The game begins with the 6:00 AM turn and continues until 7:00 PM or until everyone is out of it. Also of note for this scenario was the fog rule. Any units in the plains are considered invisible until an enemy unit moves within 4 hexes of them. Then only the front line units are revealed.

At game's start no Austrian units were placed on the tabletop. The Prussians were the first side to move and fire and began the game moving out of the valley and into the plain. The Prussian cavalry fanned out on the right flank and headed for the apparently unguarded Morellen Bach stream. A single base one strength point hussar unit headed for Sullowitz to scout out this locale. This movement caused the main Austrian battle line to be revealed. This battle line stretched from Welhotta to the north and headed just south of Lobositz. All of the Austrian Croats were piled up in the sunken road, which runs south of Lobositz and north of the bridge. The Austrian MG Bernie thought they had to be in a reserve capacity since that was the name of the command that they belonged to. This would have dire consequences later. This ended the Prussians' first move.

The 6:30 AM Austrian turn begins and the Austrians south of the Morellen Bach start their push across the bridge to support the troops to the north. The rest of the Austrian battle line remains stationary awaiting the Prussians.

The 7:00 AM turn has an interesting turn of events, which I will use to illustrate V&B's combat system. The single one strength point Prussian hussar unit decided on an aggressive mode of attack. Its movement on the first turn revealed the Austrian battle line standing just west of Lobositz. Due to a slight deployment miscalculation on the Austrians part the cavalry on the Austrian left flank was deployed one hex further back than the Austrian infantry line. This formed a very short dogleg in the line exposing the infantry's left flank to the Prussian hussars.

V&B allows a unit moving into contact with an enemy unit one free facing change at the start of its movement. The hussars changed facing to the left and were able to contact a three-strength point Austrian regiment in the flank. Now please picture in your minds eye the spectacle of a hussar regiment swing left and crossing the front of a brigade of Austrian cavalry which stands idly by and allows the infantry regiment, who they are supporting, to be struck in the flank. You are now experiencing the first sensation I had of; oh, this is not working out right.

This sensation passed quickly and I will explain why. The first issue of weather this was a flank or not was cleared up by the hexes which define this aspect of the game quite clearly, this was certainly the flank of the unit; no arguments with that one. One issue resolved. The second, also a hex question, was the nearness of the cavalry unit and its inability to take some sort of action. This answer will not please everyone but it suits me quite well. This has to do with game abstractness. Each hex represents 400 yards of game scale real estate. So two hexes next to each other represents 800 yards or roughly a half of a mile of area.

The question arises where exactly are these two units in these respective hexes and the relationship to each other? They could be as close as 100 yards or as far away as 800 yards. We chose to believe that the Austrian cavalry was 300-600 yards away and too far out of position to help the infantry. I'm happy with that are you?

Now lets talk about the combat between the Prussian hussars and Austrian infantry. V&B's combat system works this way. First each side tests its morale by determining the unit's modified morale and each unit then rolls one six sided die. A unit's morale can be modified for several different reasons, and in this case the Austrian infantry had a -2 subtracted from its base morale of 5 because it was hit in the flank. As a note I increased the modifier from -1 to -2 because I am a meddling fool and I felt the -2 was a better reflection of the hazards of being hit in the flank.

On the other hand the hussars had a +1 to their base morale of 5, raising it to 6, because they were attacking a unit in the flank. To pass morale the unit testing must roll its modified morale or lower on a d6. Both sides passed morale, the Austrians needing a three or less and the hussars automatically passing with a modified 6-morale rate. If a unit fails a morale test it becomes disordered. What a disordered situation means in terms of game advantages is this. Any unit receiving hits from a disordered unit can save them by rolling a 4,5 or 6 on a d6.

In a game where a single hit is considered big time damage this is a huge disadvantage for disordered troops. The only time a unit would rout before a melee is if it is already disordered and fails the morale test prior to the melee.

