Wagram 1809 by Decision Games

Wagram is one of the four battles presented in the recent Deluxe Edition release by Decision Games of the original Napoleon at War quad, a design that is now more than 50 years old.

A couple of weeks ago I played the Marengo battle from the same game box and have found Wagram to be more the more dynamic of the two, with more moving parts, so to speak ….. but as simple as this system is, I still managed to misread the victory conditions properly and that did influence the game!

Above - The objective for the French (blue) is to cross the Russbach Stream and occupy the Russbach Heights beyond (marked VP) and also to destroy Austrian Units. The Austrians must keep the French off the Heights and also inflict losses on the French ….. but there is a lot more going on that will influence decisions. 

The three circles at the bottom of the photo are the villages of Aspern, Essling and Gross Enzerdorf and if the Austrians enter them, they get a big wedge of Victory Point and ALSO if they are present in those locations at the end of the game, they get another big wedge of Victory Point - so although the French must advance on the heights, they also need to guard these rear areas and so those Austrians in the top left of the map are an obvious threat to those villages, together with some Austrian reinforcements that also come in on the left side of the map.

The ‘?’ symbol on the the right of the map is the entry point for potential Austrian reinforcements (turns 7 - 11 inclusive). These will test to arrive on each turn, but need to roll a ‘1’, so a low risk per turn, but over 5 turns, another threat to the French. These represent the forces of Archduke John arriving from the east, a threat that Napoleon was aware of.

Now for that mistake …. The Austrians also get VP’s for exiting units off the western edge (left side of map). I did not recall this condition and I could have and should have bagged the Austrians a goodly amount of VP’s from exiting!

THE FIGHTING.

Opening manoeuvres - The French advance towards the Heights, initially seeking out easy crossing points (bridges), while they develop their left wing to block any Austrian moves towards those lower villages. The French Guard are ordered to Essling (a lower village) as a central reserve.

Above - the First successful French attack occurs at the bridge near Glinzendorf by Gudin, but he is immediately counter-attacked and thrown back … no-one said it would be easy!

The French may have over compensated to protect the left at the expense of the assault on the heights. They advance the left to new positions between Hirschstatten and Brietenlee to effect a forward defence.

Night falls - (positions above) The French have breached the Russbach at the eastern end (right). The French left have pinned the Austrians and something of a stalemate exists there, so the French plan to thin the line here and continue pinning, to free some troops to assist the assault for the Heights. The Guard remain at Essling, but have orders to move overnight to a more central position at Ráasdorf - with half an eye on the Heights.

Morning - At Baumersdorf (centre left of stream) the Austrians repeatedly repulse French attacks (these are low 1:1 assaults and it is just a 50/50 dice thing that keeps favouring the Austrians).

Noon - there is fighting everywhere now and the Austrians are suffering the greater number of casualties, but the French left is sufficiently threatened (above) for the Guard to be re-directed down towards Aspern.  

However, the next hour sees the Austrians suffer unacceptable losses and they become Demoralised (cannot advance after combat), so it is now much harder for them to take ground. They will revert to a defensive stance. [It is at this point that remembering that Austrians can retreat off the west map edge (left) for VP’s would have added something to the mix].

Afternoon - The Guard are re-directed back north to support the assault on the heights at the Wagram / Baumersdorf sector, which is still resolutely in Austrian hands!

Late afternoon - The risk of Archduke John arriving on the battlefield disappears. French casualties are very heavy, but the Wagram / Baumersdorf area is only thinly held by the Austrians, so the French push on. They have already taken the eastern end of the heights (right).

2nd to last turn - The Austrians are getting crushed, but the French casualties have become excessive and they too are now demoralised.

Dusk - The Young Guard are the first guard unit to get into action and secure a place on the Heights. Wagram, the gateway to the western end of the Heights is firmly under Austrian control. The last chance for the French to get units onto the Heights has now passed. BELOW - final positions.

Conclusion - I really enjoyed that game. I played it as a solo game and it was fine, helped by the flow of the situation across the battlefield. At one point it really looked like the Austrians might break the French left flank, requiring the Guard to be sent back towards the villages as a precaution. In fact the guard spent all day marching back and forth and pretty much missed the action!

Once again, the rulebook did not come out of the box (perhaps it should have done for the Victory Conditions :-) ), allowing for concentration just on play. Quite a lot of the early French attacks across the Russbach were repulsed, it could so easily have been the other way and what if Archduke John had entered play? or if everything had gone right for the Austrian assault on the French left? - the panic to protect the three villages would almost have become a game on its own. Overall, I think this scenario has good replay value.

Victory. The French inflicted 81 points worth of losses on the Austrians, while suffering 55 themselves. They got 58 points worth of troops on to the Russbach Heights. Of course, of importance was the fact that the Austrians scored zero points for exiting units from the west edge of the map. These sums give us a ‘Decisive’ French victory, but I think my mistake regarding exiting Austrians to the west contributes to that and had I done some exiting of Austrian units, it is likely that the French victory level would be reduced to ‘substantial’ instead.

