My Metal Meneken: 1759 - The Combat at Zweiflaschen

Thursday 8 April 2021

1759 - The Combat at Zweiflaschen - Seven Years War

Bart wanted to play Russians and Campbell Austrians, so in this totally fictional battle I let them lead an Allied corps consisting of: Austrians, 1 Infantry and a Cavalry brigade and Russians 2 infantry and a Artillery battery. The Prussian had a similar built up just one more command dice and 2 infantry regiments less and 2 fewer guns, 2 were grenadier units, but the Austrian units of the Infantry brigade counted as large units and the Russian as small. The rest as usual, 28mm, Seven Years Wargameing rules, my turf, via Houseparty.

I had the luck and won the 1st turn and advanced my heavy guns silenced the Russian medium and my cavalry pushed forward. The Allied then started to shoot back advanced a little and the Austrian Horse charged in ... as it was the 1st clash it was just scattering both parties ... foreseeable.

Then I stopped at the midline and started to fire at the Russians, especially their guns, what I could muster. Because if they would start to bear down with their artillery superiority, my life of my infantry would be hell. The funny thing was Bart managed to roll snakes eyes and in these rules the artillery disorganises itself then ... he would continue to do this 6(!!!) times! Campbell tried really gallantly to charge with the Austrian horses and the imperial regiments ... but somehow the charge didn‘t materialised heavy scars and just disordered.

Then I set on with my fire and gun blasts, Bart send his Pandours to harass my guns after he lost his medium gun battery ... the allied positions were strategically shaky: then I charged with my grenadiers the Austrian infantry and send them retreating! And thus disordering his deployment ... a counter charge of my Hussars successfully drove his Hussars off the table ... the Austrian flank was in disarray.

Then Bart advanced a bit with his troops and tried to shoot me down with 2 line regiments and a light gun and a howitzer battery ... yes guess what happened ... After the 6th bad artillery roll Bart quit, i.e. the Russians would retreat and thus the Austrian position would fall from very displeasingly disarray to effectively untenable - I won the battle. The magic of the "orange dice" seemed to be broken this game.

We had a lot of fun, and agreed with shrinking/ losing the edge in the guns the Russians would become a liability in the next turns while the Austrians didn‘t look much of a help. Next time I will switch the numbers and guns etc from Russians to Austrians ... lets see how that works.