State of Play: Commands and Colors: Napoleonics – Le Grande Battles: Austerlitz

 

After nearly two weeks’ break form your actual wargaming, I was keen when T said he had a free afternoon and we should have a game. He had to cancel Monday, which was going to be Tuesday, but family intervened, but we managed to get together on Thursday after lunch. That would give us a clear block of nearly four hours – or that was the plan, at least. We usually have maybe two hours and change of a weekday evening, starting at about 9:00-ish (although we have been known to play through to midnight on occasion when we’re in the teeth of a really compelling game).

Four hours required something special, and I knew what I had to do.

Commands and Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010) – La Grande Battle: Austerlitz, 2 December, 1805 (from the EPIC Napoleonics Expansion (GMT Games, 2016)). For the uninitiated, a regular C&C Napoleonics game is played out on a 9 by 13 hex grid. The EPIC box came with a bunch of scenarios for the new twin mounted boards (increasing the battlefield to 20 hexes wide and 11 deep) and two scenarios for an extra set of card-printed maps, Austerlitz and Vimeiro (Peninsula War) which are fought over a truly impressive 26 by 11 hex grid.

The day didn’t quite come off how we planned. T was held up a little longer than expected at work, but I had a bunch of errands to run in the morning, and I was still placing Russian units when he arrived. We also had a new constraint on the duration of our game, now needing to wrap it up at a little after three. But having got this far, we weren’t going to be deterred. This was our first wargame for the year; we would just play until we had to stop. A few minutes and a poured coffee later, we were into the action.

The Austerlitz Grande Battle scenario is very similar to the EPIC scenario included in the same box but zoomed-in a little; it covers the same region, but the extra six hexes width allow for more terrain detail (like the two feeding streams of the Goldbach), and additional units, offering a little more nuance to the order of battle. The downside (for this session, at least) was the increase of a Victory Banner target from 19 in the EPIC scenario to a heady 22 Banners.

The Alliance start at a disadvantage; the French are further forward in some areas three units on the centre-line, with another eleven units one hex back, right up there near a string of Temporary Victory Banner locations, compared to three Russian units a row from centre (though, to be fair, the Allies have a good chance of seizing the Pratzen Heights, but whether they can hold it, if the French manage some centre-section activations, would remain to be seen. A further disadvantage to the Allies is the card distribution; they get a hand of just four cards to the French player’s six. None of this is to excuse my own poor performance. It’s a tough gig, but winnable if you play the whole board and are blessed with a little luck on the day.

Now, for the opening of hostilities, let's have a Cavalry Charge...

The required luck was not with me, however, on that particular day. I could not get any traction on the Allied Right. Of my four opening cards, three were Left activation orders, one Centre. T spent the first three rounds moving troops forward on his Right and killing any Russians they came up against. The mid-game saw some action on the slopes on the Pratzen Heights, but I couldn’t get enough troops forward to make an effective showing, let alone hold the hills.

By the end of our final round, I had Russian Grenadiers pouring fire into the Castle (to no good effect), and I had managed to push the French out of Telnitz. I’d made some ground on my Left flank and in the Centre, but at a heavy cost.

...and still no Right flank activations for the Allies.

In the time we had available we managed to get through ten activations each. At the end of our truncated session, the French held no less than nine Victory Banners, to the Allies two. If we’d been able to manage an extra round or two, I’m confident I could have gained another two banners for holding the Stare Vinohrady (having already occupied two hexes), but T should have already had another two points for holding Bosenitz, the Castle, and Telnitz, but couldn’t get troops down to the river swiftly enough to take advantage of the clearance.

Fierce fighting over the vineyards.

La Grande Battle Austerlitz is a scenario we are both keen to revisit. T and I have been playing C&C Napleonics for so long that we’re both quite comfortable playing the larger EPIC scenarios given an early enough start. But this was something different entirely. There is just so much going, all at once. There are 103 units on the board at start, and fifteen leaders across the two sides. Overwhelmed isn’t quite the right word for what I felt, but on the smaller boards, it’s easy to forget that the scenario is often depicting a portion of a greater battle, like a flank or a rear-guard position action. With the Grande Battles boards you get a greater sense of the enormity of the Eighteenth- and early-Nineteenth-Century battles, the sheer weight of armies, each a dozen or more divisions strong, colliding on a meandering front, under a rain of canon-shot and shrouded in an acrid haze of powder smoke, the smell competing with the those of burnt hair and freshly spilt blood. Not overwhelmed, but somewhat humbled.

State of affairs end of tenth round, when we had co call the game.