The Sand Box Let's see if it is broken ...

(Registrar's note: Piedmont finished a distant second to Venice in the scenario. The Piedmontese perspective is provided by Monarch Michael Flowers. In addition, Doug Powell, Ken Felts, George Harris, Craig Armistead, and John Gordon (Garibaldi) were team members).

The Piedmontese team started out poorly. I had organized the army for three players and we had some changes and a player added late in the game. The armies were re-organized in a hurry and it got us off to a bad start until Ken Felts changed that. However, his re-organization did not get out to the other players in time and the first turn was a huge loss in movement. We had split the armies into six corps, four in the north and two to protect our cities from the south. Commanding the northern units was I, Doug Powell, Craig Armistead and George Harris. Ken Felts and Aldo Garabaldi led the southern units. I led the Northern Army while General Felts took command of the southern. The second turn again had some missed orders and we moved very slowly in the North towards our target of Mantua. As expected the Venetian armies took Mantua before we got there and we started to plan an offensive to take it. There were a few skirmishes in the areas around the city resulting in stalemate for the most part, though we were slightly losing. We won a few battles North of the City after some of their units got trapped, and then the full out assault of Mantua happened.
This resulted in a slight victory for the Venetians but they were all holed up in the fort. Planning for a second turn of attacks I noticed that some units from the south had slipped through Felts’s armies and we pulled out of Mantua to protect Milano, which had been taken. It cut our supply line off and we lost men to desertion as well as strategic withdrawal to make sure there were no complications in our retreat to Mantua. Their units fled the city and we easily re took it and prepared to defend the city. The Venetian forces arrived as expected and due to poorly executed defense orders on my part we lost a decisive battle and were forced to retreat once again. During this battle our CQ was destroyed again leaving us without supplies it took us two turns to get our scattered units to Torino.
Our units had lost a great deal of manpower due to deserting and combat losses. We were facing a much larger Venetian force and sure enough the came after our last northern strong hold at Torino. It was around this time that I found out the southern units had all been destroyed save one unit. It had already been apparent but this was pretty much the nail in the coffin. Even if we one the first round of attacks at Torino we would have been dealing with reinforcements from the south. We also ran out of money around this time and could not rebuild the CQ. Most of our army now consisted of Militia units. I felt out strategy to defend Torino was sound but we were low on both ammo and men. The battle tore us apart down to two units and the war was more than over we couldn’t take back any cities or even retreat the army was decimated. It was a turn before this that Felts had told me the army of the south had been obliterated, I’m unsure of the southern events though. I didn’t receive many forwarded reports on the south.
There are a few reasons why I feel Piedmont lost to the Ventian Republic in this war. Starting off I was far too inexperienced to head the team as the monarch, I hurt us at the beginning and throughout several of the battles. I volunteered figuring I’d learn a lot, which I did, but it contributed to the team’s loss. Another was we had several players with computer problems. Aldo Garabaldi missed the first campaign due to severe computer problems, George Harris experienced quite a bit of them throughout the game as well. Craig Armistead left the team about halfway through the game and Doug Powell had business to attend to and could not always send out his orders. I also had some complications arise in the middle of the first campaign. I had to leave town and had little Internet access. This led to a lot of miscommunication, missed orders and just poor organization. The war was never really close it was pretty much a landslide victory for the Venetians. Well this pretty much wraps up the main events and why I think we lost.
As far as the game goes I enjoyed it. I didn’t think there was anything that could have made the scenario better it was designed the way it was for newer players. It might have been nice to have more diplomacy to get experience with that aspect but other than that it was great. It provided a good learning experience I think.