Tuesday, May 05, 2020

Refighting The Battle Of Pfaffenhofen (part three)

Final notes before we start:
A) The 'river' is fordable to all troops at half speed. Units firing or meleeing the same turn as crossing the water suffer a -1 modifier to combat rolls.
B) The wooded high-ground is only passable to light infantry, who suffer no movement penalty. The lightly wooded lower-ground is passable to other foot and horse, reducing movement by a third.
C) The command & control system needs modifying when two armies are significantly different in size, as otherwise the army with fewer units stands to get significantly better control of its forces. Accordingly, the Franco-Palatinate wings in this battle will each have a four-sided die instead of a normal six-sided one for assessing action points.
D)  Weather seems to have played no part in the battle, and we will not be using the Game Of Kings weather rules.
Looking from behind de Ségur and the Champagne Foot
The view from the centre of the Austrian lines
My opponent, as expected, chose to be de Ségur in command of the Franco-Palatinate forces. His centre, which gets the 10-sided action-points die consists of the foot, the artillery and the general; the right flank has three squadrons of horse; the left flank has two squadrons of horse.
My centre also consists of the foot (apart from the pandurs), the artillery and the general; the right flank has four squadrons of horse and the pandurs; the left flank has four squadrons of horse, including the hussars on the far side of Scheyern Abbey.
TURN ONE
I won the dice-off, and chose to move first. My plan is to advance on all fronts to give fullest effect to my advantages in numbers and quality - not a sophisticated plan, but it seems to me to fit the circumstances the two armies find themselves in.
For command & control, I rolled 4 (left) - 7 (centre) - 3 (right), ordering a general advance, but making sure to include the pandurs on the right and the Nagy-Károly Hussars on the left.
General view of the advance of the main body of the Austrian army - a slightly ragged line thanks to the move-variation rule
De Ségur rolled a stupendous 4-10-3 for command & control. He chose to stand pat with his centre (his artillery is just out of range of my leading foot) and left, but to charge forward with his right.
De Ségur's right-flank horse surges forward, apparently hoping to exploit their temporary local advantage in numbers
TURN TWO
I rolled 2-2-2 - not much use, but at least my artillery got within extreme roundshot range of the French foot, my pandurs continued infiltrating through the woods on the French left, and a cavalry melee near Scheyern Abbey became all but inevitable.
Pandurs approach the French left
Cavalry about to clash
De Ségur rolled 1-2-3. His artillery opened fire on my Deutschmesiter-Los Rios Grenadiers, who had advanced with the Austrian gun, scoring a potential hit but not reducing their effectiveness (he rolled a 2 rather than the needed 5 for converting a potential hit into an actual one). He made no other moves in the centre or on the left, but on his right La Reine Cavalerie charged into my von Savoyen Dragoons, and the von Gschray Hussars charged, somewhat presumptuously I thought, into my Sachsen-Gotha Dragoons.
In the melee between La Reine Cavalerie and the von Savoyen Dragoons, both sides scored two hits. The cavalerie, being cuirassiers, had saving throws, but both dice rolled a 5, agonisingly one pip short of negating the hits, so both sides lost 50% effectiveness and the melee is destined to continue in the next half-turn.
In the other melee, his hussars scored one hit but were out-matched by my dragoons who, getting eight dice in all (double the normal number as they were fighting light cavalry), scored three hits. The hussars survived their morale test, taken for losing a melee, but had to flee.
Hussars flee from the von Savoyen Dragoons

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