Marengo 2025 - Part One

Having recently refought this battle using Shako I was keen to give it a go using Napoleon's Battles, particularly as I had been working on a revised Order of Battle using Nafziger and Osprey sources.

Previous posts on this battle:

With Richard January 2015 (Austrian win)

With Stephen and Mark B March 2015 (Draw)

With Shako October 2024 (French win)

This game featured Mark B from the March 2015 and Shako game, plus Mark W and Julian from the Shako game.  I was the umpire, Mark W the Austrian commander and Mark B and Julian the French (Julian taking Lannes command and overall command in Mark B's absence).

This game featured all my figures and also my new little houses that I had purchased during my holiday in Croatia in 2023.  Annoyingly I had lost them, but thankfully found them a few days before after having given up on ever finding them.

1000 and the Austrians are concentrated for their assault on Marengo.

Top-down view of the deployment.

It has been hard to fit all the Austrians in.

Note separate stands to mark casualties and hold unit label.

They also served to denote formation as some units had only two stands.

Ott is moving up on the left and Austrian cavalry has stormed across the Fontanone stream.

The French have formed squares,

but now find themselves under assault by Austrian infantry.

It's 1030 and Napoleon has arrived,

top right-hand corner on the road from San Giuliano. 

Ott's cavalry attack.

Lannes has secured Castel Ceriolo. 

Napoleon again visible top right-hand corner.

The French in squares are taking serious casualties from Austrian artillery.

Murat is everywhere with his cavalry.

The French cavalry try to hold back the white tide.

Austrian Grenadiers have now engaged Lannes' infantry.

The French defenders of Marengo are suffering under heavy bombardment,

as the rest on the Austrians do their best to push forward 

and keep up the pressure on the French.

Ott's infantry make a brave assault against Castel Ceriolo,

while the Grenadiers overwhelm what is left of Lanne's division.

Marengo has fallen and the Austrian surge forward 

hoping to wipe out the remaining French,

before their reinforcements arrive.

The situation on the Austrian left.

The little that is left of Lannes' command holds Castel Ceriolo.

The Austrians hold Marengo and have driven off the French.

All that can be seen is one French horse battery and their heavy cavalry.

But here come the reinforcements!

And this is where we had to end the session at the end of the 1330 turn.  Still another four turns to go until more French reinforcements arrive.  French have lost eight units.  Until reinforcements arrive, they will break if they lose another two units.  The Austrians are down three, plus one unit waiting to be rallied.  The Advance Guard and Hadik's formations are fatigued.  They still have plenty of fight.

Weimar Take Six

Another chance to play this excellent political game ended in anarchy.

Richard was Zentrum (blue), Jeff the SPD (orange), Simon the KPD (pink) and I was the DNVP (black).

Anarchy occurs when there are over six issues (Threat Markers) facing the country (see top left-hand corner).

The DNVP had party bases in every city and was the party with the most seats in the Reichstag.  My strategy was to win by having the majority of seats in the Reichstag and I was hoping the Brown Shirt presence would increase that possibility.

Richard has provided this wonderfully detailed AAR that truly does this great game justice.

Chasing votes in the Reichstag?- be careful what you wish for....

It was yet another exciting roller coaster ride in the Weimar era. This game had the government teetering on the edge of anarchy for most of the game until it was finally toppled by the Black Friday stock market collapse and "successful" resolution of the Young Plan as the final, cynical, act of the game.

The KPD brought the spirit of revolution in every turn. Why wouldn't you? An extra card is always handy and they came very close to a Councils victory. It was only thwarted by the concerted government effort to force a couple of cancelled KPD Coup d'etat events and the play of Reichsexecution which knocked them back from being in a game winning position, but they were still in the fight right until the end.

The DNVP were, by contrast, keeping a low profile and despite managing to establish a single regime in Essen, were content to amass VPs by other means. They played an annoyingly skillful hand at winning or preventing others from winning issues in the Reichstag whilst letting the KPD take the brunt of government counter coup activity. The DNVP played an under the radar game of true evil genius.

The two government parties co-operated pretty well it must be said, despite the, not to be unexpected, frictions within the coalition, resulting in the odd difference of opinion and ways were parted for selfish reasons by both parties on more than one occasion.

Nevertheless, by turn 3, between the KPD and DNVP there were enough Councils/Regimes on  the board and threat markers in the Deutsche Reich (DR) box such that a single further successful coup attempt would have collapsed the government into anarchy, with most probably a DNVP win resulting. It was a big surprise to see the Reich survive this turn.

