Turn 5
The Austrian left and middle were basically static. The French are very strong around the woods (especially with their cuirassiers redeployed to that area), so the Austrians are not moving forward. I do send some cuirassiers from the middle toward the town on the right.
The Austrian right, however, is going to be much more interesting. I write orders to give the hussars in the rear more room to charge. (The results are not very satisfactory, but better than nothing.) The building will get some reinforcements. It is fairly obvious the elite legere and hussars will be charging home on my extreme right. I decide the best course of action will be to stand and fire. The infantry change to line facing the flank. The calvary do a formation change into a column facing the flank. I put the front squadron of cuirassiers on Charge if Charged orders to support the infantry. The second squadron is put on Charge if Charge Breakthrough orders in case I get my rear end handed to me.
The artillery phase goes to the French by a bit. The legere and hussars do charge in. My Dad forgot about my calvary. I was expecting he would see the formation change move and charge the area the front of the column would be in. Instead, my first squadron charges forward and wheels into his flank. The surprise for me is that the building gets charged; I was expecting only fire on it.
I have forgotten all the details since it has been awhile.... But here is what happened in a nutshell. The legere and hussars take fire casualties on the way in. My cuirassiers hit his calvary in the flank and force a withdrawal to back behind the French infantry. They hit the legere and get forced back to their original position due to moral failure! The legere bounce off my infantry (elective withdrawal I believe) as they no longer had the numbers to prevail in melee. Close to a stalemate... but the Austrian flank held! My position doesn't get rolled up!
The two front French infantry battalions advance and charge the house! (The third one only moves forward). One of the front two is destroyed by fire. The other charges in. I should have destroyed it completely in melee. Instead, the dice are not kind to me. I take a great deal of loses. Finally, the moral of the infantry in the ground floor fails completely and they end up bolting out the side door and running toward the Austrian right side of the board. The French infantry electively withdraw from the melee. The building ends up being held (barely) by a handful of sappers in the second story.
The turn ends and we call the game. It is an Austrian victory (minor). The town on my left was never seriously threatened, but it was only a secondary victory location. My right is pretty weak, but I haven't lost a building (the last turn was rather hit or miss with that). The French could probably take the large building on the right this coming turn, but they don't have enough troops in position to take a second building right now. My redeployment speed will be faster than the French, and we conclude I would hold the town through the rest of the game if we played it out (CLS is 8 turns to the day). It is not completely clear if the French would be in position to attack it again during turn 8, it may have required an additional turn or two to redeploy from the woods.
It could have gone the other way during turn 5. If the French had seized the building and crushed my flank, I would not have been able to stop them from rolling up the position. On the other hand, with a few more moral rolls going my way, they would have been stopped completely cold.
The General de Brigade scenarios translate to CLS fairly well. Artillery is the biggest thing that needs tweaking. And we are still working on getting the force balance and victory conditions exactly right.
Here are some pictures showing things as they stood at the end of turn 5 (Austrian right to left flanks):
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