Borodino a la Asquith

This week I needed to dismantle the table at the end of the game to add another foot of depth, so we were unable to play a regular campaign game. Instead went for a scenario from the SOTE book, inspired by Stuart Asquith's article some years ago. Stuart played at the club for a while but sadly we never had the chance to play this game with him and get his personal take. 

Russian forces were deployed exactly as the scenario specified, and we were lucky to have enough figures to use Russians for the whole force, We rated all the line Inferior / Superior and the Jagers as Regular. For the French forces we added 4 x Superior units to boost them a little.

The Fleches

Russians holding a village

The French massed 2/3rds of their  infantry against the thinly held woods to the south of the Felches, hoping to burst through the centre of the Russian position. More infantry faced the Grand Redoubt while Leger and horse looked to attack to the north of Borodino 

French ready to attack Borodino

The Germans attacked strongly towards the woods and the waiting Jagers, who were supported by flanking  fire from the Fleches. They used the Leger to demonstrate against the Redoubt while their horse pushed forward near Borodino.

With the units deployed close at the start we were quickly in the action. The French blasted some Russians holding a village between the Redoubt and the Fleches but were themselves pushed back by a counter attack.  The cavalry came to blows but became bogged down as they hacked away at each other in the stream. 

The key action though was in the woods to the south. The Germans charged but were mostly halted by accurate fire from the woods and Fleches. The Russians then moved reinforcements into the woods to stabilise the position.  

So a good win for the Russians with them holding all the objectives at the end of the game. On the end we ascribed the win to the Russians Superior morale - it makes them tough to kill and likely to reaerate wounds.