The Sunday pre-Christmas Slugfest

Those Russkies are tough.

I held the French right for a while. Kept Russians a tad occupied until their Cossasks slammed through everyone. Who was on Russian left?

I figured things weren't going so well overall when I heard words like "watch out on your left, the center is giving way" and that sort of thing. At least this time I held a reserve, which made me feel better despite the 50 percent casualties. And I was on top of a hill near my squares. The fact that we were getting pummeled is but a side issue

That was me in front of you. I wanted to keep you occupied while Mark worked over the center. Once a gap opened between you and Martin I threw my reserve brigade and Cossacks into it. That was when the battle started to fall apart. You fought your division well. You kept your forces under good control prior to the center break. Except for being able to work over some of your units with my guns you didn't give me any targets for my infantry. I kept trying to entice your troops forward but you kept them in a defensive posture until the issue was forced in the center. Well done.

My task was to hold tight to the right flank of Martin. He or Pepe needed some help and as I started to move forward, your guys started moving up on my right. I dispatched a couple battalions to keep you occupied on your left flank ... I was seriously considering running a brigade through straight to the artillery behind you but thought the better of it.

Russian artillery is simply nasty.

I literally threw myself in human waves at the Center. Without artillery I couldn't do much else. I was keeping track of Kevin and saw we had plenty of reserves: I figured each attack I made chipped the French center away, piece by piece. Finally Digby moved back after Kevin's cannons found the range. With the center gone, Pepe and Tom were in advance of the rest of the French army but it was too late in scenario time to make the most of that opportunity.

I literally charged six times.

It felt very Borodino-like only with attacker and defenders nationalities reversed. I was quite happy with my position which was on a low ridge facing across about 700 yds of shallow valley except my left was on a kind of plateau where my visibility was limited. Luckily the Russians either chose not to hit me there or Pepe's men on that flank kept them busy. I had to face a couple of battalions half left but they were not seriously attacked except by a marauding hussar squadron which had me yelling "form square" a few times.

Mark chose to attack me directly across the valley and in the initial deployments Pepe's cavalry ran off most of his guns although mine couldn't do the good work I needed as they kept moving rearwards due to Russians coming so close. I really noticed the changed AI routines with the guns in this game and it worked very well, the artillery slowly creeping back and refusing to stand but not actually routing away to me felt like a very reasonable representation of the gun crews darting off to seek cover for a while before coming back to their guns.

But those Russians kept coming. We could stop them in every firefight and several times enemy columns came at us in fine style at what seemed to be a rapid pace, only to halt, attempt a firefight and then fade away. It felt very realistic.

The problem was the Russian cavalry which was deployed in single squadrons and seemed to pop up every few minutes to either catch one of my battalions in line or force me to go into square and give up 3/4 of my firepower. Eventually a new gun line was established at the far side of the valley and I couldn't stand there facing that so went back about 400 yds to a second, lower ridge where I had shelter from that murderous fire. Pepe had already gone back on my left and I had a good view of his fight as Tom tried to work around his left flank. I was amazed that Russian flags were visible due N of me so I wondered what Pepe was doing! I later saw from the replay that he'd concentrated his division into a short deep formation and kept it close to me so we remained in contact.

I sent several couriers to Pat warning him I had to go back and that he should watch his left. This he did by swinging his left hand brigade back. This was fortuitous as the Russians opposite me seemed to slacken off their aggression and swung to my right to hit Pat's left. This did two things: it exposed the right flank of this attacking force to my guns and some voltigeurs who made a bit of a mess of the open flank (my guns had finally found a nice place and began to work to good effect) and secondly with almost all the Russian attention swinging to my right all that covered their guns in front of me (which had moved up) was what looked like a thin screen of Jagers. I rustled up my remaining four dragoon squadrons and my three freshest battalions and counter-attacked which was enough, it seemed to drive away quite a lot of guns and buy me some respite.

I am sorry about the confusion over the game end. I heard someone (Kevin?) asking if this was the end and assumed it was. So I left the game. I think you guys played on for about 10 minutes.

I get the feeling it was a draw with both sides about done in from mutual exhaustion.

The scenario didn't have an objective for each side other than kill kill kill so it felt a little odd. I think if the French had been given the task of holding a position it would have been a better game.

On a personal note I am starting to dislike our non-historical formations where we attach a cavalry brigade to each infantry division. I'd much rather we stuck to pure inf/art and cav/art divisions. In our present games players use their attached cavalry to good effect but every time its a kind of rock-paper-scissors thing about squadrons and squares and I just feel that the tactical details of these games are at the wrong level. Cavalry should be used en-masse and the rather tedious job of having to be alert everywhere to keep reminding the AI to go into and out of square was the one issue in this game I didn't enjoy. Despite the new WL AI we don't seem to have moved on from the kinds of game-process we had using the KS Mod for GB where opposing players keep trying to out guess each other as to where the next cavalry "dash" is going to be.

A game I was thinking might be fun to try would be a clash between two cavalry corps... maybe as a bit of a beer and pretzels event over the holidays?