Still No Duke of Montebello!

As mentioned in the previous post, I met Richard on the Montebello field of battle for a rematch on Monday.  In this rematch, we swapped sides with Richard commanding the Austrians and I the French.  To rekindle the lay of the ground, the battlefield with Austrian deployment zones is illustrated in the photo below.

Battlefield with Austrian deployment zones

Vogelsang's command stacked up around Montebello

To read Richard's account of this battle, please visit Return to Montebello.  Great account.  Well worth the time to investigate Richard's reactions.

After Richard submitted his deployments for both O'Reilly and Vogelsang's command, I set to work to devise a plan of attack.  Plan A was to take a chance in attacking straight away into the Austrian gun and Grenz set up astride on the highway to the south of Rivalta.  It might be a bold choice but if successful, the result would cut the highway and possibly force O'Reilly's position to shift to the south to contain a possible breakthrough.  Then, Lannes cavalry might be able to sweep around the northern flank.  The odds favored the French in a quick supported attack down the highway as the remainder of Watrin's French Division entered the table.

O'Reilly's deployment and French Plan A.

Before the game began and as I was reviewing positioning with Richard, Richard noted the gun and grenzer were actually supposed to be situated one hex to the west astride the road.  Well!  With these Austrians placed back one hex, the lead elements of the French column could not reach their intended target on Turn 1! Besides that, the Austrian jaegers in Rivalta would stop any further movement, regardless, due to EZOC.  The game has not even started, and Plan A is already scuttled!  On to Plan B! 

With initiative in hand, French commander, Watrin,
 sees his division begin to arrive along the highway toward Rivalta.   

As volleys are exchanged at Rivalta,
 O'Reilly pulls some units back before French attacks can go in against them.
  One benefit of having the foresight to place much of his division on Reserve!

Weakened by the exchange of musketry,
the jaegers in Rivalta are put under pressure
 by Watrin's supported attack upon the village. 

In the heavy fighting in Rivalta, the jaegers are dispersed.
Before Watrin can take Rivalta, grenzers slip into
 the village to deny the French this important roadblock.
Another case of Richard using Reserve to interrupt the enemy!

With Rivalta still in Austrian hands,
Watrin redoubles his effort to take the village.
  Leading the attack, two battalions of French storm the BUA.
To the north and cavalry to their front, French advance
 but are forced into square before delivering their volleys.

This time, grenzers are ejected and the victors take the village. 
 A lot of precious time is lost dealing with this obstacle.
In the meantime, Watrin moves to lead an attack along the highway.

Before Watrin's attack goes in, grenzers fall back away
from danger leaving the guns unsupported. 
  Unsurprisingly, the guns are overrun.
Following up on their success, the grenzers are caught are beaten.
In the rye fields, a supported French attack is too much for the light infantry.
  They, too, are scattered.
In only minutes, O'Reilly's command is broken.

With O'Reilly now broken, defense falls upon Vogelsang
 who is beginning to arrive onto the scene.
Unlimbering guns astride the highway, Vogelsang prepares a defense.

Lannes arrives to take command of the action.
He orders most of the 12th Hussars to move off to the north
 in an attempt to turn the enemy Left.
Lannes, himself, leads the 28th Line forward along the highway.

Lannes takes command!

Seeing the destruction of O'Reilly to his front,
Vogelsang encourages his men to form up and take a stand.
O'Reilly uses his cavalry to protect the flanks.

Having cleared Rivalta, the French advance upon the next line of defense.
  That line of defense is Vogelsang.
With artillery in support, the French face another daunting challenge.

Lannes leads the 28th Line into the Austrian supported guns.

In heavy fighting, the enemy is destroyed and the guns overrun.
Success!
Advancing to take the ground,
Lannes crashes into a second supported battery. 
The enemy meets a similar fate.  Both Austrian units are destroyed!
Vogelsang's command wavers under the weight of its losses.
Can the French break Vogelsang and force the enemy to quit the field?

Before we can answer that question, O'Reilly leads his hussar
 in front of Cascina il Giardina down into the valley.
  Their target?
 An infantry battlaion that has already seen a pounding
 from artillery and barely clings to the field.
O'Reilly, at the head of the hussars, leads the attack
but miraculously the French hold on to repulse the enemy!
They must have formed a square before impact.  Huzzah!  