If you haven't noticed already V&B uses six sided dice for every situation in the rules. The rules use a neat little way of giving an advantage to troops who do not move. This is called being "stationary". Infantry and artillery units that do not move in their movement phase may place a stationary marker on them. This gives them the benefit of tossing twice as many d6's as a unit that has moved. In this case the Austrian unit was stationary so that gave it four six sided dice to throw in the melee, with sixes scoring hits. The hussars had two dice coming back at the infantry. Once again the meddling Petri added a +2 to hit for units attacking from the flank. The rules as they stand offer no bonus at all for this situation, instead theorizing that since several units are represented by a single stand, what's to say one of the units isn't facing in the correct direction. This logic seemed fairly sound to me but I still can't leave well enough alone. In the ensuing dice off each side scored one hit. The Austrians being a three-strength point unit marked one off the unit's total, as well as one corresponding hit off of the divisional exhaustion level, and the hussars were eliminated since they only had the one strength point.

The rest of the turn consisted of the Prussian cavalry on the right flank fording the unguarded southernmost section of the Morellen Bach stream. The infantry was still attempting to sort itself out in the valley with one command swinging along the side of the Lobosch hill.

7:30 am

The 7:30 AM turn consisted of a minor Austrian counterattack. On the far right of the Austrian line they had placed two single strength point hussar units which held the furthest northern section of the Austrian line. These two units moved forward and attacked one regiment of Prussian infantry that was making its way along the first contour of the Lobosch hill. Both units made contact and morale rolls were in order. The Prussians had a bonus of +1 for defending higher ground, because the Austrian cavalry had to charge uphill, but lost a -1 for being non-stationary infantry Vs cavalry.

The Prussian morale was a base of 6 so they automatically passed with the two modifiers canceling each other out. The hussars had no modifiers and a morale base of 4, one unit failed, entering the melee disordered, and one unit passed. So into the melee they roared. Both sides rolled but no hits were achieved. This left us with a melee tie. This situation is resolved with each side rolling one d6 and adding or subtracting any morale modifier plus any melee tie modifiers, which are on a separate chart. The only modifier for the Prussians was a -2 for fighting cavalry and not being stationary. Even with this handicap the Prussians prevailed. The hussar unit which was already disordered was now routed and lost one casualty which eliminated it, while the second unit became disordered and retreated half of its movement. The 8:00 AM turn saw two Prussian musketeer regiments move up and finish off the disordered Austrian hussar unit with musket fire with the remainder of the Prussian infantry completing a continuous battle line opposite the Austrians.

The Prussian cavalry continued its aggressive movement with half of its force moving up the south bank of the Morellen Bach and the other half moving into attack position against the Austrian cavalry deployed just north of Sullowitz. 8:30 AM turn saw a flurry of Austrian counter attacks in an attempt to break up the Prussian advance. On the right flank an Austrian infantry unit shot and hit a Prussian infantry unit. While on the left flank, just north of Sullowitz, a massive cavalry charge was unleashed by three Austrian cavalry brigades, representing about 3000 sabers, attacking a like number of Prussian cavalry that had deployed to their front.

This act, if successful, would sever the remaining Prussian cavalry which had splashed unopposed across the southern section of the Morellen Bach from the main body, and also threaten the entire Prussian right flank of infantry. In the melee that followed one Prussian brigade was eliminated and two Austrian brigades became disordered and had to retreat. The elimination of the Prussian brigade caused the Prussian cavalry division to reach exhaustion, it was only able to suffer two hits before this occurred. I also repositioned my Austrian cavalry facing southwest, with my front covered by the southern most spur of the Morellen Bach, thus blocking any further Prussian cavalry advances in this area.

One interesting feature in V&B is the division exhaustion rule. This rule acts as an army morale system. If you take a look at the order of battle you will see that each division is assigned an exhaustion number, actually open boxes based on troop types that compose that division. When a unit receives a hit it marks that number off of its hit numbers and also marks off a corresponding box in the division exhaustion for the same hit taken. For some reason on whose logic I am unclear, artillery does not count towards this number in any way.

So if artillery takes hits a corresponding number is not marked off in the division exhaustion boxes. Once a division becomes exhausted it can no longer move into contact with enemy units, no units in its division can become stationary, and on each subsequent turn it receives a hit it must roll 1d6 and if the number of hits or less is rolled the division collapses. A collapse makes all units permanently disordered, any disordered units rout and routed units are removed. All not good things.

More Lobositz using Volley & Bayonet

Introduction
Deployments
Combat 6:00-8:30 am
Combat 9:00-11:30 am
Combat 12:00-end
Order of Battle

This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com