Sunday “Pat Folder” Battle

I think that Kevin has another setting called “REALLY Hunt Them Down”

One joy of this Pat folder game is not knowing exactly where everyone was. We got the Manassas map and three vertical, parallel arrows pointing north indicating our 3 French lines of advance. That’s it.

So first order of business was finding out where everyone was. And such a situation exacerbates each division commanders feeling of being isolated and outnumbered when engaged so I felt it was necessary to send out a couple of extra-long orders to explain where everyone was before letting each know what their specific tasks were: at least that might help enabling some to act with broader awareness.

As it turned out, we were only set up on 2 of the 3 lines of advance. Earl of Uxbridge and Phil were more of less on the western line. Digby, Ehey and Miko on the center line.

It turned out the Austrians occupied the eastern line of advance. We didn’t know that just yet.

Martin advanced North, dead center and ran into Austrians. He had a great position. I brought Phil over from the left to hit the Austrians facing Digby. Kept Earl in the west holding, but watching Phils flank. I brought Ehey up behind Martin for support.

While that situation was developing I asked Miko to jog to the east, thinking it was clear, and then move north. It would place him off the right flank of Martin where he could hit the other flank of the Austrians.

Our objectives were to the NW. Perhaps if we could crush the Austrians in front of Martin with a double envelopment we could all advance together. That’s why I didnt want Earl to advance yet on the left.

Oh but wait. This is Kevin’s design. No reason for the Austrians to be defending the objectives to the NW. instead, the Austrian attack came from the East. Apparently the eastern French line of advance, the little blue arrow pointing north, should have been a red arrow pointing west.

So when Miko jogged to the east he ran into the leading edge of the Austrian thrust. Which in effect was coming from behind us and to the right.

There came a point where we had too many divisions tied up with these Austrians and I needed to get at least one extricated to go NW. So I chose Ehey to pull out from behind Digby and goto the NW with Earl. And bring Miko up next to Digby even if that meant dragging the advancing Austrians with him

Naturally just as Ehey pulled out, in came a hard Austrian attack from the East. And of course Miko was about to bring another set of Austrians with him.

I had to leave the battle at that point.

Curious how it went from your perspectives

This was my first divisional command in MP, and it was (fortunately for me) rather straightforward in the beginning. My German brigade suffered moderate losses from a concentration of Austrian artillery and infantry, before being pinned in square by enemy cavalry (all this while I was repeatedly requested to move to Novian and Pont-de-Mousson by Vandamme). When I tried to withdraw the brigade, a battalion was attacked and wiped out (to a man) by enemy cavalry, although the flag-bearer kept running in retreat despite the troop count being zero .

My main brigade (Brigade Gilly) was able to advance against the enemy, and was gradually making progress towards the northernmost objective when the scenario ended.

In terms of cavalry, my division's performance was less than stellar; my first brigade of chausseurs suffered heavy losses when I sent them to flank the enemy artillery, while the Chausseurs of the Guard, despite driving off several regiments of enemy cavalry, were eventually forced to retreat by superior enemy concentrations.

From my perspective, the hardest part of commanding a division was simply coordinating the various arms successfully; it was all too easy to micromanage a cavalry charge and neglect the infantry element entirely, for instance.

A good game overall, and I would definitely want to try divisional command again in the future.

