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.

Mockern-The Battle for Germany 1813

 

Last Saturday, 5 of us got together for the penultimate battle in our 1813 campaign.  The scenario features the Battle of Mockern and was fought in October of 1813, as part of the Battle of Leipzig. As you can see from the map below this action was fought north of Leipzig and featured the French under Jarmin defending against attacking Prussians under Yorck on day one of the battle.

Overview of the Battle of Leipzig

Victory conditions for the Prussians were to capture Mockern in 20 turns that was made up of 2 BUA's back to back. Victory for the French was to inflict 3 Suave qui Peut's on the Prussians.

GdA has a scouting phase and myself and Iannick played it out a couple of days before our gathering. The French (myself and Helge) had to decided to just field 3 of our 5 brigades and the start of the game. 

Pelleport was deployed on the yellow marker, with Lorge's Cavalry on the pink and Jarmin on light blue, despite 4 scouting attempts the Prussians were only able to identify the position of the cavalry. 

We ended up having a pretty tight deployed frontage that I believe almost lost us the game but more about that later. 

The French kept Bouquet and Joubert as off table reserves. The Prussians had no off table reserves aside from Rummel who would arrive as a reinforcement on Turn 6.

The Game

Saturday came and the Prussians (Graham, Iannick, David)  rapidly deployed their troops across the whole width of the table, I dod not remember their exact order but Mecklenberg was deployed on their right flank with Sohr on their left flank with the other 3 deployed infantry brigades in between. We deployed Pelleport on our left with the 1e Marine holding the front Mockern BUA, with Lorge next and Jarmin on his right. I will let the photos tell the story.

The table, I think it is roughly 8x5', Mockern is in the distance with the French position to the right. There was large hill on the French side, otherwise open ground.

Here are the starting positions as seen from the Mockern side of the table. You can see to the left the Prussian wide deployment with their cavalry in the distance. The French had a very tight deployment with their 3 artillery batteries deployed together in defence of Mockern with their cavalry to the rear. Skirmishers were deployed to the left of and in front of Mockern (one legere unit deployed in skirmish). An infantry brigade was deployed to the right flank to defend against a flanking manoeuvre from the Prussians.

The Prussian players;  Graham, Iannick and David

Helge for the French and I am taking the photo!

Turn 4. The Prussian advance, as you can see they went into line pretty quickly, I believe this slowed their advance but did protect them against cannon as did the skirmishers. The French held their position aside from advancing the skirmish units on our left flank to harass the advancing Prussians. Our initial plan was to focus on our 3 batteries of artillery to weaken the enemy. The Prussian cavalry moved quickly to challenge our right flank.

Turn 6. The Prussians have advanced on all fronts and now their reserves have deployed. By now our artillery batteries are starting to suffer some attrition but we have weakened the front line Prussians.

Turn 12: Th ePrussians are now advancing on Mockern in column with their reserve. Their initial assault in line was repulsed. You can also see that Jarmin's infantry on our right flank is collapsing. The French have now brought on one of their reserve infantry brigades to buttress the right but also to be ready to support Mockern. You will notice that we have left the 2nd BUA unoccupied.  Our skirmishers have been pushed back but our cavalry is still intact.

Turn 12; a close up of the defence of Mockern.

Turn 18. A lot has happened. The Prussians were able to drive the French Marine Veterans out of one part of Mockern and only with great difficulty were one of our reserve units able to occupy the other half of the town. Our cavalry became trapped and was unable to challenge the advancing Prussians. By now, however, we had inflicted 2 Suave qui Peut on the Prussians. Before the Prussians could take all of Mockern we were able to inflict the 3rd Suave qui Peut...thus a very narrow French Victory.

Summing Up

I thought this was going to be an easy game for the French but the Prussians almost did win it. If their initial advance was a little more aggressive at the start, I think they might have got a victory before we met our Victory Conditions. Our defence was good but we had a lot of difficulty bringing in our reserves because of our narrow frontage. In retrospect, Jarmin should have been more to our right allowing our reserves to move more easily to support Mockern. I am not sure also if Pelleport should have started one of his battalions in the 2nd BUA. Certainly, his skirmishers did a good job to protect Mockern and were able to retreat in good order once their job was done. The French Cavalry, as usual, caused significant havoc to the Prussians. But a good game was played by all. I should note that around Turn 13-14, some of the Prussian players considered withdrawing their troops, Helge and myself urged them to continue the game as all was not lost. I believe we were quite correct in this and once they got "stuck in" they almost turned it around. 

There were also complaints about the actual scenario design with the one objective being stuck in a corner. I disagree totally. As gamers we are presented with what we are given, this was a historical simulation and the scenario was what it was. It ended up giving us a very good game, not an easy game but it was quite exciting.

Hopefully, we will get to the last game (Liebertwolkwitz) in this campaign fairly soon. I should note that there were 1500 18mm AB figures on the table and with the last scenario using the large OB option we hope to hit close to 2000 figures. And what will be very exciting is that we will see some Austrians.

Dresden 1813 The Battles for Germany

 

A couple of weeks ago we all went to Chez Helge for the 4th game in our Battles for Germany campaign. In this game the French were again the attackers in the 2nd day of the Battle of Dresden. The scenario focussed on the Allied right flank with Ney's attack against a combined Russian/Prussian force.

Set Up

Final OB with Brigadier Quality

GdB Starting Positions

French Plan

Helge and myself had a pretty clear plan for this game. We have understood that Artillery is not effective at long range and needs to start limbered so it can rapidly advance to Effective Range before deploying. With this in mine we deployed 3 Brigades with attached artillery. Our Veterans and our Légére were deployed in Skirmish order as they are also effective at a longer range. We focussed on our left flank with the plan to batter the Russian guns with both Artillery and Skirmish foree, thus weakening them before we did a rapid infantry attack. 

