Battle of Görlitz, 1866
15th July 2007, Comments Off
Bismarck’s Wars, Blood & Iron, 28mm
Edinburgh wargamer Dave O’Brien kindly invited me to join him for a game using his 1866 figures – a scrap taken from the battle of Görlitz which saw a Prussian Division assaulting up a valley defended by an Austrian brigade. I took one Prussian wing, Dave Imrie the other.
We started taking heavy casualties from the start, mostly from the Austrian guns which were horrendously effective. Still, Dave drove back the Austrian jaeger screen and launched a headlong attack on the main Austrian position in a hilltop village. For my part my skirmishers thrown out in front of my advancing columns saw off one Austrian regiment, then everyone deployed to shoot another one out of a fortified farmstead.
Dave O’Brien tried to save the day with a death ride by his Hussars, with predictable consequences. the game ended with the Prussians advancing on the right, screening the village on the left, and forcing the Austrians to withdraw or risk annihilation. All in all it was a comprehensive but costly victory for the Prussians.
Dave used his own rules – a heavily modified version of Warhammer which seemed to work quite well. Unlike the two Dave’s I’m a Warhammer virgin, but the system was easy enough to pick up, and the game flowed extremely quickly, allowing us to reach a conclusion in 2 1/2 hours. My one quibble would be with the effectiveness of the artillery – but probably only because I was being pasted by the Austrian guns!
