Young Bonaparte III: Lodi

Thursday evening the Fencibles played the third in a series of scenarios of Bonaparte’s 1796 campaign in Italy, by Bloody Big Battles designer Chris Pringle. The first two can be seen here.
Dego:
Mondovi:

It looked like the Austrian was in for a hard time but we figured on playing the game twice and switching sides. Bill volunteered for the first ordeal. I played Bonaparte and Ken was Serurier. Austrian morale is pretty shaky after earlier defeats. Worse, the troops are starting to have valid doubts about the competence of their CO, Beaulieu. All the infantry are fragile, which combined with the passive status and lack of officers makes them a hard army to play. They don’t move well and they don’t fight that well. They also have to worry about the French cutting them off from their supply lines to the east. Austrians are in italics in all the photos. The starting deployment is below.

Serurier crossed first and got a face-full of claws for his pains.

Then Bonaparte crossed the Po, east of Stradella.

Since the Austrians did not directly block the crossing, French units crossed at the rate of 3 per turn. The cavalry waited until all the infantry were across.

Now the Austrians started to fall apart.

The Austrians picked up 3 victory points, 1 each for holding the Terdoppio stream line on turn 4, the Ticino river turn on turn 5 and Milan on turn 6. But they lost 5 points for units destroyed during the game and another 3 for Liptay’s units cut off at game end, for a grand total of minus 5.

French losses were 7 infantry bases, 2 run off, Serurier wounded. Massena was also hit near the end of the game, out of action for a month. Austrian losses were 12 bases of infantry with 8 run off, another 12 or captured at game end, 1 cavalry and 1 run off. Bill noted proudly he had no officer casualties, since he had no officers. We had taken 2 hours, 27 minutes to play 8 turns. There had been a wild fur-ball of assaults near the Stradella crossing. They game was fun, though the end was hard on Bill. I think he enjoyed roughing up Serurier at the start.

Andrew arrived and we broke for dinner, enjoying the fine bottle of wine he’d brought, along with Ken’s bread and Bill’s dessert.

We set up again, with Bill as Bonaparte, Andrew as Serurier and me as the hapless Beaulieu. Ken watched for a while and then left to get home early.

And then I corked the bottle.

Serurier finally got a bloody nose.

Finally things broke for the French at the Stradella crossing, but way too late.

I picked up 2 victory points, 1 for holding Milan on turn 6 and another for holding the Adda river line at game end. 5 of my units were destroyed during the game, 3 in the astounding rout of my right flank early in the game and 2 near the end of the game at the Stradella crossing. This gave a total score of minus 3, a thumping French victory. Half of my army was hors de combat.

French losses were 7 infantry, with 1 run off. Austrian losses were 15 infantry, 2 run off, 1 cavalry and 1 run off. We played 8 turns in an hour, 40 minutes. I think it went faster because fewer French got over the river and thus there were fewer assaults to calculate.

We all enjoyed the game though I think Bill was frustrated by his rough time getting across the Po. We had scores of -5 and -3. I think perhaps the Austrians should count a positive score as a victory, or else give them 2 points for each time dependent objective. Scored that way, both games would still have been French wins but closer.

After the game it struck me perhaps we should not use the magnetic sabots when playing this scenario because it makes the footprints of the units deeper, and much of the game is about shoving units across the Po River in tight circumstances. Also, while editing photos I realized I had forgotten to put houses on the villages and towns. Oh well, next time...

But this was a gas and once the report is done I need to pack away the troops, roll up the mat and get working on the next 1796 scenario. Cheers. Oh yes, a posthumous medal and promotion to whoever commanded the Austrian cavalry in the second game. I need to paint a medal on the officer, put a battle honor under the base.