Napoleon at the Berezina (Against the Odds #4)

1812. After the disastrous Russian campaign Napoleon and what remains of his army retreat West. The army is rapidly whittled from 500k to less than 100k by the harsh winter, lack of food and Cossacks. At the Berezina river the only good bridge was burned and the crossing is held by Langeron's corps of Wittgenstein's army.

You control Napoleon's army in this solo magazine wargame. The objective is to get as many units across the Berezina and to an exit hex before the pursuing Russian armies arrive an annihilate the French. 4-hour turns in a 25-turn game. The map is sideways with North being to the left.

This is typical IGO-UGO game. You attack with a d6 roll and you will either inflict a step loss or not (there is a bit of a retreat rule but for the most part no retreat after combat). Units can take 4 steps and after 2 steps they are flipped to the understrength side.

Any unit can cross a ford but you will probably take step losses and may even lose the unit so key to the game is to build a bridge (B) across a ford (F). You have only two engineer units that can build that bridge. You have to build two halves of a bridge, one from each river bank so that means an engineer unit will have to cross the Berezina.

But crossing the Berezina starts activating Russian units. The Russians will move to the nearest French on their side of the Berezina. A basic tactic is to cross somewhere and draw the Russians towards you then cross an engineer somewhere else and start building that bridge. You build a bridge faster if there are no Russian units nearby.

There are four places to cross the Berzina. The southern most at Borissow-Dymki is heavily defended and that's where most Russian reinforcements arrive (though most French units arrive at Borrisow).

The next ford is in the middle of nowhere which would make it hard to get an army through. But it's a good ford to send a diversionary force.

The ford at Studianka is the one that was used historically. There is a road almost leading to it but it's almost as slow as the ford to the south.

The last ford at Weselowo-Kostuikoi is actually two fords so double the time to build a bridge. But engineers cannot cooperate making a bridge so it's as slow as you'd think. People have said that building bridges is a bit slow.

For this game I'll try the historical crossing. I can build two parallel bridges which will help in case one of them breaks down. Oudinot's 2 Corps will cross at the unnamed ford and draw off Tschaplitz's corps. The two engineers will travel to Studianka and wait for the Russians to depart before starting the bridge.

Optional Rules: I'm only using Random Events.