Wednesday, May 29, 2019

The Alps Aflame, 1809: Battle Report


The scenario originally called for concealed deployment of the Tirolese. That seemed impractical for a one on one playtest game, and after the playtest, I decided it was an unnecessary complication anyway. Here, John has deployed a lot of Tirolese around the final obstacles on the road to Biersteinburg - the village of Schpaz (near), the Arlberg mountain, and the village of Achenfuss (far). 


Tirolese deployed at the Dreibruck bridge, Mittleschmertz village, and the Greissenberg mountains. 


There is also a unit of Tirolese Landsturm in the mountaintop village of Hofbrau, and some Schutzen in the Brennerberg mountains. 


Pretty much "hidden" anyway, when placed within the "hollow hills"!


The Baden brigade advances swiftly on the opposite bank of the river, rounding the Brennerberg, as the occupying Schutzen seem likely  make a run for it rather than trying to harass the enemy advance. The Bavarian brigade sends half of its men ahead of the wagons, and have divert to flush the Landsturm out of Hofbrau. This triggers off an artificial avalanche let loose by the Landsturm, severely damaging the Bavarian Jagers, driving them back. It takes most of the rest of the game for them to rally and reform, so shaken are they by the hail of logs and boulders that rolled down the slopes and through their ranks. Fire by the remaining Bavarian units eventually eliminates the garrison, but it takes time!


The Baden brigade cuts off the Tirolese Schutzen company exiting the Brennerberg, and advances on the Dreibruck bridge, and the key village of Mittleschmertz. The Bavarians and the Wagons can be seen advancing cautiously towards the Greissenberg mountains, wary of further avalanches. I cleverly placed my one artillery battery behind the last wagon.... where it was all but useless and played no role in the battle at all... duh!


There are still plenty of Tirolese remaining between the wagons and the Fortress!


"She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes... "


The wagons pull up just outside of Avalanche range, whilst the Bavarians try to flush the Tirolese out of Mittleschmertz and the Greissenberg. In the near ground, the Baden Brigade attempts to open the Northern road across the Dreibruck bridge. They have the support of the one Cavalry unit available.


The Badeners and Tirolese exchange fire, and then close to hand to hand action. The polearms of the Landsturm are tough in melee!


Aftermath of the first Baden attack, which goes... bad-ly. 


A unit of TIrolese Landsturm, having disordered some Bavarians with Another Avalanche, takes advantage of some favorable cards and initiative rolls to descend from the mountains and  try to close with an "unloaded" and battered Bavarian line battalion. 


Maneuvers around Mittleschmertz... note the Bavarian Chevau-legers trying to get behind the Tirolese line; those rifle armed Schutzen shoot well, but are pretty much dead meat if cavalry catches them unloaded and in the open!


Overview of the battle. The Schutzen in Mittleschmertz are giving far better than they take, and the wagons dare not try to advance past the Greissenberg mountains until they are cleared of Avalanche wielding Landsturm. The Tirolese ring the Sturmglocke, summoning reinforcements!


"That's gotta HURT!" the Bavarian Chevaulegers ride down some Schutzen, and the Baden brigade looks ready to clear the Dreibruck route.


The Bavarians have eliminated several units of Landsturm in the mountains, but still have not cleared the Greissenberg, nor eliminated the garrison of Mittleschmertz, holding up the forward progress of the wagons. 


At that point, the Tirolese had dropped to zero Morale Points, and were paying the Bavarians chips for each UI lost. Still, the Bavarians had only 3 Morale Points left themselves. Above are the full units of Landsturm lost. 


More Tirolese still await along the route to the Fort, though. 


The garrison of the fort; with no friends yet within 36", they cannot leave to assist the approaching convoy.


