Game: Eckhmul Scen: Cornered

[dannybou]

Played a superb game against Pirimeister. I was the French under Davout and Paulo the Austrians. The game starts with the French attempting to withdraw off the map, only to be chased by the Austrians. The French have superior quality and leaders, while the Austrians have numbers. I managed to extract some units but impossible to exit even a division. So I decided to do what I could..... and that was to stand and fight. In the north, I was reinforced by a division and managed to stop the Austrians and fight them to a standstill, inflicting huge casualties.

In the South, I was able to form a perimeter as it came clear that I could not reach the exit point. I formed a rear guard, forming up in a square and just had them take it, covering the rest of the divisions and entering a small wooded area.

Casualties were heavy on both sides, but the Austrians got the worst of it. Their infantry losses was much higher than the french and both of us failed to adequately protect our artillery which resulted in numerous guns lost.

 

[Pirimeister]

Great game indeed! Danny did very well with what he had at hand, specialy in the South, where the odds where heavily against the French Armee.

The north side of the battlefield, comprising the Regensburg area, turned into a nasty headache for the Austrians, because there was only one brige that allowed the crossing of the river that runs through the city. This choke point held back the austrians for quite some time, but most importantly, it negated any numeric advantage that they might possesse. Since there were no good places to site my artillery (due to terrain elevation diferences), the bridge had to be taken by melee force.

Evene after going over the bridge, the terrain kept the Austrians to deploy properly, again keeping the numbers of men actually engaged more or less even - and that was bad news for the white-clad fellows.
I have to day that I was surprised to see Danny turn to fight, because I was sure he could have fled the scene with certain ease. Since he didn't, we clashed and clashed good, with our units forming lines and having then turned and counter-turned!
Sole consolation from this battle: the austrians managed to capture a fellow named Davout, thas was found carlessly roaming the battlefield.

In the South, I can honestly say that both my plan and it's execution were flawed. And if that wasn't enough, Danny came head-on with his crack troops and blasted his own way through my lines.
My idea was to find his line of advance (which I did), deploy a blocking force(which I did) with a first line of light troops and some artilery and a second line of grenadiers(which I did) and try to envelop him from the austrian right flank. There was some cavalry about, to force him to slow down.

My first flaw was that I didn' deploy any skirmishers, so when our forces made contact, it was "unfiltered" french lead that came my way. Big, big mistake. My second flaw, taht made teh whole thing come down was the fact that the enveloping force took too long to execute the maneuver (I was trying to be sneaky, not using hexes visible to him...).

This meant that, in true French Army fashion, Danny was able to outmarch me and deploy his A+ quality troops. The Austrians had a really bad time slowing the French down, specialy because they came with lots of heavy cavalry...
Eventualy they too got exausted (and there was a full Corps waiting for the remaning attackers), but the losses taken by the Austrians were too much and would qualify this battle as a pyhric victory, no doubt about it. The French 3rd Corps was destroyed, but it took with it at least 2 Austrian Corps...

Great fun!