Combat at Aire

The Anglo-Portuguese forces are attacking a French rear guard, with the Portuguese in the center and the Redcoats on either wing. The French have a lot fewer forces, and are on the defense. I tend to "defend" rather aggressively; historically the French checked the Portuguese advance with a bayonet charge; I had the Bayonet Charge card in my opening hand. I didn't destroy the whole formation but I certainly broke it up, and subsequent Attack Center and Probe Center cards let me destroy a couple of units and force the others to flee across the river, although I lost my Light unit and one of my Line units in the process.

With his center weakened and his right eager to advance, Josh marched on my left, moving his guns and cacadores across the bridge. My light horse charged the guns and was thrown back; then my dragoons came lumbering up and rode across the battery, while the hussars pestered the cacadores and forced them into square. My cavalry units were each reduced to a single block, but were able to withdraw behind the ridge line into safety. My remaining units on the left then managed to hold off the Brits long enough for the infantry to march from my center (wiping out the last block of cacadores as they passed) and drive back the Brits (wiping out the the other cacadores as well). The cacadores always take a lot of losses; Josh so commonly reanimates them with a Rally card, that we are assuming there were zombie cacadores.

With his right and center thrown back, Josh pressed in on his left, advancing four infantry across the river where I had only one infantry and a gun battery to face them. It looked like my right was doomed; however, I had five victory flags and only needed one more. I launched a bayonet charge supported by artillery, one of the rare occasions when we've been able to put together a combined arms assault. I rolled seven dice, which should on average have killed 3.5 of his four blocks, but in this case only scored two. The massed British line started to pour fire into my lone battalion; fortunately the first volley scored two flags, so my battalion raced back up and over the ridge to safety. While the Brits were reloading, my battalion (who must have been wearing running shoes) ran forward over the ridge again and assaulted the weak spot in the enemy line, and broke that unit; that secured the sixth and last victory flag. Good thing the game ended there, as otherwise Josh's remaining units would have wiped out that battalion and probably the artillery as well.