Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Caldiero 1805: End of Turn 1

Massena's eagerly awaited 3 cards for his 8th initiative  starts out with a downer... ARMY MORALE! 

Fortunately for the French, all of their leaders pass their survival tests... and almost every Brigade commander had to check! 

Not a  bad card, but TACTICAL ADVANTAGE is only a little boost, and no game changer! 

It also disappears at the end of a turn if you haven't used it, and Massena has only 2 cards left to play, and he suspects at least one is a LULL. So he uses it right away, and fires the 8 lber battery of Launay's Brigade, bringing it's shot at the Austrian battalion on the hill up to a D12; this turns out to be a good choice, with the nine pip difference inflicting a 3 UI loss! Apparently the battery's commander trained under Baron DuTeil! 

Yep, the 3rd card  French was indeed a LULL; Karl is unable to seize the initiative, but he is out of cards for this initiative anyway.

In a dazzling dislpay of symmetry, Karl's first card is also ARMY MORALE. He also has many officers that need to check for survival. All pass...

except one - General Colloredo. His brigade was certainly heavily engaged! All of his units are now thrown into Disorder. 

Karl also turns a TACTICAL ADVANTAGE card as his second!

"Use it or lose it!" Karl plays it on a Grenadier battalion in a strong position; it shoots at the column, the TA bringing it up to a D12+2, which will rout the Froggies. The unit's weak opportunity fire back is ineffectual. 

The symmetry is broken when Karl turns ARTILLERY FIRE. Massena was pretty sure there should have been a LULL in there for the Austrians as well.

Rout for your home, team!

The French column breathes a sigh of relief... and plots its revenge! The remaining Austrian batteries just use the card to remove their smoke markers. 

Massena won the toss for the 9th initiative 8 to 1; but he has only one card left, and Karl but two! As suspected, his last card of the Turn is ARTILLERY FIRE. 

A dud!

Wet powder?

I must write to the Emperor about the contractors for the Artillery's gunpowder...

The initiative passes to Karl, who turns the anticipated LULL card. As Massena has no cards left, a roll off is unnecessary. 

The final card... a LULL as well!  Actually, that's the best place for them to have been in the deck, when there was no real cost to them. 

A "Turn" in Field of Battle ends, and both decks are shuffled when:

1) The C-in-C  Leadership Die rolls at the start of any initiative are tied (a 10% chance here with an LD10 vs LD 8), or 

2) either deck runs out of cards. The other side still gets to play and act on any remaining cards it may have coming to it in this initiative, but if it has cards beyond that, they will not have a chance to play them. 

As you can see, a "turn" in Field of Battle can encompass a tremendous amount of activity. That is why we use the play of MOVE cards to estimate the passage of time; I figure about an hour of real time per such card in a sides deck, thus playing through the deck like we did in turn 1 corresponds to roughly 3 hours real time on the battlefield. 

Monday, June 29, 2020

Caldiero 1805: 7th French Initiative

Massena starts off with a Leadership card; quite timely! 

If the Chasseurs were Disordered, they would recover, but you must win by 3 to regain a UI; close, but  no sabretache! 

"Sauve qui peut!

C'est bon...

French Right after rallying attempts.

Pepe le puent dit non. ..

Vive l' Empereur!

Overview for the forces attacking "the gap". 

Bye, bye, rock; bye bye piggy! Rallying is one time where there is no special effect from winning even. Note the marker on the General reminding us that he will need to check for survival on the next Army Morale card. 


1 UI loss rallied off. 

These boys are definitely NOT getting their rocks off today. 

Ah-wooo!  Werewolves of Lombardy... 
The unit  will remove the wolf and a rock, but is still battered with 2 UI loss remaining. 

Not quite enough

Situation on the French left after rallying is completed. 

Decision time; which one command should Massena activate? 

"Excuse me, Andre; I think you must move your Routers first; you seem to have acquired quite a few recently..."

"See you later, I'm going to the rear of the the-ater!"

Massena chooses Launay's Brigade to act. No magic this time, though!
He wants to pull back the battered infantry regiment to a safe place where its chances of rallying are better. he is also pretty sure that one of his few remaining cards is an Artillery Fire card, and the Brigade's battery is loaded but without a valid field of fire. 

Situation after Launay's maneuvers. 

Last card of the French initiative is an Infantry Fire card; Massena was pretty sure there was one of those remaining in his deck as well. 

Lots of smoke but little effect!

