[Consim-l] Short Eagles of the Empire: Borodino replay

[Markus Stumptner]

John Nebauer and I finished a game of Borodino with John Mundie's refit on
Saturday. My French could not make headway initially against ferocious
dierolling by John's Russians; Eugene lost six or seven infantry steps
before he made it out of Borodino northwards around noon. Poniatowski
suffered fewer losses on the right wing but gained virtually no headway in
the morning. However, he distracted all the Russians on the southern wing
and meanwhile Desaix' division managed to burrow deeply into the Russian
positions south of the Fleches. Then, though, it took forever to get the
rest of Davout's corps into attack positions (a number of lull turns in
the early afternoon, but also I was being too clumsy with the attached
artillery), until finally the southern Fleche was taken around 17:00, and
the northern one then at 18:00. The Russian position had been completely
outflanked but then Murat missed his command roll and Davout simply could
not reassemble his troops fast enough to push further since the cavalry
did not move to clear out the masses of fleeing Russians.  So the
depression and the Russian center and right wing remained reasonably
intact.

About that time the French dice finally got hot, with Eugene breaking out
northeast of the Great Redoubt and Ney also advancing successfully on its
southern flank, but then darkness came and the French had missed the
marginal performance goal (33 steps lost, 25 light cav remaining) with
only 27 Russian infantry steps eliminated and 21 light cav on the map.
Conversely, French losses were still too light for the Russians to drag
them down to a real defeat. So, "poor French performance' as an outcome.

Markus

Last 3 games played: Air Cav, Borodino '41, Borodino (Eagles of the Empire)
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"Bakayaro! Bakayaro!"  ("Stupid Bastards!  Stupid Bastards!") -- Admiral 
Aritomo Goto's last words to his staff, October 11, 1942