Snap Con VIII - The Crisis on the Danube, April, 1809

We are pleased to announce that Snap Con VIII, the next Campaign in a Day event, using the Snappy Nappy rules by Russ Lockwood, will take place on Sunday April, 19th, 2020. The event will once again be held at the excellent gaming space and store, The Portal,  in Manchester CT, from 10 AM - 5 PM. As in the past there is no charge for playing in this event, which will once again feature as many as 16 different tables, many hundreds of wargames figures, and as many as 20 or more players, each commanding  an Army Corps or Division(s).

Situation as of April 20, 2009; we will be playing almost exactly 211 years later!

    With Napoleon and the bulk of the French Army tied up in Spain during 1808, the Austrians planned to attack in Bavaria, one the French Allied states of the Confederation of the Rhine. Taking advantage of the absence of the Emperor and many of the veterans of the French Grande Armee, they hoped that the rest of Germany would rise in revolt against the French, and possibly to persuade Prussia to join the conflict.

Emperor Napoleon addressing the troops of his Bavarian ally at Abensburg. 

Despite Napoleon being well aware of Austrian plans, he delayed his departure from Paris as long as possible to avoid accelerating events. Left to exercise greater judgement than he was accustomed to, Marechal Berthier, Napoleon's Chief of staff and nominal Army commander in the Emperor's absence, misunderstood the endless stream of instructions emanating from France, and wound up spreading his troop in a dangerously dispersed fashion. When the Austrians, led by Archduke Charles (Erzherzog Karl in German)  attack came sooner than Napoleon had anticipated, they had a real opportunity to defeat the French in detail, setting the stage for one of the most fascinating campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars.

Erzherzog Karl, one of Napoleon's ablest opponents, who would later hand Napoleon his first unequivocal defeat at the later battle of Aspern - Essling in May of 1809. 

    Interested players should contact me as soon as possible regarding their participation and preferences as to Austrian or French/Allied. As always, we especially need one player each to be the Commander in Chief for each side... a Napoleon and a Karl! The players will be assigned their final commands in the week or so prior to the event, allowing them to collaborate to establish their plans for the campaign beforehand. There are sure to be a twist or two from the strictly historical to keep everyone a bit off balance... just as the historical generals were!

Planned Commands (some larger formations will likely be split among 2 or more players depending upon the number of participants, especially Davout)


FRENCH

Napoleon, Davout, Oudinot, Lefebvre, Massena, Lannes, Vandamme, Rouyer

AUSTRIAN

Archduke Charles, Belegarde, Kolowrath, Hohenzollern, Rosenberg, Ludwig, Hiller, Liechtenstein


Please contact me if interested in participating: Gonsalvo AT aol DOT com


** Note that present plans call for running a different variation of the same event Thursday July 8 at  Historicon in Lancaster, PA, later this year.