Blucher Battle of Frischbach

The Battle of Frischbach, Southern Germany 1809, a Battle between France and her Allies vs. Austria. A fictional battle using the Blucher rules.

July 24th I ran a game for my local gaming group. When I was designing the scenario I was expecting 4 players, so I decided to use the coalition rules and each player would run a separate army. So of course 6 players showed up, which required I do a bit of on the fly adjustments, which mostly worked out well.

This game saw the first official use of my DIY battle mat.

Rather than spend a lot of time thinking of army lists, I used my force cards and drew two 200 points Austrian forces and two 250 point French forces. I actually (just) had more than enough painted units to do it (I had to proxy some French ally units, with actual French units) for a total of 37 French & Allied units and 33 Austrian units. Each army was 4 corps. Due to the cards I used to create the armies both sides were very short on cavalry, 6 per side and while the Austrians had more guns than the French, they opted to attach most of them to infantry units (as they were defending), they only had 1 massed horse battery, whereas the French had 4 massed foot batteries.

I used the Scharnhorst maps to choose a battle area, a couple of die rolls saw me using the South Germany maps with the battle centered around D3/E3. I added a road and village in D4.

The scenario was; the Austrians are defending and if the French didn't break the Austrian army's morale or capture both objectives the Austrians would win.

This was only the second game in which I used my Concealing boxes to show units in reserve, see Blinds Box Tutorial for additional info on them.

Setup locations French on the Right, under the Blue boxes, consider that one red box a blue box.

The Austrians deployed 3 of their 4 corps behind the stream, not realizing they couldn't use their reserve move and cross over the stream. (I guess I didn't explain it well enough)

Opening moves, the French send forward almost 2 entire corps against the lone Austrian corps.

The IV French corps, (which is mostly made of the allied units) moves to the stream and threatens to cross. The last French corps (the III) stays in reserve .

The Austrians realizing how exposed they are on their Left try to race their III Armee Korps to help.

a bit of skirmishing across the stream.

French reserves waiting for an opening.

Austrian I Armee Korps grimly holding on, the French II Corps prepares to assault the area around the village of Frischbach.

With the Austrians having little or no reserves uncommitted the French reserve launches it attack on the the Austrian center.

The fighting around Frischbach is very bloody

 

Fierce fighting on both sides of the stream near Frischbach.

The fighting around Frischbach dies down. The Austrians army on this side has broken and these French are beat up somewhat.

French reserves rupture the Austrian line in multiple places

The Austrian players concede the game after one wing is broken, the second Austrian wing was still in pretty good shape, but both French armies were still combat effective, albeit the I and II corps were brittle, and the French III corps had just punched 2 holes in the Austrian line

A great game and a good time had by all players. 8 Corps hammered away at each other for 5 hours and we reached an actual conclusion, as opposed to the usual "X side would have probably lost".