French v Prussian (1813)

[paulbg]

Used John's list from the Army spreadsheet, the forces gave a good balanced game.

The French defended and baring some small maneuver waited for the Prussians.Used the light infantry in skirmish to mask units from some artillery and to occupy some bad going in the centre of the table that the Prussians needed to cross. Worked very well.

Ran into some old issues (variants on the theme).

Unit with attached cavalry being shot at by skirmishers in bad going 5-6MU away. -2 dice .... you must be kidding, they can't move that far (2MU only.)

Infantry (small) unit charged by a (large) cavalry. We worked through the process and everything seemed to work out. The mounted passed inside 2 MU of some skirmishing infantry - in a wood - so we allowed then to shoot, infantry failed CT so lost cohesion and shot with some artillery in support. Lots of shooting and not 1 hit ! The square broke and the cav was disrupted (would have been waivering if it was not a large unit). Cav pursued hitting the supporting artillery - up hill and with infantry flank support. The valiant gunners defended their guns only disrupting and cav retired waivering.

At what point does the cav become spent ? After the combat ? After the pursuit ?
Is this (spent) based on the original hits (before adjustment for being large - although not relevant in our case) ?


At the other end of the line there was some shooting duels. The most interesting scenario here was about the declaration of targets and order of shooting. A large French infantry is within 6MU (and straight ahead) of a small Prussian Infantry and within long range of a Prussian artillery (or potentially in arc).

So should we
1. declare all firers against a specific target
2. fire each unit in turn

The outcome can be quite different. In this case the infantry scored 3 hits which is enough to disrupt the target. So the artillery could then choose another target ? You cannot cause 2 cohesion losses unless at short range. In our case all agreed to have the artillery fire at the infantry, since if less than 3 hits had been caused by the infantry fire the guns would have fired also).

We carried this decision forward to a later scenario (in the centre).

A Large Prussian Infantry advanced on 2 French batteries, closed to within 2MU (although after the Prussian player decided that that was an error in his judgement), it was already disrupted. The first battery fired and did enough hits to break the infantry. But we had the other battery fire also (in all 10 hits). The Infantry broke and burst through its supporting Infantry regiment and a cavalry regiment.


All in all a great game with a lot of lessons.

[SirGarnet]

Cavalry is Spent at the end of a combat phase in which it takes at least 1 hit OR immediately if it takes 4 hits from shooting. The Large -1 adjustment only affects the combat results so is irrelevant to being Spent.

All allocation of dice occurs before rolling and resolving results, so hits on a target are cumulative. Shooting dice allocation among multiple targets in arc and range is described on p51-52. Mandatory to a degree, discretionay to a degree.

[terrys]

So should we
1. declare all firers against a specific target
2. fire each unit in turn

Page 49: PROCEDURE: You Roll for hits against each target AFTER allocating dice.

[paulbg]

Mike

Thx.

Had thought that might be for Cav. It has some impact as its possible to take a hit and not lose cohesion then for the pursuit (2nd combat).

The shooting section mainly deals with multiple targets rather than multiple shooters. The issue was having seen the cumulative hits you could pivot artillery to another target before allocating its dice.


Paul



Terry has just responded (in the middle of my post).

[SirGarnet]

That Cavalry rarely are fresh for more than their first combat round is central to how they are best used grand tactically so that combat round is spent for good purpose.

The shooting section mainly deals with multiple targets rather than multiple shooters. The issue was having seen the cumulative hits you could pivot artillery to another target before allocating its dice.

Yes, Terry is clarifying the details of the sequence of play. Good practice is to save usefully pivotable artillery for late in the allocation process.

[paulbg]

Not so flexible

"declare all firers against a specific target"

means that that you cannot see the result and then add more.
If the factors are the same you don't then need to fire all in turn - just roll all in one go.