Tim put on a game covering Napoleon's Austerlitz campaign using a very old matrix game design originally penned by Chris Engle, the king of matrix games. A certain amount of updating of the mechanisms was used for this one based on our many years of playing these sorts of things as some of the original argument mechanisms were cumbersome in the extreme.
In brief, each turn each player declares an ACTION, a RESULT and up to three reasons why this is going to happen. The umpire assesses the probability of it working, throws some dice and we get some outcomes. We have considerably streamlined how this all works and have added an option for players to simply support another player or pass and gain an advantage in the turn sequence next move.
The outline of the situation. Orders of battle on the left (the 'military units' are Corps), area movement map on the right and a table of victory points for holding certain areas. I'm fairly sure Archduke Charles didn't look at this table for the entire game.
Essentially it is September 1805 and we have six months (turns) to see if Napoleon can defeat Russia and Austria, although naturally it is a bit more complicated than that. Overall campaign victory is supposedly determined by the points above, but I suspect we'll end up winging it, at usual.
Tim created this fine representation of the map. The leaders are 54mm personality figures while the units are 15mm figures from various manufacturers. Unfortunately his tablet kept going out of focus during the game but we all had a pretty good idea where stuff was.
This is the starting setup, Massenas Army of Italy (me) is in the western end of the Po Valley, Napoleon (John B), Murat (Micheal) and Ney (Ian) are with the Grande Armee in France. Archduke Charles (John B) has a large army in the eastern Po valley, while Mack (Russell) has a Corps in the Tyrol and the rest of the Austrian army in Vienna. Kutuzovs Russians (Pete) are up in Russia.
We also had Tom in attendance as 'the world press'.
I was Marshal Massena. Great hat. We all had individual objectives as well as the national one. I must say 'capturing Italy' is going to require a bit of fancy footwork given I'm outnumbered 3:1 by the Austrians.
I've already run through the dramatis personae, but it was an excuse to wear some particularly stupid hats.
September passed with a massive sweeping move by Napoleon which ended up in Bavaria. Both Mack and Charles were so slow they hadn't even started moving! That was good for me as it gave time to fortify the western Po valley. Napoleon very kindly left Soults Corps in France as a reinforcement, but I had to get it there first.
In October things hotted up, Charles attacked Massena and drove us back but we inflicted heavy losses on them. Napoleon marched in to Vienna and fought Mack, driving him back and capturing Vienna. Mack retreated to Moravia. Meanwhile news arrived of the British naval victory at Trafalgar.
In November Kutusov finally stirred and Napoleon, Mack and Kutuzov fought a huge battle on Moravia. Although it was a French victory, it wasn't decisive.
Down in Italy Charles attacked westwards but Massena stole a march on him and marched north into Helvetia (Switzerland) where he was joined by Soult. I had a cunning plan! cleared by Napoleon himself.
There was a local ceasefire in Austria in December, but clearly Charles hadn't got the message and continued to attack west, Austrian hussars even crossing the alps into France. Massena force marched through Wurttemburg and into Bavaria. My plan was to descend into eastern Italy via the Tyrol with Charles distracted in the west, Wurttemburg and Bavaria were also worth 15 VP between them for anyone who'd bothered to read the VP table...
We broke for the night at that point to see what 1806 would bring.
In Bohemia/Moravia fighting broke out again between the French, Russians and Austrians. Kutuzov marched to link up with Mack, but Murat held the Russians off at the second Battle of Austerlitz while Napoleon enveloped Mack at Linz. Mack surrendered and Napoleon marched back into Vienna in triumph.
And what of Italy? Well Archduke Charles continued his rather ill advised invasion of France labouring under the misapprehension that France was devoid of troops. In reality only half the French Army marched into Germany, Napoleon left 200,000 troops to defend France although 40,000 of those were coast defence troops. The main Austrian Army struggled to cross the Alps in winter and by February 1806 it was still mainly light cavalry and Jaeger detachments rampaging around south eastern France.
After the march through Switzerland in December, Massena spent January resupplying and preparing a surprise operation in Bavaria and was relieved when Charles didn't march back into Italy. In February, Massena conducted 'The descent on Italy' is it would become known in future and crossed the Tyrol via Innsbruck and then attacked the defenceless plains east of the Quadrilateral fortresses at Peschiera etc. The attack was successful and Venice and Trieste fell to the rampaging French.
With Vienna and half of Italy in French hands, the Austrians sued for peace and the Treaty of Pressburg was signed.
Totting up the victory points it was a crushing overall French victory (31 VP vs 10 for the Allies), and in terms of the individual objectives, Charles came last, Massena, Napoleon and Kutusov all tied in second place and the joint winners were Mack and Murat. Mack in particular had pulled a blinder with his appalling Austrian accent throughout the game and overall tactical ineptitude.
That was really good fun, and it was nice to dig out one of the older matrix game scenarios. We had a brief discussion around why pure military campaigns had gone out of fashion in favour of polmil or pure political games but didn't really come to any conclusions. There seemed to be a certain enthusiasm to repeat the experience so I expect we will do another one at some point.
Perhaps I should resurrect my old WW1 Mesopotamian Campaign game and the never played 'Battle for Berlin' I wrote decades ago.
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