A minor miracle!
Wavering French need 9+ on each of the morale checks to survive.
Whew!

Having destroyed two batteries and two battalions,
Lannes finds himself over-extended and nowhere to hide. 
 Ott takes command of the Austrians and attacks!
  First pouring volleys into the dense target from the flank,
 Ott leads his men forward!
Lannes goes down and the 28th is destroyed! 
Oh, the humanity!

Both armies see reinforcements arrive onto the field.
For the Austrians, Schellenberg's Division arrives and reaches Casteggio.
For the French, Victor and Chamberlhac arrive with their division.
Lannes' hussars swing out to the right.

After some cat and mouse tactics, hussars collide in the valley.
While one of the Austrian hussar units is destroyed, the cost is high.
French hussars are destroyed as well.
To add insult to injury, this loss pushes Lannes' command
(well his ex-command!) over the breaking point.
Ouch!

Schellenberg reaches Casteggio.

Sensing that Vogelsang is under stress having lost four units, 
Watrin keeps the pressure on by attacking toward Casteggio.
The Austrians in the rye are scattered.
  The Austrians to its right are driven back. 

French High-Water mark?

Schellenberg erupts out of Casteggio to take the fight to Watrin.
Watrin's Division suffers huge losses.
Watrin, himself, goes down in the fighting.
These losses push Watrin's Division nearly to the breaking point.
Only one little nudge is needed to push him over this threshold.

The Austrians hope that nudge comes from a second attempt
 to break the French still in square to the south of the highway. 

In the hussars go!

With each unit only able to muster a single die in the attack, 
the hussars score a hit, but the infantry do not.
The French cannot pass their morale test either.
The square breaks and the infantry are crushed under 
the horses' hooves.

With the destruction of the square, Watrin's Division breaks.  Seeing two of the three formations broken, the French attack at Montebello is called off.

Victory to the Austrians!

The result was a close one, though.  Vogelsang was only a few hits from reaching his breaking point.  Had Vogelsang broken first then victory would have been the French's.  Close, yet again, but I manage to be outplayed by Richard, yet again!

Great job, Richard, and well played!

Watrin should have followed Vogelsang's lead and withdrawn when his division was in jeopardy.  Then, we could have seen Schellenberg and Chamberlhac fight it out to decide the battle.  That option would have required a second gaming session, for sure.  Instead, I thought that Vogelsang could be caught and destroyed.  Schellenberg, however, put a stop to that plan!  

As for the Butcher's Bill, the Austrian Army certainly suffered more but most of its losses came from O'Reilly's Advance Guard which was essentially annihilated.  Game duration was a little under four hours.

Butcher's Bill

With Lannes falling, yet again, there still is no Duke of Montebello!

More Mounted MAA

As I deploy Richard's Austrian Army and ponder my own attack plans for the French in preparation for Monday's refight of Montebello, some headway is made at the painting desk.  March saw respectable activity at the workbench seeing 100 figures and three vehicles emerge from the production line.  Have not seen that level of production since last September.  

Off the painting desk today sees another body of Wars of the Roses mounted MAA trot their way out of barracks.  The trooper in the back rank looks to be slipping out of his saddle.  The weight of his lance must be too great!  Figures are 28mm Perry Miniatures plastics.  Lots more figures in the pipeline.

Back to Montebello for a moment. Richard sent his initial deployments for O'Reilly's Advance Guard at Rivalta.

Opening at Montebello

One of the challenges facing the French Army is that Watrin's Division enters along the highway and is immediately faced with the prospects of how to deal with the Austrian Advance Guard.  With not much space to deploy and no artillery present, the situation offers more than one challenge and more than one choice.  I should note that Richard overcame any challenge when he commanded the French.  Does Watrin attack straight away with his lead elements in a piecemeal fashion hoping to breach the defenses at a single point or does he allow time for his division to come up for a concerted attack.  The former plan may cut through the defenses at a single point during the initial impulse, but the cost could be high.  This plan is especially dangerous if the Austrians can mount a counterattack.  The latter plan may offer a successful general attack across a broader front but also allows the defenders time to respond.  What will I do?  We will find out tomorrow!

Thoughts on Montebello

All is quiet on the battlefield of Montebello.  In fact, the table has been dormant for the past two weeks with no activity at all.  Well, besides figures and sorting projects piling up on it.  That will soon change, though.  Richard has agreed to a rematch from our earlier game (see No Duke of Montebello).  For the next episode, we will swap sides and refight the battle from a different perspective.

