As far as the conduct of the campaign it took about 8 weeks in real time and ultimately consumed everyone with the incredible experience. Everyone roleplayed their roles very well. There were times when each player was shaking with rage and frustration, even a few hints at potential duels. I served as both GM but also chief of staff for each side to occasionally make suggestions to the commander to help steer things along. Suggests they could either take or ignore.
The Austrians were at all times in a disadvantage. They had more troops, but of more uneven quality. They had a wider range of incompetent generals above and below them some of whom had different political motives for what they did, as well as various court intrigues. Also they had less military experience, which led to lack of clarity in their communications and coordinations as well as lack of establishing a good unity of command, which, given the court intrigues, they were never going to get anyway. They made up for this with aggressiveness, some creativity, some unpredictability, and for one of them, a quick learner. Also they were in friendly territory and had the advantage of civilian population intel whenever they thought to ask for it. They had larger forces but these forces were much more ponderous to get going.
The Prussians had the advantage of professionalism, they understood the basic principles such as mass, unity of command, clarity of orders, maintaining an effective reserve, reconnasaince, operational planning. They had disadvantages in that they were in unknown, unfriendly territory, the onus of the attack,and also never enough forces.
Ultimately the real challenge for both sides was one of limited intelligence and make decisions without knowing everything. How to mitigate this disadvantage, and operate within it became the keys to success of failure. Very rapidly one learned not to throw away their light cavalry in battle when on all the other days between heavy combat is when you need those guys to do that work effectively. once side made this mistake up front and had a difficult time recovering from it.
The ability to effective plan pre battle and lay out the commanders intent so commanders can operate effectively ina dearth of guidance and information was key.
Also this was not some even fight with carefully balanced points driven forces. That doesn't happen in real life. How one side's commanders could deal with this fact and operate within these parameters, was a test of their character. In the end as the campaign was moving along and getting long in the tooth, the King back in the capital threw in the towel based on a decisive massive battle occurring somewhere else in the war. But then again stuff like that happens.
Ultimately in our campaign everyone had a great time. Nothing happened in tis campaign that did not happen in real life at some point or another during 1860s warfare. Bravery, savagery, blundering, incompetence, miscommunication etc all led to various events grave and farcical. Te enjoyment was less about the tools we used and more about the interactions and decisions players were faced with. Everyone came away a little more humble about what they thought they could accomplish in these situations when they were faced with the twin devils of friction and lack of information. Cheers..
Los
HistWar (English zone)