AARs - post here all after battle comments and replay files

Come to think of it my heavy cav was rather timid. And even tho that cav was at the front of my division column only 1 of 2 brigades completed the march close to the French where I began to deploy my formations. One squadron remained a mile in the rear for a long time. Took repeated orders to get it forward.

I even checked to see if Phil had somehow taken command in the interim and tied the horses to his command tree (some commanders have a headquarters but Phil commands from “the big orchard“ as his soldiers call it. He has even altered the names if his formations to the genus and species of local plant life ... but thats a whole different story for a different thread) but that was not the case.

I can confirm however that the AI artillery works very well. I am beginning to suspect they use triple-shotted canister/grape as a standard load. And some of those guns looked suspiciously like French 75s. I couldn’t get too close of a look because we were all too busy running away for dear life while they reloaded.

A pity for that cav. We will never see massive cavalry charge. I'm sure Ehey will be fond of that.
Is there absolutely nothing to be done ?

The reason the cavalry doesn't respond or will start to move and then stop is because it cannot find a direct path to the destination.

Typically in our games, the cavalry is mixed in with infantry formations. They have no path the through the traffic jam. If they are ordered to charge the enemy, but friendly infantry form a wall of btns., the cavalry has no way to get at the enemy. When Pat bleats like a gutted sheep to me requesting cavalry support, I almost always turn him down because his infantry is in my way. I tell him so, but he still moans and whines incessantly.

Certainly massive cavalry charges are possible, in fact I often do that whenever possible. However, to do this, I have to bring my troopers to a flank that has no friendly infantry in the way and is open ground, not forested. To have a massive charge against enemy infantry, a large part of the field must be cleared of friendly infantry first. That takes a fair bit of time and effort. Only then can the cavalry deploy in that space and move forward. Watching an enemy line dissolve and flee the battle as the charge unfolds is a heart warming experience. In fact I get the same feeling when Pat's hapless infantry are attacked by enemy cavalry. I should probably intervene, but why spoil the spectacle.

I can’t help it if my infantry refuses to shovel and clean up after your horses. Even we have standards to upkeep. Bring your own shovelers and maybe we will open a path for you

Clearly the French thought Miko and I posed the gravest threat - clearly our reputation preceded us - and focused their attack on us first from the North.

A second French division approach from our right (East) flank, and it was clear its line of march would present a nice flank for the other corps, positioned to our right and farther south (they were huddled in their warm beds not wishing to both the French). I requested help from Vince, who immediately responded by sending Phil and Levin forward (no doubt Kevin whined about having to move).

That attack helped.

I had asked Miko to pull back and swing behind me from left to right to meet the French attack also and be reminded me that our troops were Spanish and “not French” .... thus a tad unwieldy lol. A good reminder.

Cavalry is really tricky. I'm not sure if it's my tactical intent or my roleplaying but I often play cavalry as support first and opportunistic strikers second. My goal with cavalry is often to disrupt and make difficult the enemy's movements. If I see undefended guns, or battalions not paying attention to my regiments I will have a go at them, but for the most part I'm content to find a spot where my horses can offer motivational support while still letting the cannon fodder infantry do the heavy lifting. To that end, as people have suggested already, cavalry behind infantry is almost exclusively a supporting role, as it is very difficult to weave regiments between battalions, especially as they move and fight. Any striking to be done with cavalry will likely be on the flanks.

I only ever TC cavalry if I specifically don't want them to move, as this is the only way to stop the regimental captain from ordering a charge that I might not want. If you are having trouble getting your cavalry that is close to the enemy to move somewhere I find giving them a quick withdraw order or two to get them out of the mess is often helpful. They seem to often get fixated on enemies within ~200 yards so quick withdrawing them gets them away from the enemy where you can be sure they'll pay a little more attention to your orders.

Great battle yesterday. Might have been even funnier if the artillery had worked..

My part of the plan was to set a reduced force around the northern objective to delay Prussian action. But I think a committed too many men there and make a useless sacrifice. Probably lost 800 men in that small engagement. If I had put skirmishers into the two woods along the roads, it would have been more efficient I guess.

Then, I tried to organize a defense with good position for artillery. Bad luck, they were on strike, only the guard battery shot and reached 170 pts in total.

The situation became critical when Ehey appeared on the west. At that same moment, one of my largest brigade decided to withdraw from the field, leaving the place dangerously exposed.
He pushed me out of the most central objective finally. Then I tried to charge two batallions of skirmishers with cavarly, that would have, I guess, seriously reduced the chance to allow wagons to get in the place. But infortunately, instead of charging the infantry in front of them, the charge back the square just behind us... and fled the battlefield.

It was a lot of fun and really allow to rely on AI since we cannot be everywhere, we sometimes tend to TC too often in order to take advantage of that poor AI doing mistakes

There's a good shot of your cavalry charging the square behind them on the video, but I couldn't remember when exactly it happened. It's funny because that battalion that was in square did the same thing when I was marching them up there to attack your guns. They tried to charge something behind them and ran into a house for a while.

I thought my guns would be helpful on those giant hills but most of your men were hidden in a big hallowed ground. By the end of it all I had was numbers so I started using it. There was a few brave battalions that got sacrificed to the cavalry.

It was a really long march though. It took nearly an hour and a half to get to sight of enemy. The limited amount of cavalry, and the separation of cavalry from some of our divisions is a good balancing move to reduce the advantage of having more players. It was a good fight and good scenario, next time we'll need to bring in an independent statistician to verify our tallies.

