23 May 1813 - Southern Germany - Day 3
Marshal Massena is determined to hold the Kufstein/Salzburg border
7th army to hold Walchsee
8th army to hold Sankt Johann
9th army to rally at Worgl
General Schwarzenberg wants to follow up his victory at Kitzbuhel
He also orders reserve depots to forward all available supplies to
forward depots
1st army to attack Walchsee
2nd army hold Inzell
3rd army occupy Kitzbuhel
Battle of Walchsee
Austrians win the battle of Walchsee
At nightfall the Bavarians hold half of the town, but have six brigades
in rout
During darkness they retreat and abandon the town
Bavarians lose 8 infantry, 2 cavalry and 1 gunner casualties (3500 men)
Austrians lose 3 infantry and 1 cavalry casualties (1300 men)
Comment
The battle was
much closer than the casualties and final outcome would suggest.
The Austrians
lost the first attack on the town, which was held by a militia brigade
Due to a poor
dice throw, the attacking Grenadier brigade retreated shaken
Fortunately
there were two reserve brigades, and they took half of the town on the second
attempt
The Austrians
also lost the first cavalry melee, but rallied and routed half of the Bavarian
army
We fought this
game twice, which is really very unusual
I always feel
that it is important to accept the outcome of the table game
However in the
first attempt the Austrians lost so heavily that it would have been the end of
the campaign
This was
entirely due to poor dice for the Austrians, and very good dice for the
Bavarians
The result was almost
all of 1st Austrian army were routed with heavy casualties
After just three
campaign days, and two battles, the Austrians would have been reduced to two
armies
It would have
been impossible for them to attack the three Bavarian armies
Had it been a
PBEM campaign, we would have felt obliged to accept the result
But because it
is a solo campaign we both agreed to refight the battle
In doing so we
salvaged the whole campaign phase.
But I do feel a little guilty to have compromised to do so
Thistlebarrow,
ReplyDeleteAn interesting battle report … and an interesting conundrum for you to solve.
I suspect I would have stuck with the disastrous result, even if it had an undesirable effect on the campaign, but I can understand why you chose to refight it. As your campaigns are ones that you fight for you and your wife’s enjoyment, having a campaign end before it has properly begun would have been more than a little inconvenient. A refight makes perfect sense … although I would have loved to have seen if the Austrians could have extricated themselves from such a difficult situation.
All the best,
Bob
Hi Bob
DeleteThanks for your comment.
In the great scheme of things it would not have made much difference one way or the other, had we accepted the outcome of the first wargame. This is the 21st campaign phase set in southern Germany, so the winner would make little difference. However a lot of work goes into setting up each campaigh phase, and we would normally expect about six battles/wargames in return.
When fighting the wargame we are both aware of the campaign background, but mostly as the objective of the wargame. For example the objective will often be to capture a town located on a major road junction. But the effect on the campaign of the loss of the cross roads is not upper in our minds. This only comes to the fore when I transfer the result of the wargame back to the campaign.
However on balance I would agree with you, in theory anyway. I would prefer to accept the result of each wargame/battle, and indeed we almost always do. I only mentioned it on the blog to clarify how unusual it is, and why we did so this time. The decision, rather than anything that took part on the tabletop, made this a significant and memorable wargame
regards
Paul