New Leipzig PBEM AAR

[milrevko]

Well the French in the last AAR called the game after 100,000 casualties, no one can fault his resolve.

New we have begun the new game, as the French I chose to abandon Dresden, who cares about the will of our worthless German Allies.

We are using the house rules below:
The Campaign game is 353 turns. Each Turn is 10 minutes.
House rules:
Night Rules, no army may move at night. Exception Each Nation may make one emergency retreat at night once per game. They must move away from the enemy and keep moving away all night. This is not a redeployment to a better position, this is army moving off the battlefield to avoid destruction.

Multi INF and CAV Melee is on:
No formed unit may be melee'd more then once in a turn, skirmishers (are the only units that may be melee'd more then once in a turn) may be melee'd with out mercy. CAV charges my use the Penetration as normal, no change

CAV may not charge in to non clear
INF may not square in non Clear

Skirmishers must remain with in two hexes of the parent unit, they may not operate independently unless the started the game as Skirmishers, there are very few that do and they are all Prussian. If a Skirmisher routs and runs away, it must take the most direct route back to the parent unit. (not go off and run around behind enemy lines, they were not commando units, sorry but no Sharpe's here, Line unit skirmisher were only used top support the advance or retreat of the parent unit.

We are big on historical play and not on gamey tactics, Skirmishers are the biggest abuse of the system. If You have played the Civil War games, they have got the use of skirmishers right, they are not separate units.


Victory Points are by Objective and:
Each point of INF 0.1
Each point of CAV 0.2
Each point of ARTY 6.0
Leader casualties are by rank of the leader, from 2 to 64 points (not sure what Napoleon is worth, I have never had him killed)

Here are the starting positions:

[BigDuke66]

Take a look at the Optional Rules guide, with things ON like Multi Inf Melee or without Column Passthrough Fire ON you beg for a slaughter fest with totally unhistorical casualty figures.

[milrevko]

Take a look at the Optional Rules guide, with things ON like Multi Inf Melee or without Column Passthrough Fire ON you beg for a slaughter fest with totally unhistorical casualty figures.

Wrong! You beg for historical play. If you play and use your units like they did historically you will have historical casualties.

And you might as well read what the house rules are. Once you have read the house rules tell me how "Multi-melee" used?

Once again read the house rules...

[BigDuke66]

Yea but you must support historical gameplay by punishing ahistorical gameplay, turn Column Passthrough Fire On and it will lead to the players not stacking insane amounts of units together and letting all this melee in a 10 minute turn, they simply have to resort to historical formations and make attacks in waves etc.
Looking at some screenshots of your last PBEM I see huge stacks like in a mahjong game, no wonder you have past 100k losses in less than 50 turns, outcome is more like a trenchwarfare offensive.

[milrevko]

What are you talking about?

Column pass through is historical. I suggest you David Chandler.

You are ignorant of the facts of why the losses were so high. You know no what you speak of, you had better read through the AAR and get your facts right before you assume things that are demonstrably wrong...
You should start PBEM games and get away from playing aginst the computer.

[mfriedman421]

letting all this melee in a 10 minute turn

You need to look at the house rules they are using. They cannot melee formed infantry more than once in a turn. The multi-melee rule is just being used so that skirmishers can more easily be swept aside and not halt an advance. It's really no different than playing with the multi-melee off, except that now skirmishers can not be used to effectively halt an advance.

I do not like playing with house rules myself, but I get what they are trying to do with this one. It does lead to more historical play.

I wish the game engine instead had an optional rule that would just allow skirmishers to be attacked more than once in a turn. I think almost everyone would play with that option.

[BigDuke66]

Well I don't say anything against the house rules just that correct optional rules can support historical gameplay or hinder it depending on how they are set.

[milrevko]

Well I don't say anything against the house rules just that correct optional rules can support historical gameplay or hinder it depending on how they are set.