Allied Plan

The Allied plan was to hold the centre and left, and possibly flank the French left. What we did not comprehend was our abysmal ADC rolling!

Game Photos

The Allied right

The allied left

Graham's movement trays again worked brilliantly.

The French centre ready for action. The légére made one move and went into skirmish order.

The Game

The Allied Commanders

The Allied Troops deployed up to their maximum zone.

Russian Battery

All Batteries within effective range of each other, there was quite a bit of counter battery in the first few turns. It did go back and forth ....... 

........but a cavalry battle on the French left seemed to sort things..........

....................with the Russians losing their cannon on the centre high ground and their second battery between the high ground and Seidnitz collapsing with the 3 French Batteries larger intact. The Allies had now lost some of their Cavalry as well as Infantry.....the outcome was clear and on Turn 9 they decided to withdraw.

Summing Up

I felt our pre-game plan of attack really was quite effective and this was an easy victory and a very quick game. It will be interesting to see how we do as the defenders in the next battle, The Battle of Mockern.

Bautzen 1813 The Battles for Germany

This past Saturday we had our 3rd game in the 1813-Battles for Germany campaign. We had planned a two day event but we were able to complete the game in 6 hours with a clear victory, more about that below.

This time we played at Graham's in Beaconsfield. We had 4 players but an extra player, Steve, showed up unannounced and Graham very graciously withdrew as a player and acted as the games master. Thus we had Helge and myself, again taking the French while Iannick and Steve played the defending Russians. 

Scenario Victory Conditions

The game was 18 turns with the French being the attackers. They have to control 2 of the 4 areas of terrain on the Russian side, this including the two villages and the two hills. What the French had selected was kept from the Russians.

The Russians ended with a Bold and Poor Brigadier, the French had minimal success with their scouting just identifying the position of the Russian GdB Phalen.

The revealed starting positions of the 5 brigades aside, only the French had a reserve brigade of cavalry which was treated as an off-table reserve rather than a reinforcement. 

Initial Deployments on the Table

Overall View, unfortunately I cut off the French right flank, so you are missing a brigade of Reservists. Unlike our last game the Russians did not deploy far forward in their defensive positions. The stream in this scenario was rough not severe terrain. The French deployed their 2 artillery batteries limbered.

Top left are the French Reservists, being confronted by 4 battalions of Russian line.

The Russian centre.....

.....which was a brigade of Jagers with a brigade of line further back. Their 12pd large battery was deployed on Windmill Hill.

The Russian left flank

The Russian right flank

Game Turns

We started around 1030h, being slightly delayed by the usual chit chat, the players were also allowed to rearrange their internal organisation of each of their brigade. The French won the initiative on the first turn.

Being one of the French players I knew our plan which I can reveal here. We had decided to lead with our reserve brigades on each end flank. We had selected the two hills as our victory points. They had to be cleared by turn 18. The reservists were to advance to these hill in order to weaken the Russian defences but at the same time to soak up attrition to the point were our 2 line brigades could replace them and finish the Russians off and seize the two hills. We decided to not deploy our artillery until they could move up to effective range. We have found long range fire pretty ineffective. The skirmishers were send in on both flanks to harry the Russian guns. Our initial focussed attack was on our left flank towards Windmill Hill, to do this in our first few turns Forwards tasking was heavily utilised. For our right flank the attack was to be more leisurely, our deployed cavalry brigade was deployed to our centre right which turned out to be the correct choice as you will see.

French Right at the end of turn 6

French Left at the end of turn 6

The above 2 photos show our positions at the end of Turn 5 when we broke for lunch at 1300h. As you can see on the French left flank, both brigades had advanced with the reservist brigade on the extreme left now broken out in line in a firefight with the Russian line. The French line have advanced to the left of the forest in column but are having some difficulty manuring with their tight advance. Abling holding them off is the Russian Jagers. The French cannon are now focused on the Jagers.

The situation on the French right was quite a different proposition as the Russians tried to go on the offensive despite orders to the contrary. They successfully threw their 2 brigades at cavalry at the French advance hoping to catch them out of order. The first attack was repelled by the French line and skirmishers while a second attack on a French column resulted in minimal success with them being repelled. Meanwhile the French cavalry charged the second Russian cavalry and caused them to falter. They subsequently fail a falter test and disperse. An infantry charge by the Russians also failed with the chargers ending up in a position where they were run down by the French cavalry and were subsequently dispersed. The end of turn 6 essentially found the Russian defence on their left having crumbled with a few stragglers left on the table.

Position at the end of turn 15

The above photo is the final position of the troops at the end of the game. As noted above the French have captured the hill on their right achieving one of their victory conditions. The next 9 turns went quickly as essentially only 2 Russian brigades were left limiting their number of ADC's. They fought well dispersing the French reservist brigade but this left the hill open to the French line who were able to break out and advance in line towards WindMill Hill. They were ailing assisted by the victorious French cavalry crossing the river to run down the demoralised Russian 12 pders. The Russian defence collapsed....a French victory.

Summary

This was a strong victory for the French and because of this in the Battle of Dresden they will have a veteran guard cavalry regiment added to their order of battle. This will be invaluable as they are again the attackers. I should note that the Russians were a bit handicapped in this game as one of their players was not in on the initial defence planning. We plan to be much more careful with this in the future. Our next game probably will not be until the end of April, lots of vacation time between now and then to shake off the doldrums of the Winter and the Orange Buffoon.