Turn 4 saw the death of Reichspresident Ebert, which precipitated elections and the final run off vote was for either the DNVP candidate Paul von Hindenburg or the SPD's Otto Braun. The Zentrum were the king makers and backed their government colleague and the SPD had control of the Presidency.

Weimar forces you to make a lot of tough decisions. Do you play the percentages and hope that an outlier event doesn't happen, or do you plan for the statistically unlikely, but theoretically possible worst case to occur? It can be a tough choice.

In turn 2, mindful of the ever diminishing number of seats in the Reichstag as a result of failed crisis rolls and threat markers in cities causing losses of seats in the Reichstag, the Zentrum player urged their SPD partner to focus on different issues in play in the Reichstag as the Rentenmark issue looked safely in the bag at the 5 voting mark on the SPD's track. This proved to be a critical moment in the game as the DNVP ensured that the Rentenmark issue ended up on the zero space by playing a rare 5 Action point card to debate. (5 action point cards normally have very powerful favourable events on them for the party playing them, so to use one for debate is quite an important decision). With the issue on the zero space at the end of the round, this meant that it couldn't be resolved and as a result 2 inflation markers (there can be a maximum of three) were left permanently in the Deutsche Reich threat boxes. This was a very shrewd move by the DNVP who, having concentrated on amassing VPs, were no doubt looking to an anarchy win, the negative consequences of which they were shielded from by virtue of not being in the government.

This really made the situation extremely difficult and probably impossible for the government to extricate themselves from, with anarchy looking inevitable assuming there wasn't a successful coup d'etat before then.

Ironically there was another opportunity to introduce the Rentenmark available, but the Zentrum player didn't realise his one card left in the draw pile was this very card which allowed an attempt to introduce the Rentenmark via a different method. Instead he chose to add the Economy focused cards into his deck instead and thus buried this potentially game saving card in the draw deck with a slim chance of it being drawn. A fortuitous mistake as it turned out. Perhaps more ironically, whilst Zentrum was most annoyed at this spoiler by the DNVP, it turned out to be a critical, but not sole, component for forging an unlikely victory.

Everything you do in Weimar can have consequences in the game. Some are immediate or set you up for another action in the next round, whilst others can have unforeseeable consequences.

The turn 4 Flag Dispute issue was hotly contested between the DNVP and Zentrum. With 5 VPs up for grabs, but at the cost of some (easily handled 😉) NSDAP consequences. With an eye on the state of the DR threat markers and the likelihood of anarchy, those 5 VPs were an important potential buffer to the -8 VP penalty to the government parties if/when anarchy occurred. A quick scan of the VPs determined that a rare Zentrum victory was possible if they won the Flag Dispute and then toppled the Reich into anarchy at the very beginning of turn 5 before any attempt by the KPD to win via Coup d'etat. Zentrum went for it and with the final card play of the round in turn 4, the Flag Dispute was won by Zentrum and the 5 VPs were gobbled up without remorse for the NSDAP consequences. Zentrum was still in with a slim path to victory. Something else would need to happen to get them over the line however....

The composition of the Reichstag also changed at the end of turn 4 and some of the seats were now occupied by gentlemen in brown shirts. Following the tussle for seats, Zentrum ended up with the most seats as compared to their coalition partners in the SPD and the Chancellorship passed to them for the next turn. However, it seemed that Chancellor von Richard had been passed the poison chalice with 4 threat markers already in the DR box and one guaranteed to appear at the start of turn 5 thus finding himself at the helm in the unenviable position of seeing the government and Reich fall.

With Black Friday triggering the depression at the start of Turn 5, and thus placing the 5th threat marker in the Deutsche Reich box and with 35 VPs to the DNVP's 26, Zentrum could afford to absorb the anarchy penalty and still come out in front. The challenge was to tip into anarchy before a successful coup d'etat from the KPD which was still a possibility. If only there was a way to "generate" another DR box threat marker....

At this point, in an historical twist, Comrade Simon of the KPD received a call from the "Boss" at party HQ with instructions to have the Revolution over within 30 minutes or the only thing being "overthrown" would be his dinner....

