If you are new to the campaign, here are the prior posts:
Weil Campaign – Day 1 and 2
Weil Campaign – Day 2 Battle of Neuben
Weil Campaign – Day 3
Weil Campaign – Day 3 Battle of Stautz
Weil Campaign – Day 3 Battle of Sägwell
After the draw at Stautz and the French win at Sägwell I updated the map and forces. One wrinkle of the current campaign rules is, that you cannot retreat into a location with two forces already present. This means that Austrian II Armeekorps has been effectively dispersed in the retreat.
The Austrians could have avoided this but I simply forgot. Maybe I have to address this, as it does feel very forced to move in such a way to avoid it. It also seems not historical to split up retreating forces into different locations.
With the French now at 7 victory points and the Austrians at -3 I decided to stop the campaign here. Even with a fresh force still at Weil the losses have been too severe and the strategic position is untenable. The Austrians have to retreat and the French have won a major victory.
The overall losses are heavily weighted in favor of the French after the battle of Sägwell:
French: 4000
Austrians: 25000
Thoughts on the Campaign Rules
For the first playtest the rules worked fine. Some of the mechanics to keep the armies on a broad footing strategically seem a little bit artificial. A more open map might help here to force armies to spread in order to cover ally approaches.
Thoughts on Volley and Bayonet
The more I play the rules the more I like them. Although I usually prefer more restrictive command and control rules the campaign did its part to come up with interesting scenarios that were challenges to commanding a force in itself.
Only artillery seems a tad too strong, especially on defense. But this can easily mitigated by fielding less dedicated artillery.
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