"Castiglione 1796 X 2" Topic

We played two games of the 1796 battle of Castiglione Thursday evening, using our Bonaparte Waltz rules. The scenario is heavily weighted against the Austrians. Napoleon outnumbers them by 30,000 to 24,000 and has a division arriving behind the Austrian left flank, making the redoubt on that flank less than secure. We figured we'd play the game twice, switch sides in between.

For the first game I was Bonaparte with Ken as Fiorella, who arrived behind the flank on the third turn. Rick was Wurmser, with Tom as Davidovich. The Austrians concentrated towards their left flank early on, building up around the redoubt on Monte Medolano. I threw Massena's division at their right center. A scrum broke out and Massena began pushing into their line. Meanwhile Fiorella appeared behind their left and advanced on the redoubt from the rear. The Austrians attacked Fiorella's division but were repulsed. Back on the Austrian right, Massena captured the hilltop town of Solferino and could see the supply wagon that signified the Austrian line of retreat tantalizingly near. One more push and the Austrians wouldn't be able to draw cards while we held it. Since their dice had been cold as ice they threw in the towel. The game had lasted five turns and taken just under an hour. I didn't count, but the losses may have been near the historical 1,000+ French and 3,000 Austrian.

We broke for dinner. It was decided that Fiorella didn't have enough command problems, so we drew up a short chart that had Fiorella do nothing on 1 or 2, move slowly on 3 or 4 and move full speed on 5 or 6. Cards could also be used to get him moving. We changed from drawing one card per turn to drawing two per turn for the competent Wurmser and three for the superior Bonaparte. Tom didn't bring his camera so I only have a few pictures of the early part of the second game.

I was Wurmser, with Ken as Davidovich. Rick was Bonaparte, with Tom as Fiorella and Augereau. An early attack by Massena with Marmont's horse artillery was repulsed.

I threw in a spirited counter-attack that did some damage but saw my right flank cavalry brigade destroyed. The French surged forward and broke through my center. The threat to our rear materialized. Davidovich sent his cavalry brigade to screen them. This ended up actually hastening their march. The scenario needs some more work…

The redoubt fell. It looked like curtains for us but I was in a Jimmy Cagney frame of mind. "Come and get me coppers!" Each turn I sent whatever was in order charging into the midst of disordered or exhausted French units and tried to rally the rest of my troops.

Once I sent a disordered brigade of grenadiers to fall on some exhausted French infantry. The French played an infantry counter-attack card and sent in fresh units. The grenadiers drove the attack back but then were in no shape to continue their attack. Ken crossed the stream with two brigades and artillery, but was hit by 8 French units while surrounded. He took 4 hits and 4 retreats, but managed to escape without too much further damage. This led to a discussion after the game and some changes to the rules. There are now free hacks…

There were a lot of units on both sides that only needed one hit to go. I put some away with my 30 gun battery and added a few more with the odd attack when I could scrape up a rallied unit at the start of a turn. Suddenly, we found that the French had lost 8 units and hit their breakpoint. The losses were astronomical. Austrian losses were over 8,000 and 10 guns, French losses were more like 10,000 and 10 guns. Davidovich had his horse shot out from under him near the end. We played 10 turns (of a possible 15) in two hours.

All of this led to rules changes, since the Austrians were able to function too well with their center broken and their left flank out of command control. Also, an Austrian division was able to retreat through a gauntlet of surrounding French without much damage beyond that in the initial assault. Another problem was the French didn't clearly understand the victory conditions. They thought taking the redoubt was sudden death. When that happened and the game didn't end, they continued to press forward in the center. I think they would have been better advised to pull back and reorganize. I had a good time – sometimes nothing is better than a desperate scrape.

Our impression of the victory conditions in both games and both sides was that for the French to win they had to capture the redoubt and knock out 5 Austrian units while losing less than 5 themselves, which we did – we had no idea we also had to hold that lead to the end of the day. Nevertheless, I certainly enjoyed both games and liked the back & forth.

I advised Napoleon, upon hearing that the battle had not ended (even if it appeared ended), that we should take a hour (like 2 game turns) to reorganize and go forward again as this is possible in this game and there was plenty of time in the day at that point. Nappy wanted to move all our troops across the stream I'm not sure how that would have helped with the amount of disorder we had at that point.

Lovely looking battle-lines and models, its a shame there isn't more photos as Castiglione is a favourite scenario of mine.