Wagram 1809 at Partizan 2025

 Hi all

After a very long hiatus, here is a fresh blog post to describe the game I staged at Partizan in Newark a couple of weeks ago.

This was a resurrection of the terrain and troops that I originally put together to recreate Wagram on its bicentennial in 2009. The troops are 6mm size from Baccus6mm with buildings from Timecast and terrain boards that I made myself from dense polystyrene covered with chinchilla sand and painted to represent generic fields and hills.

The rules I used were a heavily modified version of Volley and Bayonet. The most significant modification was the grafting on of a command and control system. Parts of the latter borrowed from Sam Mustafa's Fast Play Grande Armee - mostly the table for rolling for changes of orders and the use of command points to influence this.

Forces (typically corps, but some independent divisions) are allowed one of three order "stances": March allows the to manoeuvre rapidly but gives a severe disadvantage if caught in combat, Assault allows for forces to be mobile with the intent of making contact with the enemy and Tactical lets using adopt a more prepared ("deployed") status to give advantage when defending in combat but severely restricts movement and allows for very little launching of melee combat.

We (Matt, Phil and I) aimed to play the whole two-days of Wagram but this was never likely to happen at a busy show, and it didn't. What we achieved was to play through the first few hours of day 1, as Davout and Massena tackled the Austrian avant-garde and VI Korps to open up a bridgehead. We then skipped forward to the afternoon, with the bulk of the French and allied army crossing the Danube to form up as the Austrians prepared their defences along the Russbach stream. Finally we moved the clock forward to the morning of day 2 to see the French begin to attack northwards while guarding their right flank from a powerful Austrian counterattack by III and VI Corps supported by the grenadier reserve.

Overall the game played well, giving the feeling of commanding large lumbering formations and needing to make the high-level decisions about order stances. The uncertainty in the game generated some realistic friction, particularly when the avant-garde attempting to stage a measured withdrawal from Davout's III Corps spontaneously decided to counterattack, costing both sides casualties and surprising both commanders,

I'll not pretend the rules were a watertight set, but were an effective set of guidelines for a group of friends moving models around a table in a moderately plausible recreation of an actual battle. I'm now planning some smaller battles using more or less the same system, but looking at the campaigning in northern Italy between Eugene and Archduke John. These battles will be a lot less mentally fatiguing that Wagram, which no matter how streamlined the rules is always going to create a large mental load on players and umpire!

Firstly, here are some additional commanders I painted in the week before the game:

Now some of my own quick snaps of the game in progress:

...And for more of a treat here are better photos taken by chum Dr Phil, who also agreed to the challenging task of commanding the Austrians on the day:

French Chasseurs a Cheval

Hesse-Darmstadt infantry allied to the French

French infantry

French light cavalry under Lasalle and dragoons under Grouchy's command

part of the initial attacks by Davout and Massena. Note the corps "flags" made from overhead projector acetate printed and laminated

Lasalle and Grouchy on the move

Hussars of the avant-garde

More of the avant-garde

Kuirassiers and dragoons of the Austrian reserve

Three Austrian Corps defending the Wagram heights

French grinding forwards

Oudinot's 2nd Corps arrives

Davout tackles the avant-garde to expand the bridgehead over the Danube

Cavalry clash

French legere

Horse artillery

2 Corps is deployed for action

Massena's 4th Corps guarding the left flank

Bessieres with Napoleon's heavy cavalry reserve 

(Carabiniers are in the wrong uniforms, I know, but I like them)

Multiple French corps prepare to storm the heights

French and Saxon infantry of Bernadotte's corps

The Austrians sweeping in from the flank on day 2

The entire sweep of the battle on the 8'x8' table

The grand battery has been formed

Austrian grenadier reserve

Massena's massed corps artillery tries to hold back the Austrians

Saxons assaulting Aderklaa 

(these are actually SYW Prussian figures, but they scrub up OK)

That's all for now folks.

On the painting table are more 6mm Napoleonics as I add more grenzers, landwehr and insurrectio units for Archduke John's army.

My next demo game will be at The Other Partizan in October, when I'll be returning to 28mm AWI with a celebratory recreation of Bunker Hill to mark 250 years since 1775. With added elephants ships.