Being a good uncle: Montebello 1859 (again)

Had the pleasure of my nephew visiting from the US this month. Neph had never wargamed and expressed interest in giving BBB a go, as he had heard so many good things about it. (From me. For a week.) Since it is one of the responsibilities of being an uncle to introduce one's nephews to new experiences, I happily obliged.

I chose Montebello for Neph's baptism of fire. This is an ideal introductory scenario for a new player. Both sides have only two units on-table initially, allowing players to learn the rule mechanisms gradually without being swamped by the command task. Even after all the reinforcements arrive, it is still a small battle, easily played in under 2 hours. The table is small (4'x4') and the terrain very flat and simple to set up. It is a meeting engagement, which makes for a relatively mobile situation and therefore a dynamic and interesting game.

View of the whole battlefield from the south. White counters indicate the objectives: Genestrello and Montebello on the hills in the foreground, and beyond them the Cascina Nuova and Foliarina next to the railway. I had the luxury of time, so I took some trouble over the aesthetic aspect and tried to make the game look good. The scattered trees, hedges and fields that are just ornamental and have no effect in-game. The pretty red-roofed buildings are tourist souvenirs from Dubrovnik. Fields are from Hotz Mats, as is the cloth underneath. Trees from some model railway scenery company. Hedges a mix of homemade from scourers, and resin from Timecast (I think). Latex river from "wondrous Wendy" at Historicon. Railway from Irregular Miniatures. Hills from Total System Scenic.  Streams made of felt (please don't ask me where you can get felt).

I'm going to depart from my usual brief synopsis approach and match the scenic effort with a fairly blow-by-blow account of the game. As Blogger won't let me have more than one photo in this post, you'll have to follow the rest in this album in Flickr.

This battle is a classic clash of quality vs quantity. I took command of the polyglot Austro-Hungarian mobs, while Neph got the heavily outnumbered but formidable French. Their allies were briefly represented by a unit of Sardinian cavalry, but these immolated themselves gloriously on Turn 1. The Austrian unit that was the target of their heroic sacrifice failed all but one of its subsequent movement rolls and played no further significant part in the game.

That apart, my Austrians belied their supposed Passivity and swarmed across the table at high speed. Although the French had got into Montebello first, their position looked precarious. This was soon confirmed when Baumgarten's men drove them out, while Schaffgotsch's and Braum's shook out into a line to confront the French reinforcements. As part of my aesthetic enhancement exercise, I dispensed with my usual functional but garish plastic counters, and instead used wool roving for different coloured smoke clouds. White denotes Disrupted/Silenced; Brown = Low Ammo; Black = Spent.

As if the mass of Austrians to his front wasn't enough to contend with, Neph also had a problem on his left flank. The unfortunate loss of his cavalry meant he had been unable to initiate any assaults on Turn 2, hence the Prince of Hesse was emboldened to commit half of his 31st Regiment. They entered from the north, shadowed by a small body of the French 93rd, and by Turn 4 were in range of the Cascina Nuova.

However, by Turn 5 Neph was able to make full use of Blanchard's brigade. He wasn't winning many firefights - he was struggling to get his guns in to action as they kept getting sniped at by Jaegers, plus his dice stank - so he launched assaults with every one of his units. That of the 84th on his right against Montebello was desperately optimistic, and they were driven back towards Genestrello. Action in the centre was inconclusive, but on his left Hesse's threat was nullified, raising the possibility of a French push against Foliarina. (Situation at start of Turn 6 here.)

Turn 6 saw the results of Turn 5 reinforced. Baumgarten chased the 84th and seized Genestrello, but on the Austrian right Hesse's men routed, exposing Foliarina. This was duly overrun by exultant Frenchmen, despite me moving another regiment to try to hold it.

On the last turn, Beuret's 74th came within an ace of retaking Montebello but were denied by Austrian cannon and my rather fortunate dice. Meanwhile, my counterattack against Foliarina expelled one French unit but could not defeat the second. Thus, yet again, all three results had been possible right to the end, and the final result was an honourable draw.

It has to be said that Neph's dice were as abysmally bad as mine were embarrassingly good. After one exchange of fire in which he had rolled snake-eyes to my box-cars, I apologised, we swapped dice, and then with the next volley got almost exactly the same result. In a larger game with more units and more rolls these would have averaged out, but in this small scenario a couple of extreme results can skew the game, so we did mitigate a couple of results by a point. Notwithstanding, the primary aim was achieved, as Neph said the game was good fun.