8 AM - The weather is Fine. Visibility on the table increases to 84”.
Austrian Headquarters - French brigades are clearly forming up in readiness for a prepared attack. There appears to be a particularly significant concentration of troops below the slopes in front of the village. If the French gain those slopes their artillery will get command of the battlefield. We are reliant on 2nd Cavalry and IR 36 keeping hold of that ground until we are ready to evacuate the village.
French headquarters - the Austrians look to be making a determined stand here. All orders and objectives still stand. Marulaz’s cavalry will wait for Bouquet’s 4th Infantry Division before assaulting the slopes.
Molitor voices his reluctance to an attack amongst the vineyards below the village, citing the heavy casualties already suffered by 2nd Line. Messina does not show any patience as 16th Infantry Regiment and a battery of guns are moving up to support the attack. He eventually compromises and allows Molitor to defer the attack until Lasalle’s 1st Cavalry Brigade (Bruyére) also arrive, but then the attack must be made.
A message is sent to Lasalle to move his cavalry division up at best speed.
Summary - The French forces gather, while the Austrians can do no more than wait!
9 AM - The weather is fine. Visibility on the table increases to 104”.
Austrian Headquarters - the sound of cannonade signals the opening attacks. Klenau senses that the weight of attack will soon drive him from the village. All orders stand!
French Headquarters - Masséna is content that the infantry brigade at the village will likely see him have control of Klein Stetteldorf and the associated bridge by late morning.
French 37th and 67th Line Infantry Regiments with supporting artillery have started their assault on the village. Bruyére has arrived on the right with his cavalry brigade to support Molitor’s advances into the vineyards.
At the slopes in front of the village, Austrian horse artillery enters a gunnery duel with Marulaz, while the foot artillery fires down at the village at the assaulting French formations - with some effect it must be said.
At the village, Hohenfeld defends with just four battalions. They face six French battalions and a foot artillery battery. Over the next hour, the buildings are bitterly contested. As the French break into the village, one of their battalions takes heavy casualties and retires. A counter-attack pushes the French back out, but they quickly regain the lower half of Klein Stetteldorf.
The Austrians at Klein Stetteldorf are on their knees. IR 59, unsteady through high casualties, retreats, crossing the bridge, leaving IR 14 with the task of holding the top half of the village, but it is not all going the French way. Despite their superiority in numbers, they are taking serious losses. Viviez is killed and for a while, the French right are disordered. Ledru takes command and attempts to restore order by personally leading a battalion from 37th to skirt around the right side of the village.
After an hour of fighting, the French are still holding the lower half of Klein Stetteldorf, but 67th Line Regiment has become too unsteady to continue fighting with any reliability. The responsibility of taking the town and its river crossing now rests with 37th Line Regiment alone! As bad as that might sound, they are in better shape than the Austrians (IR 14) who now need all the luck that they can get.
Beneath the village amongst the vineyards, Molitor makes his attack. The vegetation makes for difficult going.
Above - the view of the opening positions from the Austrian perspective. The French infantry that can be seen up on the hill (right) are the 2nd Line Infantry who were mauled just a few hours ago and they are not particularly enthusiastic about advancing!
Everything else in this sector is fresh. Lasalle’s cavalry can be noted on the French right, alongside the river. The Austrians are defending with three infantry battalions and an artillery battery.
But things go wrong for the Austrians from the start. The artillery battery gets confused orders (Random Event) and pull out, but immediately become entangle with the reluctant 2nd Line Regiment, however the artillery are able to keep 2nd Line at bay.
Slowly, over the difficult ground, the Austrian infantry are gradually pushed back. Then their 1st Battalion are suddenly assailed by 24th Chasseurs, things happen so quickly they are unable to react, taking losses and falling back, the rest of the regiment follows.
Gyulai, commander of IR 60, wishing to preserve the fighting capability of the regiment, orders a retreat back to the bridge. They are his last words, he is shot from the saddle, but fortunately Froon is immediately on hand to take command and ensure that the retreat order is properly executed. IR 60 disengage.
