Battle of Raab

Hosted another of the Napoleonic historical battles, this time the Battle of Raab of the 1809 campaign as Seth again brought up his growing collection of Austrians to match against my French.

Basically it was a very good French/Italian army vs a very dubious collection of Hungarian Insurrection (militia) units supported by a limited number of Austrian regulars.  The Austrian high command apparently was a mess, with much mismanagement.  The defensive line finally taken was a small but difficult to cross stream of the Pancza and a heavily fortified farm of Kis-Megyer.

The historical OOB had the French outnumbering and certainly the better troops but the terrain to there disadvantage as only a few crossing points were available without disorder penalty.

A large battle, but with many small individual commands, these needed to be combined, and more so with only a few of the guys able to show up.  The effect was that players had a lot of elements to think about and the PIP counts were larger than we had herefore known.

Austrian players (Barry[L] and Andrew[R] ) looking apprehensively at the masses of Grenier's and Grouchy's (Jim's) French which formed the bulk of the French attack.

Grouchy's cavalry found the only ford across the stream and start engaging the Hungarian Insurrectio cavalry (poor militia types played in this game by regular Austrian cavalry)

View from the Austrian side showing Seth's good looking and growing Austrian army.  The Austrian reserves on the hill constitute most of the only decent troops available to them.  The Austrian players decision was when to bring them into play. 

Close up of Seth's element of Grenzer with Austrian infantry to the fore.

Another view of the Austrian defense of the stream and Kis-Megyer farm to the right

 Seth has based his elements in identical fashion to my method. So while his painting may be different than mine, the two collections blend seamlessly so look very good together on the table I believe.

Meanwhile...on the Austrian right flank, Davidovich inactive during the historical affair, comes across the Raab river to move against Lauriston [part of the LSPPL combined French commands under my rather dubious ability)

Note in point from previous caption... Why am I always masking my own artillery support??

The Italian Royal Guard represented by the element in dark blue greatcoats advance with a fresh MP of 6!

French infantry

the Austrian Davidovich's Insurrectio infantry (played by Bavarians) are abandoned by their cavalry and are surrounded by French cavalry while stuck in square {indicated by, well, the black squares!}

The French won the battle but at the point where the Austrian players knew the battle was lost, the MP losses were about the same. In other words the lowly Insurrectio militia gave as good as they gave, but the French simply had more and the terrain was not enough to prevent the French assault ably done by Jim and his Chief of Staff, Joshua, who rolled some good dice for him.

The Kis-Megyer farm, the focal point of the historical battle was carefully avoided by the French who took the time to take out the supporting elements.
It was acknowledged that more defined victory conditions must be made so players will know what to do once those victory conditions could, or perhaps not, be met.

The rules are now working and most issues are now easily handled so in that we hope the game was fun for the players as it was for Seth and I.

2nd Battle of Limonest

First off, major disappointment.  With lots of planning and arrangement and purchasing of the flight, this weekend was to be my trip up to see Mike B. and do an all-weekend game fest.  However, fog.  Lots of fog.  All up and down the coast for 500 miles and not burning off.  Well, perhaps just for an hour late in the day, before the sun goes down and it rolls in even heavier.  Many cancelled flights especially the smaller carriers to the smaller towns including mine. Damn. Damn, Damn.

With the weekend open, I decided to do another go at play-testing the rules and set up this historical battle again. Good to compare the command rolls verses the first go-around.

The main Allied thrust represented by my Prussian elements moving against the French on the hill.

Because of the complete randomness of the rolls, even small commands of 3 or 4 elements cannot often benefit from the comparatively potential of pip happy times.  Well, not with the numerous 1's and 2's I roll certainly. This was made very evident in an interesting conclusion of the battle as, with the French retreat in full bloom, the right flank Allied commander obviously frustrated with no more opposition to his front yet rolling poor movement pips each turn, drove only an element of dragoons forward in an effort to close off the bridge to the retreating French.  On the way his sliced up ol' Grouchy with a couple saber cuts (lone HQ overrun on a "Danger to General" roll. Adds drama and if the General is killed, the HQ is eliminated and all elements now double price to move)

my Grouchy HQ element

Anyway, this silly dragoon brigade is now out of command distance, the player (me) not moving the HQ to keep pace. Well, now I again roll a '1' which does not allow the dragoon element to about-face to meet the oncoming French; who besides, laid up a cannon to blast its way past!  A lesson to all the players to keep all under command distance.

