Battle of Hochkirch

 Managed to get in 2 days of gaming this weekend, and they were brilliant. Yesterday I went off to Matt's to refight the Battle of Hochkirch. Frederick has been caught strung out in camp by a much larger Austrian Force. I was the Austrians and had to capture the Prussians before they could escape. THe Prussians had to hold their defensive positions to allow their troops to make an escape.

As usual it's a massive table and used all of our infantry. I'm on the edge and Matt in the centre. He has his advance guard camped on the wrong side of the river against 2 massive brigades

At the other end of the table I again have very large brigades against is brigade behind earthworks in the centre

I have reinforcements due to arrive on his flank

Matt's main redoubt next to the village of Hochkirch. I have more reinforcements coming to his rear

I open my advance to the right to kick out the vanguard from my side of the river

I start to advance to the left

I double move and almost immediately kick out the vanguard, capturing the guns

My intital advance on the main redoubt is rebuffed but I'm heavily engaged in woods tot he right of Hochkirch

My artillery has pounded the redoubt and the Prussians are ripe for picking

I make my move. My reinforcements hace arrived to the rear but Matt is waiting, more of that later.

Lots of bad command rolls has stalled my attack to the right and my reinforcements have arrived beyond the river

Massed cavalry battle, I get the worst of it

But to the left another cavalry / infantry skirmish sees me get the better of it

I'm at the redoubt as Matt bugs out

I own the redoubt and will soon own it and Hochkirch

Here I come

But it's too late and Matt has sufficient space to bug out.

Brilliant days fighting and a well bakanced game. As always in wargaming we review what happened and the battle fought very well but there are 3 things that in hindsight we could have done better when designing the battle. We made the rivers too slow to cross and that stalled my attack to the right. The Austrians din't have quite enough space to rout before they were off the table and this chewed up my brigades. The prussians had loads of space and so whilst Matt had more units routing they recovered. Next time allow Austrians to recover on table edge. Finally when the location of reinforcements is known it is too easy to automatically set forces to oppose them on arrival, which happend with 2 of my sets of reinforcements. in future we will randomise thier appearence along the relvant talbe edge.

None of these things impacted the game play significantly  but we always like to tinker don't we. We are running out of battles and on 2 more major battles to go. They we wil swap sides and I'll be the Prussians.

Can't wait