Battle of Eylau 2018

Rather than snow …. or lots of baking powder all over the table….we decided to do this January 1807 battle in the summer.

Start of the game.  Eylau is represented by the yellow church in the middle

Showing James' fine work.  He did these French AND a Russian command!

Murat's huge heavy horse command.  Murat is the single horseman in the centre.  DaveB's nicely painted Imperial Guard is in the background.

Looking upon the Russian Right/French Left flanks

Showing Davout (commanded by myself) coming onto the battlefield near the village of Serpallen only to be stopped by a good defence by Ostermann (MarkS) and reinforcements coming in.  

Showing late in the battle with the Russians advancing with infantry and artillery.

I debated whether to add sandstorms (rather than snowstorms) add/or downgrade the Russian command and combat abilities, but in the end did not add any variations.  Probably should have.

One result is the Russians actually saw how few French were in front of them and immediately advanced.  By not lowering their maneuver pips and thus they moved at uncharacteristic speed for the Russians of this era.  Using group moves  (the now banned after game casual debate over lunch and beers), they managed to move troops to the beleaguered left flank to which Davout (myself) was attacking.  My attack along with all the other French commanders were stymied by the good Russian commanders.

Lestocq (and yes that is the spelling; and no, I have no idea how to pronounce;  we went with "la-stock") the lone Prussian finally entered at the historical time and immediately started marching toward the French.  However it was clear even at that point that the French were done and the Corps Morale rolls were starting to affect the outcome in any event (as they should)

It was a bad day for the French and our first a-historical result using the rules.  Should have gone with the original plan.  Must revisit this battle with such changes and see if the result will be different and, as interestingly, a historical one.
Nevertheless the game was a good one and as the players are now well familiar with the rules, the game chugged along at a good pace.  We had 95 elements on the table, with 9 players and concluded the affair in one time slot.

Thanks to all the players and to those who contributed the time and effort in painting and basing your figures for the game.

Murat at Eylau

Murat at Eylau

Our big Napoleonic game for the upcoming Enfilade! convention in Olympia, Washington State this year is Eylau.  A large, but largely indecisive battle between the French and Russians.  This battle was notable for the very large cavalry charge led by the flamboyant French cavalier Joachim Murat across the snows to charge the masses of Russians during this winter battle.

Many paintings of this event have been produced to portray this colourful character of history.

Murat during the Battle of Eylau 1807

Murat is on the right of the command knot.

While I already have a figure of him in his uniform during the battle of Heilsburg (see my previous post: link ),  this fashionista was notable for his various attire. Each was distinctive at the different battle and as we have one player paying us in beer in order to command the massed French heavy horse,  I decided we must have him play with the correct miniature.

I initially was going to make the model myself out of the plastic bits plus a lot of ‘green stuff’ but then noted that the figure manufacturer “Gringo40” offered a good option.

The Gingo40 version from its website.

I purchased him  (plus three Mamelukes to fill out the order).  Still, the price along with shipping, seemed quite expensive.  The minis, including our Monsieur Murat,  are a bit tall having rather thick bases for the normal 28mm,  as have done with this Murat, I will need to dig trenches in the MDF base to place the figures into, to drop the height somewhat.

The Gringo40 figure is not badly done with the pose obviously based on a famous painting (see above).  However, that absolutely ridiculous sword I removed,  replacing with the proper riding whip

Murat at Eylau without that ridiculous Gringo40 overly-large simitar!

The ground work is incomplete.  The battle, and thus his fur-lined cloak, were for the winter conditions which apparently were horrible with snow and freezing conditions.  This would suggest a snow covered terrain on the base.  However the rest of the armies are with green grass as will be the tabletop terrain.  We will fight the battle in May not February so no snow. Thus the whitened base will look very strange on the table and go very much against my ideal of visual continuity.

But do I portray the snow??, leave as is?? or add the grass and say “what-ev-er!” ??

Ah, these little wargaming hobby dilemmas which keep us up at night  :)