    At this point John conceded the game, although a 3 MP lead is nothing to bank on in Field of Battle. ( I also had not much time left before I had top take the Empress out to dinner as well!) We felt we had learned what we needed to from the playtest, and made several changes, reflected in the scenario posted earlier, the most important being decreasing the UI per unit of Schutzen from 3 to 2, and the Landsturm from 4 to 3. That will decrease the staying power of the Tiorese... but they can summon more with the Sturmglocke (and quite possibly in the rear of the Confederation troops, too!) , and limits the number of MP's lost when a unit crumbles. I think this game will work quite well at Historicon, after applying the lessons learned from this game. Thanks again to John for playing and helping me flesh out the game!

22 comments:

  1. Peter, this is an unusual and interesting game and scenario. I cannot recall ever having seen a Tirolean Revolt game before. Nice job!

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    1. Thanks, Jon. I have had something like this in mind since I first purchased the Eureka Tyrolean "deal" over 7 years ago. Tghe only other Tyrolean game I am aware of was played out in your area a few years back; Dean has a blurry picture of the game on hios blog, which was pretty closely based upon the account of the Disaster at Oberau in Gill. That game used Eureka Tyrolese, and Perry Rhinebund figures, and looked great. Michael Hopper placed me in contact with Jamnes Sagan, who ran the game, and he kindly shared details of his scenario, which used Black Powder. From him I stole the idea of the Sturmglocke (which will be represented by an alpine cowbell, rather than the deep toned sound of the real thing).

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  2. That looks fun, and reasonably evenly balanced. Which is what you need for a convention game.

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    1. The distribution of the Ttyrolese commands needs to take into account the need to keep all players in the game. From the test, it looks like that will work OK.

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  3. Excellent and exciting reading about the game/battle Peter! Great to know you guys are having fun!

    cheers,

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    1. It is definitely a different scenario in many watys, whuich is what I was looking for!

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    1. Thanks, Brent. The mountains will be re purposed for the Berg Isel game as well, which I hope to update a bit and playtest in the next month as well. I need to finish my Tyrolese buildings and make some avalanche markers!

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  5. Accurate and entertaining write-up, Peter. A well-crafted and interesting scenario. My people earned their feathered hats! Small downside, since this is an unusually linear game, would be giving the players farthest from the action something fun to do to hold their interest until the Bavarians show up. Maybe they could manipulate the two landsturms near the Bavarian setup? Although it was a runaway landsturm with their pikes who stopped the Bavarians cold in the bottleneck, which would never have happened without a unified command. I'd play this again in a heartbeat.

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    1. Thanks, John. Yes, keeping three Tirolese players engaged is a key issue. I may be more deterministic about their set up, placing the mandatory units at each of the sites myself, to ensure that at least some of each command gets into the action in the early going, and allow them to place only the "extra" troops of their commands. In fact, I think that is pretty much a must. I will probably play with that a bit and add it to the scenario.

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  6. Wonderful looking game, love the Tirolean troops and the gorgeous terrain, inspiring!

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    1. Thanks for the kind words, as always, Phil!

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  7. I do like these assymmetric games! That does look like horrible country to try and force through a supply column - a challenge for both sides!

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    1. Thanks; it was a nightmare for the Bavarians and their allies in real life as well!

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  8. Tremendous use of artillery! Bad baden puns! Avalanches! Annoying baggage trains! Halberds! Weird as heck Napoleonic campaigning in the Tyrol!
    Great job in bringing this to the world Peter! :)

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    1. Thank you, Mark. It is certainly not your standard Napoleonic action, is it? Having said that, without the avalanches and the polearms, a similar scenario set in Spain would be very feasible... or just use Grant's scenario and place it in Spain with a mix of Guerillas, Spanish regulars, militia, and maybe a stray British rifle company, etc.

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  9. Lovely game, beautiful terrain, and very original setting!

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    1. Thanks, Mike. Definitely a change of pace! :-)

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  10. Lovely looking and unusual game and sounds like a pretty balanced one too!
    Best Iain

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    1. Thank you Iain. I am interested in seeing how the final version plays out in about 6 weeks!

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  11. Great to see the collection finally making it to the table. Very unique set-up. I like your impassable hills especially.

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    1. Thank you, Jake. The basic concept for this goes back to when I bought the first wave of Tyrolese. Now I just have to finish my scratch built Alpine buildings.

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