commander: Delaborde
• 5 Command Cards
• Optional 4 Tactician Cards
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| 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
Victory
5 Banners
Special Rules
none.
Tags: Base Game, Banners: 5, Army: British, Army: French, Army: Portuguese, Special Rule: none
- They take their time to gather their troops on the wings and stay cautious in the center, so that a bayonet charge won't immediately give the French an advantage (except turn 1, can't do much about it);
- They apply pressure so that the French player cannot be everywhere and then attack at a point/points where the French player is the weakest;
- They usually aim for both objective hexes so that the French player has to stretch his defence no matter what.
Edit: oops this question was 6 years ago! Had seen this map in the "latest scenario" so I incorrectly assumed that it meant somebody had posted on it recently.
Stormkahn wrote: For those of you who've played this scenario and won as the Allies I'd be very interested to know how you did it?
Here is the session report I posted on the Geek
Cheers
Chris
In the 1st game, I was the French, the Allies made a well organised attack on his left wing, he didn't run out of cards. I stop him there and counter attacked to grab several points. He had the same issues in the center and right.
In the 2nd game, different opponent, I was the Allies. In trying to learn from the previous game I tried attacking from 2-3 fronts at the same time and to limit the prospects of the French counter attack. It just ran out of steam and never recovered.
The common denominator for both of these was the minimal use of Allied cavalry and artillery.
I think that next time it'll be softly softly move everything up whilst building a hand so that when the time comes pretty much everything goes in at the same en masse.
ATM it "feels" like it's a scenario that punishes the Allies for any mistake but I admit we need to work through it a few more times with different approaches.
cheers,
Dave.
Sure, you need good cards/dice to win on both sides,
but most mistakes which less experience players do,
is to believe, with every played command card you must order and move forward
Thus far I've been through it twice, as both sides. In both games it was a landslide win for the French. In both games the allied artillery and cavalry hardly moved. In both cases the Allied infantry was fed peicemeal into the fight.
I have some ideas but was interested to learn how others have got on.
Cheers,
Dave.