Summary - The Austrian centre (the village) is under great pressure and quite likely to collapse, though if that happens, the French would struggle to find enough immediate strength at hand to take full advantage of that. To the South, Gyulai / Froon have fought a successful rearguard action but, if the centre and its bridge falls, Froon is in danger of becoming isolated.
The bombardment at the slopes reduces in intensity - the French below look like they are ready to assault.
Admin note 1 - As I play the campaign I am developing a couple of rules. One is to tie the actions into what else is going on in the bigger picture. Using my own rules, in game, an infantry unit in assault column can move 10” per turn over open ground (minus 2” for difficult ground). So assuming each section of the map to be a 6’x4’ table and clear terrain, such a unit unopposed could travel the length of it in around 7 turns and the width in 5 turns.
So, I am setting each action on the table to play for 7 turns and then play stops or pauses while the Campaign Turn is played out over the pinboard, so the things going on around the battlefield come into play, which could include reinforcements arriving on the battlefield and in any case, just the general progress of the campaign.
At the end of the 7 turns the pins on the battlefield are also moved to their current locations within the battlefield AND all casualties and states (disordered) for each unit are recorded. This allows the gamer to clear the table and fight any other actions that need doing during the current campaign hour and then returning to the original action in the next Campaign Turn. It does obviously mean the re-setting up of battlefields to continue their fight in the next Campaign Turn (Hour).
Admin note 2 - During the campaign moves stage on the pinboard, I use a deck of playing cards to activate formations one at a time. Black for Austrians and Red for French. So for example, red is drawn, one French formation can move. I choose Molitor’s 3rd Infantry Division and any associated artillery. They make their pinboard move. Draw again, it is red again, so the lucky French move another formation, perhaps Lasalle’s Cavalry Division etc. This becomes important because pursuing troops might catch up to retreating units, locking them down so they can’t move away in their own activation. It particularly helps solo play and brings a sense of order to the proceedings in face to face games to avoid any argument.
Resources -
My other piece of webspace is called COMMANDERS, it has a variety of snippet based type pieces there. LINK
https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html
The previous campaign turn (7 AM) can be found here - LINK
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/02/7-am-pursuit-of-vi-korps.html
Is it a great deal of work constantly taking down and setting up the engagement ls? Relative to playing time.
ReplyDeleteI'm a big fan of card activation for formation movement in the nineteenth century, it produces a manageable degree of friction and as you say, allows for units to escape or become engaged in unpredictable ways.
Hi Martin, yes there is a ‘task’ of re-setting up, but so far I have not found my enthusiasm to do that dampened.
DeleteRelative to play is not a fixed quantity as in one sector you may already be towards the end of the engagement and one side is trying to disengage, so that might be a very short second action, while another is in full pelt.
One of the things you can do is make the last action the one that you think is most likely to drag on and then after that game, you can just leave the table set up, with units in place and once all the pinboard moves have been done for the new Campaign Turn, just make the last game, which is already set up, the first game.
Because I am carry attrition through the game, later battles will likely be over faster, because units are starting each battle already with high casualties and so their robustness is less. I imagine that one can reach a point where the combat is worked out in an admin fashion, with units on the table in the right position, but only the critical elements of terrain placed down, while the moves and combats of 2 - 3 turns are played out.
Two excellent actions here Norm and nice to see how they tie into the overall picture, which is of course the aim of such a campaign. Nice to see your admin notes too. As mentioned before, I'm pondering how I can make this work for WWII and BKCII, given the speed of movement, the range of guns etc. As I think about this more, it seems sensible to maybe try something akin to what you are doing, but with HoW or BPII, just to get to grips with the broad campaign mechanics.
ReplyDeleteHi Steve, I have done the pinboard moves for the next Campaign Turn, but have not played any of those actions yet, but I am still getting a strong sense of the campaign unfolding and the gains and losses of the previous turn very much feeding into the narrative and moves of the current one.