Having drawn an extra party card as a result of his particular Agenda card the KPD player was required to play an extra card prior to the regular impulse. Perhaps with the thought of an angry "Boss" clouding his judgement or the urgency of getting the job done, but not realising all of the consequences, the KPD played an extremely powerful card, "BVG Strike" at the beginning of the Impulse phase as he is required to do. This card is a timeline card and offers the player the choice of placing a token on the NSDAP track and resolving the effect, but then allowing them to use the value of every other player's action card that round for debating OR do nothing at all. An extremely powerful opportunity.  The NSDAP effect that was required to be resolved was to place an "Instable State" threat marker in the DR box.

The KPD chose to accept the choice and the NSDAP effect was to place a 6th threat marker into the DR Box. The window to an unlikely Zentrum victory had been opened...

With the Young Plan diplomatic event available for resolution, any attempt to resolve this diplomatic action would automatically place a Violent Peace marker in the DR box and regardless of the result of the attempt would tip the Reich into anarchy. Playing first in this round as the Chancellor, Zentrum successfully resolved the issue earning 3 VP to further increase the buffer, anarchy resulted and the two government parties suffered a -8 VP each. Game over.

The final scores, adjusted for the anarchy penalty (-8VPs) for the two government parties (Zentrum and SPD) were:

• Zentrum: 30
• DNVP: 26
• SPD: 16
• KPD: 13

It was a close run thing. A lot of people find the unexpected outcomes in this game to be a turn off. The twists and turns in this game are simply amazing. Personally, I think this is what makes this the game stand out as the best political game ever. So much can happen, and it is all thematically possible. The game is not so much about the outcome, but the journey and it is an exciting and absorbing one at that.

Thank you to my fellow Weimaraners for sharing the journey.

Looking forward to the next outing in Weimar!

Maximillian Imperials versus Tudor

I found a different army to use my Burgundians with and took them to fight Mark B's Tudors in a tough fight.

The Imperials were out scouted and started on the defensive.

There is some difficult ground on the right and a small wood in the centre.

The Imperials advanced while their knights shuffled sideways.

The shooting starts, mostly ineffective.

Except for the Tudor artillery.

The Tudor's Irish tried their hand against Imperialist harquebusiers,

but were bloodily repulsed.

The Tudor artillery continues to inflict damage,

as the Imperialist infantry wait for the knights to catch up.

Some telling fire from yet more harquebuses decimates one of the Tudor units of longbow.

The Imperial mounted harquebusiers look a tad exposed.

The mounted harquebusiers were traded for a unit of longbow.

The Imperial knights from Burgundy obliterate the Tudor artillery

and inflict a heavy defeat on the Tudor knights stationed behind it.

The Imperial's harquebusiers have started to punish the Tudor longbowmen

that are hiding in the wood.

A unit of Tudor infantry has been bested by Imperial pike.

A slight pause before the final push.

The Tudor mounted knights fared badly,

but their dismounted knights made a mess of their opponents.

However, it was all too late for the Tudors.

The Lamps Are Going Out again and again

It had been a while since Richard and I had last played this game.  The first game saw the war over by Christmas, but the second ragged on with a Russian Revolution and a very late US entry. Richard was the Central Powers in both games.

Germans spend Christmas in Paris.

US isolationists caused a critical delay.

Richard has provided the following (with a few edits from me)

The final scores for the second game were as follows:

Central Powers Points earned:

• Russia defeated:  4
• Serbia: 1
• Romania: 1

Entente Points earned:

• East Africa: 1

For a net of 5. The Central Powers need 7 to win.

The game was lost for the Central Powers when the Entente got back the Somme early in the game (1915). There was no real coming back from this as the Russians had built up so much that the Germans couldn't even spare a single army for the Western Front if they were going to make any progress against the Russians. The Russians had also made that extremely difficult by leaving armies behind to threaten the German flanks and Baltic supply line tying up two of their armies needed at the front.

The Russian fast build up was also made easier by super early Italian entry (fewer Austrian-Hungarian units used against Russia) and particularly no Gallipoli campaign (this might have been the first game where there was no Gallipoli). That was a critical factor which freed up a British army at a critical

time. The British seemed to always have more than enough production points throughout the game as the maximum U Boat attrition was only two which still leaves the British five.

The High Seas Fleet put in a good account after technology improvements, causing the British to expend production to repair their fleet, but it was too late by then.  The Germans pushed their luck with an extremely skimpy defence in the Rhine, but it failed at a critical moment and cost them a permanent army lost, which really hurts the Germans as everything is needed in the final turns. One more army

would have meant saving Belgium and another VP. With the late US entry, although a long shot, it was all still up for grabs, which is great as you never feel it's over until it is.