Birdseye view of battlefield.

Before that game hits the table, time for a little reflection on the battle, its historical counterpart, and the rules.

Looking back at the battle report linked above, the game offered a tense battle as the French Army under Lannes scraped out a dramatic last‑minute victory.

Game Recap

Against the odds, Watrin’s French division assaults O’Reilly’s advanced position at Rivalta through the tall rye fields surrounding the village.  Initial attacks are repulsed, but repeated assaults eventually break O’Reilly after brutal fighting south and north of the village.  The Austrian jaegers are finally compelled to give up their defense of Rivalta.  As the French push on to the west, Vogelsang brings up his reinforcements to Cascina il Giardina while Schellenberg reaches Montebello.  Ott tries to form a defensive line as the Austrian army falls back toward Casteggio.

Attack on Rivalta.

To the south of Rivalta, the 28th Line ejects Austrians from Cascina il Giardina after repeated attempts to take the strongpoint.  Lannes then leads his hussars in a devastating charge that destroys an Austrian infantry battalion and overruns a retiring battery.  Unfortunately, Lannes falls in the confusion.  The Austrians are not done yet.​

Lannes leads the charge!

Austrian dragoons countercharge and scatter the depleted French cavalry.  Seemingly out of nowhere, a third hussar unit strikes unsupported Austrian infantry.  With the combat raging and both formations on the brink of collapse, the Austrian infantry are scattered and Vogelsang's Division breaks.  With O'Reilly and Vogelsang broken, Ott is compelled to quit the field.  Lannes gains victory with a razor-thin margin.  It could have tipped the other way.

The destruction of Vogelsang.

Post-Game Thoughts

Montebello offers challenges to both players and scenario design.  With both armies arriving piecemeal and a tight timeline to clear the highway, the French are forced into attacking at unfavorable odds.  When Watrin first attacks Rivalta, the defenders hold about a two-to-one advantage.  As the fighting builds with fresh reinforcements reaching the field, the battle emphasizes a measurable quality‑versus‑quantity dynamic as well as trading space for time.  A situation that Ott and Lannes, themselves, faced.  Players faced the same conundrum.  That is, how best to utilize the forces at hand.

With Lannes' qualitative advantage and ability to pick and choose the place and timing of attacks, as Ott, I fell into a similar trap.  When Watrin's initial attacks were repulsed, O'Reilly made the decision to stand and fight at Rivalta.  Only as more French reached the battlefield did he realize his mistake.  By the time Vogelsang approached from the west, it was too late for O'Reilly.  His formation was wrecked and in retreat everywhere.  Vogelsang tried to bring his division up and hold Cascina il Giardina but that stronghold could not be held after repeated attacks.  In the vicious fighting around that stronghold, Vogelsang's Division was wrecked.  With two of his three formations broken, Ott was forced to yield the field of battle.

The flow of the tabletop battle broadly followed the historical battle.  While the fighting may have played out with variation, the end result was the same.  That is, Ott's command was forced to retire from Montebello and head back to Alessandria to lick its wounds.  Five days later fighting would resume at Marengo.

Now, scenario design and often rules' writing remain as works-in-progress.  This refight offers similar thoughts on amending scenario details.  Having realized the historical result in the first outing, how much really needs to be tweaked?  While Victor/Chamberlhac played a role in turning the battle historically, in this playing Chamberlhac barely reached the field.  Same can be said for Schellenberg on the Austrian side.  

Schellenberg arrives.

While providing a good-sized game for two players, Montebello presents a more difficult path for multiplayer games since reinforcements arrive throughout the game.  This might lead to players not getting into the action right away.  Meeting engagements offer unique challenges for multiplayer games.  To steer the game toward this end, the next refight will see game duration lengthened from 8+ turns to 10+ turns while unit arrival times will see some compression.  The caveat, here, is that reinforcement compression may alter the already finely balanced arrivals to match the historical situation.  Do you come down on the side of history or player engagement?  Should arrival times be adjusted based upon the number of players present?  That is, keep historical times in a two or three player game but compress arrivals for larger multiplayer games so that everyone is involved within a turn or two?

Before I take command of the French Army in the next game, there is much to consider.