I remain happy that I bought this deluxe edition. 

Resource Section.

My sister webspace ‘COMMANDERS’  showcases the various figure and boardgame systems that I am enjoying and gives a flavour of where current projects are up to. Link.

https://commanders.simdif.com

Previous write up about the Marengo game - LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/05/marengo-june-1800-napoleon-at-war.html

10mm Napoleonic French Bases

A few weeks ago, I bought a few bags of Napoleonic 10mm from Pendraken, to make single test units for infantry, cavalry and artillery, plus a command base. There is a previous post that discusses this and the thoughts behind how the basing should look (link in the Resource Section below).

A main thrust is to try and get some benefits from speed painting, relying on the ‘three foot rule’ to get armies painted and to the table quickly. 

In that post I discussed basing options and showed the infantry unit painted up and based. 

This post concludes things by showing each of the test units all fully painted up and based for further consideration.

All these figures were glued to bases before painting, something that I have never tried before and thought would be much harder to do than it was. It actually helps with the discipline of speed painting.

As a reminder of the infantry side of things, here are a couple of shots of the Austrians in line and column. They are on 40mm x 20mm bases, with 12 figures to the base, so that is 36 figures to the unit, which I think is enough ‘heads’ to get an okay look.

The unit is double flagged simply because I bought 1 bag of everything and by using a 36 figure unit, I ran out of infantry and so had to use extra command figures to get the third base. As this project continues, that second command base will just move to the next unit, to be replaced by 12 standard infantry.

Next up I did the artillery. I am aiming for roughly using a figure pack per unit and since you get 3 guns and 12 crew in a pack, all three guns and crew have been used to  represent a battery. This single base is 80mm x 40mm and I like the effect. It looks like a deployed battery. I think it best to represent limbered artillery with a separate base of horse pulled guns. At this scale, it not particularly an issue to have enough limbers.

For cavalry, you get 15 models to the pack and here 14 have been used in two lines of 7. The standard bearer is front centre, but I have not yet decided yet what to put on that pole. These are Austrian dragoons in the colours (blue facings) of the 6th Dragoons, based on a single 80mm x 60mm MDF base.

To help the speed painting, I adopted something that a poster at Lead Adventurer Forum (thank you) described as ‘wet painting’ for the horse. For this, I kept the brown paint quite wet so that as I slopped it on the horses, it pretty much went everywhere it needed to for fuller coverage. This is hugely helpful with pre-based horses.

Setting aside figure prep (easy), basing, priming and then later adding basing paste and flocking which are fairly fixed in terms of time spent on them, the actual painting of the cavalry unit took just 1½ hours, which I am pretty impressed with and I think the overall effect (3 foot rule) is fine.

Finally there is the command base, these are generals and they have been put on a 40mm circular base, which I feel looks too big, but I like the bigger base for senior command and I think the real problem here is not the base size, but that the figures have been spaced too far apart.

It might be a scale thing, but I note that all of these bases look nicer to the eye than they do via the camera.

Anyway, it occurs to me that 1 base of cavalry, artillery and infantry already done, this is half way to a Neil Thomas style force in his ‘One Hour Wargames’ system and so for the little effort of 3 more infantry bases (3 packs of infantry at the cost of roughly £21) that a usable Austrian force would be complete.

For my own tastes, I would see that as stage 1 of a Pocket Army, with a later doubling of it to reach a stage 2 size that essentially gives a 12 unit army, possibly a sweet spot for many.

So there we are. Will I complete it - well, I thought more than likely I would, but not just yet. However, at the recent Partizan show, I was quite taken by that 4’ x 4’ self folding terrain board made from a re-configured wooden pasting table that Martin from Peter Pig had brought along and perhaps that might make a nice self contained project.

I have seen similar boards used at the last two Phalanx wargame shows used with 6mm armies (a Napoleonic and an Ardennes WWII game).

But of course as always, there is a lot of good stuff that is competing for immediate attention! I am looking at getting the Wagram board game to the table, having a trial or two of the Blood Red Roses rules that I bought for 28mm Wars of the Roses, painting the 9 x 28mm French Napoleonic Voltiguers started a few weeks ago, completing the 3 table corps game and keeping my hand in with the Advanced Squad Leader situational exercises. All are on the immediate horizon.

Resources

The previous post that introduces plans for 10mm basing styles. LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/search/label/10mm

My sister webspace ‘COMMANDERS’  showcases the various figure and boardgame systems that I am enjoying and gives a flavour of where current projects are up to. Link.

https://commanders.simdif.com

The Partizan May 2026 Wargame Show.

