Zorndorf: the debacle

I managed to lose the refight of Zorndorf as the Russians without Seydlitz and his cavalry having to appear; a feat which takes some doing I think. Oddly, I'm not at all sure what I could have done differently. Probably I should have attacked with my left wing cavalry in order to divert attention away from my right wing, but I'm not sure it would have made a very decisive difference. There were the usual little vignettes where things could have easily gone the other way: one spectacular Prussian cavalry charge that routed a unit of grenadiers despite being virtually blown away by flanking fire as it charged in; a flanking manoeuvre followed by a point blank volley that caused no damage whatsoever followed by the flanking unit being flanked and destroyed in turn and the undamaged unit winning a melee against one of the large Observation Corps units with contemptuous ease; and a couple of others. However, to make a difference they would all have had to have gone the other way.

I'm not sure of the reasons why it happened that way. I suspect pre-assigned unit qualities had something to do with it, but only another refight on the same basis will prove that one way or the other. Roll on Triples. I think the one thing guaranteed is that Fermor must inevitably Go Mad at the earliest opportunity on Saturday. Speaking of which we played four turns and the Go Mad card was drawn first in the first three of them. Now what are the chances of that happening? (1) In the fourth by the way the card dealt out because of the inclusion of a Command Indecision card was the Command Indecision card itself.

The above is the cover of one of a new series of novels based on Piquet cards. James didn't require much persuasion to put on his little black dress and heels for the photo. Coming soon Peter in leopardskin as the model for 'Movement in Type III/IV', the exciting Lexi Graves mystery number four.


(1) about 30,000 to one as it happens, but just to remind everyone that the odds of whichever card sequence are turned over at the start of three turns is always 30,000 to one.