Sunday 7 August 2022

Kufstein Campaign Day 3


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

2 comments:

  1. Thistlebarrow,

    An 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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Bob

      Thanks 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

      Delete

I have set the settings for comments to come to me before posting so that I will not miss any