We met up at my place about 10:30 first dice were thrown about 11:30. The battle was fought over two historical days with night time movements and casualty replacements. Austrians (Me, Simon, Paul) had to capture both villages AND THE GRANARY. The French (Jordan, Mark, Norman)had to hold the villages AND THE GRANARY and destroy 26 Austrian units . The French had to rely on the arrival of reinforcements across a rather dodgy bridge. The French had two troops of Engineers to protect and strengthen the bridge. The Austrians had a troop of vey creative Engineers to try and destroy the bridge with the use of barges full of stone, felled logs and best of a mill on a barge. The rest was history so they say.
The opening scene. With Simons Austrians advancing on Aspern, the French advanced units preparing the villages for defence and the French cavalry in the centre. The head of the French column just starting to cross the bridge with Napoleon in the lead. Austrian Engineers can be seen preparing a barge to float down the river and the French Engineers taking a well earned rest.
These pictures are out of sequence, but 'hay ho' this is early on the second day and you can see the 'mill on a raft' (I know ??) floating towards the bridge. In the distance on the right you can see a barge that has just floated off in the wrong direction, its one of those 'anything but a 1 tests' and incredibly the AWSOME! 'bridge destroying' mill on a raft did exactly the same (the Austrians were using a novice dice thrower)
Here you can see the French Engineers, in a boat with hand pikes protecting the bridge.
Paul as Rosenburg moving his Reserve Cavalry over onto his Left Flank.
Peeler doing some fingering !!
Normans (Lannes) well ordered French Right Flank
This is the crazy story of the day. The scene shows an Austrian barge smashing through and destroying the bridge, HOWEVER! this was at the end of the game, literally just after the last French unit in a long reinforcing column passed over the bridge, go figure ! just toooooo late.
The final scene, the Austrians captured both villages and Garrisoned them, BUT! they never took the Granary !! and the French Destroyed 26 Austrian units and won the game.
A great game well fought, the game had lots of high octane moments and the final victory was a nail biter. The game finished around 6pm we then went into Scarborough for a few sherbets and a good curry.
