The Battle of the Alma: The Road to Sevastopol

Advance of the Scots Guards at the Alma

We continued with our refight of the Battle of the Alma from June. We had three turns to go. The allied forces had to exit two French divisions and a battery of guns from the battlefield on the road towards Sevastopol. Or they had to control the road that left the battlefield towards Bakshiserai. This meant no Russian units on the road. The latter was the task assigned to the British brigades under Lord Raglan.

As we recommenced play the French had one division off the table towards Sevastopol already (Bonaparte's division), but the road was now blocked with a unit of Russian hussars. The French and Turks were trying to drive the Russians away from the road. It seemed like they would be able to achieve this in short order, but the French started to roll badly on their movement checks and their advance suddently slowed down.

Above: The British brigades (pink and red) have driven the Russian guns - mostly - off the crest. Three Russian regiments still block the road however. The Alma river can be seen in the bottom right of the picture. The purple meeple near the bottom of the picture is Raglan's HQ.

The battle had developed into two separate engagements with the Russian army equally split. Playing the Russians, I had assigned my limited cavalry under Ryzhov to support the attack on the French, but left my artillery to try to stop the British.

Above: Harder to distinguish in this picture, but the purple blocks in the left half of the picture are Russian regiments, trying to advance onto the Sevastopol road. The blue units are French divisions with a yellow Turkish division. The blue meeple is the HQ of the French commander Marshal Saint-Arnaud. As you can from this picture, the French were in a good position to move units off the table, but the dice turned against them.

The British advance seemed unstoppable - they stormed the Russian artillery emplacements and Prince Menshikov was forced to evacuate whatever cannon he could further up the slopes. The Russian infantry was gradually driven back towards the exit, but Menshikov steadfastly kept them on the road.

Above: The British in a strong position towards the end of the game. The Russians have two batteries, but one is limbered and low on ammo and the other is depleted. Two disrupted Russian regiments are clinging to the road. Raglan is now in one of the Russian redoubts; he came within a whisker of winning it for the allies.

With two turns left Russia was playing for a draw - victory for the Russians was well out of sight as they had no hope of threatening the allied communications with the beach at Kalamita. Some of the Russian regiments were becoming depleted and unresponsive to further commands. On the right flank the Russians were facing elite units under Cambridge and England, including Guards and Highlanders, who were battering their way through.

Above: A good shot of the end game - the French just needed to get their artillery off the table to win, or have the British sweep the Russians off the Bakshiserai road on the left. In both cases the dice were unlucky. By this stage the Russians could only play for the draw.

The French succeeded in getting a second infantry division off the table, but failed to move their guns away. This meant the allies needed to control the Bakshiserai road to win. The Russians managed to cling on for the draw at the end, keeping a unit still astride the road at 6pm.

Conclusion

Another excellent game using Bloody Big Battles. I think it is fair to say we both enjoyed it. The outcome came down to the last few rolls of the dice. The secret objectives process which is unique to this scenario caught me - as the Russians - on the hop, as I went for a strong right flank move, with my forces concentrated on the village of Karlysch. The allied decision to go for an aggressive attack meant I needed to shift troops quickly to the Russian left to avoid the French simply marching their entire corps off the table unmolested.

Massing all my guns against the British seemed like a sound move, but the Russians simply did not have enough firepower to slow Cambridge and England down (despite having more than 100 guns in position at the start of the game). Plus, the British artillery unlimbered across the valley and began pounding the Russian batteries. It then really became a question of throwing enough road blocks onto the Bakshiserai road to slow the British down.