Welcome to Marauder Moments - a chronicle of the Mortimer Street Marauders; the games we play, the rules we use, the figures we play with and the scenery they fight over. Hope you enjoy these pages and maybe call back to catch up with our escapades.

Sunday 11 June 2017

Dresden 1813 - Conclusion


This post concludes the Dresden game which I first posted some months ago. I've lost my "posting mojo" hence the delay. We have played every week since but the desire to share has waned a little plus work/family has been pretty hectic. The Summer might see more.  

I have a heap of new toys to share with you and will do once fully based and worthy of your inspection. In short the massive Christmas order from Elite Miniatures has been painted plus a few more beside plus a few interesting bits from ebay & some painted by Peter Morbey of Elite himself.
  
The Battle concludes.

Crisis on the French right & centre...
 
Here Austrian foot drive back Italians with supporting charges by two regiments of cuirassiers who broke through...  

To the right of the above shot more Austrians relentlessly increase the pressure with further cavalry support and batteries. 

Elements of an Austrian Advance Guard Brigade including jaegers, grenz, & hussars 

Six Russian Guard & one Prussian Guard battalion fall on Bavarians supported by Westphalians. 

An outlying village and lynch pin of the French right falls to Austrians.
Note Westphalian Guards screen left.

Middle Guard quick marching from Dresden to prop up the failing French right.
Retreaters mill about impeding their progress.
That caisson is dashing to resupply a batter which ran low on ammo at a crucial time, as always.  

French "top brass" observe the critical situation from high up on the city walls. In safety.
I love that roof scape. 
The struggle on the French left

French heavy cavalry charge en masse and clear the Russians from this sector buying some time for Ney to reorder his Young Guardsmen and sort out another attack to recapture the Grosse Garten.
Then more Russians arrived...

Fighting rages in & around the gardens...

The Bavarian position looks perilous, Russian Guards to the front & now Prussians on the flank. 

Bavarians lining the breastwork of their redoubt.
Dresden looms in the distance.

Russian Guard Cuirassiers arrive with a horse battery - Perfect.
Great command vignette.

Russian Guardsmen & Austrians plough into the Bavarian & Westphalian lines.

Hanging on grimly.

Russian Guards - not sure which regiment.

Russian 6lb battery deploys to bombard those French heavies we saw earlier. This is one of Tony's epic vignettes.
The cart brings up stale bread but will return with casualties no doubt.  
ies
Sheer numbers may just prevail for the Allies at the ornamental gardens. 

"There seems to a twig stuck in your spokes old chap!"

They score!
Lead Prussian & Russian Grenadier battalions storm and capture the Grosse Garten.  


The French left is in chaos with troops intermixed in tight confines under constant fire from two 6 gun batteries.


Finish Guard Jaeger - one of the junior Russian Guard Regiments.
These are Warlord plastics with Front Rank command waving very pretty GMB flags.
Painted by Barry Hill for me, based by Chris & I.  

A panoramic sweep across the field of battle showing the depth and width of the battlefield, 14'6 x 14'. 

A similar shot... 

and another.

At this point the French threw in the towel conceding defeat. 
The Austrians were rampant. Well handled & numerous combined attacks with great support. 
The Russian Guard looked powerful but never fully exerted their full power & potential.
The Russians on the French left performed poorly but were numerous enough to outlast Ney.
The Russo Prussian attack on the Grosse Garten was well handled. They took & retook it twice.
The Prussians elsewhere had little or no impact being very slow to deploy.

The French and their allies held on bravely. Most formations stood their ground until the end despite some frightful loses. In some respects this was a problem because fresh formations struggled to insert themselves into the line. Cavalry formations especially blocked the route of march or unformed others as they milled about. This prevented the Guard from even firing a shot, drawing a sabre or deploying a cannon. The French launched only one major counter attack, that of the heavy cavalry. This repulsed the first Russian line but never exploited it.    

The General d'Armee rules in a beta test format held up very well. These have now been published in a final set which are even more streamlined and playable; truly an excellent set.  

This was a wonderful game to play, infact we did so twice with the same result twice! We are presently playing the test game in the rule book, a fragment of Bautzen, it's tight!  

I hope to post a bit more in future, possibly shorter update style material as these "slug fest" write-ups are very time consuming to write.

Best wishes,

Jeremy

          







12 comments:

  1. Great new additions JJ and cracking looking game. Would you say you guys have now moved away from GdB in favour of GDA or will you still be playing the odd game of GdB? As you guys play mostly big battles I'd gu3ss GdA is perfect to you?
    We haven't moved over from GdB as the guys still enjoy it. We will s3e in time if that changes.

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    1. Cheers Paul, great to hear from you.
      Good question re GdA v GdB. You kinda answered it yourself, we plan on sticking with GdB for Peninsular War games which are smaller & more granular also for smaller continental games. However for the usual Marauder fair we intend to run with GdA as they really are superb at representing that scale of warfare; all we need is more space!

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    2. That's good to hear JJ, A bit of both.

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  2. Brilliant! Thanks for all the pics, and report, just fabulous! :)

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    1. Hi Chasseur, you're very welcome. Many thanks for your kind words, glad you appreciate our efforts.
      Best wishes,
      Jeremy

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  3. Huge and most impressive, love the roof view, superb!

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    1. Hi Phil,
      glad you approve, we all like a stripey roof once in a while!
      Many thanks for popping in to comment.
      Best wishes,
      Jeremy

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  4. Epic in scale and scope indeed

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  5. I can understand losing the 'urge' to blog Jeremy. I've had a similar thing for most of the past six months.
    Really pleased that you got over it sufficiently to put fingers to keyboard and compile this report with your superb photos of this epic. Formidable!

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    1. Cheers James.
      We start another big game tonight, Russians and French fictional encounter pre Borodino, I'll post quicker next time as you have encouraged me.
      Best wishes,
      Jeremy

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    2. That sounds great. Bet it's gonna look superb!

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