WW1 Game Completed

The battle between the German/Austro-Hungarian forces vs the Russians came to a conclusion tonight. In a previous post, I gave a report of our game that started last week. Tonight, the battle raged on.

On the right flank, my flank, it became rather grim. My poor die rolling continued as the Russians rambled forward. I lost my 3 howitzers as the Russians charged. The Russians did take some losses in the brief fight, but not enough to turn the tide. Another Russian unit continued to move on and managed to eliminate 1 regiment of mine. They withered under numerous volleys of rifle and artillery, as well as several charges. One Russian unit finally broke by failing his morale to move. This was a brief victory until another moved in to take it's place.

The Russian unit that used boats and rafts to enter from behind my furthest right unit, only managed to make a brief appearance. That unit spent too much time holding it's position and when he finally moved, they were going uphill which slowed the dramatically.

One brief victory for my German flank occurred when a Russian unit conducted a charge and survived my rifle fire to continue with a melee. The Russian unit was coming uphill at my Germans. This caused him to suffer numerous negative modifiers. When we rolled, the difference between his roll and mine was great! In favor of the Germans! The Russians lost 4 stands and routed away. It was the best die roll I had in 2 weeks! Of course it was short lived because a couple of turns later, I was hammered with artillery and some rifle fire. I took some significant casualties, however, I did mange to advance and retake some rifle pits. My unit was down to 3 stands out of 12, but holding tough. I knew their days were numbered.

On the left flank, the Austro-Hungarians began to make their move. Though their units were of lesser quality, they continued to press their advance. Infantry and artillery deployed and began to cause casualties among the Russian cavalry, and manged to silence an artillery battery.

My German 2nd in command was driven from his gun pits, but still managed to continue the fight. Once driven, he counter attacked the Russians. The charge didn't break the Russians and he had to fall back. It was time for a strategic withdraw. This was to hopefully put the Russians back on the move to where we had an advantage. He manged to pull his artillery back before he lost them. He was down to 4 batteries. He withdrew to the town which was our main supply route.

With my flank lost and my 2nd in command withdrawing to a better position, the game was called. In the end it was a Russian narrow victory. The Russian goal was to find a weak spot and break through. He found it on my farthest right flank. The Russians took my high ground and held it. The game could have gone longer, but because it was only our 2nd battle with the new rules, we had enough information from our play test to call it.

Our goal was to stop the breakthrough and the Austro-Hungarian goal was to take the Russian supply route.

The rules used were Battles With Brusilov. These are based on the Fire and Fury system for the American Civil War. Of course they had some modifications because it was WW1, but they seemed to work alright. We have some questions and we need some clarifications, but a usable set of rules.

I hope to have some pictures soon to add to this report.