The Battle of Montebello, 20 May 1859

The club meeting last weekend saw me playing a game put on by someone else for a change.  In this case a 6mm game on the Battle of Montebello in the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859 using the Bloody Big Battles rules.

Since the scenario has only a relatively small number of units we managed to get two plays of the scenario in, swapping sides between them.

I began with the Austrians but really struggled to untangle my traffic jam of units arriving over the bridges at the table edge caused by an early French cavalry attack.  I then failed to break through the French unit screening my closest objective all through the game and only managed to secure the objective further up the table. I didn't get anywhere near the other two!  So that game ended in a French victory.

In the second game I took command of the French which was a bit of a change as whilst they have less units they were mostly veterans with skirmishers and command stands (something the Austrians lacked!).  I decided to try the same approach as in the first game and charged my cavalry into the front of the Austrian column.  This proved somewhat less successful for me and entirely failed to slow the Austrians down.

Whilst my Austrian reinforcements entered across the same bridges as the core force, in the second game I was facing reinforcements entering from a completely different edge!  Whilst I managed to hold these off my attempt to secure a third objective and thus secure victory failed. So the game ended in a draw.

Not a great performance from me but lots of fun.