The reason that the results were "UN historical" is because: (In the North)
1) The Isolation and Destruction in total of the French IV Corps
2) Which lead the French III Cav corps to try to rescue the doomed IV Corps and was in turn destroyed.
3) This lead to the French XII Corps Total isolation and Destruction
4) That meant the French VII Corps could not make it across the river in time and it was also
totally destroyed
5) The above was even before the main battle in the south

This about 60,000 casualties of French for about 6,000 allied. This is not a "rules" option but a poor choice of corps placement to say the least.

I would have been able to make this happen with any combination of optional rules because I isolated,disrupted then "routed and Isolated" every unit there was, then I over ran them....

So, I apologize if I seem harsh but when a person see's something they do not understand and then attribute the cause to non attributable factors I am prompted to make them read the facts again.

Multi-melee is only used against skirmishers and in the last game the French did not make use of skirmishers and I did.

In some ways the column pass through could benefit the allies but it does also hurt them.

In earnest I would say the excessive casualties were caused buy the French attempting to operate corps in a semi-independent manor with out cavalry support where as I used INF corps integrated with CAV and ARTY to pin then Isolate the destroy the bad guys...

Here is the Starting positions of the new game:

[milrevko]

For 17 turns now (2 hours and 50 minutes) I have been running across the northern river and dropping every bridge and preparing the others for destruction:

I put out a large number of light cav to keep tabs on the Allies on all fronts and I have to say I really did not do a good job in the north. Given the Allies wealth of cav I should have been more careful and cautious with my scouts. That being said I might take 1,000 casualties in the north but I will get 60,000 men across the river and out of immediate reach of the Allies northern armies virtually rendering the Allied numerical supremacy on the map moot.

I will achieve numerical supremacy in the south.


I placed my main line further back then historical as I did not wish to risk any engrament until I have all of the players in place: (estimated turns 30 to 35)
1) Old Guard Corps
2) Young Gurad Corps
3) II Corps
4) VI Corps
5) III Corps
6) XI Coprs (In mobile reserve 15 turns behind the front)
7) Dresden Garrison ie. Poniatowski Corps
9) Guard CAV Corps
10) I CAV Corps
11) II CAV Corps

and, last but not least kellermans CAV WING

In the south I might have close to 120,000 men against an estimated 90,000 allies, it will get biblical....

This is the first line

[milrevko]

Some light Skirmisher action:

Voltigeurs-Tirailleurs
Etymology
Voltigeurs (lit. Vaulters) hold their name from their originally conceived role of cavalry-transported skirmishers: the voltigeurs were intended to jump onto the croup of cavalry horses in order to advance more quickly on the battlefield. This proved unworkable and they were trained to be elite skirmishers while retaining their original name. They formed an integral part of la Grande Armée's basic building blocks, the Line and Light infantry battalions.

---

Not to leave out the Prussian's:


Prussian “Jäger” Skirmishers]
Interest in light infantry tactics increased across Europe after the Battle of Valmy, where the Prussian line infantry proved unable to break through the French sharpshooters. Initially soldiers were drawn directly from the line infantry to fight as skirmishers instead, but in time many German-speaking states adopted Jäger to fulfill this role. In theory the Jäger operated in pairs to protect each other while reloading, and remained within 100-200 yards of close-order infantry on which they could fall back if they were endangered by cavalry or driven off by infantry. However, it was admitted that, due to the difficulty of controlling troops spread out in open-order and in the thick of battle, these guidelines might not always be followed. Jäger were allowed to act with a certain amount of initiative on the battlefield, unlike line infantry who were rigidly drilled and kept under tight control by their officers. For this reason, it was the most energetic and daring soldiers who were selected to become Jäger.
The Prussian army gained experience as an auxiliary force in the French invasion of Russia, where the Jäger were often used on the strategic level to provide support and cover for the rest of the army. They managed to escape the fate of Napoleon's French soldiers after Yorck negotiated a battlefield truce with Russia when, during a rear-guard action, the French withdrew and left Yorck's troops isolated. In the War of the Sixth Coalition that immediately followed, the Jäger of the various armies performed well against Napoleon's forces, and Prussian Jäger played a significant role in the battles of the Waterloo campaign, holding off Grouchy's corps at the Battle of Wavre.