Campaign Map
There was a break of almost three weeks between the end
of the Leon Campaign and the start of the Bayreuth Campaign. This is the longest gap in the 1813 campaign
since it started in July 2009.
This was partly because of working on the “almost
battles” project, but even more so on the PowerPoint slide show project. Neither are completed, but I felt the need
to get back to some wargaming.
It is surprisingly easy to get out of the routine of the
campaign, even after such a long time.
We have both missed the regular wargames, and feel the need to get back
into having one on the wargames table all of the time.
Russian Army
This is the twenty-eight campaign phase in the 1813
campaign, and the sixth one set in Central Germany. It is unusual in that the French have won
five of the previous campaigns. This
has nothing to do with the composition of the French and Russian armies
involved, nor that one side has a particular edge in command ability. Nor has it anything to do with whether Jan
or I commanded one side or the other.
It is purely down to luck.
All five campaign areas have their own strength and weakness,
as do the ten armies which fight over them.
Each campaign phase has different objectives, but always equal French
and allied armies. Apart from Spain, all
have similar orders of battle. Certainly
all have similar numbers of infantry, cavalry and artillery. The four corps in each army may have the
same number of brigades. But each is
different in ability. There is always
one elite corps and one conscript one, plus two average corps. The confusion of the campaign movement means
that it is very unusual for the two elite, or the two conscript, corps to fight
each other.
Then each army has different morale and combat
abilities. For example the British have
slightly better firepower, but the French slightly better morale. The differences are slight, and may be a plus
or minus one in a combat or morale chart.
So the all deciding dice throw evens these difference out over a
campaign which has six or so battles
Second French Army
The latest campaign is unusual because a river runs
divides the two armies from north to south.
In my campaigns almost all river sections have a bridge, and in addition
are fordable either side of the bridge.
This is because I want to be able to wargame every single square on the
campaign map, all 81 of them. Artillery
can only cross by a bridge, infantry and cavalry can ford. However they do so at half movement rate, and
are disordered when they do so. This
puts them at great risk if they are attacked whilst crossing a river.
Having equal sized armies also makes it very difficult
for the attacking side. They have the
advantage of being able to concentrate in the early stages of a campaign, but
they have to take full advantage. They
also have to be lucky in the early moves.
If the dice runs against them and they lose heavily in cavalry or
artillery, they will find it very difficult to continue to attack.
Despite this all twenty-eight previous campaign phases
have gone well. I cannot remember even
one where the campaign had to be abandoned because it had become too one sided
too early in the campaign. Mind running
a solo campaign does mean that I can allow a defeated corps extra time to
recover. This was not possible when it
was a multi-player PBEM campaign.
So pleased to be back in wargame mode and looking forward
to some challenging but fun games.
You will find a link to the 1813 campaign blog
below. It contains details of the
Bayreuth campaign including maps used, orders of battle campaign objective and
history of the campaign in central Germany.
