Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

#05H. The Battle of Elchingen (HTH)
- It seems clear that the victory conditions have to be changed. Again the Austrian can leave the map without a fight and still win what makes no sense.
To re-mirror the situation the objectives should be about the same value as the complete Austrian force. That will make the Austrians stay at first because with an intact force and the objectives in their hands they will be in the victory range. It will also give 2 options, the Austrian can stay and hold the objectives as long as they can be held with an acceptable casualty ratio, the second option is to save the Austrian force if it's driven off the objectives and the casualties start to mount. That will likely result in the Austrian holding as long as possible but then trying to deny an annihilation of their forces because that would be without a doubt be a major victory for the French.
A minor victory for the French should be possible with conquering the objectives or destroying a certain amount of the Austrian forces, if the French is able to get the objectives and at the same time cause considerable damage it should result in a French major victory.
A different approach could be to add an exit objective for the Austrian so he is really in the hassle of either holding the objectives around Elchingen or removing his force intact back to Ulm, but waiting too long will not leave much to exit the map.
- French release times have to be adjusted.
I wouldn't mind if the French get the first bat. of the 39th released not before 9am as that was the time when the first bat. came over the Danube.
Next is the French corps artillery that doesn't need to be fixed as Ney order it over the Danube right after he went over with the 6th Legere.
The rest of the 2nd French could be released by 9:40am.
After that(I would say 10am) all French cavalry has to be released to be in time over the bridge and to the far right to be able to attack the Austrians South-East of Unter-Elchingen, the current release times of 11am for the light cavalry and 12am for the dragoons is much much too late as the French had finished the Austrians South-East of Unter-Elchingen by midday.
And the first units of Mahlers 3rd Division reached the Danube by 11am so its release time must also be moved to an earlier spot of at least 10:20 or earlier to make that it in time from its current position.
- Scenario is too short, while the Austrians are fixed for the early part of the game they are last fixed at 9:50AM and after that they are able to march to the map edge to leave what would deny the French any chance to even score a draw. With victory conditions and release times adjusted like recommended above the situation would get better but fact is that it's up to the Austrian do decide when to leave in the attempt to deny the French a victory. But if he chooses to stay the French should get the chance to destroy him. Scenario should be extended to 6:05PM what would mean 19-20 additional turns.
- Map wise the streams north of the main Danube should be made creeks, it seems that the bridge spanned over the creek North of the main Danube was the damaged one. It should also run closer to the Danube to cause the situation that a crossing of the Danube and the creek beyond it is a problem for the French. Next is the swamp & forest South of Unter-Elchingen, it seems too extensive to allow the French passing to setup their positions opposite of the Austrian positions.
Here my idea of the changed rivers:

- As repair rate of the bridge is per 25 men there are currently only 2 points repaired per turn. That is much to low for the French to pass their artillery with the recommended release times. The French artillery came over right after the 6th Legere and supported its attack on Ober-Echlingen. Besides this, the big bridge over the Danube should be intact while the bridge over the northern creek was the damaged one and should be the one to be repaired, but as we have no hexside bridges it must be simulated by using the recommended release times for the French.
- Austrians again have much to much artillery, sources mention 14 guns of which 12 were light 6-pounder and 2 howitzers, the single Austrian horse battery had 4 6-pounders and 2 howitzers, in game we have 24 artillery pieces what is way too much.
- Weather may need a look too, day started sunny and not foggy, the ground conditions were soggy from the intermittently snowing, sleeting and raining that went down for almost a week, so while the weather was not bad the ground conditions were bad and should be depicted by slow movements and less effective artillery fire because of the soft ground.
- Maybe the fixation of the Austrians should continue further, their center did nothing while the positions West of Ober-Elchingen and South-East of Unter-Elchingen were cleared by the French. And almost lethargy behaviour that should somehow be simulated in the game.
- Regarding the French forces, it seems that the 6th Corps had a horse artillery battery(2/1 Art a Chv) there. Also the cavalry seem very strong while the webpage(http://obscurebattles.blogspot.de/2013/ ... -1805.html) lists very low strength figures, maybe the truth is in between. Same counts for Marcognet's brigade that is 1000 men stronger compared to the webpage. Lowering these strength figures should be consider as the current French artillery loadout is already slightly stronger, often 5 guns are listed and the game gives 6, that may not sound much but with some infantry and all cavalry also stronger it gives an overall stronger French force that historical.
- Regarding the Austrian units, 1/Froon IR54 and 3/Froon IR54 are twice on map, likely that these unit are supposed to be the missing 2nd and 4th bat. of Froon IR54.
- It is noted(http://obscurebattles.blogspot.de/2013/ ... -1805.html) that the Austrians did stand in 2 rows with their companies and didn't change to line or square at all. To simulate this one could first set the Column Fire Modifier to1/2, next would be a houserule that the Austrians can't change into line or square, and finally to support staying in column the Austrian Line Disorder Value could be set very high maybe even to 100% to force the Austrian to not use the line formation.

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You contradict yourself here - while you make good points you are asking me to introduce bad weather which will slow down movement but you want the units released sooner. In the end it won't matter as by slowing down the movement it will end up the same.

I used Scott Bowden's book for this scenario. About the best I could do at this point is come up with a different version. I also do not like to change maps like that as for the people playing the scenario, when they do their update, it will cause their game to have problems. They will be defending behind a stream on the old map and suddenly they will be defending in open terrain.

We playtested this scenario several times and while I agree with you that the Austrians can just leave the map, other than raising the objectives in value most of us don't just leave the map in our games. Why? Because in the club if you do you automatically forfeit a Minor Victory to your opponent. So leaving the map was never in our minds during playtest.

I do remember reading that some of the units did not become engaged that far east. Again, its been years since I worked on the game.

For scenarios that are older than Campaign Leipzig which need changes to the scenario objectives or victory levels I really do not want to venture into doing this. Its just been too long. I asked for input on the games for years. Once it got past a certain point I realized that I had so much new work to do that the old work would have to be put aside.

You are always welcome to put out your own version of the scenario and post it to the club website.

If there is a bridge missing, map error that I can fix (missing stream section, etc) then I will do it. When it comes to redoing an entire scenario I just dont have the time and in all fairness I did ask for input. I updated scenarios for games #1-4 a lot back in the 2000s. Now I am only going to work on the scenarios that are in Leipzig thru Marengo.

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)