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Author Topic: "The Death Ride of Jean Lannes" -- Game Time Is...  (Read 80166 times)

JasonPratt

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Reply #330 on: October 29, 2020, 09:51:29 PM
Also, and this must be faced squarely, the French won by their choice of actions.

1.) They chose to abandon Regensburg/Rattisbonne (for all practical purposes) in a risky move to support the French center on the Isar at Landshut. That battle could have easily gone against the French, and would have without timely reinforcements from this early choice. Sure, a fresh Hohenzollern reversing his course might have helped, but he also might have easily arrived too late to save the fight, and remember he had (by our design) the worst corps (i.e. comprised totally of Charles' experimental attempts at light infantry brigades.) Though Barthheart might have gummed up Davout's attempt at striking our supply line long enough to solidify our win, perhaps.

2.) Davout's choice to hit our supply line back to Passau -- EXACTLY what I worried the speedy French would eventually try, but there was no way to guard against that except to leave Austrian players behind. I will note that Cyrano never told us our supply was interrupted, only that Davout was on the way (thanks to Hiller's detached cav brigade autobot). So we never actually suffered this. But neither could we ignore it: we had to send two corps back in an exhausting rush to secure the line, and that wasted no less than two game days, maybe three, when otherwise we would have been instituting stage two of our main operation and pivoting down upon the French supply line at Ingolstadt (presumably) and upon the French rear areas between Munich and Landshut.

3.) Davout's choice to NOT stay at Straubing on our supply line (where he would have been destroyed by our superior numbers, flanking positions, and his own fatigue), but to continue his fine Yang Wen-Li move immediately south of the Isar and then back along to hit the remnants of the LowerJawForce, racking up more easy victory points for the French, and positioning himself to take Munich behind the HindclawForce. (Also screwing over their supply line back to Passau not incidentally.)

And then of course the basic French choices to recover Munich, catching more of our divisions for victory points and taking the win firmly out of our teeth.



JasonPratt

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Reply #331 on: October 29, 2020, 10:11:46 PM
Hey, Jim! -- currently nine of the 22 videos are still marked "private" and can't be watched.



JasonPratt

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Reply #332 on: October 29, 2020, 10:18:33 PM
Also, video 13 is currently out of order (after two videos later than it on the same day.)



Hatricvs

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Reply #333 on: October 30, 2020, 04:24:48 AM
Really interesting read so far and great to see the videos of the action.

The French from the get-go decided Regensburg was untenable and that those troops of Davout were key to ensuring we had some punch elsewhere. We, jointly, quickly decided that given the fact that our forces were spilt over time and space; most of them coming on in dribs  and drabs and knowing that the Austrian's could potentially start on our front lawn, we knew that we must buy time to centralise and combine our disparate forces. We opted for our collective centre of gravity to be Landshut and we positioned what forces we had early on to try and hold key areas until reinforcement could be deployed. I did not want to see Davout's 50,000 men bottled up and eliminated or prevented from being mobile and effective for the whole campaign stuck in the environs of Regensburg. We decided if we were to leave, then leave with all but the bare minimum.

Our centralised policy would, it was hoped, then allow us to deal with developments as we became aware of them. The idea was also to ensure that we did not lose Munich as this might cause our Bavarian allies to lose faith and join with our opponents. That was a situation that I was most anxious about, as also I was about Austrians legging it off the west side of the theatre of operations.

The central plan never really came together as the situation rapidly altered around the threatened theatre around Munich and the situation that Oudinot was facing. Increasingly I had to throw French reinforcement towards that sector to stabilise what I believed was a big push to take Munich and come in via the back door on that western border. With Regensburg I always believed it would fall but I hoped that once we had concentrated our force around Landshut we would be able to move off from there and bring battle to the Austrians somewhere in the area of Landshut or if/when we tried to oust the Austrians from the area of Regensburg.



JasonPratt

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Reply #334 on: October 30, 2020, 10:55:53 AM
And that mostly happened, except substituting Munich for Regensburg in the final push.

