The Invasion plans

A whole fortnight has passed since I last posted, due to real-life work, wargame record-keeping bogging me down, plus numerous other projects rumbling on at the same - there's always something! Anyway, what's needed is a campaign overview to show how things have been developing for the protagonists.

Aschenbach are invading, and to avoid the single easily-isolated army I split the total force into three roughly equal parts. Von Krumper would take his third (styles the 'main' army, because - well, he's the king, basically!) and head directly for the province capital of Brederdam, stuck on it's little island in the mouth of the mighty Schelve river. Krumper would take the eastern road and then cross the northern fork of the Schelve by pontoon bridge, arriving on the island and besieging the city by it's landward side. Approaching directly from the north would mean attacking over a river, and the swampy ground north of Brederdam didn't exactly promise a happy fate for any siege guns hauled into it! His advance has gone well enough, but sadly he has been compelled to stop and build up supply depots to operate across the river. Something of an unfortunate delay, but now he's gathering himself for the river crossing (which is next for the gaming table.)

In the centre of this province would go the second army, led by the grizzled old veteran, General Von Grenwitz. His job is to try and clear the province north of the Schelve of all enemy troops. At best, this means capturing the city of Oosterheide, but at a bare minimum it means protecting Von Krumper's advance in the east and keeping Luftberg raiders off his flanks and supply lines. It swiftly proved that Oosterheide was strongly garrisoned with a regiment of infantry, and therefore that a siege was only going to succeed if the Luftberg army completely failed to intervene - a highly unlikely turn of events. Sure enough it proved so, as once Von Grenwitz occupied the town of Dolderburg he received news that a Luftberg army under the Graf Von Bitzhem was crossing the Schelve to his south and rushing up the road, looking for a fight. Well, as you'll have seen from the last battle report, he gave it one! The two armies met a short distance from Dolderburg and Luftberg was defeated, the battered remains pulling back to the town of Veldhuizburg on the Schelve river.

So much for the two armies, but what of the third? Well, the third and final component was placed under Von Hartling and held back for a delayed entry. It was felt that there was a serious risk that the line of the Schelve river could become a kind of impregnable moat for the defenders, and so Von Hartling is to enter in the west of the province, which lets him come out behind the line of the river where it curves north. Any Luftberg defence which had formed in the first few months would be outflanked, and the river line could be rolled up like a carpet - genius! Well, so Von Krumper naturally thinks.

The map above (which is hopefully enlarge-able, although I can never work these things out) should give some sense of where they are - Krumper is the easternmost arrow, Grenwitz is the central one, while Von Hartling's planned entrance is shown in the west as a dashed route. I will post more maps soon, when I cover the province's fractious defenders.