Liebertwolkwitz-The Final Battle in our 1813 Campaign

Last Sunday five of us got together to play the final battle in our Battles for Germany campaign. We decided to go with the large version of the battle as laid out in the GdA source book. Iannick had put together an Austrian Divisions and we wanted to see them on the table.

Like the last battle in our campaign, the French were the defenders with a combined force of Austrians, Russians and Prussians attacking a centrally placed village. The final OB was as follows with Helge and myself playing the defending French with Graham, Iannick and David playing the attacking Allies. The pregame was played on Discord and Graham and myself set out the troops the day before the battle.

The game was 20 turns but we are getting pretty adept at this ruleset and although we planned 3 sessions through out the day, I suspected that we would be done by late afternoon. I hate writing reports but here are a few photos.

The initial disposition of the troops, with the French in the foreground. The Allies focused on their left flank with their initial Russian brigade quite forward as a reward for Good Scouting. They failed to protect their large artillery battery and this was taken out within a few turns by the French light cavalry.

The Austrians

The destruction of the Russian artillery

Turn 5 with the arrival of all the reserves on both sides, the French skirmishers had advanced to meet the Allied reserve advance. You can see in the farground the bloody encounters between the Austrians and the French Infantries. By now the centre Russians had suffered significant attrition but their infantry did advance and attack the BUA.

The French right flank

I think this was the final position in the game before the Allies had called it a day. The heavy cavalry on both sides had a face off just to the right of the BUA, but by now several Allied battalions had dispersed and they decided to call it a day. I believe the French only had one dispersed unit.

We did finish the game in 2 sessions over about 6 hours, I think 12-13 turns when it came clear that the Allies would fail to take Liebertwolfwitz, so a French victory.

I enjoyed playing the campaign but at times it was a little one sided. We did make a few errors in this last game, I forgot that Légére deploying in skirmish order could only do so if in rough terrain. I am not sure why I forgot this but our last game was 4-5 months before. I believe this had very little effect on the game outcome. The other problem we keep having is keeping cavalry brigades in their designated zone. We subsequently discussed dividing the table into 2 flanks for cavalry brigades rather than interposing them with the infantry brigades. We will probably give this a try in our next game.

Overall though, I continue to enjoy playing Napoleonics with this ruleset. I am not sure what we will do next but I suspect it will be again in Central Europe.