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?