Neil Thomas "Napoleonic Wargaming": Bridgehead!

 After a few weeks of outstanding gridded wargaming, I returned to an "open" concept this Sunday to get a game of Mr. Neil Thomas' "Napoleonic Wargaming" on the table and to test out a handy QRS I've put together for the game.

Note the measurements are in inches instead of cm's!

Today's fight?  A battle for the French "Bridgehead" using Scenario 5 from One Hour Wargames.  This battle was a desperate affair that could have been taken straight from the pages of "Thunder on the Danube".  

The French have a unit across the river and the Austrians are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the bridgehead to contain and destroy it.  A roll of the dice for both OOBs confirms that this is not going to be an easy task for the French with "the dreaded OOB #2" the French have only 3 line infantry units, 1 artillery unit, and 2 x light infantry units.  The Austrians fared better, rolling up 4 line infantry units, 1 light infantry unit, and 1 artillery unit.  The Austrians will better be able to sustain casualties than the French and have much better firepower.  

I played Napoleonic Wargaming straight from the book without any modifications, but my QRS has a few untried ideas to spice things up.  The scenario sees the Austrians randomly approaching from 3 possible directions - as if the French needed any more difficulty!

Turn 1 - Austrians go first in each turn (although adding an initiative roll would have greatly increased the tension in this game - something to think about going forward).

The Austrians roll up the middle approach and come barreling down along the road to the bridge  The French slowly move up, anchoring their left flank along the woods to their left, and hoping the Austrians dont roll up an approach from that direction!

Turn 2 - French reinforcements arrive as the Austrians march closer to the bridgehead.  The French battery moves as quickly as they can to cross the bridge and unlimber on the other side.

Limbered battery arriving while 2 x Austrian line units bear down on the lone French unit defending

Turn 3 - The Austrians position themselves to assault the French.  The plan is to shoot with one unit as another goes in.  Where is that damned artillery???

Austrian reinforcements arrive from another point.  They are marching with all haste to the field.  The guns will position themselves atop the hill while the infantry attempts to flank the bridgehead

Austrian reinforcements rushing to the battle!

It's not all white coats here!  French reinforcements also entering the battle.  The guns will support from a central position while the infantry expand the bridgehead, taking the fight to the Austrians.

Turn 4 - The battle is joined as a deadly fire erupts along the Austrian line!  Both sides join in the carnage.

Fighting erupts at the bridgehead and both side pour musketry into the other.  The Austrians have an element in columns ready to assault when the signal is given!

The Austrian line hammers into the French who have "hopefully" been weakened enough from fire to give ground.

View from the Austrian side as the combat is ongoing, both sides' reinforcements are marching up!  French artillery is setting up while the Austrian guns in the foreground are occupying their firing position atop the hill.

The combat is a tie!  In NT's Napoleonic Wargaming, ties go to the attacker unless in built up terrain.  The French must retreat - but can they?

Another aspect of NT's Napoleonic Wargaming rules is that if a retreat is blocked, the unit is eliminated.  Pretty harsh but in this case they'll have just enough room to fall back!  Note the French reinforcements coming up on their right. 

You have the option to fall back 1/2 facing the enemy, or a full move facing away.  In this case they fall back half

For those of you out there who love friction on the tabletop, NT's rules following a lost melee or the loss of a stand from fire force you to take a morale check.  Failure results in another stand loss!

The French fail their post melee MC and lose another stand!

Turn 5 - The Austrians are using a combination of movement and fire to bludgeon the French but the French are committing their reserves aggressively (perhaps too aggressively?) and assaulting the encroaching Austrians.

French assault to push back the Austrians while the unit in the center holds back to guard the bridgehead

The Austrians fire at the French guns to little effect but it's the only target they have as they're blocked by advancing Austrian infantry.

The battle lines form!  The Austrians put the pressure on the French bridgehead .

The end of turn 5 sees big problems brewing for the French.  Namely, the 2 x new units approaching from the west!  Meanwhile the grenzers take to the woods while the newly arrived Austrian infantry flank the woods closest to the river.  The French are desperately trying to keep their hold on the bridgehead!

Turn 6 -  High drama as the French slow down a bit.  Realizing that they've over-extended themselves, they attempt to extricate themselves and keep a bad situation from getting worse.  The unit that withdrew from a few turns ago is now thrown into the fight against the Austro-Hungarians approaching along the river.  Meanwhile the French "elites" in the center go into line and deploy to defend the bridgehead.  They know there are light detachments coming up that can also be thrown into the fray, but they're fragile and while they can move & shoot, they cannot stand up to a large line Regiment in a one on one fight.

Even battered units are thrown back into the fight as this French unit turns to face the flanking Austrian force.  Note the Grenzers in the woods also approaching.  They'd be content to sit there and fire at will at the French for the rest of the battle.

