 THE TIME IS: 0500 hours., 17 April
1809
At
the end of a 96-hour journey from Paris, as the Emperor stepped out of his
carriage in Donauwörth, Bavaria, his army was in an extremely hazardous
position. Even if Davout and Massena had concentrated, the position would have
been bad enough. But, thanks to Berthier's misunderstandings, they are ninety
miles apart. The Archduke Charles, with nearly 90,000 men, is moving across
the Isar River at Landshut. Two very easy marches will take his main body to
the Danube at Kelheim or Ratisbon, whilst between Massena, in Augsburg, and
Davout, in Ratisbon, were four days march. In this space there was nothing to
oppose the Austrians except 27,000 Bavarian troops.
Inside Berthier's headquarters the Emperor did not find that marshal, who had
gone to Augsburg, but sat down to study his correspondence in the office. He
now learnt that Davout had first retired behind the Altmühl River, above
Ratisbon, and had been sent forward to Ratisbon over very bad cross roads.
The Emperor's first move was to send his aide-de-camp Savary to Davout to warn
him of the absolute necessity of getting in touch with the center, even if he
had to abandon Ratisbon. In that case, he was to destroy the stone bridge
there, so as to prevent the Austrian northern wing from falling on his rear.
At 8 A.M., news arrived from Lefebvre that an Austrian force of unknown
strength was issuing from Landshut, driving the Bavarians before it. Later
Napoleon discovered this column comprised four army corps, with two more
moving on parallel routes.
While the Bavarians slowed the "column of Landshut," Davout was ordered to
move on Neustadt and Geisenfeld, and Massena on Pfaffenhofen, along the Ilm
River, closing up the gap between the two marshals. But the Austrians had
other ideas.
GAME SYSTEM: Six Days of Glory/1806/Last Days of the Grande Armee
SCALE: Six hours per turn / 800-1000 men per Strength Point. The scale
of the map is 1:100,000 (each 16mm hex equals 1600 meters).
PLAYERS: Two (or two teams).
SEVEN SCENARIOS: The Austrian Advance to the Danube, The Trap Closes,
The Emperor Arrives, The Battle of Abensberg, The Maneuver of Landshut, The
Battle of Eckmühl, and The Campaign Game (various start dates).
COMPONENTS: One 22 x 34" map and 280 two-sided units; 32 pages of rules
including campaign analysis, designers notes and more; 8 player aid cards,
including French and Austrian March Tables showing the positions of all units
and leaders on the morning of each day, and turn record track.
Bonus: Free copy of OSG's Wargame Design Magazine, special issue on The
Seven Days of 1809.
GAME DESIGN: Kevin Zucker.
PLAYING TIME: 8 to 10 Hours
Click here for Rules
(ver. 3.27)
(zipped .pdf
format).
Click here for Counters Front
Back.
Click here for map
sample.
In response to many requests for one-map games, we have
eliminated the area north of the Danube - the territory from there southeast
to the Isar R. fits perfectly on one map. We have updated the series rules in
order to benefit from the game questions asked about the prior games in this
series.
This campaign has plenty of opportunity for the offensive for both players:
the Austrians at first have a shot at Davout's III Corps, which has to
withdraw along the Danube. Later, Napoleon arrives with more troops and can
attempt to outflank the Austrians via Landshut in the south.
"The battle of Abensberg, the maneuver of Landshut, and the battle of
Eckmuehl are the boldest, the most brilliant, the ablest maneuvers of
Napoleon." So wrote Napoleon at St. Helena.
The game covers a near-catastrophic week in 1809 when the Archduke Charles
caught Davout's incomparable III Corps against the Danube River. The French
had to fight their way through Teugen and Hausen on the 19th of April. During
the preceding twenty-four hours Lefebvre with the Bavarian Corps had retired
to Abensberg under pressure from Hiller's corps after trying to reach Davout's
position. This day started with the Austrians not fully concentrated for
battle but strung-out all over the map, spoiling a golden opportunity to
resoundingly defeat an important component of Napoleon's army. Had Charles
realized his opportunity sooner, and moved with alacrity once his decision was
made, the French III Corps would have been bloodied; compounding the mistakes
of the French Marshal Berthier, the French could have been defeated in detail.
Instead, the grand assault became a grand retreat, part of the Austrians
escaping by the bridge at Landshut, and Charles' force escaping over the
Danube at Ratisbon (Regensberg).
OSG was fortunate to have the assistance of an historian of Munich, Germany,
who provided a set of maps (scale: 1 cm = 1666 m) which were used by a
Bavarian officer for a reenactment of the campaign in the year 1907. On this
maps are the main roads which existed in 1809. Further drawn on the maps are
the locations of the involved units from 17. - 22. April; for every day one
map with the situation at the morning and at the evening of the day - very
interesting!
