1849 action - breakout from Komarom

It's been two months since my last post, probably the longest gap since starting the blog. It's not that I haven't had anything to report - I've fought First Bull Run (ACW) twice, successfully initiating three new players into the delights of BBB, as well as having my first ever go at Peter Pig's Vietnam rules, "The Men of Company B". The latter was an entertaining game using Leslie's beautiful troops and terrain. The emphasis of the rules is very much on game rather than simulation, but it does capture some of the flavour of the conflict. Good fun.

But this week was my first outing at OWS in a while, and it was really good to catch up with the guys again. We fought my latest Hungary 1848-1849 scenario, the first battle of Komarom. I was excited to see this on the table as I visited the actual battlefield in September.

Hungarians breaking out from Komarom. Klapka's I Corps has overrun the Austrian siegeworks. Some of Damjanics's men have crossed the pontoon bridge into the Star Fort,  about to head west.

No Austrians to be seen!

Figures: Pendraken 10mm. Forts: Peter Pig. Entrenchments: Irregular Miniatures.

Pontoon bridge: Heroics & Ros.

The battlefield is very flat and open apart from one big wood and a few small farms and vineyards. The situation is that the Hungarians are erupting out of the partly-besieged fortress of Komarom (the game starts at the point where they have already overrun the Austrian siege lines in a brilliant cold-steel pre-dawn assault), and trying to cut off the Austrian main army's retreat from Buda. A large force of Austrians that is supposed to be retreating past the fortress then decides to pause to fight, so as to cover the retreat of its supply trains and siege artillery.

Consequently the scenario generates plenty of movement. Given that the technology of 1849 is essentially Napoleonic smoothbores, the bullet is very much secondary to the bayonet, so the game was all about the two sides maneuvering for advantage and then smashing into each other. It was a real ding-dong scrap, with many glorious charges and all the tense opposed dice rolling that those entail.

Unfortunately for the Austrians, some good rolls early on gave the Hungarians an edge that they never lost, taking out some Austrian artillery and seizing a key objective from which they could not be dislodged. The Austrians' problems were compounded by the fact that one of the Austrian commanders has been away in Indonesia for the past year or two and was distinctly out of practice.

For once we were therefore denied our usual last-turn knife-edge finish, and instead called the game a couple of turns early as a clear and irreversible Hungarian victory. Notwithstanding the one-sided outcome and the Austrian commanders cursing each other at times, it was a happy evening! And a useful playtest to fine-tune the scenario, which from this and others' reports did seem slightly skewed against the Austrians. Last but not least, it was great to get Dave's lovely Pendraken 10mm Hungarians and Austrians into action.

The scenario can be found in the files of the BBB Yahoo group as usual.

I posted photos in Flickr but haven't had a chance to annotate them yet.