I also enjoyed the scenario a lot, thank you Sandman for another great one. Although it was complicated to play as Prussian CiC, with Sandman I had no contact at any time, with Gandhi only at the beginning and at the end (when he had already disconnected) and with Tadzio I thought I had and most of the messages were intercepted by the French. I could only communicate normally with Trane.
Very complicated scenario for the French:
Completely surrounded, although there are large gaps between the 4 main Prussian forces (divisions), neither they nor we were fully aware of that.
The French knew the location of the objectives even though they did not appear in the game until after 40min, (90min for the Prussians) and their point value (2500) seemed to us all decisive at the beginning of the scenario. It also seems that they mistook one of them (Kalcennordheim) for the Kormesthein which was to the S of Gandhi's position.
We started badly, losing in points and with Gandhi very pressed in the SE (I think because of the error in the location of the objective), once again Gandhi had to fight one of those battles totally alone that he likes so little....
I moved quickly towards the hill occupied by Trane to locate the French, soon after I "sensed" that the French were beginning to move to concentrate to the E-SE and I asked Trane and Tadzio to prepare to attack their rear..... the French intercepted several of those messages and thought that their maneuver was compromised so they cancelled it.... I think that was the key, not only they did not concentrate but the shock division of the guard moved to the W, just between the jaws formed by the divisions of Trane and Tadzio.
As CiC I had little control of the situation, deployed a brigade of cavalry covering the SW gap, but I withdrew it in view of the fact that the French had in that valley a heavy cavalry division against which they could do little.
I stayed on that hill controlling the French Corps that was in the valley (attacking Gandhi) and although I made a couple of attempts to go south to establish communication with Gandhi both were aborted by enemy movements.
Trane conducted himself like a veteran, and together with Tadzio formed a shredder that ended up annihilating the French units in the area, including the guard. Sandman, as always intractable, did not give any chance to the French NE (Heldor), and although Biondo punished Gandhi hard, at the end he had little uncommitted strength to try to win the objective...
The last phase of the battle was another game, a mix of dance-race between Biondo's uncommitted forces against my two cavalry brigades to see who could reach the objective first.
Their last feint threw me off
and I thought it was going to be Gransee, so I moved the cavalry to block their access and asked Trane and Tadzio to send everything they could. The French took advantage of the situation to occupy Rothenburg.
But it was not enough, my cavalry blocked the arrival of the follow-on forces, so that the brigade that occupied the objective was isolated and without sufficient men (4000 were needed) to score.
As I commented a very difficult scenario for the French who have no margin for error, and that after the error in the NE objective and aborting the initial maneuver, I think they had already lost at 11:00.
Great tactical performance of the four Prussian divisions, which destroyed/blocked each of the French forces they faced, with a "La Garde recule" included
although those points can be a bit misleading, I think most of the fleeing French units were intercepted by us so the battalions automatically surrendered.