Napoleon's Battles: First game Ru/Au vs It/Sax

Nate has gotten a fire in his belly to play some Napoleon's Battles. He has been steadily working on Austrians and Russians and, at last, we had enough troops to have a go at it (borrowing some italians and saxons as opposing forces). The scenario is that the allied Saxons and Italians are covering the retreat of the French army over a river after fierce fighting at leipzeig. The Russians and Austrians are trying to cut off this route of retreat. 

More after the cut.....

 The Russians are on the right of the photos, the allied contigents on the left. Bottom left is my command (the Italians). We had 2 corp per side, with about 5 divisions total per side (ish).

We were learning as we went (except for the clever Nate who has played before, and is just rusty) so we did some silly things.

 The italians decided that offensive is a great form of defense and pressed forward to try and crack the Russians. They foolishly ran their light cavalry in front of the heavy (I think to soak up firing hits).

The Saxons turtled up on the left but, despite facing cavalry, chose not to form a bunch of squares.

Command ranges are pretty short in NB's, and once troops are out of range they can't do anything. If leaders are out of the chain of command they have a 50% chance of doing nothing, and 50% chance of half moves. Serious stuff. 

Cavalry seems pretty speedy as the italian lights learned to their dismay. They lost the dice off and promptly routed back about a foot.  Rallying basically requires you to remove your leader from commanding the frontline so your troops stop doing much. The conundrum is: rally or press the attack. Tricky tricky.

 Nice shot of the italian cannon lining up a crossfire on the approaching russian brigades. They were successful in driving off the first way of attacks, and sent the Russian left wing back.

While the Russian left recoils, the Austrians drive in towards the Saxons. Turns out the saxon infantry is pretty lame, even worse than the italians. 

Twin cavalry charges catch the infantry in line, and sends two of the routing immediately. Break through charges would be sent off by emergency square in the corn fields, but the cannon and infantry nearby will be an issue.

We were running short of time, which caused us to do some 'end of the game' gambits. The Italian lights, who had been doing so well, charged the nearby Russian brigades. Strange how those russian guard look almost the same as the line. The lights were sent routing away, creating a solid gap in the line between the Saxons and the Italians. The Italians looked fairly lost with 1/2 their brigades routed, 1 in square, and 1 stuck in the town.

The Italians, while largely successful in their attack on the Russians, hadn't really been decisive and routed much. They wouldn't be able to break their enemy before the Austrians would be a problem. We declared a solid win for the Ru/Au forces.