Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Napoleon's Battles: Austerlitz AAR

One of the local-ish gamers, Murdock, (*only* 90-120 min away) hosted Austerlitz. We managed to line up a local gaming space and a long weekend were we could get enough people together. This was previously done many years ago, and in fact we used the same set of figs, although I understand that it's a legacy set with the original owner having since passed away.


The night before a set of players did some lite role-playing (the briefings are hilariously prejudiced against one another on the same side) and determined the plan of attack. It was largely historical, although the timing of some of the reinforcements changed.







With the plan for the allied left flank to march far, and hook into the flank, while the right holds fast we were assured total victory in the end. cough.
To the right we see the left Formations moving in early. Each turn we diced to remove fog with a increasing chance as time moved on. 
 Left we look up the french lines, with sokolnitz castle in the mid field. Looks pretty spares. The allied left flank was told to screen the castle and hook. He ended up vigorously assaulting both town and castle with little progress, the the castle was briefly on fire at one point.
 Right - the currently orderly left wing moving on the french position. Sharp eyes will note the columns of french troops arriving off the table edge. Soult has conducted a surprise forcemarch overnight to our dismay.
 The centre, Russian guard under Constantine, arrives. Command issues have plagued us with many large formations totally bogged down from the lack of neccesary command distances to keep us in command.

Right - The right wing has chosen to hold aggressively, and deploys their cav forward, partly to screen the infantry, and partly to drive off the pesky french cav lurking on OUR side of the fog. 
 Above- A view up the battle field as the last of the mist burns off. The battle is well and truly joined on the french right flank (bottom of the shot). Unfortunately for us, the french commander has red hot dice, and with the rules being dice offs the attack is firmly stalled.  Top left we see the french standing unmoving with their reserve.

 Left - The right wing has deployed it's artillery and infantry on the crest of a hill, and continues to harass the french with their cavalry.

Up top, a fortified french artillery is causing all sorts of havoc, and the allies are having trouble chasing off the French cavalry. Bottom right, a reaction charge by the french provisional cav blows through thier opponents and eats two artillery batteries trying to deploy.

Allied command problems compound. The Tsar and Kutusov are randomly diced to be in charge each turn. Someone didn't pay too much attention to where the high command was situated vis a vis with the front lines. French lancers OVERRUN our HQ and the tsar is captured.

The heroic Russian officer Meatbollitov takes over for roughly an hour until General Kutusov is found in a nearby dell having a nap after a large second breakfast. Thankfully the Tsar had sent him away in his unlimited foresight.

My own command finally arrives, in the centre out of command. The cavalry reserve is led by Meatbollitov to chase the lancers off and attempt to recapture his majesty. 


I was forced to leave the game a bit after. We can see the French have moved off the hill to attack the Right wing. It will start crumbling under heavy pressure. More critically the Left wing (off picture) has lost enough units that it's unable to advance on the enemy.

The French imperial guard chooses this moment to arrive, and should shortly be advancing on the 'rupture point' of the allies. Around this time the crew packed it in, with the end result obvious, and a long drive ahead for some. A massive shout out to David/Murdock who put in a lot of work to make a lovely looking game a reality. 



6 comments:

  1. Thanks Dave it was a blast! More fun than I have had at table game than some of the convention games.

    Nate deserves special mention for bringing in some of his terrain bits that made the table fully come to life!

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    1. Nate does have a solid collection of terrain.

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  2. You got some great pictures Dave. The last one really gives a good view of the number of miniatures involved.

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    1. Yes, very impressive number of figs. I usually find I have a lot of junk photos and I try and pick out the best. Glad to hear there were some good ones here.

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  3. Wow, Napoleon really had your number in this one.

    Impressive setup! Enjoyed the writeup too mate.

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    1. Hah. Pretty historical I imagine. It's quite interesting playing these games when you don't have much idea of the history and getting a historical result. It's amazing how much the battles are driven by the geography, troop locations and initial plans.

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