French "elites" in the center position themselves to hold out as long as they can.  More light infantry is coming up but will they be enough to hold out?  The game isn't even halfway over yet!

Here, the French unit that went on an initial rampage is facing off against 2 depleted Austrian units, who are content to stay there and fight it out with them while their flanking element assaults the French left.  A tough day indeed!

Turn 7 - The Austrian flank attack starts in earnest as the Hungarians slam into the depleted French infantry and destroy them.

Austrian attack coming from the left here into a 2 stand French unit.  Note the lights hustling up to the line.

Pre charge fire does whittle the Hungarian unit down a bit but they're fresh while the French are not.  It's a numbers game here on the left flank.

Turn 8 - (Blogger put my pics in reverse so here is the start of turn 7)...anyways the French Bridgehead has some viable combat power but the Austrians will have to roll very badly in their combats to pull out a win.  Turn 8 sees continued pressure mounting against the bridgehead.  While the French are putting up a tough fight, the Austrians continue edging closer to the bridgehead.

Firefight with the Grenzers in the woods!

Lots of French units firing.  The French are desperately fighting on all sides to keep the Austrians at bay but the noose is tightening!

Knowing full well the retreat rules, the Austrians keep assaulting the bridgehead.  One light unit will inevitable be destroyed as it has no room to retreat!

The lights are fighting as hard as they can, but they don't fight back in the open in melee!

The Austrians choose this unit to melee first.  It's a disaster with the Austrians scoring 5 hits.  The French light detachment evaporates since it cannot retreat.

Austrian gunners sending rounds downrange!

A couple turns went by when I forgot to take morale checks for both sides who lost stands from firing (this happens when playing solo from time to time).  I end up placing a red marker on a unit to remind me to conduct the MC.  both of these tough French units pass.  The French still have 3 units left (the Artillery were driven off by the Austrian guns!  (failed a save)

The French reduce the bridgehead a bit and the elite center unit moves closer to the lights to support them, as 2 Austrian units nip at the flank.

Turn 9 - The decisive turn as the French lights are destroyed, in addition to the 1x stand infantry regiment to the north.  This leaves the French elites left.

Beginning of Turn 9 it's looking grim for the French

The Austrians attack the lights from both sides, wiping them out

Ouch!

The French elites in the center are surrounded and cut off from their retreat!

Deadly grapeshot knocks down what remains of this once-proud regiment.  Only a single French unit remains!

Double Ouch!  All of the Austrian units fire on the remaining French unit and it is destroyed.  The game ends on Turn 10

That was a wonderful and entertaining game and to be perfectly honest I cannot remember a NT Napoleonic game that was not fun and entertaining.  I do think the French could have been played differently here to win this game, but they did not play to the strengths of their forces and they did not properly analyze the victory conditions (IE doing the staff-work).  So what went wrong?

LESSONS LEARNED

Victory Conditions.  If you own OHW, go check out Scenario #5 "Bridgehead" again!  It's a tough one.  The conditions for victory are "no enemy units on the north bank of the river within 12" of the bridge".  Yikes.  The French (Blue) also go second and the Austrians (Red) get the first go each turn.  That makes the woods "key terrain" in my opinion (hindsight is 20/20).  The French were graced with not 1 but 2 skirmisher units who should have come on first and immediately occupied the woods as a bulwark.  

Light Detachments.  That leads me to my next point.  Lights fight as close order infantry in terrain so this should have been an easy way for the French to dig in and be extremely difficult to remove.  Very big mistake here!

Aggression.  Aggression on the table is never a bad thing if it has a purpose.  The French in their vigorous attacks early-on pushed multiple Austrian units back, but wore the French down to the point where when the Austrians arrived in numbers, the French units were all too weak to really to attack again.  In fact the critical point of the game was the Austrian flank attack right at the bridge into the weakened French infantry regiment on the left flank.  The NT rules are very good but units get worn down quickly!  You should only commit, especially in melee, when you know your chances of winning are good.  If you're the red player in this game, you get to apply pressure to multiple points at the same time and it pays to be aggressive.  In fact you should be shooting or assaulting every time once in position if you're the Red player.  As the Blue player, you should temper aggression until you have enough combat power built up on the north bank.  Then you can start pushing the enemy units back!

Planning.  I dont think I dilly-dallied in getting French units over to the north bank.  There wasn't a moment wasted in reinforcing the bridgehead, but the units crossing should all have been selected in support of the plan.  I was more concerned with shoring up the beleaguered units north of the river instead of carrying out the plan.

Well I hope you enjoyed looking at this little AAR as much as I enjoyed playing this game and writing about it!  I hope everyone has a great week.