The game includes a matrix that shows the position of each unit in each army
at the beginning of each day of the campaign. This table was created from the
'official' Bavarian Army maps. Such a table reveals a lot about how well the
game flows (i.e., are Movement Allowances correct and are command, marches,
battles, retreats achievable).
THE 6 DAYS SYSTEM
Seven Days of 1809 uses the game system that
first appeared in "Six Days of Glory," which covers the Battles near
Montmirail in February of 1814. OSG's first game in this series was "1806:
Rossbach Avenged." The following description of the system is from a review of
OSG's "1806" by LTC Wilbur E. Gray. [Note: "Six Days of Glory" was designed by
Kevin Zucker and published by Clash of Arms Games.]
There are three daylight turns of each calendar day (eg,
Morning, Afternoon and Evening), with the second player moving first during
the single Night Turn. The sequence of play during each of the day turns has
three phases:
Command and Reorganization Phase. The player
first may use any of his eligible leaders to resurrect any available
eliminated units, though by doing so these leaders lose all ability to perform
command & control functions for the entire turn. This is a critical issue for
both players as the second half of this Phase is the Command Segment, perhaps
the single most important part of the game. In this segment the player uses
his leaders to place other leaders and units "in command," assuring that they
both move and fight most effectively. This is done by the distribution of
Command Points against subordinate leaders and combat units within Command
Range, or by a die roll against the leader's Initiative Rating. Those failing
to meet these criteria have an Out of Command marker placed on them and remain
in this status for the remainder of the turn.
The next phase is the Movement Phase, and like
the phase before it, is also divided into two segments. The first up allows
the player to move all forces currently "in command" up to the limits of their
movement allowance, with reinforcements entering the board automatically being
considered as such. The second segment allows the individual movement of
leaders who previously failed their initiative check. Players may also move
"out of command" (eg, outside the Command Radius of any leader) units assuming
they now pass an initiative roll similar to the one attempted by leaders in
the first phase of the game. Trundling leaders and divisions from place to
place is done as in most other wargames, but with complete hidden movement in
1806, the of the counter displayed.
The final phase is the Combat Phase and here
all opposing counters are flipped to their opposite sides to reveal unit or
leader type and strength. Defending cavalry to include small recon/counter
recon patrols called Vedettes may retreat before combat. At this point the
phasing player must attack every enemy counter he has forces adjacent to,
using a Combat Results Table (CRT) of the typical odds ratio type. Combat
results are equally typical, being Attacker or Defender Eliminated, Attacker
or Defender Retreats 1 (or 2) hexes or the time honored Exchange. Defending
units receive the single most effective terrain effects bonus and voluntary
odds reduction by the attacker is allowed. When the final combat has been
resolved, all counters are flipped over to their flag sides and the game
continues with the next player starting his Command and Reorganization Phase.
The single Night Turn of each calendar day is a
little different in both sequence and the types of actions each player might
perform. In this turn the second player begins first, which means he actually
has a back to back set of phases coming out of the Evening Turn, a small but
important difference. The turn itself has a Command and Reorganization Phase,
but here the only activity allowed is to start the process of reviving
eliminated units if possible. Units returned to play out of this phase do so
at a reduced strength, using a second supplied counter. There is also a Supply
Phase where the player determines both the Supply and Demoralization Status of
his forces, the latter based on the number of friendly units eliminated. The
Night Turn ends with a Disengagement Phase where the player may move any of
his units out of an enemy Zone of Control (ZOC) up to two hexes away so long
as the counter in question does not reenter an enemy ZOC.
Essentially, C2 in the game works like this. Each army
has a set of leaders called Commanders, these being the overall Army Commander
(Napoleon) or the equivalent of a Wing Commander. Each
of these Commanders controls a certain amount of Command Points, each one of
which will place both one leader AND one unit in command if they are in range.
Thus, since Napoleon has three Command Points, he may place three subordinate
leaders PLUS three units in command. Command Range is a universal four hexes
if traced exclusively through roads or trails, three hexes if the first or
last two hexes are roads or trails, or two hexes otherwise.
The second tier of leaders are called Officers and
generally represent the equivalent of a Corps Commander and his staff.
Officers are the leaders who are placed "in command" each turn by the Command
Points of their Commanders. If these Officers are "in command" because of
Command Point distribution, and if their subordinate units are within their
own Command Range, then these units are in command automatically. Thus Marshal
Davout, French I Corps boss, may place his own I Corps units in command if
within range, as well as a single non-I Corps unit. Officers who find
themselves outside the Command Range of their Commanders may attempt to place
themselves and their units in command by rolling a die number less than or
equal to their Initiative Rating.
The rules on Vedettes allow cavalry formations to
break down into regimental sized formations for use as a reconnaissance or
counter-reconnaissance force. These Vedette counters confer most of the
advantages of regular cavalry units,. including a Combined Arms combat bonus
or the ability to retreat prior to combat. When combined with hidden movement,
however, these tiny formations can really keep an opponent in the dark about
who has what where.
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