Cossacks Without Horses

With thoughts rumbling around in my head about bringing the Second Coalition Russians to the table for their first battle and the recent Battle of Montebello still fresh in mind, more early Napoleonics are seeing action at the painting desk.  In work are two regiments of Russian musketeers.  First up, though, is a body of Russian dismounted Cossacks or militia.

Given the harsh terrain of fighting in the Alps during Suvorov's 1799 Italian and Swiss campaign, I figured a number of the Cossacks would be forced into trudging through the mountain passes on foot.  These fellows will be utilized in a dismounted cavalry role.

These dozen Cossacks are Old Glory figures led by (I think!) an Essex officer that I have had lingering in the bits box for decades.  Good to clean out a bin and get these figures into the "Completed" side of the Painting Ledger.  Painting activity picks up in March, and early counts show that totals will exceed 100 figures painted in the month.  A milestone I do not often reach.       

Returning to the Battle of Montebello, the scenario saw action only once.  I plan to rectify that inaction and bring the game back to the table for an encore engagement or two.  Actually, the battle never left the table and remains in situ after the last die roll.  I have been pondering the game and the scenario.  My thoughts on that first game and scenario are being tossed around in my head.  Perhaps some of those thoughts will make it here.

On the gaming front, two games are scheduled this week.  First up, later today, is a return to Koenig Krieg and Richard's tiles as he presents a new remote battle on the subcontinent.  Should be fun.

More gaming on the horizon.

More Highlanders

A second body of Highlanders charges out from the painting desk today.  A third such Highland regiment is currently in work.  The figures are Old Glory and present a motley and somewhat untidy appearance.  Flag is by David at Not by Appointment.  Hopefully they will intimidate any opponent who dares to stand in their way!

The bag of Highlanders contains a mix of figures in a variety of dress and pose.  With 23 figures per unit, I ought to be able to field two such regiments from one bag of figures, but I have managed to only field three units from two bags.  Each bag contained a few broken or damaged figures that I chose not to use.  A few command figures were siphoned off to command lowland units.  Clearly, more Highlanders will be needed if I am prepared to get serious with a Jacobite expansion to the SYW/WAS project.

When I am in command of these fellows, the above view will be the one seen.  When I face these hairy lads, this is the view I hope to see!

Wargaming as an Escape

Keith Flint, in his Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategy #137 essay on wargaming as an escape (see WSS#137 Let's Escape pp 62-63) offers an interesting perspective covering several topics.  Some of his brief thoughts on this topic can be read on his blog at In Which I Became a Global Influencer.

To briefly summarize the escapism portion of Keith's essay, Keith highlights a quote that he has heard from wargamers that,

Wargaming allows me to escape everyday life, and it allows me to be someone else for a while.

Now, I have never heard anyone utter similar words and if they did, I would take such claim in a figurative and not a literal context.

Given this statement's literal weighting, Keith argues that we should reject the notion of hobby escapism that allows one to step away from everyday stresses, work, or reality.  Keith posits that this thinking is misguided since one cannot truly escape the real world.  The wargaming hobby is an extension of the real world and an extension of who we are.  Framing the hobby as an escape tends to discredit both daily life and the hobby.  A more wholesome approach is to view hobby time as a constructive shift between different and complementary aspects of life.

How does this tie back to the Great Wargaming Survey?

In an earlier analysis, I examined the question of why we wargame.  In Why We Wargame: A Closer Look, survey results show that when the top three choices are aggregated across all respondents that "Fun and escapism" contributes only about 13% of the top choices. "Fun and escapism" comes in at Rank #5 of 7.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Now, "escapism" is lumped in with "fun" so separating the two is impossible from the 2025 survey.  If this question is asked again, perhaps, "fun" and "escapism" ought to be separated to identify those seeking escapism solely? 

A related question that examines the role of the hobby as an outlet for stress is present in the 2025 survey.  That question asks, 

Would you agree that wargaming helps you forget about the stresses of daily life?

The results are overwhelmingly one-sided.  Figure 3 illustrates that 62.1% of respondents entirely agree that wargaming helps forget about stresses of daily life.  Fully 93% either somewhat agree or entirely agree with this statement.

Figure 3

Rather than looking at the wargaming hobby as a literal escape, perhaps, wargaming ought to be viewed as a relaxing, constructive shift between our different aspects of life? I think Keith would agree. Keith, thank you for offering up some food for thought!

Do you view the hobby as an escape from real life?