Had my first game against a live opponent today - and a cracker.
I took 1805 Austrians (+ Reserve Cuirassiers), any my opponent 1805 French (+ Elite infantry). He totally flumixed me by also choosing to defend and winning the dice off, and then making me deploy first (and so choose table edge). I had not expected to be attacking - particularly meaning I would have to wait for my Reserves to arrive and get them across the table.
The initial attack of the Austrians was ponderous. Being only able to charge in line with big units is tricky. You put out a lot of firepower in line, but have no real way of charging the enemy - you will nearly always have to hit multiple units in a charge and the French can walk backwards as fast as my troop can walk foward.
But (as in my solo games) the timing of the game was superb. The Cuirassiers arrived mid game and stormed across the table to get into position with a turn or 2 of mine to go. They had to win, and win fast.
They immediately rode over 1 French battalion (failed to form square), but a combined infantry and cavalry attack on another French battalion failed when it formed square and beat off the attackers (fittingly since I mistakenly charged in attack column with my foot).
As we moved into extra time, the French square was first hit by musketry and canister, then charged by infanty and Cuirassiers to break, another French battalion fell to canister and another to musketry. This pushed the French over 33%. In the 3rd period of extra time, the French failed their morale test, for an Austrian victory.
My Austrians were a fairly sick lot by this stage. While only one unit was broken (by canister), many units had 3,4 or 5 hits racked up.
The overall outcome of the game felt right. The Austrians are very powerful with musketry - 6 dice and being able to take 6 hits. Any French unit in a musketry duel one on one is in big trouble (5 dice but can only take 4 hits). But the French are so manoeurvable they can escape just when you think you have them pinned. Thought it modelled 1805 fights quite well - the Austrians can wear the French down slowly but are not decisive, and struggle to advance (I certainly did not threaten the objective).
Biggest conclusion for my opponent is if you want to fight with infantry only, you better make sure the terrain helps - all infantry armies are risky. He probably also had to attack me early hoping to win before the Cuirassiers arrived. But with a bit better dice luck it could certainly have gone the other way.
Cam