Battle of Beckstein - set up

One of the reasons behind this blog is to motivate me to play a few more games solo, so I have officially made Friday wargames night. In order to get through a game in a relatively short space of time, I'm going to try and set everything up on Thursday night so that it is all ready to go.

The premise of this battle is that the French Revolutionary Forces are pursuing an Austrian force that has pulled back into my fictional realm of Frankenberg. The first town upon crossing the frontier is Beckstein, which just happens to be situated in between a woods and a wooded hill. Perfect for a rear-guard action.

The battlefield as seen from above. Beckstein is in the centre with the wooded hills to the right and just out of shot on the left is another wood.

I set up the Austrians as if I was deploying to defend the town against a real opponent. Two guns with good fields of fire, two battalions in line, some lights in the town buildings and cavalry and infantry in reserve.

The Austrian defensive position.

The French were rolled for randomly. I divided the table into two feet spans either side of the road and then rolled a D4 for which area they turned up in. They ended up surprisingly evenly spread. I allowed myself one redeploy if I thought it was necessary, and as it turned out a French gun ended up deployed behind the crops on the French left, so that was promptly moved.

The French deployment

Other slightly worrying things were the French cavalry ended up square on to an Austrian battery, as did an infantry battalion, but the French automatically receive the first initiative due to being the attackers, so there is time to sort out those deployment issues.

'Ah, mon ami. this will be a lovely open area for us hussars, n'est-ce pas?'
'Err, Pierre, you might want to look in front of you.'

So all set to go tomorrow night. i don't hold out too much hope for the French - they probably need a couple more units to assault a defensive position successfully, but we'll see how they go.

'Ach, Wolfgang. there are not enough of them to give us much trouble at all!'

Finally a close up of the Austrian 1st Kaiser Dragoons. These, the artillery and the Austrian general were all completed this afternoon, as were the blue roofed buildings that the Grenzer are occupying. More on all of these later.

Kaiser Dragoons

Battle tomorrow and hopefully a battle report on Saturday.

Nate