Was there an actual in-game risk of your Bavarians deserting (off map and/or over to our side) for us holding Munich too long? We were never told about that.

Also, we were very unclear about how long we'd have to hold Rathbone and Munich in order to win. I presume there was some kind of flexible point system going, where we scored major points every set-amount-of-time (whatever that was), and if that running total ever got so-far-ahead of the French score then we won. We figured we were close to winning after taking the second city (or at least the northern group figured that), but while we knew the Landshut area was in trouble we didn't know how much, only that the LowerJawForce had inflicted hard defeats on the French there. But it turned out that while they Austrians won several times, they didn't actually knock out any divisions! -- if I understand Jim correctly, the only French divisions lost were the two parked in the cities. Whereas, we thought the LowerJawForce, and maybe the HindClawForce, had knocked out at least two or three more.



TTC

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Reply #335 on: October 30, 2020, 11:29:32 AM
As a participant in the campaign, who occasionally needed prodding from Jim to get him orders and do something, a big thank you to him and all of the participants.  It was a lot of fun and quite challenging.

I love the concept and purpose of the kriegspiel, although it can be frustrating in the midst of the action (or really during the blindly stumbling around part)--with delays in communications and no real clear picture of what is going on.

But it's an incredible experience.  Merci, Jim!


Viva la France!

Viva l'Empereur!

Your humble servant, I remain always, 

André Masséna, 1st Duc de Rivoli



Hatricvs

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Reply #336 on: October 30, 2020, 11:47:15 AM
And that mostly happened, except substituting Munich for Regensburg in the final push.

Was there an actual in-game risk of your Bavarians deserting (off map and/or over to our side) for us holding Munich too long? We were never told about that.

Also, we were very unclear about how long we'd have to hold Rathbone and Munich in order to win. I presume there was some kind of flexible point system going, where we scored major points every set-amount-of-time (whatever that was), and if that running total ever got so-far-ahead of the French score then we won. We figured we were close to winning after taking the second city (or at least the northern group figured that), but while we knew the Landshut area was in trouble we didn't know how much, only that the LowerJawForce had inflicted hard defeats on the French there. But it turned out that while they Austrians won several times, they didn't actually knock out any divisions! -- if I understand Jim correctly, the only French divisions lost were the two parked in the cities. Whereas, we thought the LowerJawForce, and maybe the HindClawForce, had knocked out at least two or three more.


Well the information we received about our Bavarian friends was that the loss of Munich leads to loss of morale points in the Bavarian units. It also goes on to say that ..."you are not so sure of these allies, as German as the enemy. They can fight well, not well, or desert, you just do not know."

All I know is that Lefebvre did a stirling job for me and held those Landshut bridges with those Bavarians for a long time and he was also my escort for a large part of the game before I was able to finally find and keep Davout in my sight! Grand game and very well fought by your boys...I have said it before and I'll say it again I thought we were done for and that you and your Austrians and stormed the game.
« Last Edit: October 30, 2020, 11:54:25 AM by Hatricvs »



JasonPratt

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Reply #337 on: October 30, 2020, 03:19:40 PM
Based on the video of the final fight at Landshut, you seemed to turn a stalemate to a win by your presence, so following Davout riding hell for leather around the banks of the Isar helped a lot with the eventual win! (Though I doubt the LowerJawForce would have been able to hold on until we could grind down to their rescue; we just moved too slow.)

Two of the videos are still listed as private, Jim, by the way (as of this posting), and vid #13 is still late out of sequence by two notches.



JasonPratt

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Reply #338 on: October 30, 2020, 03:22:09 PM
Oh, all the videos for April 18th are currently out of sequence, too, with a newly unprivatized April 20th late night video stuck in the middle!

And both of the current April 17th videos are reversed.



Cyrano

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Reply #339 on: October 30, 2020, 04:26:18 PM
I was this many years old when I figured out how to re-organize the playlist.

Which are showing as private?  There's one in there I need to delete, I think, because the sound is buggered.


