A solo Napoleonic siege - Battle report

This post turns out to be my 1000 blog post and what better way to mark this milestone than with a battle report of a Napoleonic siege wargame.

Austrians returning with supplies from nearby farms in preparation for a siege.

The town of San Mariano guards a vital supply route.

Siege Background

French General Delacroix, commanding a corps of seasoned veterans, has been ordered to seize and hold the key crossing at the fortified town of San Mariano. The town is a strategic stronghold guarding a vital supply route trough the mountains.

The town is encircled by an old, but well-maintained, bastions and walls. An Austrian garrison having dispatched messengers for a relief force and have been gathering supplies from nearby farms in preparation for the siege.

Battle Report

Turns 1 and 2

The siege begins with the construction of the first parallel. The besieging French assign a portion of their troops to guard against any potential Austrian sorties. Although no sorties were launched, accurate Austrian cannon fire harassed the French engineers and delayed the establishment of French gun batteries.

The first parallel is prepared as the Austrian guns open up.

Accurate fire from the Austrian guns delays the building a French batteries.

Turns 3 and 4

The French pressed on with their trench works, completing the first parallel and finally establishing their first gun battery. Zig-zag trenches advanced steadily forward from the first parallel, though progress remained slower than General Delacroix had hoped. The Austrian defenders launched a sortie, but the French, maintaining vigilant guard posts and successfully repelled them.

As the first parallel is completed 

The Austrians launch a sortie.

Turns 5 and 6

An Austrian messenger successfully slipped through the French lines, carrying urgent pleas to the relief force to hurry up, tightening the timeframe for the besiegers. The garrison continued to launch sorties as the French dug forward and caught the French off guard, inflicting casualties and reducing their resources to build trenches.

The French dig forward and begin to establish their second parallel.

A successful Austrian sortie forces the French to divert soldiers from the trench works.

Turns 7 and 8

Trench digging continued as a priority, and three gun batteries were soon in position. The zig-zag approach trenches were now within assault range of the town walls, creating two potential sites for assaults. Meanwhile, the Austrians managed to get further messages through the lines, keeping the approaching relief column informed of their situation. Time was now becoming a worry for General Delacroix.

The Austrians continued with their sorties and forced the French to divert troops from the trench works to reinforce their guard lines. this slowed down the establishment of the fourth and last gun battery as they took precautions against further attacks.

The trenches are now within assault range of the town.

Turns 9 and 10

The Austrians prepared countermine charges beneath the most vulnerable sections of the walls, ready to detonate them during any French assault. At the same time, they continued launching sorties in a final effort to disrupt and delay the inevitable attack. By this stage, the French had established four artillery batteries and had successfully breached the town’s walls. They had also completed the digging and preparing their own mine, ready to support the final assault on the fortress.

The French begin the work to breach the walls.

Turns 11 and 12

The French detonated their mine beneath the walls and launched an assault. Although the attack was repulsed, the Austrian defenders suffered casualties, and their morale was beginning to falter.

The first attack is supported by a mine detonated just before the assault.

Meanwhile, French scouts reported that a relief force was only a few days march away. In response, General Delacroix ordered a series of assaults in a final effort to seize the town before reinforcements could disrupt and end the siege. But the news was not all bad for the general, engineers informed him they had made a second breech.

The French prepared counter mines two assaults.

The French planned two successive assaults. The first was repulsed with heavy casualties, as the Austrians successfully detonated a mine beneath the breach. However, the second assault proved to be more effective, Austrian troops had been drawn away from the walls to reinforce the earlier defence, leaving the second breach under-manned. French forces surged through, and with sections of the town’s walls now in French hands and Austrian morale collapsing, the defenders were overwhelmed. The fortified town fell to the French.

French troops assault the breaches.

French troops surge forward into the second breach.

A French victory! Just in the nick of time before the Austrian relief force could lift the siege.

Summary

Had the second French assault failed, the approaching Austrian relief force would have forced the French to abandon the siege. It was a very exciting game. Early on, it seemed unlikely the French would take the fortified town, as their progress on the gun battery positions was slow and hampered by accurate artillery shooting from the town. However, once all four batteries were in place, they quickly created breaches in the walls and were able to widened them to prepare for the final assaults.

A resource based game that can be adapted to the tabletop.

The rules used were from the pen-and-paper game “Siege Works” by Solo Wargame, which I recently purchased from Wargame Vault. It’s a resource-based game in which you, as the besieger, must manage limited resources to progress of trench construction, establishment of gun positions, dig mines, and post guards against sorties which is all marked off in pencil on a game map. All while you have to make sure you have enough troops available to launch a successful assault before your time runs out. Meanwhile, the defenders will attempt to disrupt your efforts through actions determined by a dice-driven event table. 

The game includes four scenario maps to play through of varying complexity.

All my parallel and zig-zag trenches advanced in 6-inch increments, so I pre-measured the starting position of the French attackers to ensure the number of trench sections matched the progression in the game.

It was pretty straightforward to adapt the game to the tabletop using the simplest  scenario map as a guide. Instead of marking progress on a paper map, I placed the parallel trenches, zig-zag trenches and gun positions on the tabletop, building and advancing them in 6-inch increments. This required some initial measuring to determine where the French attackers would begin placing their first parallel trenches so the layout aligned with the original map in terms of the number of trenches and batteries required to build.  

Resource management and breach tracking were handled using markers and small bits of paper with written notes (hidden under troop bases). All in all the game played out in just under an hour as I worked my way through the rules for the first time. Some rereading and checking of the 7-page rules was required, but I was soon in the swing of things and the game progressed smoothly.

Transferred to the tabletop, these rules provided an enjoyable and challenging solo siege games with the added benefit of getting my siege terrain, forts, and troops on to the tabletop. There is no movement of units in the game, just the placement of terrain and troops to indicate progress and for the look of the tabletop. I may well have to invest in some engineering troops or make some conversions which can be used as markers for mines. In the meantime I am looking through a couple of Military Modelling books by Stuart Asquith, which cover both solo wargaming and siege warfare for ideas.

A source of ideas.

For my next siege game, I plan to use the rules in an English Civil War setting. I will also be introducing forts, as some of the other scenario maps in the game feature outlying forts which must be taken before assaults on the main fortifications can begin.