The infantry in the "Suburbs" are a poor unit, with penalties for firing from town, uphill, and at a unit behind works, so it's rolling a D4; as it was already loaded, it is a "free" shot and will remain loaded thereafter. Fortunately the target is one of the substandard Austrian units. The French had a 25% chance to disorder the target, and a  roughly 6% chance to cause a UI loss. It does neither. 

No joy here either, on another "free" shot. 

The Austrians are pushed back 2" in Disorder. 

These French Legere in line are rolling a D12+2 at close range; the Austrians will be pushed back 4" in Disorder, and lose a UI (plus of course, an Army Morale Point). 

We can't see the French roll, but the result was no effect upon the whitecoats. 

A "free" shot with better odds, but still little discernible effect. 

These boys kept their powder dry; the Austrians lose 2" UI and Rout back 6"!

Massena wins the next Initiative roll. 

Saturday, June 27, 2020

Caldiero 1805: 6th French and Austrian Initiatives, 7th Austrian Initiative

Massena turns "ARMY MORALE" as his one card; almost every French Command Group (brigade) officer must check, along with TWO Divisional commanders! 

General de Division Duhesme is OK.

So is general Gardanne; in the event, no one "rolled a 1", and all commanders survived intact; quite against the odds, actually! 

Karl turns MELEE, but has no units able to use it.

The Archduke wins the impetus dice off, and definitely wants to go First!

His first card is.. ARMY MORALE. As Karl just checked his commanders a short while ago, and there has been no combat since then, no checks need be made. It still costs one impetus to turn the card, however.

Karl's second card  is INFANTRY FIRE; this has definite possibilities. Massena is NOT happy!

Two Unloaded Austrian grenadiers reload and, having targets at close range, shoot. Unfortunately, neither fire has any discernible effect this time!

A fresh but substandard Austrian battalion takes a "free fire" at the French column, thowing it back slightly in Disorder

A similar shot at the French garrison of Caldiero inlicts a loss of 1 UI.

Some more ineffective fire!

A simultaneous exchange of fire between the Austrians in line and rthe elite Grenadiers ion column comes off... poorly for the whitecoats, as they lose 3 UI. They would rout, but having already lost 1 UI, that places them at 4 UI lost, and with no remianing UI,  the unit disperses instead!

Another Austrian unit pops off at the French, inflicting a loss of 1 UI, but their morale holds.

Austrian fire from the ridge line fails to inflict losses on the French column, which holds its fire for another time.

"Schrecklich, ganz schrecklich!", is all Karl can mutter.

The final Auytrian unit that can shoot forces the French line back with the loss of 1 UI.

The resulting situation; other units that have smoke and are not going to fire now remove same.

Karl's final card of this initiative is a MOVE.

The routers must move first...

This unit has reached the table edge; if it does not rally before the next Austrian MOVE card id turned, it will leave the table and the game.

Kalnassy rolls a single move with fancy business foe his Brigade; with the Uhlans far to the South, it is becoming difficult to keep all of his Brigade within his command radius (twice the LD type, in inches, so 20" for him).

The Uhlans adjust their facing somewhat. His infantry perform some minor adjustm,ents as well, but nothing striking.

Colloredo's Brigade also gets a single move with flexibility. His troops also perform some very minor adjustments.

A single embellished move for Wetzel's Brigade.

Some shifting of troops follows, with a ragged and ineffectual long range volley at the Grenadiers.

Another ineffective volley!

2 segments, but no magic for  Croll's Grenadier Brigade. 

More of the Mantua Minuet is performed

One move for Soudain's Brigade as well.

More exchanges of lines

For some reason my camera went blurry and way off color registry for this and the following fortunately, it corrected itself thereafter. Michalowich also gets a single move segment.

Still more limited shuffling of the successive lines of infantry follow.

Utterly ineffective Opportunity fire by the French unit, too!

To the far North, Kuttilinsky's troop refuse to move; fortunately, there was little he needed to do with them anyway, so there is no reason to take the risk of calling upon  FML Simbschen to attempt to motivate the troops better.

But wait... there's more!
Lippa and his small Grenadier brigade arrive to reinforce the Southern ridge, but their advance is slow.

The remainder of Michalowich's gigantic Brigade arrives, but are limited by the single move he already rolled up.

Overview of the Battle from the South. Only a few cards left in the decks now..

Blogger note:  Tried the "New Blogger" interface, which worked fine, BUT when I went to publish this post, it posted it as the last date it was edited. Unpublishing, editing it and republishing didn't solve the problem, so I wound up copying and pasting it into a new post and then removing the original in order to get the sequence (and updates correct). Reported to Blogger.