Marengo in Leeds - AAR

 The last two club days at Leeds saw a return to Marengo, with myself as Austrian and regular opponent Mike as Bonaparte himself.  Marengo is interesting, in that the French deploy at the Austrian end of the table and are attacked by overwhelming Austrian forces - so they need to hang on till Dessaix and the reinforcements arrive.  We used BBB rules and the Marengo scenario posted to the BBB io group.

A quick look in the archives shows that I played this in August 2021, as we were emerging from Lockdown - I remembered it as a fun and entertaining restart to my hobby.  See the last AAR here  

Here's the board at the start of play:

Above, the Austrian end, with cheeky French column deployed in the Austrian start area.  They were relocated and the game could start.  Marengo is the left hand village, stoutly defended by 4 French infantry.

Below, the view from the French end towards the Austrians.

The view from the Austrian end - these troops are all going to come piling on  as the Austrians start the game.  Note Austrian command cup of tea.

My plan, as Austrian general, was to push forward in the middle whilst sending cavalry, infantry & grenadiers up the left hand road.  The plan worked, in that Mike deployed his initial reserves to counter this threat and stopped shoring up his troops around Marengo.

Mike also managed to lose all his cavalry in the really stages.

Below, scattered Austrian units cause Mike concern.

Below, French Consular Guard & Friends threatened by the left hook.  In the process, however, my left hook forces started to get whittled away....

Meanwhile, however, my forces in the middle had issues with traffic jams and three French units that holed up in the villages and woods.  Instead of a swift breakthrough, I was rolling just low enough to miss/disrupt, not cause damage,  So my troops assaulted, got repulsed, formed up, tried again, etc.

Below, Austrians not quite co-ordinating and expelling the French, who used the woods and villages to great effect.  A lot of inadequate movement rolls on my part did not help!

The French unit below, having been evicted from it's village, spent the rest of the game sitting in a marsh and distracting Austrian gunners with forays into the dwindling Austrian left hook forces, before retreating into the marsh again!

In the end it was a draw.  The Austrians had Marengo (Hurrah!) but didn't get the crossroads or eliminate Napoleon.  Neither side had inflicted more than 50% casualties than received.

All in all it was a fun two evenings gaming.  The game was in the balance till the end.  Well worth playing if you want something different.  We both agreed we would be happy to play again, perhaps next time I'll be the French?

Bloody Big Bash Day IV - the last post.

BBB Bash Day IV has happened, mostly to plan, so here's the report of what we did on the day.... 😊

With 8 hosts and 11 players, we decided to change the format so that 4 games were played in the morning and a different 4 in the afternoon.  This meant that hosts could join in a game, as well as hosting a game.

Apologies, in advance, for the lack of photos for some games, I did not get photos of them all.

The morning games were Chancellorsville (ACW), Kissingen (Austro-Prussian War), Nyezane (Zulu War) & Sedan (FPW).  Here's what they looked like:

Chancellorsville

An impressive 8' x 4' table, showing heavily wooded terrain.

One of the two balloons in operation on the day.

Kissengen - early on in the game.

Nyezane - start position

Nyezane - the game progresses.  Bruce (game host) took BBB upscale with a 28mm figure per base, rather than our more usual group of 6-10mm figures.  It looked fun!

Tom getting into the spirit of the game!

Sedan - the one I actually played - photo at start.....   and that's it for this game....   see below for more reports.

We broke at mid-day for lunch, with the scores as follows:

Chancellorsville - Rebel (Patriot?) win.

Kissengen - Bavarian win

Nyezane - Zulu win

Sedan - draw (it was in play till the end...   which is what BBB is all about).

The next 4 games were set up, as follows:

Aspern-Essling - I had lent Ned the troops and houses & rivers, I understand that it was a fun game, more of that below...

Gujrat was our Anglo-Sikh offering,   A flat, dusty plain - it won the award for fastest set-up/pack down

As can be seen, some point with fingers, some with sticks...

Lutzen - it happened, and I contributed, but sadly took no photos!  Sorry!

2nd Bull Run - once again, the preference for ACW battles to take place in wooded, hilly places - at least it makes the battlefield sites nice place to visit in the modern day.  The woods are bath mat - once again proving that warmers look at every-day objects and think "now if I change this a little, it will make a superb....."

The scores at the end of the day (yes, we were sorting the evening curry and some people were STILL rolling dice) were:

Aspern-Essling - French win

Gujrat - Sikh win

Lutzen - French win 

2nd Bull Run - draw

Some of the participants have posted on their own blogs, see here Tom Davis and here Blackshaw gaming 

 

Check out the BBB FB page Bloody Big Battles and Chris Pringle's BBB Blog for his report

It only remains for me to thank the Leeds club, the game hosts, the participants and my long suffering wife  who made this a memorable and fun day.  

Oh, if this inspires you to try the rules, buy a copy and come to the next BBB day - wherever and whenever that will be.

Colin