1809 Project: A first taste of the Eckmuhl refight - in pictures

No I'm not dead or seriously ill! Too many issues cropped up early in 2025 and stopped me having time to blog, then inertia set in along with inevitable pressure to catch up on other things in life. The most significant of those to my readers was our team plan to refight the next big battle in the 1809 series - Eckmuhl. I started the process in about February and got it going seriously in about April - booked a date in mid September for a three day Napoleonic-fest. Around a dozen players were set to come and the whole thing just grew as I did my research and realised all the potential for a massive 'what-if" we could have.

This post isn't meant to be detailed on the project, it is intended to introduce my latest Guest Page. My friend Glenn was not fit to stand the rigours of participation, but he did not want to miss it and came on the Sunday afternoon, the third and final day, to capture the events in some really great photos.

Please see the Guest Gallery here

All the detail will be covered soon in a series of blog posts so meanwhile please take a look at the eye candy. Three sample photos are shown below and there are dozens more on the guest page. The statistics, for those interested in such things:

Approx 9 km x 6 km of northern Bavarian countryside represented on 12 feet x 8 feet playing area. 96 square feet of sculpted terrain, and I'll be blogging how I made it. I've doubled up on my 3D printed buildings with around 50 or so on the table. The rest were an eclectic mix of card downloads, resin, plaster, scratch built and gift shop porcelain houses, and some beautiful custom-German buildings loaned by Paul B.

Over 3000 of the potential 3,500 15-18mm figures made it onto the table from the collections of four of our core team, at one figure represented 50 men scale. That included 12 regiments of French cuirassiers and two of carabiniers and 6 regiments of Austrian cuirassiers. Overall around 40x2-model artillery batteries with limbers and around 75 generals in command stands or individuals. 

9 players took part over the three days, two of them provided continuity over all 3 days, the farthest coming to Oakridge in The Cotswolds  from Birmingham, Bristol, Aldershot and Aylesbury,and some "locals" from Cheltenham and Cirencester.

Rules used were our own adaptation of Keith Flint's "Honours of War"  called "Abensberg to Wagram" (A2W) which I think are very nearly ready to be made available for free download.

Here are the photo samples of the Guest page and I don't want to give too many spoilers, so please bear with me for now on detailed questions.

Overview of the northern two thirds of our battlefield where the the Allies had made steady but not spectacular progress by lunchtime on Day Three.  Eckmuhl Schloss in the foreground, Ober Laichling at near left, Hohenberg on the central high ground and Rogging village burning at near right.

From left: Demont's French infantry, Lannes' French infantry in the woods, French cuirassiers, Bavarian cavalry, Wurttemburg cavalry, many more regiments of French cuirassiers and horse artillery

Ken Marshall controlled the Bavarian VII Corps and some Cuirassiers forging through the central valley; Tony Dillon was Marshal Davout with left flank French and that's CG having to do player duty as an Austrian as two other chaps had to leave early by then.

Please stay tuned for a lot more on this in the rest of the month.