32. Battle of Astorga - 4th April 1809

Marechal Verdier's IV Corps in recent weeks has pushed boldly west, taking Leon with ease and pressing rapidly on to take Astorga. However Verdier was dismayed before Astorga when the ragtag division he had pushed out of Leon was supported by a very large force indeed. The French halted while the enemy host deployed and it was not many hours before the French learned via boastful travellers that he was facing no less than General Cuesta himself, hero of two defeats at Valladolid! Cuesta has with him much of the powerful Army of Galicia, perhaps Spain's finest army now that Castanos has fallen back from Madrid. Uninformed locals say that the Spanish force could be between 30,000 and 40,000 men.

Verdier chose to tactfully withdraw to Leon but before his corps could move far the Spanish unleashed a bold advance upon his retreating columns, coming on at him with great panache and passion, drums beating and silken colours flying. Clearly no man but Cuesta can rouse such passion in the hearts of the Sons of Spain!


The battle in relation to Astorga and Leon.

Verdier's corps, about 20,000, has fallen back though Santo Domingo and while on the road to Aldea de los Olivos has deployed along the ridge that forms the western flank of the Pase de Dos Brazos. It is not certain if Verdier will hold this ground or fall back to a better position.

Cuesta and his Galician host have advanced on a broad front either side of the Astorga road and are entering Santo Domingo.

The French must halt the Spanish attack and throw it back to claim victory or extricate their troops off the map along the Leon road to claim survival! The Spanish must inflict as much damage as they can on the French.

SCENARIO SPECIFIC RULES:

Each side has a safe or exit zone which will function under the usual rules. For the French this is the Leon road exit (and a couple of hundred yards either side of it); for the Spanish it is the Astorga road exit west of Santo Domingo (and likewise, a couple of hundred yards either side of it).



This battle requires 10 players and I hope we can fight it this Sunday, 7th Feb. I have a Doodle Poll here.

Please sign up and also fill in the poll even if you cannot make it, as usual.

Detailed OOBs and maps are given in each sides' private forum.

Many thanks.

Heads up, it is Super Bowl Sunday, don't know how many Americans you'll have playing on the 7th.

Super what? Bowl? Is that a cooking contest?

Such trivial things can't be more important than this!

Over here in Blighty we have something called soccer. I totally ignore fixtures for that as well.

Ya well I doubt you'd skip out on awesome parties with drunk chicks; if so that's your loss


Let me rephrase this; I am going to a Super Bowl party with my girl haha. I'm sure several other guys here will be doing the same thing. Except for Kevin. Kevin has already preprogrammed the results of the Super Bowl and he has more wine and women than he can handle ...

For the players new to the KS group please sign up on the Doodle Poll in the first post to indicate if you can make it or not. Even if you cannot, please indicate this as its a big help to my administration of these campaign games which take a fair bit of organising.

If I do not get enough players I will sometimes cancel or postpone as some of our less frequent players need to commit several hours of weekend family/social time to our games and it is not fair on them to come along but then find we have not got enough people for the planned game.

Your assistance is really appreciated.

This will be the first campaign battle we will have played since our new Steam friends joined us so pre-battle I will spend a few minutes talking about what is different about these battles and why. Please try to play these with a different mindset to our usual stand-alone scenarios that Kevin kindly creates.

Alas I must decline this week as well. Prepping food for the commercials, Er, ah, I mean the game.

ok.. I understand this is on Sunday... can I still join? if yes then which side?

Yes Miko, everyone is welcome, please go wave the flag on the Steam groups forum ... although those with a rabid sense of competitiveness may find it a bit different

You will be allocated to whichever side needs you most.

Please sign in the doodle poll in the first post. Having that populated helps me a lot.

Do you know how many of the Steam players may want to play?

Do you know how many of the Steam players may want to play?

No idea - probably people that already read this forum... however expect reduced numbers because it's Sunday...

Digby wrote:Super what? Bowl? Is that a cooking contest?

Such trivial things can't be more important than this!

What?! Sacrilege! Football is life. Life is Football. The eternal struggle of good (Broncos/Spanish) vs evil (Panthers/Bonapartists). Raise a glass to those evil twins both taking it in the shorts this weekend.

I'm working but hope to be back by 8ish. It could be later though, so I will not make any promises.

Mike

We were unable to play this game yesterday as we were 2 players short (your absence wasn't critical Mike!)

I have therefore rescheduled it for next weekend and have added a new Doodle Poll.