Partizan is a premier UK wargame show and we are lucky enough to get it twice a year, May and October. It is held at the Showground in Newark in the George Stephenson Exhibition Hall, a large single space that is pretty much filled by the event.

Today we got 47 traders and 68 game tables, with almost half being participation games. There were also 8 societies represented. There is a bring and buy area, the idea being that the visiting wargamers hire a table, charged by the hour and then sell whatever they no longer want from their collections.

A nice element of the show is the space reserved as ‘Writers Corner’ where you can meet an author and buy their signed books. There were three authors today, Andy Johnson, Harry Sidebottom and Steve Tibble. I already have a Sidebottom book (The Return).

There is of course a cafeteria area where the weary buyer can recuperate before returning to the fray to make more traders happy! 

I was accompanied by the kindly Mrs. Wargamer, who took the alarm going off at 5.30 AM graciously!

With our trust in the Sat Nav and making two stops for Coffee and high calorie goodness, we  arrived at the Showground a little after 10 AM and the Queue was already long. A bloke was shouting out that anyone who had pre-paid on the internet should walk down straight to the front of the queue. I had an amusing thought of everyone pre-booking next year and causing another queue :-). I should mention that there is a ton of free parking at the showground.

As soon as you enter this space, the senses are assaulted (in a good way), for a hobbyist to be immersed in their hobby environment is just a thing of joy and long may these calendar highlights continue, we must never take them for granted.

It was very busy and fairly packed, but everyone without exception was politely handling that …. even the dreaded back packs were not out in number! 

On my way out I asked the desk if they had been happy with the numbers …. They said ‘Very’!

Now it is one thing to have high footfall and another to convert that into good trader spending. I saw plenty of people actively shopping, but I also saw some traders looking bored and some punters without bags etc, so it will be interesting when the dust settles to know how the traders felt about it all. In the UK there is a lot of pressure at the moment on family incomes.

Each year that I go to Partizan, once I get home and watch some of the videos that other gamers have put up, there always  seems to be a bunch of games I don’t recognise, even though I know that I will have passed all of the tables while there - there is just so much to take in.

Anyway, here are a few moments that I enjoyed, sorry no credits recorded ….. but you know who you are :-)

Above - this is part of the huge and very attractive game that greets you on entering the hall. Sorry my camera was deciding to have a red tint moment!

Above - I think I was having a bit of a buildings moment today, but some of the tables being shown have clearly had tons of passion lavished on them by the groups putting on games.

Above - Martin from Peter Pig had put a 15mm game on, this is framed by a pasting table being reconfigured so that it folds sideways instead of length ways, I love these sort of things.

Above - Wonderful!

Above - I think this was an AWI game, but loved the sculpting of the river banks - very visual.

Above - Lego of course, fabulous.

Above - I was surprised that this was the only game using Warlord Games’ Epic napoleonics, they were very strikingly painted.

Above - Could this be my next project!

Above -  Another example of how much effort had gone into the tables, this was just one corner of a WWI scene, but you can see how much work has gone into texturing and detail.

The impact of the hobby by 3d printing was clearly in evidence today as several tables attest to.

The Shopping bit

I didn’t go with a shopping list, so everything I picked up was an impulse purchase. In no particular order, he is my list of good things;

The Last Valley - a couple of river sections and hedgerow sections, just adding to what I already have from him.

The Tree Fellas - A rather nice 3 storey resin model of the ‘Cafe de Normandie’ building and 3 large singularly based conifer trees.

PGS Scenics - 2 Pkts Tufts, adding to what I have to keep basing continuity.

Great Escape Games - 2 Pkts Tufts

Warbases - 2 packs of self assembly casualty trackers to add to what I have and a ‘Raven’ pack. The Raven pack, in metal, has a couple of grave crosses, a shield and a tree stump, each has a raven perched on it and I think will make rather nice markers.

Andy Johnson (author) - from the Writer’s Corner, I picked up Bloody Meadow, a nice looking narrative of the Towton Battle (Wars of the Roses) ….. bought by Mrs. Wargamer.

Freezywater - a sheet of 25mm Wars of the Roses flags just to make the next batch of WotR stands a little different.

The Ancients Society - Strategos II by Philip Sabin, which I think are the rules that he used in his book ‘Lost Battles’ (not sure I have that title right). Also a set of rules called Blood Red Roses authored by Adrian Nayler. I am still not settled on a Wars of the Roses rule set …… so perhaps this time!

Thanks to all who organise the show, to those supporting the show with games, books, society information etc and to the traders who mostly probably got up earlier than I did! :-) This show would not have worked without your hard effort.

I am writing this from a hotel room. Tomorrow, on the way home, we are doing a stately home ….. Mrs. Wargamer’s answer to my wargame show!

Resources

My sister webspace ‘COMMANDERS’  showcases the various figure and boardgame systems that I am enjoying and gives a flavour of where current projects are up to. Link.

https://commanders.simdif.com