The Peninsula Adventures of a French Dragoon Leo Sole: Intro

And so I decided to start a solo campaign of 95th: Adventuring in the Napoleonic Wars by Two Hour Wargames, (for those unfamiliar with the game you can find free sampler of the rules here). Here you'll find the adventures of Leo Sole - a cavalryman of the French 2nd Dragoons.

So first of all my character!

Name: Leo Sole
Rep: 3
DV: 2
Attributes: Poser, Fluent

Background: Leo was born and grew in Bayonne in a moderately rich burgenous family. Family business seemed to be his future but his temper disrupted those plans suddenly when a random bar argument turned into a knife fight and young Leo had to run or face prison or maybe even gallows. At that time army seemed like a good idea - a place to start a life anew. A pouch of coins, his father gave him, bought Leo a place in a Dragoon regiment. Not a hussar but at the time it seemed like much better prospect than cannon fodder - infantry. Was it a good decision? Only time will show.

Fast forward one year. Joachim Murat leading 40 thousand troops enter Madrid. One of the french soldiers entering the city, exhausted from a long march, clad in a dust covered green dragoon uniform, heavy musket on his shoulder, is our star - Leo Sole.

"So where is my horse?"

-private Leo Sole, 1808, outskirts of Madrid

History and rules: French dragoons struggled with the supply of horses, so I decided that company my character is serving have none, maybe later they get lucky, we will see, the lack of supplies seems to be as real of an enemy as Brits. In any case dragoons are supposed to fight on foot, especially considering that 2nds were equipped with proper muskets that were hard to use from a horseback.

Regarding the rules I decided to start with the lowest possible rep of 3, Leo is not only inexperienced, he is very naive about what war is. but after a first propper battle I plan to increase his rep to 4 regardless of what happens. I also took attributes from FNG books, because 95th has a very short list of those and I wanted to get the game more of a RPG feel. So I rolled one randomly: Poseur - I think this fits my character quite well, he is full of bravado and has no idea what a real battle is. Second one I pick from the list: Fluent. Bayonne is not far from the border of Spain and his family was involved in trade so it only makes sense that Leo was exposed to Spanish language from a young age.

The Company: as per rules I created 10 soldiers to represent Leo's company. There are obviously much more soldiers, but those are the ones who will get spotlight in our story. There are just a few worth mentioning right now: sergeant Baptiste Pinchon as inexperienced as Leo himself (rep 3). I guess the company is freshly formed from new recruits (4 out of 10 are rep 3), but there are three veterans: Severin Baume, Jordan Hachette - a beer of a man, who looks more like a grenadier than a dragoon, and Omer Azena (all rep 5). I think those are what was left of the old company in some messy battle somewhere in Austria. Those three keep to themselves, they know that the kids have a slim chance to survive for long, especially when their life depends on the competence of the sergeant Baptiste.