Please sign up!

http://doodle.com/poll/u5cam9sckuzaamhm

Thank you Martin.

Thanks for letting me know this.

I'm, again, working the full weekend but might be able to get home in time.

mike

I'd like to play (one day!) but at the moment, I've only played two HITS games against the AI, and I didn't really know what was happening. (So a historical result then!). Saw a lot of dead sprites though, and they weren't all mine...

So unless there is a command for the tragically incompetent, perhaps I should try to fit in a few more AI games and sign up for a real battle in a turn or two?

Join us for a non-campaign game first. There should be one today at 20:00 GMT. Or just take a small Spanish infantry brigade, generals without experience are preferred there!

Hi all

So far the most popular date and time is Friday 12th Feb at 20:00 GMT, 21:00 CET, 15:00 EST so I will be planning to run the game then. We have 7 signed up but need 3 more.

However if one of the other days suddenly explodes with sign-ups I will move to that one

See you on Friday.

I'll go ahead and sign up.

Fantastic. We now have 10 players signed up so the battle is on! For those players who can't see the private Allied/French forums I will supply OOBs on the day.

For the two sides I have tried to choose a balance of new players with experienced and the more gung ho players for the Spanish(!)

French:

Kevin (C-in-C Marechal Verdier)
Pat
Jeanathan
Joe

Spanish:

Martin J   ) one of you
Morsey    ) will be C-in-C
Gavin       ) Cuesta
Digby
Andrew
Phil

If we get more players people can take brigades but for now everyone will have to have a division.

Would everyone please gather in TS 30 minutes before we start to add the small scenario mod that is required and test your set-ups.

I want to start the game as promptly as possible so please have a battle plan in place. I know the French have one and Gavin has already proposed one for the Spanish so I am only going to give the two sides TEN MINUTES in their private rooms to discuss these plans and allocate commands.

The scenario length is only 150 minutes as well, not our usual 180. Too many of our recent games have gone on too long due to lag.

I now have a Provost guard assigned to protect my baggage train from poachers in my own army. The now are reassigned as wagon drivers with at least two extra guards because I have fired all teamsters who apparently were receiving kickbacks from Kevin in exchange for looking the other way. Also, Mine is the only division where my reserve brigade is, as part of standard operating procedure, positioned in the rear in multiple squares with wagons inside. So don't come crying to me, Kevin, when the Spanish are pouring through gaps in my line because my reserve troops aren't there in time to plug the holes. Just sayin'

The commander of that brigade happens to be married to one of my wife's sisters. And the provost commander lost heavily at cards earlier this week and owes me money.

Clearly yours is the original "first family" of the French Mafia

Pat it is time for you to leave the dark side and come to the light. The barbarian Kevin will plunder you over and over and like a good China men smile as he dose it claiming he is your friend.

AWW NUTZ

I didn't account for 1.5 hours of crashes before we started in the snooze of my Windows updates. Since Martin had set game for 150 mins I thought my 4 hour snooze was good lol.

Apparently the exact wrong time to drop. I had command of Fr cavalry on our left. I watched he Spanish start to wrap around my flank ...I lost a squadron running off bothersome artillery ...did a slow leapfrog withdrawal ... then reversed and attacked. Got like 3 of their squadron in short order. But it was looking like I would need to give more ground be at there were so MANY of them. It was like the horses were giving birth as the battle progressed to create MORE horses. It was only a matter of time before they took the ridge.

Then came the windows update. Silence. No more game. And apparently my cavalry stood still thereafter. Hardly what I would expect in "attack" order lol

Sorry Kevin. You can have some of my finer silver for that one.

As for the Spanish ... on our left flank I saw a steady and very coordinated attack. Nice job!

that was a good game everyone thnx for having me apart of it

I could use some input from everyone involved in this game since the French cavalry got destroyed soon after you dropped Pat. On the other hand it did a lot of damage in AI mode, taking out two of my battalions and probably 4 to 6 Spanish squadrons before it was driven back. That allowed my division on the Spanish right to get to the top of the ridge and when the game was called it looked to me like a Spanish win from my vantage point.

I had however no idea you had dropped Pat.

I could see to my left or north however the attack by Phil's division against the right hand brigade of Steve's Dutch-German division looked like a stalemate. I couldn't see any units running away but it looked like the Spanish were not making progress. I have only the replay viewer to tell me what was going on in the far north where Mike and Le King were attacking Joe.

So I'd like to hear the "local" view of each player on how you honestly thought the battle was going in your sector.

Thanks guys.