The first time we played this scenario I was the 2nd division in the main (east) column with Kevin as the leading one and Miko as C-in-C behind me. Kevin got embroiled in a fight for the big hill at the main crossroads and I was swung out around his right in exactly the same way that Pat deployed mine and Ehey's divisions this time. I therefore had a good idea what to expect and so was quite cautious in my approach to the hill and initial deployment. I was lucky that the Austrians moving south from the crossroad chose to lead with an artillery battery and my Italian dragoons wrecked that straight away which killed off the enemy's ability to hurt me at range and allowed me time to deploy on the heights. My problem was that the enemy was just that bit too close to allow my artillery to deploy so I had to unlimber them well back and the shape of that hill's northern slope is convex, so all the juicy Austrian squares half way up it were sheltered from my guns. I couldn't go forwards because of the mass of Austrian cavalry to my left front down in a re-entrant and I couldn't get rid of the cavalry because they were in a depression my guns couldn't cover. I managed to skirmish about a bit and drive back 2 or 3 Austrian squares and my skirmishers would tempt the enemy cavalry to try and charge them which brought them out into sight of my guns and I would peck away a few hits at them each time. This slow and laborious effort went on for the best part of 90 minutes until Phil's division came up on my left. I ordered Kevin who commanded my left flank brigade to advance on Phil's right and eventually, with Uxbridge's division showing up from the west, the Austrian right flank crumbled and their whole position began to fall apart.

The high point of the battle though was my spying some enemy officers and messengers riding about in the woods to my right which was to the NE. I advised Pat who had already decided to send Ehey to that flank. He made distant contact with an enemy force which was skulking about somewhere down the heavily wooded slopes but steadfastly refused to attack. Eventually as the clock was ticking Pat elected to detach Ehey from my right and send him behind me and off to the NW towards the objectives. Literally within 5 minutes of him moving away all hell broke loose and an enemy division came out of the trees at my right flank. My Italian dragoon brigade was destroyed in an instant trying to stop much stronger hordes of Austrian hussars and dragoons so I had to pull my last cavalry regiment, some German chevauleger, from my far left where they had been supporting Kevin and bring then over to my centre. Ehey wisely left his cavalry as rearguard and saw off the first Austrian flanking attacks and as he went away Miko arrived. I had no idea at all that Miko had been in action to my SE against yet another enemy division but when he arrived his two cuirassier brigades went into action in magnificent style on my right and I was treated to a grandstand view of one of the best whirling cavalry melees I've ever had the chance to watch.

Eventually Miko's cavalry neutralised the enemy's but I was wondering where all his guns and infantry were - it turned out they were south of him fighting another battle facing the other way. Phil and I cleaned up the remnants of the two enemy divisions at the crossroads and we agreed that he would head off NW to attack the southern of the three objectives as Pat had ordered when he left. I stayed on my hill to tidy up any remnants but then we suffered a string of crashes which caused us to run out of time (I had to go do some caring issues with the elderly person I live with).

My entire battle consisted of marching less than a mile and then standing on a hilltop whacking anything that came at me. Quite satisfying but also the battle played out completely differently to the last time we tried this. The AI used a different strategy.

This was definitely a case where as CinC my best option in playing had to just be on a horse and not commanding a spare brigade and certainly not a division. With Earl on the flank and new to division command, I wanted him on the defensive as long as possible. And I also needed to check out the terrain that Phil was advancing into and make sure his line of march came alongside Kevin rather than behind him (I think I have developed a reputation of squeezing divisions into small spaces and preferred to do something different this time lol). While it would not have surprised me if Miko ran into something once deployed fully on Digby's right flank, I did not expect him to run into Austrians that far south. moreover, I even rode the ground off Digby's right flank and, seeing nothing, felt I could order Miko to come back up north. Worst case -- at least I thought at the time --would be Austrians following him slowly. That's when I went back to the other flank and determined it was time to send Earl NW. And after confirming (twice) that Ehey had not yet committed his troops to support Digby, I sent Ehey to the other flank (another thing I have done is ask a division to pull out and change fronts while engaged, which I know is not an easy thing to do) because we basically had 4 divisions focused away from the objectives for one reason or another, and there was 90 or so minutes left in the game time.

And that's when the nasty flank attack came on Digby, which I heard about via courier.

As a disinterested party, I can say the battle was a case of good new/bad news. The bad news was that the Emperor made a huge blunder in assigning such an important mission to Vandamme. A large swath of France is now firmly under the Austrian yoke and Vandamme's cowardly exit when things were looking bad, just adds to the mummers that the Emperor's judgement is becoming faulty. The good news is that one of the Directory's mobile guillotines has been put back into service and will be arriving at VIII Corps headquarters momentarily.