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JasonPratt

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Reply #340 on: October 30, 2020, 04:39:00 PM
Now that I've caught up on more of the released videos: hm.

Well, on one hand I can't complain, I suppose, that the HindClawForce didn't get their supply chain from Munich snapped even though it should have been flowing from there, with a VERY iffy chance of other supplies coming in from the main artery (from Passau to Straubing. As an aside, we were never told we had another supply source at Deggendorf but I can't see how that would have ever practically mattered anyway.)

On the other hand, if the HindClawForce had been told by Jim, "Hey, by the way, y'all aren't getting any more supplies through Munich..." -- even if no other information came along with that -- they might have realized someone snuck a unit between them somewhere back to Munich to sit on it.

I thought we had been holding both victory locations for two or three game days. It turns out, we held both of them for maybe half a day? (Hard to tell, the videos are currently scrambled out of order mostly, and obviously there are some significant time skips.)

So that's a big reason (not the only one, but a big one) why we didn't win -- Munich was taken behind us. But apparently we were never told that Munich was taken behind us, to do something about that.  But on the other hand, neither did taking Munich seem to affect supply to the HindClawForce.

Relatedly, am I upset about the Reserve Corps pushing so far north as to let a small French force sneak through and take our victory location behind our back? Not really. Technically it was an operational error, sure, but they weren't disobeying orders or deviating from the plan: we knew they'd be out of comms for practically the whole game, and would have to operate and make decisions on their own recognizance, and as the compiled operational strategy thread for us Austrians shows, the HindClawForce had a ton of leeway about prosecuting contacts and creating advanced defense lines to stall any forces coming down to Munich. Plus they were getting messages from the LowerJawForce at Landshut, calling out trouble, so with Munich apparently secured and supplies still flowing through it  ::) it made some sense for them to go up the road and see if they could lend help. Plus from a gameplay standpoint, sitting around on defense building up entrenchments would have been boring. So I understand it, and can't really complain.

In real life, their part of the plan would have been to DEFINITELY sit on Munich and fortify that sucker (especially with Charles' preference for epic defensive sitzkriegs and then counterattacks). Would that have made enough difference to win by ref judgment?

Unsure. I'd like to hear from Jim's opinion on that. The main difference would be that practically all of the very exhausted French forces would have arrived on both sides of the Isar to besiege them -- definitely snapping supplies, although given the simplified supply rules we were using I don't know how much that affects city sieges, which they would have been stockpiling for.

The French would have worn them down and through, but the Austrian elite corps would have been well rested, ammo'd up, and ready to fight, so my guess is that it would have taken several game-days beyond where the game ended, to rotate rested French troops onto and out of the line and back in again (with whole days of rest in between). Nappy's presence would have helped, but enough to get it done in less than (let's say) five more game days? Unclear. (No artillery city following him around this time to blast out the HindClawForce either.)

By then, Hohenzollern would have flanked Vandamme's blocking force, allowing him and Hiller to overrun his defenses (and notice from the post-game test battles how his much smaller and weaker force compared to the HindClaws, entrenching fewer days, outside a city, still gave Hiller's assault a very problematic time without Hohen's help). I would have been farther up the valley, possibly still able to come to their aid, but it wouldn't have been necessary so I would have continued on, as would Bellegarde in any case.

Even with crappy Austrian marching speeds, I think we would have arrived in time to extend the game even farther; though our two corps would have been hit with severe fatigue penalties, but probably not bad morale all things considered. Whereupon we would have been sitting on the French supply lines, and by the time we arrived Hohen would have been approaching the Ingolstadt supply source, cutting it off already or very soon, with Hiller providing support from the south side of the Danube (since we didn't know what Nappy would try to do with his forces once arriving in the theater).

Rotating troops in and out again, with Munich still enveloped, but lots of the French also enveloped and out of supply,, and with tired but high-morale and low-casualty corps of Hiller and Bellegarde on the way arriving a few more days after our arrival.... even if keeping Munich all that time hadn't won us the game much sooner (thanks to the French scoring points for whomping out most of the LowerJawForce), I think we would have had a shot.

