Battle of Friedland 1807 and Snappy Nappy - AAR

Start positions, from behind Russian lines looking W across the Alle towards the French

After much delay I finally got my game of Friedland underway. The game was played with Snappy Nappy as I'd heard a lot about the rules and wanted to give them a go. This post will therefore have two parts, an AAR of the battle, and some comments on the rules.

End Turn 4 - Peak Russian!

The Battle

The Russians already had all their forces across the Alle river and were pushing out of Friedland, and only Lannes' Corps and Grouchy's cavalry stood in the way.

The early turns went the Russian's way. On the left (Russian/West) they moved unopposed through the woods. Closer to the Muhain Floss though Lannes guns and cavalry managed to match the Russians blow for blow. It was a similar story on the higher ground just R of the millstream with cavalry matching cavalry. On the extreme R the Russian cavalry scored some successes against the French and the Russian Guard Cavalry almost reached Heinrichsdorff. By the end of Turn 4 the Russians were doing OK, if not spectacular.

On Turn 5 though both Victor and Ney arrived (Ney one turn early). Ney arrived in the Sortlack Forest and right in the rear of two Russian Divisons  that were trying to turn the French R flank. Victor was behind Mortier and Lannes and struggled to get his fresh troops to the front. As Ney rolled up the Russian L the Russians moved onto the defensive, pulling back into Friedland on the L/C, but keeping a strong gun line plus cavalry on their R flank. Ney found it a costly slog to reach Friedland, particularly with position batteries across the Alle firing on his flank, but eventually the way was cleared for Victor to come through. But its a very narrow spit of land that Friedland is on and so was too congested to really deploy and fight - particularly with the Russians still holding the right. So it was only on the last turn that Victor's first divisions got to grips with the Russians defending the town. Without any softening up (the guns trapped behind the inf) it was going to be a difficult ask for Victor, and so an even result (2 off one of Victors divisions, and 2 off one of the Russians) was not a bad start.

As night fell the Russians still held Friedland and the R side of field - but backs against the Alle. They had through lost 5 Infantry Divisions, 3 Cavalry Divisions and one Grand Battery - and out of these the Advance Guard had lost 6 of its 8 units. French losses were 3 Infantry Divisions and 2 Cavalry Divisions.

Turn 8 - French cavalry reached Friedland

Overall not a bad result historical wise, and it was always going to be a struggle for the Russians once the main part of the French force arrived.

The final (first) assault on Friedland

Balloon's eye view of the final assault

Endex - in the gloom of twilight!

Snappy Nappy

I think I like some of the ideas of Snappy nappy (such as the Division level and "campaign in a day" idea), but the rules didn't really work for me.

The biggest issue was undoubtably the Morale Check (MC) mechanic. The main result of any combat is to take one or more MCs.Typically this is 6+ for veterans, 7+ for seasoned - but you keep taking it until you pass - and lose one damage for every one you fail. So get a bad run and a single MC result wipes out your unit (5 fails). And that happened a lot. I even had cases where the melee was a draw, one side took 0 hits (passed its MC first time), and the other routed (lost all 5). I also had a case where a square got a minor win (1 MC) out of an attack by a cavalry division - but the division lost all its MCs and so was wiped out. The whole model was just too random for me.

Some other observations:

• Having "divisions" of horse artillery is a bit odd
• Couldn't see any rules for interpenetration, so I allowed it
• Heavy Cav gets no advantage vs Lt Cav unless it is attacking (but didn't try the counter-charge rule)
• Artillery could survive multiple melee rounds with cavalry and even retreat
• Cavalry vs column seemed to get no DMs at all, so little incentive to form Sq as could square off as equals
• Not sure why cavalry on a hill crest should get a DM
• Artillery wiped out a whole division at 800m in one go
• A square wiped out a whole cavalry division in one go
• 
  

Now I was playing solo, and had not seen the rules played, so I may have missed some things (although there rules are actually very short and so things should be hard to miss), or got them wrong, but for me the main rules mechanic was just too unpredictable, and some of the other elements just didn't play right for me. Your mileage may differ of course....