I have been working on eight more battalions of Austrian infantry to complete Nordman’s advanced guard in the order of battle I have been building. They are now complete. To finish the plan for my 10mm Austrians, I need one more leader and four more batteries of artillery.
Once again, Sam Fuson hosted a day of gaming at his place on the East Cavalry Battlefield at Gettysburg. As a play test for the upcoming gaming convention, Cold Wars, Dave and I ran the full battle of La Rothiere.
La Rothiere, which took place in February 1814 as the Allies were advancing toward Paris to depose Napoleon, is an early battle of the campaign. As the forces became more and more depleted throughout the campaign, I think this is the largest battle. In the upcoming Last Days of the First Empire scenario book, this battle is broken into three scenarios: the main battle (French center), the French left flank, and the whole battle. Saturday we ran the whole battle.
The scenario involves Russian, Austrian, Bavarian, and Wurttemberg forces attacking the French, who were greatly outnumbered. Marshall Ney had been sent away by Napoleon, but when the Allies attacked, he was recalled. His arrival, as well as that of the main Austrian force, is governed by random die rolls.
The battle occurred in February amidst intermittent blizzards, so each turn there is a die roll to determine the weather. In this game, all but the first turn were blizzard, which worked to the French favor as it delayed the Allied attacks. The objective is to seize six towns.
Other than the blizzard conditions, the battle was a tightly run thing. The Wurttembergers captured one of the six towns. Decisive victory could only be accomplished by the side that held all six towns, so the Wurttembergers stole a decisive victory from the French.
Then the Austrians entered the table on the extreme French right and would almost certainly have captured one or more towns. Eventually, when we had to stop the game to set up the next one, the Allies had inflicted more losses on the French than the French inflicted on them, so the game was a marginal victory for the allies. The French were poised to get the marginal victory, but a group of light cavalry that had been on a flank attack was forced to retreat. Being cut off by the newly arrived Austrians, an entire cavalry brigade surrendered!
Dave and I were happy with the way the scenario ran and are ready for Cold Wars
This weekend a bunch of us met at War Horse Farm in Gettysburg, PA, for a gaming day hosted by Sam Fuson. One of the games we played was a WWI adaptation of the Look, Sarge, No Charts family of rules by Duncan Adams. He has used ideas from the WWII and ACW sets and added some interesting ideas of his own. It is a very effective combination for early WWI games. (It may also work for later in the war, but Duncan has only run early war games.
In the scenario, the French were advancing to capture the town you see in this picture. Some of the Germans were defending the town, while others were coming to their aid.
Duncan has come up with an interesting concept for representing rolling terrain. See all the “hills?” The tops of those hills are actually the base level of the terrain, with the gaps representing gullies and depressions. It really worked well!