Sending a French autobot cav division to find our supply source at Passau, and then splitting into a second brigade to work up the road to search for any other source coming onto the map, would have screwed us over, too, of course. No way for us to stop that either, but we knew that going in: if all the players were to play, then we had to try to win fast enough (with our glacially slow mighty grinding going almost nowhere!) to keep the speedy French from nuking our rear areas.



JasonPratt

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Reply #341 on: October 30, 2020, 04:42:12 PM
I was this many years old when I figured out how to re-organize the playlist.

lol!

I just did a refresh. The last two private ones are currently #4 and #11. They've been reshuffled around in the order, so they may actually BE in order -- just can't tell yet.

As far as I can tell, all the other videos are in correct order now (including the Bad Abbach epilogue).



Advocator (Scott)

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Reply #342 on: October 30, 2020, 04:52:03 PM
Jim,

Thank you for running that final fight for me! I honestly thought Hiller had a lot more men there than he did. Now that I know that there were two giant groups to my left and right, I'm actually kind of happy I overestimated his forces because, had I not, I would have charged, likely drawing their very unwanted attention.

Also, when I first showed up, I was under the very strong impression that Davout's forces were still holding the city. I thought you guys were getting ready to siege the place. I even tried to parlay with Hiller (I think it was Hiller?) about surrendering the city in exchange for giving me the men that I thought were in it. I even tried to entice the deal with delicious tomatoes (if you've seen HBO's Watchmen, you'll get the reference). All the while, I was sending anything I could to the rest of the French about how I happened upon at least 1/2 the Austrians up here and that I could really, really use a hand.

All in all, in spite of never getting into a fight, this was a great experience and I'm going to miss it. Opening my email to a dispatch was kind of like stumbling upon a dollar on the ground. Such a little thing that caused such great excitement. I wish I'd noticed the other ones forming up, I would certainly jumped in to one of them.

Great time, everyone, and great job, Jim!

Scott/VanDamme



Cyrano

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Reply #343 on: October 30, 2020, 04:54:27 PM
When I debate using vols. #2 and 33 for VdA -- which I will not -- it's almost entirely because I want to connect these units to their true "tail", i.e., back to their depots.  VdA one cares about LoCs, not supply lines as you describe.  The author points out that all the vol. 1 campaigns are so short that things like foraging, hospitals, depots, return of stragglers, &c., can be more safely abstracted.  Not that there aren't consequences -- there are -- but they are abstracted out.

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Cyrano

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Reply #344 on: October 30, 2020, 04:56:34 PM
Jim,

Thank you for running that final fight for me! I honestly thought Hiller had a lot more men there than he did. Now that I know that there were two giant groups to my left and right, I'm actually kind of happy I overestimated his forces because, had I not, I would have charged, likely drawing their very unwanted attention.

Also, when I first showed up, I was under the very strong impression that Davout's forces were still holding the city. I thought you guys were getting ready to siege the place. I even tried to parlay with Hiller (I think it was Hiller?) about surrendering the city in exchange for giving me the men that I thought were in it. I even tried to entice the deal with delicious tomatoes (if you've seen HBO's Watchmen, you'll get the reference). All the while, I was sending anything I could to the rest of the French about how I happened upon at least 1/2 the Austrians up here and that I could really, really use a hand.

All in all, in spite of never getting into a fight, this was a great experience and I'm going to miss it. Opening my email to a dispatch was kind of like stumbling upon a dollar on the ground. Such a little thing that caused such great excitement. I wish I'd noticed the other ones forming up, I would certainly jumped in to one of them.

Great time, everyone, and great job, Jim!

Scott/VanDamme

Thanks for all that.

Oh, and, yeah...there's one slot left.  You want it, it's yours.

Figure I owe you a scrap in north central Europe.


Sergeant-at-Arms - Fraternite des Boutons Carres

Negotiator of the fragile peace between Ruritania and Strakenz

Weeple Herder to the Emperor