Mrs Browne's boy

The 1757 campaign is back on track, with the continuing multiple misunderstandings of the rules being put behind us. Readers will be aware that my tabletop performance has been dire, but on the map things haven't been so bad. The conclusion that I came to early on was that the Austrian player has to be opportunistic. The commanders' low initiative means they often don't move so when they do it's best to make it count. So, when - to my complete surprise because I didn't understand the rules - it turned out that Browne was temporarily in charge instead of the Archduke Charles, then the best thing to do was to seize the moment by sending him off on his own so he could at least act more frequently. Charles always has to have the largest force and Konigsbeck is wandering round Bohemia with quite a large army (albeit smaller than it used to be following the disaster at Sobotka) so Browne couldn't have a large force. This in turn suggested that it had to raid rather than fight and, I think to everyone's surprise, his small band of troops managed to cut the supply of both the Prussian armies manouevring on the road to Prague.

Somewhat against my expectations Prince Henry didn't use the breakthrough rule to brush past the entirely ahistorical von Krappa, who would - in my interpretation of things - only have had his personal two dice to use in the resulting double pursuit fire. The Prussians have therefore been surrounded and brought to battle by Charles of Lorraine, due in no small part to another rule that I'd overlooked; so much time has now passed since the invasion that the Austrians' initiative has improved somewhat. The battle starts tomorrow. Will it go better on the table this time? History suggests otherwise, but we live in hope.