Battle of Puebla - First Playtest

Wedndesday night Hal, Jan, and Jon joined me in my first playtest of Puebla for Historicon.

I don't have time to write up a detailed battle report, but I wanted to show you some eye candy from the battle.

Jan and Jon were the French and had never played miniatures before, nor Piquet, so they were under a steep learning curve. Hal, my veteran of many campaigns, controlled the Mexicans while I umpired and took notes.

Initial Setup viewed from the Mexican right flank:

Mexican right wing agressively moves forward while the French left wing scrambles after seeing the Mexican advance.

Zouaves, Sailors and Marines advance up Guadalupe Ridge

Nice view of the entire battle

Mexican right wing under Porfirio Diaz continues their advance.

The Mexicans launch into the thin French left wing. Here a Republican cavalry unit is routed in melee by the French guns! Stunning victory for the French!

French 99th Line battalion moves into the action!

Disaster! The Blue Butchers are destroyed by flanking fire from Mexican regulars!

99th Line repulses Mexican assault, even in skirmish formation!

French assault force nears Fort Guadalupe

Nice parting shot

French took a beating in morale chips compared to the Mexicans and are struggling to hold their left flank, but the battle is far from over. We did call this one in favor of the Mexicans.

Overall, I'm pleased with the setup and special rules. We got a late start (8pm) and we finished around 10:30pm after two complete turns. This gave me a good idea of what I may be up against for the convention game.

Another playtest next week! Cheers!
Eric

Battle of Puebla May 5, 1862 - First Playtest

Hi,

Here are some shots of the terrain for tomorrow night's first playtest of the game.

I expect some bumps in the road with regards to the scenario, but I love the layout! I will likely do some more sculpting of the hill to get it to my liking, but you really get a sense of how big an obsticle this terrain was to the French. Forts are still unfinished, but we have to start playtesting.

Table is roughly 8' x 5'. This is really a small battle by European standards.

Zouaves leading the assault! Yes, the Foreign Legion didn't fight in this battle, they are being used as substitutes for French Marines.

French baseline deployment.

The neighborhood of Xonaca where the French and Republicans fought fiercely around the brick factory!

General Diaz's command on the right flank.

Here you can see the earthworks that Republicans created before the battle.

There is another Republican command off board which the Mexican player will have to commit, but they must chose between the fortresses or Xonaca neighborhood.

Cheers!
Eric

Terrain: Battle of Puebla - Part 2

Thought I would share more of my Guadalupe Ridge terrain project for Historicon.

This has taken much longer than I thought it would, but I believe the end result will be smashing!

So far you can see how I'm doing the rough sculpting of the hill with my Foam Factory tools.

Here are some photos of the hill after being sanded with very coarse sandpaper. Oh, the fortresses now have their base coat of grey on them. I have to do quite a bit of detailing on the fortresses. 

All my Imperial Mexican infantry and command, including Austrian Legion and Belgian Legion. You can see the custom tray for travel that I'm making for Historicon.

Terrain: Guadalupe Ridge for Battle of Puebla

Hi folks,

I'm frantically trying to make Guadalupe Ridge for my Puebla playtest on Wednesday night. I have all the figures ready and just need to create this large peice of terrain.

Guadalupe Ridge was the target of the French assaults on Puebla in 1862 (they learned their lesson and left them alone in the siege of 1863). This will be a large piece of gaming terrain with two fortifications crowning the heights.

My first attempt to create the ridge failed as I had originally settled on a 2' x 3' footprint for the ridge, but once I drew the fortresses on the ridge line the sloops were going to have to be too steep, so I have gone to 3' x 4' pink board.

My table at historicon will be roughly 5' x 10' so the ridge will dominate half the table.

Found the following maps of the forts at the time of the battle so this gives me a rough outline of the fortresses.

Fort Loreto

Fort Guadalupe with an Abbey inside it.

I blew up the fort jpgs to make a template to trace onto the pink board. The ground to the left of Fort Loreto and to the right if Fort Guadalupe are going to be steep rough (Class IV in game terms) ground.

#1 – template with walls. Discovered how to bend foamcore!

#2 – Adding gun and troop walkways.

#3 – French assault

#4 – Good shot of Loreto and Guadalupe in the background. Ridge is not cut out yet.

#5 – Charges!

#6 - Made gates that can be removed if needed. Made a similar one on Guadalupe. Also filled in the gaps on both forts with wood filler.

Showing the template of Fort Guadalupe from the map above, which is blown up to scale.

Walls done with Musket Minatures Mexican American War Church (which will be the Abbey)

Good shot of defending Mexican forces!

Guadalupe Ridge in the process of being carved out. Fortresses are not painted in a black base coat. Still have tons of work to do on this, but I wanted to share.

This has taken a lot of research, but well worth the effort! Historicon will be a blast!

I will try to post pictures of our playtest next week.
Eric