Mike hosted a Napoleonic game with me running a Austro-Russian force against Stephen running the French. I generally went with the initial setup that Mike had made with the main exception being beefing up the center right by going 3 deep with my regiments. Stephen counter by stuffing the town with troops and moving all of his light troops to his left.
I got off to a really good start with some effective bombardment on the left. This prepared my cavalry for a successful charge. In the center, my plan was to sit tight and not take casualties while pushing hard for church. I felt that Stephen had left this area a bit open and there looked to be a gap between the town and the light troops to the far right. Here is result of these opening moves. On the far left, my first wave of cavalry had succeeded in chasing off the French cavalry and effectively pinning the French infantry by causing them to start turning to face the Austrian cavalry. On the right of the following photo, I was pushing hard on the church and overwhelming the defenders with weight of numbers. Not in the photo are Stephen's light troops, which were marching (leisurely as it turned out because Stephen forgot or did not hear that troops could double their speed if they were more than 18" from the enemy). I turned my militia to face them (more as a speed bump than actual effectiveness).
I continued with some clutch rolling on the left and continued to roll up the French with a devastating combined arms offensive of artillery, cavalry, and infantry. Stephen emptied the town to counter my church offensive and I was losing momentum. But I had succeeded in drawing out all of his reserves and putting some wear onto them. Meanwhile, my Russian grenadiers were coming up to deliver the final blow. On my right though, things were crumbling as the French lights swung into action and started to chew up my right flank.
At this point, we called the game with Mike awarding the Austro-Russians with a minor victory.
My thanks to Mike for hosting and to Stephen for providing a hard fought challenge.
No comments:
Post a Comment