Katzbach 20.9.13

My nephew David had last week off and with me still unable to get on my feet properly we organised a game for Friday. If you follow my blog regularly you will know I am working towards the Katzbach 1813 order of battle so we decided to give the scenario a go. Straight up I'll let you know there are a lot of pics and they are not great with only a couple of close ups as I messed up my settings. However hopefully the pics I took will give you an idea of how we got on.

  

The set up: I laid down the terrain the evening before with the actual Katzbach river just off table to the right of the trees (I need a bigger table). My objectives for the day were to either break through to the bridge and hold the area till the end of the game or to break 3 French brigades. David's objective was very simple, just do as much damage to my units as possible and stop me reaching my goals by games end.

David's newly finished French light battalion. That's 2 leger battalions he has now finished, good man!

  

And David also took charge of my newly finished French foot battery. There was a lot of recently finished lead on the table so the finger of fate was pointing all around

   

View down the barrel of the guns at my advancing Prussians. Unfortunately with such a small table it didn't give David much of a chance to knock many casualties off the lead columns before they reached the guns.

     

I very quickly had a large portion of my force on the move.

   

Not to much thinking on my part as I really only had 1 option, 'forward'. I already knew I had more troops coming so I had to make space for them. 

  

David appeared to struggle with his deployment area and actually held up his reinforcements till he had more space to manoeuvre however it didn't help matters that he forgot to move over his CinC to give the new brigade an order. We had a crazy start to the game when David frustrated with his deployment decided in a split second to roll for a brigade initiative and rolled a double 1. This meant that his brigade sitting on a hold order at the tables edge would have retired off the table! We had a good laugh about it and decided to forget about it and move on.

  

I tried to take full advantage of David's early deployment as I knew he would soon have plenty of troops coming into the battle. 

  

With a rush of blood I charged 2 battalions head long into the guns and David again rolled incredibly low, only faltering 1 battalion and the other battalion charged home smashing the gun crews (1st newly painted unit lifted from the table!).

   

With an initial advantage gained I pushed my troops forward with cavalry support. However out of shot David countered my assault and capture of the guns by riding down the unformed victorious battalion cutting and slashing at them as they ran from the field and forcing brigade and morale rolls that I luckily passed. 

     

More cavalry coming over to help getting targeted on the way.
  

Another strange 1, David left his front brigade in line within cavalry range and not enough time/distance to for square and the brigade was broken?!? He now had plenty of room for his reinforcements!

David finally got his cavalry off support orders and onto assault! 

   

By turn 6 my Russian battalions entered the game however being 2nd line I decided to keep them as security on the flank as things were going well over on the left. You can also see my 2 kurassier regiments standing in as Silesian landwehr and East Prussian cavalry regiments (I kept them at a distance holding the flank to). 

You can see things are starting to heat up, the cavalry battle in the centre was great fun push backs and horses blown, returning to own lines and then going back in for more when reformed.
   

David doesn't have any French lancers or chasseurs painted so suitable stand-ins were found.

Yet another newly painted unit about to leave the table, the Brandenburg uhlans having taken a few casualties on the way to the fight eventually routed however the West Prussian dragoons stood their ground all day.

David sent his 2 elite chasseurs regiments (more stand ins), to harass my infantry however he had taken so long to get them into the action that I had set up quite a line of artillery fire. I also had a go at 1 of the advancing cavalry regiments with my Silesian landwehr cavalry who were on engage orders. The chasseurs turned to meet their charge and my cavalry stopped dead in their tracks and were smashed, with the chasseurs having enough distance to catch them in flight . . . they didn't stand a chance!
  

However on the left flank my troops were pressing David's battalions hard with some lucky, lucky dice rolls. There was plenty of opportunities to stop them but still they pushed on. My veteran West Prussians fusiliers standing in as East Prussians 

Everything was on the table now. 

David had his final brigade at the edge of the table and again he had moved his CinC outwith 30 and failed the order change so went for the brigade general order change and rolled double 1 again!!! This time I couldn't let it pass, 2 brigades broken.

And they were dressed as the old guard as well!!!

Eventually I broke through to the bridge

The Brandenburg hussars holding their own on the day.

The bridge was secure but David still had some cavalry of a reasonable quality around if not bloodied.

David's right flank finally gave way.
    

The last fight of the day: We had been fighting for maybe 11 hours with breaks for dinner and snacks, it was decided if David won this cavalry battle, beating the only really useful allied cavalry left on the table we would say that there was a chance of a draw, and if he lost it then it would be a Prussian victory.
 David rolled low, I rolled high and the allies won the day!
   

A brilliant day of gaming and we both learnt loads. We no doubt made loads of mistakes but we both agreed it flowed really well and we worked through any areas we were unsure of. We planned to play FOW the following day but were to knackered so relaxed looking though all our stuff and making plans.
More painting to follow . . .

. . . Super, Fantastic, Napoleonic Fun!!!