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#11

Tabletop AARs / Re: Papelotte, June 18 1815, 1...

Last post by MengJiao - March 07, 2024, 06:39:15 PM

At 1pm Bluecher is just off the map to the east wondering where IV Corps is and getting some reports from his scouts. 
Meanwhile, a French Division is about to attack Saxe-Weimar and his Brigade.  Both sides have their cavalry lurking behind them.

  By 1:20 a lot has happened.  Saxe-Weimar attacks and is stunned and out for six turns.  Heinemann, Rebeque and Perponcher take over the leaderless brigade while disorder and confusion fill the smoky hedges around the Chateau de Frischermont.  The French rally and resume their own attacks.

  By 4pm, the French have completely routed the Prince of Saxe-Weimar and all his associates.  The English Cavalry
have withdrawn since things are going wrong to the west.  Now the French just need to seriously delay the Prussian I Corps which will be approaching from the NNW (ie the Chemin de Ohain and not east of the Ruisseau de Smohain).

#12

Tabletop AARs / Re: Papelotte, June 18 1815, 1...

Last post by MengJiao - March 07, 2024, 12:40:04 PM

At 1pm Bluecher is just off the map to the east wondering where IV Corps is and getting some reports from his scouts. 
Meanwhile, a French Division is about to attack Saxe-Weimar and his Brigade.  Both sides have their cavalry lurking behind them.

  By 1:20 a lot has happened.  Saxe-Weimar attacks and is stunned and out for six turns.  Heinemann, Rebeque and Perponcher take over the leaderless brigade while disorder and confusion fill the smoky hedges around the Chateau de Frischermont.  The French rally and resume their own attacks.

#13

Tabletop AARs / Papelotte, June 18 1815, 1pm

Last post by MengJiao - March 07, 2024, 12:11:27 PM

So, if you indulge in Napoleonic games, sooner or later you have to refight at least some part of the whole waterloo thing.  I've done Ligny and Quatre Bras recently in another game system, but After Dresden, the next La Bataille is Waterloo, which just came out.  Here is a tiny scenario covering the area where the Prussian I Corps arrived (IV Corps hit the Guard at Plancenoit later).  At 1pm Bluecher is just off the map to the east wondering where IV Corps is and getting some reports from his scouts. 
Meanwhile, a French Division is about to attack Saxe-Weimar and his Brigade.  Both sides have their cavalry lurking behind them.

#14

Tabletop AARs / Re: Bohemian Nightmare

Last post by MengJiao - March 06, 2024, 03:22:05 PM

Also, the Prussians are using howitzer counters from the Age of Reason (10 pounders) using 11 pounder artillery cassons! The Reasonable Prussian Blue is nice anyway:

By 7 am the Prussian Howitzers have done some serious damage.  I've had Prussian Howitzers in probably about
20 games and they have never done much.  Apparently, three batteries of them firing from a hilltop can even blow up
artillery caissons across a river at 700 meters.  Things aren't looking good for the Austrian Light Division, but the French are arriving and marching past Kaisar Franz and the King of Saxony.  Kleist and the Prussian Monarch are back with the artillery reserve about 500 meters behind the Howitzers, a hill and a forest or two.

  A little later, it looks like the Prussians have won in a couple of ways I wasn't expecting.  I did kind of think they would do okay, but their Cavalry mopped up up north against a decoy force that collapsed (my fault obviously)
and their Howitzers did some unexpectly serious damage while the river crossing thing worked as well.
Anyway, here's a last look at this hypothetical battle

#15

Tabletop AARs / Re: Bohemian Nightmare

Last post by MengJiao - March 03, 2024, 08:43:54 AM

Also, the Prussians are using howitzer counters from the Age of Reason (10 pounders) using 11 pounder artillery cassons! The Reasonable Prussian Blue is nice anyway:

By 7 am the Prussian Howitzers have done some serious damage.  I've had Prussian Howitzers in probably about
20 games and they have never done much.  Apparently, three batteries of them firing from a hilltop can even blow up
artillery caissons across a river at 700 meters.  Things aren't looking good for the Austrian Light Division, but the French are arriving and marching past Kaisar Franz and the King of Saxony.  Kleist and the Prussian Monarch are back with the artillery reserve about 500 meters behind the Howitzers, a hill and a forest or two.

