Shako, 8 August

A historic evening.  Since I started painting up 15mm Napoleonics in 1997 I've painted a fair few figures.  I started out with French and British, and then got stuck into Austrians.  It is only in 2012, 15 years on, that I find I have enough finished French and Austrian units to play the Shako 'pick up' game scenarios.  The lists at the back of the rules set out roughly a Corps level force as a basic army and then offer further optional selections, with the players choosing how many options to add in for a 12-15 turn game which is notionally playable in an evening.  Even the basic forces end up being quite big, so finally, many years (and children...) after starting to play Shako with Dunc, I had enough for this week's historic game.

James and David had decided on the respective force compositions earlier in the year as per the 1809 lists.  James went for a French Corps with 7 Divisions.  Since they were attacking they had 10% more line infantry than David's Austrians.  Having studied the mathematics of breakpoints (didn't we use to do this for DBM?) David concluded that 4 massive Divisions sounded about right - so the game was almost a canonical encounter between flexible, manoeuverist attacking French, and stolid, steady defending Austrians.  James wasn't able to make it alas, so Orhan took the role of Marshal Victor, French II Corps.  David was his white-coated nemesis Prince Alois Lichtenstein, commanding Austrian II Corps.  The area of operations was Wachau.

For terrain, I set up a reasonably crowded 6' x 4' table with the large town in the centre, a river on one flank and craggy hills dominating a defensive position of hedgerows and enclosed fields behind the town.  Deployment was alternating by Divisions, with David's line infantry and grenadiers in the centre and cavalry on the right flank.  Orhan went for an enveloping attack, with heavy cavalry on his left, light cavalry on his right, both backed up by lots of infantry and guns.  His centre held his (newly painted) Polish infantry division in reserve.

The Austrian deployment - cavlary on the right, massed infantry in the centre, Landwehr on the left

The French centre - Polish in reserve, a Light Infantry Division in skirmish order moving up through the woods.

Orhan's charge of the Heavy Brigade

The game opened with headlong cavalry attacks by Orhan on David's gun batteries.  It was a bit 'charge of the light and heavy brigades'.  The lights were successful in taking out David's guns on the left - but were wiped out in the process; a multi unit combat saw batteries sabred but the attacking hussars cut to ribbons by enterprising Austrian Grenzer light infantry.  On the right, Orhan's heavies took out one of the guns but were forced off by good defensive dice rolling and the arrival of David's own cuirassiers.  Orhan seized both of the crags and deployed artillery which shot up David's infantry on his left.  The French grenadiers who took the hill on the Austrian right didn't make any real impact from firing down on the Austrian lines; the French heavy battery which finally made it up to the heights didn't get a chance to fire because we had to call time.

We managed to play 7 turns.  Orhan's infantry on both flanks was just starting to engage the Austrians - massed volleyfire from both sides was causing casualties on the left.  On the right, combined arms tactics from both sides was inviting stalemate - infantry was deployed in squares, threatened by opposing cavalry, cannons were getting into position for some serious canister damage.

And alas then it was time to stop.  The game was in the balance.  I think that either side could have won (the scenario was that if the French didn't break the Austrians then the Austrians would win).  As it was, Orhan had lost his Light Cavalry Division and some Light Infantry, David had lost his guns on his left and his infantry was in a bit of a parlous state there - but his huge centre Divisions were pretty much unscathed.

Overall, we all enjoyed the game and remarked again how good Shako is as a rules set.  We should play it more often...