1809 - The Battle of Razyn - My Austro - Napoleonic Premiere

This Thursday it had to be Napoleonics (28mm, BP2) and nothing less than the battle of Razyn! That was when Ferdinand I tried to get over a swampy and through snow-melt flooded river named Utrata to get his greasy hands on good old Warsaw, which was what Bart came up with.

For years now I heard almost the repetitive gunfire-plea, please Michael, now get into Napoleonics! And resisted up until now. But today in a somewhat surprise premiere, I dished all my plastics (mostly Perrys) that I painted since xmas. And you know what they say about first timers on the battle field!!!

Bart stipulated the scenario victory conditions that the Austrians would win the battle, IF they get at least ONE unit over the river. Sounds tremendously irresistible, but sadly all the Polish and Saxons were already there behind an uncrossable river (apart from 3 bridges guarded by guns) and a complete cavalry brigade already deploved in attack mode in the middle of the battlefield, while my Austrians would have to march into their lances in column brigade by brigade. Ah, and yes, the river bushes and low trees counted as soft cover, but only on the Polish side... just incase some mad Austrians would actually come so far.

And soon after some failed command rolls, I finally had ONE brigade on the field, just when  the Polish lancers started their skewering, while I was of course still in column. Somehow though my cavalry units were too big and were just repulsed from the field, but not destroyed and came back later for more. Alisdair IS quite a fierce cavalry officer had a damn good dice roll that night!

Around turn 7 all my units had finally arrived on the table, when I started counter-charging the Saxons and the rest of the Polish lancers. In total I managed to kill 2 units, one of them the Polish lancers. As Alisdair didn‘t manage to kill a single unit, the kill count would be in my favour ...

... BUT I lost the battle as, at the end of our time, I hadn‘t even begun to approach the river, due to the tough victory conditions. My guess even if NO Poles AT ALL would be behind the river, my Austrians wouldn‘t had the time to even set a foot on the grass on the Austrian side of the rivers or bridges. The time was just too short.

All in all a nice pre-start for a real battle, but undoable in just a club night. Just when I was getting warm and had my troops half way in formation on the table ... we had only 15 minutes left to play.

After my first turn of movement

The Saxon-Polish Brigade pointing their spikes against the Imperial targets

While the river and all the rest is heavily guarded

The Polish lancers charge, while the Austrians just take it on the chin.

But my Infantry is already forming into a Divisional mass

My Chevaux-Legers and my Hussars left the field, but just to return later

Then my cuirassiers arrived and also the next infantry brigade.

all had to be in march column

My Hussars and the Chevauxs came back...

And my grenadiers came in last of  the 5 brigades all queuing on the road to get on the board.

Then the lancers did the same "trick" again and charged my cuirassiers off the field

While the grenadiers just moved forward one move...

My Hussars finally reached the centre of the battle field

The two Divisional masses from the first brigade enfilade the cavalry

And the cuirassiers came back

Then they charge the Saxon dragoons ... and destroyed them

That was where the battle ended.