And this coming from a Brigade commander who said "okay gents I have to go - see ya" when his brigade was hidden by thick woods and at precisely the time where his division commander was busy on the other side of the line. Guillotine for two.

A tandem guillotine, now there's a spectacle. I'll make a killing setting up a stall to sell spiced punch and roast chestnuts.

The first time we did this scenario I was a western division with Phil.  Our orders then were a simple "take the objectives regardless of where you are" and so everyone advanced.  I managed to slip through a gap of the maneuvering enemy and wound up on top of the two northern objectives without having to fight for them.  Shortly after though the enemy wanted those objectives back and attacked me with two divisions.  I was in a good spot and bought myself time enough to write to Phil.  Fortunately I was able to convince Phil to stop looting the division he'd defeated and come help me.

I was watching Martin's engagement from his lines while I was waiting behind him.  I figured I could at least bring my cavalry and guns up and help out a little while I waited for orders.  Martin asked me eventually if I could check out some movement in the east where he'd seen some couriers.  I had already seen an Austrian officer over there so I took a look while I waited for my guns and cav to come up.  I found a regiment of cav moving south east from the North East, not directly at us, but outflanking us.  My men were sitting so close to Martin I was nearly already watching his right, so I just changed the facing of a brigade in a good spot to be ready for something.  I then went to position my guns.  There was a hill on Martin's right that had a great angle on the Austrians in square in front of him.  The guard artillery taught the Austrians about geometry while I kept looking east.  Another regiment of cav had moved past from the NE but I had seen nothing else and kept Martin and Pat informed.

The order to move west to Nancy came and I started moving my division.  Martin had just written me about his cavalry being in a bad way.  With no reason to linger, I went to move my cavalry and I noticed Austrian infantry peeking over the hill on Martin's right.  Knowing they were likely supported by the earlier seen cavalry I felt the only thing to do was to keep my cavalry there until Zeschwitz could come up and for Martin to set up his guns and some type of defense to the new direction.  At this point I had no idea Miko was fighting something.

As time ticked on I put my cavalry on a defensive stance and went to catch up with the rest of my division.  We marched West to Nancy, I played tug of war with calling my cavalry back, and was pushing towards the northern objectives when we experienced technical difficulties.  It was a good game.  The Austrians had impeccable timing and impressive knowledge of the terrain to hide a division until the right moment like that.

Also, I messed up the audio on the stream so you'll need to bring your own music and make some sound effects yourself if you want to watch my perspective.

You put your guard horse battery in the exact spot I planted one of my batteries in the previous version of this game, looking down that small valley that cuts up into the hillside so you can blast whatever is attacking towards the flat top area where I had set up my picnic cloth. A couple of your canister bullets plopped into my goblet of claret which was a little rude of your gunners I thought.

I know the spot. I remember stopping there early in the game saying “now THIS would be a nice spot for a battery” before pausing and saying “ok now where exactly is the rest of my command?”

DumpTruck wrote:Also, I messed up the audio on the stream so you'll need to bring your own music and make some sound effects yourself if you want to watch my perspective.

https://soundcloud.com/napoleonienstratageme/march-to-the-sound-of-the-guns

Biggest problem with Sunday's streaming was video quality for me, Ehey.
Portions of screen froze very often, getting oddly pixelated or just black.
That made it barely watchable.

I'm going to try with yesterday's one now...

DumpTruck has suffered from a couple of bad internet days recently. I wonder if the extra load from zillions of people sat at home streaming movies or playing games more might be a reason?

Yeah Sunday was the same day I had frame dropping problems last time too. Perhaps the network is taxed more. And who knows with the entire globe inside on the internet what the effect is.

We should invite them all to a some monster PvP games.