DeleteThe more I play, the cleverer / nuanced I am finding the layout of the map and even though we are only looking at 9 sectors, each location feels different enough to have its own character and problems, while still being viewed as part of the whole.
I have simplified all moving, because I thought for my needs the infantry rates were too slow as presented, since there is not a lot of pure open space, so most times things are moving over ‘difficult’, plus I was constantly referring to the movement rates as they wouldn’t stick in my mind.
So I now have all foot moves 2” and all Cav move 3” (i.e. half the length of map zone … longways) on the pinboard by default. If I think the movement is over enough open space, I add ½” to that and if moving along a major road, I add 1”. Likewise, i would add a penalty if I thought the terrain was harsh such as the marsh area or bottleneck effect of bridges. It seems right to the eye.
With WWII and vehicles, I think the visual problem is that due to the size of the buildings, this looks like a tactical landscape and vehicles as such could cross that campaign area several times in an hour if UNOPPOSED, so I think the trick would be to treat vehicle movement as by necessity having to use a sort of ‘cautious’ movement and dampening it right down.
My pinboard is looking a bit scruffy at the moment because I have bits of paper floating around it that are showing the movement of new orders.
For BKCII, in terms of scale, one might have to think of the village as being a town and using keywords like ‘assembly areas’ and for those areas being subject to enemy bombardment etc. The map in its current presentation, for WWII, visually seems more suited to tactical WWII because of the size of the buildings and the author does mention Bolt Action.
So for BKCII the village might have to be broken don into small BUA. For Napoleonics with roughly three divisions against two, I have it divided the village into 4 BUA’s with each BUA conveniently being defined by the crossroads and the arms of those roads.
The admin notes were very helpful in understanding how the system works, but the batrep, the terrain etc were top notch. Like Steve says I reckon this’d work the best with horse and musket stuff, so for me that’d be ECW and maybe AWI. Reminds me a lot of your glorious Napoleonic PBEM game!
ReplyDeleteHi JB, thanks, As I prepare for the next campaign hour I obviously know what is coming next and I think it will show this style of play off rather well. I agree that Horse & Musket would be a good target audience, as would Bolt Action. ECW would be a lot of fun and I would imagine that there must be a real life action somewhere that is ‘similar’ enough to this campaign r at least has elements of it, that would help pull a narrative campaign together.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was looking at starting this campaign, I searched and searched my boardgame maps, looking for a location that had a crossroads centred on a river crossing.
Someone did say that other booklets might follow and if so, this might bring something that is more adjusted towards ancients or higher level WWII.
Yes, doing something akin to the Napoleonic PBEM game would be fun and very engaging …… we just all need to recover from the last one :-)
Most splendid, the investment in the product is paying out dividends by the bucket full. A joy to follow!
ReplyDeleteHi Phil, thanks. It has certainly fully captivated my attention since receiving it.
DeleteAn enjoyable read Norm, it was tough for the Austrians, getting the confused order for the artillery really didn't help their cause?
ReplyDeleteGood idea about the admin and pinboard map, that must make life easier.
Hi Ray, I do like a bit of chaos thrown in, especially useful in a solo playing. The admin aspects keep things ‘in order’, though sometimes I think to make these things work,, when the unusual crops up, you just need to make a judgement call for the best. If I do that, I make a note, so that I apply the same again when it next crops up, so that at least there is a bit of continuity.
ReplyDeleteLooking good, Norm, and your careful organization is bearing fruit. For fighting the tactical engagements, you mention using your own rules. Which rules are these?
ReplyDeleteThey are my ongoing Eagles at Quatre Bras (EaQB) rules, which originally came from a different lineage than Two Flags - One Nation (TF-ON ACW), but have since been brought to closer align with them to give a more generalised Horse & Musket set. Plenty of red ink is still being spilled on them :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks! Has TF-ON seen much change since last time I played them (well, several years!) or have the rules remained stable?
Delete