Halloween ESR Napoleonics Game AAR

[Bandit]

On Halloween TWC hosted an 1812 French vs Russians scenario – a slightly modified version of the Battle of Loubino (Valotina-Gora) – for the SPI group. Five corps, five players, and five hours led to a very frustratingly historical result! Both sides wanted to change history…

Historically the French under Murat and Ney hit the rearguard of Barclay de Tolly’s 1st Western Army following the Russian retreat after the Battle of Smolensk. Murat and Ney are able to push the Russians but don’t have enough infantry to win the fight. Junot’s VIII Corps was supposed to support Ney and Murat but he failed to act, reportedly drunk and depressed. This was also the battle that saw Gudin (of Davout’s I Corps but acting under orders from Murat and Ney) killed by a cannonball.

Our game was slightly adjusted from history because the SPI group wanted to see how large masses of cavalry worked under ESR. So Junot’s Corps (which historically never showed up anyway) was dropped as was Gudin’s division. On the Russian side we dropped one infantry corps, otherwise the forces were historical. This left both sides with disproportionately high amounts of cavalry and the horse driven tactics ran the tabletop…

[img alt=]http://thewargamingcompany.com/images/gallery/IMG_2927.jpg[/img]

You can see photos of the whole battle at <a href="http://thewargamingcompany.com/etsansresultat/gallery.html" target="_blank">The Wargaming Company Gallery[/url].

Cheers,

The Bandit

[gustav]

Interesting aar and good looking setup too.