Tonight my group met up and played Et Sans Resultat (ESR) from The Wargaming Company. We had two players on the Russian side, and two on the French. We didn’t play a historical battle so the goal was just to destroy the enemy forces. The two sides were fairly evenly matched, although the Russians had a distinct edge in artillery support and the French had to move up in terrain that was more broken up by bad terrain. (Only the main road through the middle of the board was classified as a road. Everything else was a trail with the same movement rating as the terrain it ran through. The only benefit was it allowed troops on a Move order to follow the trails instead of heading straight to their objective.)
The French had some really bad rolling in the first turn so their troops weren’t able to place an objective and thus were delayed in starting up through that messy terrain!
Off to the far left of the picture the French troops engaged the Russians, while in the center a French Division engaged a different Russian Division. The French cavalry were hemmed up by the terrain and were unable to form up to provide any support. As I had the regulating unit move through the embarrassing terrain of the woods the supporting division to their right was able to keep pace and move along the forest and maintain cohesion.
The French Division in support was able to turn to face the advancing Russian Cossacks and put a few points of fatigue on them. With that much firepower the Cossacks were unlikely to survive unscathed next turn, and in fact they took 10 fatigue before they could order a Withdrawal!
On the far left flank the Russians and French fought a mutually destructive combat but due to some poor rolling the French had been unable to get enough troops into combat and were slow to get to the Russians flank. This in turn allowed the Russians to move more troops to the center of the board and make quick work of the central French division. Three Divisions versus one is not a good ratio for the French!
In this picture you can see the the Russian division on the far right flank (Bottom of the picture) charge the French who just shot the Cossacks to pieces. The French were on a Support order so were able to convert to the attack and meet the Russians head on, but without their guns they were at a disadvantage. The middle French division started to see more troops converge on their position adding further weight of fire.
After rolling some more dice we realized the gig was up for the French. With two divisions on Retreat and only one Russian division beat up the chance for the French to overcome their defeats was passed as the Russians would just keep pressing them, preventing them from over Recovering! A fast, bloody and well fought game. If it wasn’t for the initially poor French dice rolls it might have been a different game!
In case you were worried, we did have dinner. Amongst the field of battle we feasted upon meat lasagna and garlic bread. The lasagna had beef, pork, chicken, and vegetables. Not a combo my Italian wife would put together but tasty none-the-less. Plus it tricked me into eating vegetables!
-Wachtmeister
The Wachtmeister's Patrol 