Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Bill
Sorry to hear a valuable resource (fireandmelee) might not be around. I hope you can work something out with Colin.

Just scrolling through the play-by-play example you provided on the site. There's an example of an Austrian cavalry charge, where the first squadren charges first, thereby disrupting the target, which then gets the rest of the cavalry regiment following up. While this might be hard on the first squadren, charging disrupted enemies has got to be good for the odds.

Using embedded melee, this might look a little odd and I must admit it simply hadn't occurred to me before, nor have I seen it employed by such luminaries as Bill Peterson or Muddy Jones. I would argue that it meets both the spirit and the letter of the embedded melee rule. But, playing without EM, which is my preference these days, its simply good play.

No real reason for this post, just pointing out a good lesson learned.

Lt Colonel Neville Worland
Chef d'Etat-Major
Ier Corps de Réserve de Cavalerie
Army du Nord

Actually what happened is that Ed Stewart offered up space on the ACWGC.ORG site. I will be posting my stuff there as soon as he gets me a username and FTP info, etc.

Colonel Bill Peters
Armee du Rhin - V Corps, Cavalerie du V Corps, 20ème légère Brigade de Cavalerie, 13ème Hussar Regiment
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

That's because, under embedded melee house rules, all cavalry charges must occur (the movement part) BEFORE the resolution of melees. Now, such a "softening up" might occur after the first round of melees, but not before the initial melee.

FM Sir 'Muddy' Jones, KG
2nd Life Guards, Household Cavalry

I think the procedure described is not in contradiction with the "embedded melee" rule. The squadrons would all charge together, but the first would melee before the others, in the same melee phase.

However, while I may have sometimes employed this tactic, I normally couldn't help finding it a bit "gamey", because the defensive penalty for being disrupted is so steep in these games. It's normally always a bargain, sacrificing a small unit (just not so small that it's wiped out completely without disrupting the target) to disrupt a large stack that is then meleed with very good odds by larger units that take very little risk. Sacrificing a pawn to kill a queen with a bishop, or so? The only problem being that the "pawn" could be a really insignificant part of your force, a small, highly fatigued battalion or squadron out of a hundred or more, so that losing it is not worth a second thought. Besides, it represents *men* who normally simply cannot be brought to let themselves be so readily sacrificed as a pawn in a game of chess.

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[url="http://home.arcor.de/dierk_walter/NWC/2nd_Dragoons.htm"][/url]
Maj. Gen. D.S. "Green Horse" Walter
~ 2nd Dragoons (Royal Scots Greys) ~
2nd (Union) Brigade, Anglo-Allied Cavalry Corps
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~ 3rd (Prince of Wales's) Dragoon Guards ~
[url="http://www.geocities.com/militaireacademie/"][/url]
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Dierk and guys - I would then say just dont play with ANY of the Multiple Melee rules ON. That would hold especially true for EM games.

Colonel Bill Peters
Armee du Rhin - V Corps, Cavalerie du V Corps, 20ème légère Brigade de Cavalerie, 13ème Hussar Regiment
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]