Battle of Busaco

With Martin free to play a game on Sunday, I decided to do another Peninsular War scenario.

Problem with most Peninsular battles is that even with the scale of age of Eagles, we still don't have enough figures and tabletop area for a full battle. After some reading, I decided to depict only the southern half (or two-thirds) of the battlefield, pitting the French II and VIII Corps against the Allied 2nd, 3rd and 5th Divisions.

I gave Martin the option of deploying hidden behind the crest of Busaco ridge, which would oblige the French players (Thomas and Gerard) to approach the ridge blind. Martin chose to deploy at the crest of the ridge, and the French decided to attack the the two ends of his line...

The Allies deploy along the length of the ridge. The cork and bits of turf mark the rough ground.

The French approach, pushing their guns forward.

Line vs. column... well, supported lines, actually.

Panorama of the battlefield, showing the French attacks at both ends of the Allied lines.

After much to-ing and fro-ing, the French managed to occupy the highest points on both ends of the table, and even managed to haul their guns up to the crest on the southern end.

In its basic form, AoE doesn't really confer a "historical" advantage to the British Line vs. French Column match-up. The various scenarios that I looked at had different ways of dealing with this, but all seemed to give too much advantage to the British. I guess I will have to study this aspect again before our next game.