Friedland June 14 1807/2014

[hazelbark]

Saturday our group fought Friedland and had a great game.

History followed suit in many places.
Bagration, the Russian center and Guards pressured Lannes to the breaking point. Even kept Victor in check for a good while.
But they were a bit too over extended when Ney's Corps attacked through the Sortlack woods. They had pulled all the Russian reserves in against Victor, so Ney instead of having to fight through Sortlack flew in very hard and fast intot he flank of the Russians in the center.

Gortchakov started off pressing Grouchy and Mortier on the North side of the battlefield, but as the French got into position and Nansouty' cuirassier made their presence felts that started to collapse.

One observation is while historically the Russian command structure was a mess at Friedland, its a tough call to give them all the commanders that they would have in a points game. But the lack of the abundance of commanders meant it was a matter of time before their were too many units that needed bolstering. In our after discussion we sort of decided to up the # of commanders of the non-French in the early period armies to balance the game more for fun. I think actually there is a lot of good history in how the game unfolds with the difficulty of the early period coalition forces not having a 1-3 or 1-4 command ratio to units. Historical OBs look more like 1-5 and 1-6 which you factor in Corps and such. But to make it a tenser fight we will adjust in the future.

[viperofmilan]

Dan,

Thanks so much for putting this together. I know it was a lot of work. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and got to leave before everything went south for the Russians. I hope that we can do more of this kind of thing. IMHO, how a rule set performs in historical scenarios is the "proof in the pudding" of how good a rule set it is. So far, FoG-N has performed very well in this regard.

Kevin

[hazelbark]

Indeed our list is growing
Katzbach 1813
Brienne 1814
Marengo 1800
Friedland 1807
Talavera 1809

[bahdahbum]

The russian army is divided in 2 by a small river ( the russian units fighting in front of Frieland ) and there were some bridges . So how did you treat the river which prevents two russian wings to cooperate ?

[hazelbark]

Bascially the middle section of the river was impassable as I wanted the Russians to be able to anchor their flanks. And that was pretty historical,.
Then back toward the Russian rear there was a bridge for easy crossing. And that river area was a CMT to cross. (this is not the Alle, which was impassable except at bridges)
The Russian players chose not to shift forces or use any reserves to bolster their northern flank.