I really like the “Pat & Vince vs the World” type scenarios. And in this case the play balance seemed good. The notional point system also seemed to reflect the reality on the battlefield.

Vince had a fighting withdrawal kind of strategy. My job on the flank was to harass and delay with a small portion of my force while sending the majority of it south to support defense at either of the 2 southern objectives.

We were definitely going to give you that first objective. I detached 2 of my 4 small cav brigades, a battery and 2 infantry battalions to harass the southern movement. My artillery was likewise useless despite having what appeared to be great position on the flank and rear of Mikos advance south. And my cav was timid, even when on the flank and rear of oblivious infantry in line. So all I could do was some harassment and make my presence known.

As I leap-frogged my small detachment south I came across Vince at the middle objective. The Prussian juggernaut continued to press southward and I could see another force (Ehey) coming from the West. Vince asked for cav support against that western threat and I sent him a few squadrons. I also brought an additional infantry brigade into what could have been a punishing flank assault on Miko. But for some reason they fell to pieces before the attack got going. I spent a bit too long trying to get that assault going and got killed in the process. The end result is it delayed my orders to the rest of my command (2 brigades of inf, 1 guards cav and guards arty) to occupy the southernmost objective.

I arrived at the southern objective with about 30 mins left in the game. My command was just arriving. They could/should have been on place 20 mins earlier had I not had tunnel vision on Miko. The Prussians - under Grog - were already there in force so I threw my brigades into the fight immediately. I set up my artillery in a beautiful commanding position only to find that they, too misplaced their ammunition and apparently forgot how to use flame/spark to ignite gunpowder. I blame Kevin.

It was a tough fight at that southern objective. A standstill in the end.

Overall a very fun scenario. Big map. Had I place the units a tad closer it would have saved 20-30 mins marching time for some of us. But it still was a battle only decided near the end. I will make another one for a future fight!

I forgot to check if the Scenario was changed to 3h and so we failed on Sunday... unfortunately, my initial orders to Ehey set up the scene for failure - knowing that Ehey is marching on parallel road south and spotting Russians nearby I decided to smash them from two sides... the cavalry-less Phil's division was ordered to march to the objective - Phil parked outside the woods (wait, what?) and was waiting for orders while me and Pat (brigade in my division) demolished the 2 divisions attacking us - actually I intended fight-retreat west but that looks silly as at later stage we seem to be running away from the inferior enemy... Ehey wisely disengaged and also marched on the objective... so at the 2h30 we had two barely scratched divisions ready to attack the objective but no time to do so... so, with this time limit the only chance for French is if first division (Razout?) ignores the Russians south and races towards the objective and other two division follow west and engage the 2 Russian divisions...

It definitely takes a "race" mode and the decision is how much of the force to bleed off to (1) enable the race to the objective and (2) keep the road clear for reinforcement at objective.

So when I left the game and turned my division over to Grog, I was trying to extract my command from a French vise.

Turned out driving up the highway on Phil's left to flank the French in front of him worked out really well until a second French division emerged out of the woods behind me.

How did it turn out?

Thanks a bunch, Pat
Initially, continued pulling back but realised Phil was in the wood and figured he would be staying put.
I didn't want to expose his flank so stayed put.
It was actually quite a good position away from enemy artillery.
Smoke did a nice job of pushing back the French to the Northeast but their artillery started to hurt.
We didn't get far but held back the numbers.I led the Militia brigade on a fine charge to the NE.I left them for a few minutes, then came back to all 4 battalions vanished. Just Sir Colin Hackett riding around bewildered.
The last 20 mins saw our artillery cannistering them down.
If I remember the replay right, Miko fought two Divisions with limited cav.
Apparently, Kevin did all the Heavy lifting, it was said!
Great game. Thanks fellas.

Yes, I fear I must take credit for the only bright spot in yesterday's action, the conquest of Purcka and defeat of both the Imperial Guard infantry and cavalry. Although I did notice you rode headlong into the French lines and were gleefully bayoneted, so I guess there were two bright spots.

This scenario has been added to the Play It Again folder, so after an appropriate period of mourning we'll give it another go, preferably with a new unsuspecting CinC.

Admittedly I was less reserved knowing I was leaving early.

Based on what we saw and knew, it was going really nicely. My lead brigade marched down the road and wheeled in line to the right. Smoke Grenadier followed with his brigade to extend our line and start overlapping the French. By that time my 2 batteries were already in action

I need to remember to pay attention to the “little” things that preceded my awareness of the French behind me. To wit:

-Why did that battalion do a 180-degree wheel?
-Ok, this is the THIRD time I have ordered my cav brigade over here and it still isn’t moving
-Wait, why is my battery moving back? Come back up here, please

When I saw the French flag behind me I saw a few scattered troops with it. Looked like a routed brigade from afar. As I galloped I saw a second flag. And rode between them into the heavy woods. It was at that moment I truly realized they were skirmishers and then a split second later ran headlong into a french battalion

Clearly this is what brought Kevin so much joy in his post

Upon respawning at my artillery I looked around and saw French cav and infanty barely 200 yards away.

Ok. Time to get everyone out.

It was a great place to hand over the division to Grog who just happened to show up on Discord. I had to leave and it was all his lol

Smoke did an excellent job on the initial flank move, disengaging out of a bad situation and then reattacking.

-Why did that battalion do a 180-degree wheel?
-Ok, this is the THIRD time I have ordered my cav brigade over here and it still isn’t moving
-Wait, why is my battery moving back? Come back up here, please

All also common place things under your daily command I'm sure.