Borodino - un cri de coeur

This follows on from p45 of LGDR England v France in G7 where Stuart and I discovered that we are facing each other on the rather crowded field of Borodino.

with that in mind please read on........

today Stuart wrote
"All I can say is that in the original plan the wide open spaces were left to invite the Russians to cross the river and fight in front of a French Grand Battery. But then some manic red head did not wait for the bombardment but sent Infantry across other corps line of fire to first storm Borodino then attack in column across a very, very , very heavily defended bridge.

Sadly by the time the expected routs cleared out of the way Grouchy had get fed up waiting and has now moved and blocked my line of fire as well !!!

Fed up, bored and IV corp is now waiting for 2nd day of the battle by which time the red head and rash cavalry commanders may have got themselves killed and IV corp may be able to actually able to fire a shot without hitting French troops.

I should have been a Russian !!!!!!"

No we too have our issues:

Do you really think it will go to a second day? Can you stand the pressure??

Its interesting that Ney, "The bravest of the brave" has acted as his historical counterpart. But what is Eugene up to? He's now masking Grouchy's rash deployment. Lets hope the light infantry are vaporised allowing the Russians to take pot shots at the gunners. He should have set up a square or so back.

Thanks for letting me know the plan: I approve. Ours was a one-liner stating "Move your Corp to some map coordinates. This was impossible as several corps were between me and that objective. Indeed we are trying to fill the centre with shoulder to shoulder troops some 50 files deep. Imagine that routing.

IN fact lets consider the routing thing. WE all run away ( and I err well I shot down a heard of routers straying into my lines - best other commanders learn from this!) but then Ney gets caught the same way.....

Where is the in game comms?

Good news is that all the positions are being played. Just.

I wonder if we can cobble together a plan worth using and then go for it?

As for a plan: at least in BnG the destruction of the Imperial Guard did prevent the Allies from being able to turn on Staferio's cavalry and the bits of other corps who ultimately triumphed for us.

Anyhow Stuart I'm glad you are as frustrated as me.




Come to think of it: Wasn't Borodino a bit of a mess???

Pressure what pressure? Its mid afternoon on the 1st day and IV corp, Davout & the Imperial Guard have hardly fired a shot.

So on that basis I would say its going to go into a 2nd day unless the Russians decide to run away first. And looking at the Russian traffic jam south east of Borodino will probably need to rout off the field because they are never going to untangle three that mess by normal means.

Ok plan for second day is either 1) You cross river and attack me or 2) We wait for blocking troops to thin out on day one........French & Russian Guards get sent in on the morning of 2nd day and I cross the river and throw in the Italian Guard about late Afternoon on 2nd day. So with any luck you get to fight French Guard on the morning of 2nd day & me in the afternoon. That should be lots of fun for you

Looking at Looking

Weeeel, you could be right but for sanity's sake I'd go for a draw at the close of day 1.

I don't mind losing but I'd like to have an input on the strategy, have some support and get to do a bit of fighting afterwards...

But in the absence of that I'll do my best to bleed you frogs a while longer. Lets see what the centre does and how long my "bait" remains intact... LoL.

Bloody Hell! Description not exclamation. Anyone care to tell what happened in the centre?

Meanwhile I'm off to polish my cannon......

My God.......The Russians have run away! But why?????? If anything they had the better of the 1st day.

From a French Viewpoint:

In the south Davout & Poniatowski backed up by two small Cavalry Corps have thown in wave after wave of attacks which have been fought to a bloody standstill. Fitting close to their entrenched Artillery Borozdin Grenadiers have taken a terrible toll on
the Attackers with two or three Frenchmen falling for every Grenadier.

A possible Russian Concern in the South is that even at the current rate of exchange they will start to run out of these rock hard Grenadier types and their massed Malita & Cossacks could end up having to fight.

In the North the Russians declined to cross the River and fight my French IV corp & Grouchy and elected to use a small force as bait for a artillery trap. IV corp picked off the bait (x6 or X7 units only) and spent the rest of the first day spreading out in the most open order possible and frantically rotateing units and issueing flag orders as it attracted huge amounts of artllery fire.

IV corp ended day only minus 1 Artillery unit pinched & lost by Nay and minus 1 light cavalry after it charged the wrong unit.......I said the flank of the Lt Infantry lying down not a frontal charge on entrenched foot!........but it was not having a fun time.

Basically, IV corp foot was suffering in line and skirmish order to keep Tolstoi, Korff and Bagavout honest and away from counter battery fire on the French Guns of IV Corp, Gruchy Corp & when they made it Montbruns Corp were fireing into the hinge of Russian position south of Borodino & west of Gorki.

My feeling is that the Russians were in no trouble at all in the North and could have attacked with success. Ok they may have ended up masking their own guns and fighting the Italian Guards but they were given every chance to fight on even terms, they declined and than ran away!

In the centre situation was "interesting" Nay had launched a head down kill or get killed attack at such seed that he enjoyed some marked success against Dokhturov (who was also suffering from cross river Artillery from North) and Raevsky before running out of steam and suffering terrible losses when suffering massed routs in turn. With Russian Cavalry mixed up. In their turn Sievers and Kreutz cavalry then got jumbled up with French Squares, Gullies, Streams and a counter attack my the French Guard with the odd unit of the Emperors Escort and Montbruns Cavalry joining in.

Basically apart from his intact Artillery Nay is down to about a Regt of Horse and a couple of foot brigades......from a whole Corp! The Guard and Montbruns Cavalry have not been touched and they are getting fire support (both Artillery & Muskets) from the North bank as they go into attack against the four jumbled and damaged Russian Corps.
Note the Russians seem to have smaller corps but more of them.

However, while the four Russian corps in the centre may be feeling bad and not up to taking on the Old Guard backed up by the best of the French Cavalry behind them and not having fired a shot is the Russian Guard! So why are the Russians running? From my side of the hill (well river) I think it seems illogical.

Stuart et vos amis,

As a Russian I have to say, good riddance to this game: Borodino was a mess historically with as in the game too many troops in the field.

You may be interested to know that our C-I-C game be a map coordinate saying move your corps here. As I was covering the northern flank and the location was to my south and in the rear I was a bit surprised. Furthermore I was only infantry and artillery and needed to link in with Korff to put up a force to face err - the French grand battery (perhaps then our C-I-C was correct?) But poor comms from our C-I-C and players who dropped out or just sat there doing nothing was to say the least frustrating.

To be fair Ney (God Bless Him) got the game going and by tea-time I had the french advancing into my own grand battery. A sort of Russian forlorn hope posted on the Western side of the river which I hope tempted my opposite
numbers was destroyed but my now two forces of Tolstoi and Baggovut were in good order and hardly damaged.

Interestingly I had placed some of my men in square and artillery facing our own men. This was to prevent a general rout and night would have allowed the broken units to re-establish themselves and allow me to prepare to receivea more coordinated French attack.

But without the promise of better comms and player support well... what would have been the point?

I'll sign up for the next game though....

BTW Ive been playing NB for most of its life. Ive done the ECW and ACW variants. (Once played all three mega-game positions in an ECW game against one player) and I'm just getting more and more rubbish. Spookily my artillery seems to mis-fire and my infantry dissolve. Any suggestions as to why this should be?