We did have a few mistakes over production points and fleet usage as well as forgetting to use poison gas, although the latter is understandable. 

Later Abbasid Arabs versus New Kingdom Egyptians

Not historical, but at least from a common location.  My Arabs were on the defensive facing Karl's Egyptians. Given their subsequent performance my troops must have lost their faith. 

Out scouted the Arabs deployed with a strong left flank.

There is some broken ground on the left

and extensive difficult terrain including a wood on the right.

The Arabs adjust their frontage, massing all their cavalry against a measly two units of chariots.

However, it seemed the Arabs had forgot to bring any arrows

unlike the Egyptians that score a hit with every shot.

Arab skirmishers and light cavalry have run off.

The first clash was held.

And developed into a very long fight between the Arab commander and the chariots.

The Arab cavalry was not having a good time.

Their infantry was not having much shooting success.

So in they go!

But it didn't go well.

Failing to throw sixes in combats,

they threw sixes in Cohesion Tests and fled.

Marengo Muster

I have been working on a revised scenario for the Battle of Marengo using Napoleon's Battles.  I am 99% of the way there.  Here are all the troops and their casualty stands.  The only short fall I had was with Austrian cavalry and I made it up using some white coated Prussians.

All that remains to do is make up some large print rosters and schedule the players.  The latter is the challenge, made doubly so because parking at my place is a bit of a mess due to building works.

The French

The Austrians

Abbasid Arab Infantry

I think I can just recall buying these chaps in the past few years, but I wouldn't swear to it.  Maybe they were a gift (I think that accounts for the archers).  Regardless I have started painting them all (two or more packets of Old Glory - AC1 and AC2).  Still more to do, and then there is some cavalry.

A bit dark, but suits the times.

Here's to brighter times.

The only disappointment I have with these guys is the bendy spears.

There are some other spearmen mixed in, I think they are Essex.

The secret is the black wash.

It really brings them to life.

Museum Pictura again and again

I was keen to play this delightful game again after the stress of Gallipoli.  Richard laid it on with all the expansions.  After playing we realized we were doing the exhibiting of pictures wrong and decided to play again. It is not a complex game, but that are a lot of moving parts.

My gallery - The British Museum

Richard's New York Gallery

The art market

Richard has provided this summary and commentary.

Here is the adjusted total broken down by where the points came from:

Main Game: Mark: 221 Richard: 215

Crystal Palace: Mark: 32 Richard: 51

Vernissage: Mark: 66 Richard: 114

For a total of: Mark: 319 Richard: 380

The big difference in the scores in the two expansions all came down to the Patron cards. I don't think we'd managed to pick up a lot of Patrons in previous games, but we sure managed to pick up a big collection each this time. Once I saw the opportunities available for having a lot of Gallerists and statues multiplying the effect of collecting the Patron cards, I made an active effort to get into a position to get the Patrons. That was the biggest factor affecting the final scores.

One might sum up the difference in the museums thusly:

The Soirees organised by the British Museum attracted the wrong crowd, with, mostly, a bunch of freeloading journalists turning up and promising all kinds of press coverage. In the end, we all know they were there for the Champagne and Canapes. Still, they did save 19 points in discard pile penalty.

In contrast, the New York Museum's events attracted the most discerning gallerists who were falling over themselves to be seen with the museum's "A List" patrons whilst admiring the tastefully arranged statues within the museum.

Burgundian Ordonnance versus 100 Years War English

Time for my Burgundians to face Dave's English again.

The Burgundians found the English hiding behind a hill, between a forest and a lake

Both sides advanced.

The English getting in a lucky shot.

With their weight of firepower 

the Burgundians thought they should be doing more damage

to the advancing English, 

but it seemed not...

Even a close range the Burgundians didn't seem to be able to hit anything.

Charge!

The English went first and routed the ineffective Burgundian artillery,

and pushing back the Burgundian pikes.

But the Burgundian general charged in with his knights,

but failed to make any noticeable impact.

At least the Burgundian archers had found their target.

English billmen devastate the Burgundian pike,

as the English knights charge on the flank.

The Burgundian centre has collapsed or rather vanished.

However, the Burgundian general has broken through

and the other Burgundian knights are getting ready to charge.

The battle is in the balance...

Both sides are close to breaking...

A draw!