Trumpeter Salute 2026: Battle of Luetzen (15mm Honours of War)

I played in this game during Trumpeter Salute, hosted in April in Burnaby BC (in Greater Vancouver). Dennis was the host and had painted up some lovely figures over the year. My opponent was Malcolm, who often takes command for Napoleon in the napoleons battles games featured elsewhere on this blog. 

The battle was Leutzen which, like most historical battles, I don't know a lot about. The crash course was that the Austrians held a town/bridge over the river and felt comfortable holding it vs the Prussians. They hadn't done a very good job with recon over the area, and the Prussians discovered a ford, promptly marched over to it, and deployed on a hill with command over the Austrians lines of communication. Now Austria needed to switch from defensive to offensive with all of the typical challenges of the time, and national army, that that entailed. 

 

 

Our game started off similarly. I was able to steal the march on the Austrians and hurtled most of my troops towards the ford, and hill with the objective. Ahistorically, Malcolm/Austria launched a strong counterattack across the river. The Prussian command was split, and faced a bit of a challenge of how many troops to leave on their side of the river to threaten the village, but not denude their drive on the objective too much. 

 

 

 

While the game looked nice, and I have (in the past) enjoyed Honors of War, there was a bit off. Some changes were made by the GM (I think in the interests of time and convention realities) and I think he wasn't too solid in the rules. There were some options for 'pass through' fire (overwatch/reaction fire) that could have made quite a difference but we were told it wasn't a thing in this game. After the weekend I checked my own rules and let Malcolm know, as he was (rightly so) a bit disappointed by the rules and the outcome. I do think it would have made a major difference. 

 

In general, the Prussians were able to sort themselves out on the hill in a strong defensive position. The two armies cavalry forces were slightly overlapping, so a cavalry vs cavalry charge quickly morphed into cavalry vs infantry attacks (which are very iffy in this time period). Some good rules by the Prussians vs some ugly roles by the Austrians quickly made the writing on the wall clear and the battle was resolved in a timely fashion within the block. 

 

 

 

I didn't feel like I'd done great generalship, but a combo of lucky roles, & some missed reaction fire opportunities ended the battle early. The pressure was definitely on my leave behind force, and I suspect the hill battle could have been fairly interesting/close had the cavalry action not been so decisive. 

 

 

 I feel like this is was one of my somewhat typical convention experiences, where you play with pretty figs and terrain that someone else has made, but the actual gaming experience isn't the most uplifting. It seems churlish to say it though and I don't think it's really a function of the GM (in most cases). I think that the convention setting and time constraints, vs the rules that are available (specifically the complexity and time requirements), make for a challenge that often is imperfectly solved. I think my expectations for conventions have gone up as it's hard for me to get to them. The time and monetary costs are balanced vs the other things I could be doing (gaming or visiting with friends) often means that what would otherwise be entirely satisfactory games are seen through a more critical lens.