#16

Tabletop AARs / Re: Bohemian Nightmare

Last post by MengJiao - March 01, 2024, 08:43:06 AM

Just after 6am, Hardegg leads the Kaiser Franz Cheuverlegeire on a wild charge that swings around the Prussians (who see the charge and go into squares) and hits some of the light troops of the Russian Avantguard from the rear.  They rout off and can be seen clumped behind the Windberg by the Weisseritz.  The other squadrons hit a Prussian Silesian Landwehr formation in the flank and disrupt it.  This all isolates one of the Prussian infantry brigades in the little hamlet of Burgk.

After a lot of minor disasters with Austrian Cavalry, the Prussians decide to blast their way across the
weisseritz.  It seems like a very bad idea, but went you have to roll some options in solitaire, bad ideas
happen.  Anyway, Two Prussian infantry brigades backed up by the Corps artillery are about to cross versus the Austrian Light Division's skirmishers.  What could go wrong?
Also anyway, when playing solitaire, you should never interrupt yourself when you are making a mistake.
Also, the Prussians are using howitzer counters from the Age of Reason (10 pounders) using 11 pounder artillery cassons! The Reasonable Prussian Blue is nice anyway:

#17

Tabletop AARs / Re: Bohemian Nightmare

Last post by MengJiao - February 29, 2024, 01:12:53 PM

So in the summer of 1813, Napoleon had several chances to make some kind of deal with Austria...
Here, Leichtenstein's Light Division moves quickly to secure the bridges on the south side of the middle loop: 

Hmmm..

About 6 am and the Prussians are still doing okay here and there.  They fired artillery and hit some of the Kaiser Franz Cheuverlegeire.  The Fusiliers in Klein-Burgk stopped a promising-looking attack by a lot of Grenadiers.

Just after 6am, Hardegg leads the Kaiser Franz Cheuverlegeire on a wild charge that swings around the Prussians (who see the charge and go into squares) and hits some of the light troops of the Russian Avantguard from the rear.  They rout off and can be seen clumped behind the Windberg by the Weisseritz.  The other squadrons hit a Prussian Silesian Landwehr formation in the flank and disrupt it.  This all isolates one of the Prussian infantry brigades in the little hamlet of Burgk.

#18

Tabletop AARs / Re: Bohemian Nightmare

Last post by MengJiao - February 28, 2024, 06:32:32 PM

So in the summer of 1813, Napoleon had several chances to make some kind of deal with Austria...
Here, Leichtenstein's Light Division moves quickly to secure the bridges on the south side of the middle loop: 

Hmmm..

About 6 am and the Prussians are still doing okay here and there.  They fired artillery and hit some of the Kaiser Franz Cheuverlegeire.  The Fusiliers in Klein-Burgk stopped a promising-looking attack by a lot of Grenadiers.

#19

Tabletop AARs / Re: Bohemian Nightmare

Last post by MengJiao - February 28, 2024, 06:20:22 AM

So in the summer of 1813, Napoleon had several chances to make some kind of deal with Austria...
Here, Leichtenstein's Light Division moves quickly to secure the bridges on the south side of the middle loop: 

I should note that this is from the Clash of Arms version of the La Battaille version of the Battle of Dresden. I've heavily modified the command rules so that they are random moves in preset modes (so the modes: move/deploy/attack movefast/roadmove) that are set before the random moves.  This was supposed to favor the Prussians who are slightly faster and more flexible than the Austrians...but the way things are shaping up -- maybe not and maybe not at all when the French turn up who are even faster and even more flexible.
The latest rules for these games are designed to make it possible to play huge battles and I'm doing small (1-2 Corps) battles so I'm running with modified rules and a different aim: interesting solitaire.

#20

Tabletop AARs / Bohemian Nightmare

Last post by MengJiao - February 27, 2024, 11:43:56 AM

So in the summer of 1813, Napoleon had several chances to make some kind of deal with Austria and after all the Emperor of Austria was his father-in-law and the Austrians were not all that fond of the Prussians and Russians so let's suppose some last-minute coup wrenches apart the Army of Bohemia.  Kleist, and his Prussian Corps breaks with the Right wing and escapes to somewhere south of Dresden.  The Austrian Right Wing pursues and one morning at 5AM, the Prussians try to lure the Austrians into a trap on the Weisseritz, expecting the Russians to turn up and finish the trap.  The Austrians move to enact the mirror image of the trap, expecting the French to turn up and finish off the Prussians.
Here, Leichtenstein's Light Division moves quickly to secure the bridges on the south side of the middle loop: