A playing of a smaller introductory scenario from the Austerlitz game, looking at the southern end of the battlefield around Telnitz and Sokolnitz, which sit on the Goldbach Stream.

Davout thinly spread, holds the area with the lead elements of IV Corps. The rest of the corps are off board and will arrive as reinforcements over the coming hours. The Coalition have orders to strike and take Telnitz and Sokolnitz and the dynamic of the game is whether they can do that before Davout’s numbers grow.

The game starts at 7 AM and plays for 5 turns, each representing one hour of real time.

When you play the full campaign game, there are several opening options for the Coaltition to take, but seeing the thinly spread Davout at the foot of the Pratzen Heights makes for a very inviting target, even though as the Coalition player you know that the whole of the French Corps will soon assemble and that you will struggle against them, opening the attack against Davout is just too compelling to ignore …. plus the the high victory points for that area just draw you in.

One of the fascinating things about wargaming is how individual parts of the battlefield, thanks to situation and dice can see narratives unfold that surely deserve recounting and so it is here, with the tenacious (in our game) Tirailleurs du Po.

They are a small unit of 308 Italian soldiers, allied to the French. As the French centre at the Goldbach suddenly starts to look like a potential crisis point, this small unit works its way across the northern arm of the stream into wooded ground that sits in a loop of water.

The position is good, proof against cavalry, with terrain that protects against both infantry assault and gun fire. Further, the troops are classed as light and so get a +1 bonus to their own fire.

So what can be hoped for from this small unit? A desperate stand, soon to be brushed aside perhaps!

The first assault is launched by a single powerful column (stack) of infantry, but the Tirailleurs Defensive Fire, sends that column routing off into the distance (in the photo,  the red arrow).

The shock to the Coalition caused Dokhturov to make a much better prepared attack (3 attack stacks - the white arrows in the photo), preceded by artillery fire. Despite the overwhelming numbers and taking heavy fire (flipped to the weaker side), the small band of Tirailleurs held out for another two hours, by which time, Davout had brought enough support up to the centre position to keep it secure from breakthrough.

On another day, our dice would be less lucky and we wouldn’t get our little story of a little unit bravely battling to save the Corps!

By mid-point in the game, it was looking a tough uphill struggle for the Coalition, but surprisingly towards the end, the castle and Telnitz fell to them, as each side worked to feed enough troops into the fray, but as the clock ticked down, the Coalition were not left with enough time to turn that into a victory (at best scoring 14 Victory Points from the needed 18) - Davout had held on for long enough and the battle would be decided in other parts of the field.

For last nights face to face game, I put down the introductory scenario from Eylau 1807, published by Sound of Drums. I have version 1.5 of the rules printed out and the latest version of the play aids.

The intro scenario (The Battle for Night Quarters) has the Russians already occupying Eylau with Baggavout and the centre artillery. Essen’s and Markov’s divisions are in support.

The French are entering from off map. Their initial main force will advance up through the village of Freiheit, from where they can assault Eylau. Turns are hourly, starting at 2pm. Being an intro scenario, fatigue points and change of orders are not used to keep things streamlined and simple. So both armies are classed as being under ‘Attack’ orders from the outset and these cannot be changed.

An attack order essentially allows both movement and contact with the enemy.

We had decided not to play the scenario competitively, but to just use the evening to explore the system.

The French and Russians both have their own activation cubes in a draw bag. When a cube is drawn, the side owning the cube can activate one of their divisions. If a red cube is drawn, then simultaneous fire is resolved by the infantry of both sides that are adjacent to an enemy and by any and all artillery that has an enemy within fire range.

In this scenario, there is just one red cube in the draw bag, together with 6 French cubes and 5 Russian cubes, so over the hourly turn, there will be 11 divisional activations and one fire phase.

 By the end of our short evening (2 1/2 hour session), we had only played half the scenario, as it takes a bit of time to absorb all of the various nuances that fall from the rules. 

I think we had probably got to a point that our grasp on the rules would allow us to start playing faster and indeed better as we started to better understand the relationship between cavalry, infantry and guns, we did plenty of daft things just to explore those aspects.

While I am playing, I like the involvement that is going on down in the hex. I like the differences between say column and line etc, though as I reflect, I am left thinking that if you multiply all of this nuance across the full battle, it is going to take quite a while to play.

Though I would counter, that in a full game, the order system would be in play and plenty of formations would be on hold / retire or regroup orders, so the tempo and therefore the game time would be reduced. I won’t know until I play the full game.

I did have one single moment that caused me to doubt the mechanic of only firing once per hourly turn (in this scenario), when the red cube was pulled and that was when French cavalry suddenly appeared before the Russian heavy guns. The red cube had already been pulled, so the guns could not fire at range. They would of course get a chance to defensive fire if charged to contact, but it just felt strange that the guns were effectively silenced via the mechanic, while the smartly dressed cavalry of IV Corps paraded in front of them.

Again, to counter that, in the full game there will be two red cubes in the bag, so all firepower can be used twice in an hour - but as this is draw dependent, we are still held a little hostage as to when artillery can be used in the full sense, even when their entire formation (i.e. 2nd Division) is activated. This is just a single observation and at the moment, I am content to believe that it is a very intentional design decision and that over the course of play, it will look less questionable.

I have been reading here about cavalry being potentially over powering, though those comments seem to fall from the playing of the next scenario, which is French infantry Vs Russian cavalry. In my scenario, both sides have cavalry, though in my game they didn’t meet, being on opposite sides of the battlefield. I didn’t get the sense that the cavalry was over powered. Their function seemed fine, with a blend of function ranging from screening to charging. Infantry going into square is really what the infantry should be doing against a cavalry threat and I don’t really think much of the idea of infantry advancing against a cavalry force in a meaningful way anyway. The best way to deal with enemy cavalry is with ….. cavalry and guns.

Guns are quite fickle. Mine dealt out some deadly fire (not always!) but they are VERY vulnerable to the enemy contacting them or being forced to limber up and retreat. I had my guns stacked in two, which is good for firepower, but being stacked with an infantry unit gives them better resilience.

I do quite a bit of solitaire gaming and the mechanics here strike me as being favourable to solo play. The randomness of chit pull very much helps that. 

I have become a collector of series games, simply so that I have to learn less game systems to keep on re-learning before each play. My examination of Eylau 1807 sits against a background of me wanting a napoleon ‘go to’ series. I presently own Hexasim’s Eagles of France and Vae Victis Jours de Gloire. Of those I think I prefer the Eagles of France system, but prefer the smaller footprint of JdG, but both games take too long to play (for me). My last playing of Hexasim’s Ligny took me 11 hours. A great experience, but too long on my table. I fear that Eylau 1807 doesn’t advance the cause of faster play. It is another longer game, even though I think I prefer its mechanics. So am I still looking for the right Napoleonic system for me?

I am now going to go back into the rulebook for another read through. There is a lot of nuance here and the learning curve means that a couple of small games are a good idea before tackling the big one. I don’t think the game will serve our face to face sessions because our sessions are too short and the game is too big to be left set up while we play enough sessions to reach a conclusion. 

However it may serve me for solo play. I have invested quite a bit of time in the game (and money, getting V1.5 professionally printed) so now that I have gone through the initial learning curve and have the system mostly under my belt, I will put the full battle up. I think it is only after playing the whole thing as intended by the designer, can an objective decision be reached as to whether this is the series for me. The purchase of the game and my learning to date at least deserves that.

I like the idea of smaller scenarios, but I think here, one needs to see them as purely learning situations and not as stand alone smaller scenarios. The smaller scenario plays out of context against the full battle and so it is too easy to draw conclusions from them that may not be true of the system as a whole. Perhaps the game needs some better smaller scenarios. Ones that are more reflective of the full system and can give those players with limited space and time a better feel for the whole thing. 

Over on BoardGameGeek, a gamer has modified some of the starter scenarios to also include Fatigue Points and Orders, so that the full flavour of the system can be experienced with a smaller one map scenario.

I thought this would be the ideal next step for me to explore this system and broaden my rules knowledge.

It is a 6 turn game and concentrates on L ´Estocq's Corps counter-attack against Davout.

I am doing an AAR over on BoardGameGeek and will updating that post after each of the six hourly turns.

LINK for anyone interested.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3453153/aar-variant-of-l-estocq-saves-the-day

Just released by Vae Victis, this module called Two Years of Glory, covers the battles of Jena-Auerstedt (1806) and Eylau & Friedland (1807), which is an absolute bonza bundle of battles for the napoleonic fan.

The game comes with 4 maps, 3 ½ counter sheets, plus rules and scenario book, written in dual language (French / English). Units are brigades and regiments, the hexscale is 500 metres and the time scale is 1 turn covers 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Eylau with its snowy landscape map grabs my immediate attention, is a 10 turn game, though I note it has a morning only scenario lasting 5 turns and i might give that an early go, just to see whether the game can fit into a single play session.

There are some rather nice CAM counters that bring a touch of flavour to each of the battles, they seem a bit more inventive than others that I have come across.