Triumph and Glory Castiglione round 2: Results

The battle picked up on Wednesday as we attempted to finish our Triumph and Glory battle. You can read the first part here: http://hudsonshideout.blogspot.com/2013/07/triumph-and-glory-castiglione-round-1.html

Today my main goal, as the French, was to trap the Austrians and prevent him from getting off the board. Everytime he did he scored points. I had to eliminate him or have him stuck with a bunch of routed people left on the map to end the game.

At first my terrible luck persisted. The Austrians fell back and I continued to roll poorly for battle commitment or get really bad chit draws where he would get two or three commands in before me.

As the game progressed however I started to collapse his flank and the French took the town of Solferino. This allowed me to get French Commander Messina through that gap and into the Austrian back area. I started to ignore the routed units and go for disrupts and more routs. I wanted to cause as much havoc as possible in his lines.

Back near the bottom of the map I was still having trouble catching up to his withdrawing units and getting close enough to cause casualties. He was backing up quite well.

Finally however I had an excellent string of chit pulls and managed to force him out of San Cassiano. This allowed the bulk of my bottom armies to link up and start to close the circle around him.

At last...due to many disruptions I had caused and the fact that he was in my ZOC's the bulk of my bottom French army caught the main Austrian retreat force and I started to lock him up in combat. Not all combats went my way and I took many risks but wanted to get anything on him I could. Some of my attacks flat out ended up in myself being disrupted but I kept throwing units at him and pressing from the north with Messina.

At last the game was drawing to a close. I had only one unit of his that was not routed and he was in the very corner of the map. He had pulled back as far as he could. My artillery was firing now but doing poorly have no effect.

Then the last Austrian unit that was left in normal condition on the board was routed. With him locked in my ZOC's he could not rally and we called the game. I gained points for all the eliminated units as well as all the routed units left on the board and won the game 68-41.

Another close game however. My opponent performed a great withdrawal and gave me fits at every turn. He even eliminated two French units during the course of the game.