Liphook - Margeno Megagame

A good game at Liphook this weekend. It was a smaller crowd and smaller battle, with less troops, but with still three big tables so it was the most open game I think I’ve very played there, with a reasonable amount of room to manoeuvre. I think its also the first time I’ve ever seen a unit fight its way across 2 whole table width.

The 3 tables looking W from behind the French lines (c. San Giuliano)

The battle was Marengo, with me as Napoleon and Nick as General Melas. As the heavily outnumbered French we had little option but to try and hold the line of the Fantanone stream. Nick decided to avoid a direct assault across the bridge to Marengo and instead put almost all his forces to the flanks. Kellerman and Murat did an ace job is using their cavalry to frustrate his advance, particularly in the south. With all our troops more or less engaged on the flanks he was then able to force a ford just N of Margeno.

Fantanone table now clear of my French (except Marengo!)

At that point I ordered a fallback to a new line at La Fournace. We managed to make a clean break and at this point apart from our cavalry (which was now pretty much spent) had suffered hardly any damage. Nicks parallel thrusts on our flanks continued. In the S Victor fount a village based defence, also making good use of the woods and vineyards. In the N it was more open and although Lannes tried to hold the vineyard line some good dice rolls from the Austrians, plus their surfeit of cavalry/artillery and some poor rolls on our side soon saw the whole of Lannes’ Corps streaming back beyond Villa Nova.

The middle table and the fight for the vineyards and wheat fields

Desiax was rapidly trying to get into a position to fall on the flank of the Austrians in front of Lannes, but Lannes gave way and a poor firefight saw Desaix frustrated and it was game over.

Austrians advance out of the wheatfields

Nick and the Austrians won 4 points to nil, and we’d fallen back (rather than be pushed back!) to a line which we were just about holding. Lannes was actually still a very potent force once rallied, and so we feel it was far from a  white-wash.

Kellerman's Dragoon's saw much action during the day - as in reality

Overall a good game for Liphook, with a nice amount of space to play in, a reasonable amount of troops on the table (not too many, not too few), and a reasonable, if still brisk, tempo to the play.
With Trevor “retiring”, there is just one more “classic” Liphook game to be played in September, but there is already talk about how to continue these mega-games beyond then.

More pesky Austrians!