One command [lower portion of the photo] but with the lone dragoon element [cavalry in green] near the bridge but out of command distance ...

...and now unable to be ordered to turn around to face the retreating French elements [infantry with the tricolor flags] and now facing deployed artillery [left] by a commander WITH enough command to do so!

Also had other situations which hopefully simple conclusions with the rules will result. 

With only 7 turns done, which at half-an-hour assigned per turn, it is roughly the same time frame as the real battle and this was done in a fairly small area of 3 feet by 4.5 feet.   Lots of elements eliminated or done to 1 MP only so conclusions to any battle will certainly be easy to reach. 

Battle of Limonest 1814 /playtest

The Battle of Limonest was fought on March 20, 1814 near the important city of Lyon during the Campaign for France.  While Napoleon fought the main armies of the Allies, relatively unrecorded battles were fought in other parts of France. Augereau was tasked to occupy the other forces of Austrians and protect the city of Lyon.  Heavily outnumbered he deployed available forces north of the city at Limonest and Dardilly.  With 18,000 he faced some 48,000 (some sources suggest over 62,000!) Austrians and Hessians. 

While the sources of the battle (many from poor French translations) are confusing, I decided on 10 elements of French to 23 elements of Allies and deployed as accurately as I could determine.

Rather plain terrain set up but Napoleon or any army's high command certainly did not worry about hedges and so with the focus of the rules, only terrain which would affect these larger formations are represented. Would 'doll it up' for a convention setting.

The French deployment facing the more numerous Allies. Towns of Limonest (right), and Dardilly (left) and the heights of Champ-Vert form the line of the French defence. The very edge of Mont d'Or mountain can be seen on the right. 

With that as the framework for the scenario, I did "play around" with the rules to test certain aspects.  The rules themselves worked well.  Used the 'new' rule that after a round of combat the defeated element has to retreat at least 2 inches.  If unable, it must find to next nearest spot to place itself.  This simple expediency did keep the results easy and certainly promotes the use of reserves.  To counterattack the player must find the pips to do so. 

Because I was soloing this, I only accorded one d6 per army. While certainly a test-it-beyond-the-stress-load-until-it-breaks kind of expediency,  obviously it hampers the Austrians more than the French with their more numerous elements.  That, and the die themselves which seem to roll always very low for the poor Austrians in a historical effort to mimic their command sluggishness?  While interesting as a military simulation, I think as a game ploy, each player must have a d6 to do any good on the table.

And yet, in another effort to "simulate" the seemingly poor Austrian combat efforts, and even though I think this is certainly overplayed in the histories, I used similar modified combat dice as the red ones, but these white ones have one more 0 and no +3.  Verses the reds they come out very poorly percentage wise.  Funnily enough, during the playtest, this was not evident as the Austrian rolls beat the French many times and at two different combats, it took three rolls to resolve the close combat - completely destroying these fresh units.  Things legends are made of!

The noted red and white combat dice

Of the game, the thin French line was forced at several points which got the French command nervous about flanks and so forced retreat with one command trying to retreat in whole (but the movement pips in short supply) exposing the next command.  Basically as it happened in the historical engagement. Grand tactically, a brigade (element) of Allies were sent around the Mont d'Or on the French right to outflank their line.  While pip-starved, I did not move this element, it was a constant reminder to the French of their precarious position.

The column on the right is entering unopposed into the town of Dardilly, which will compromise the French flank on the hill forcing their retreat.

A few painted elements of Prussians posing as Austrians.

The rather chaotic end of the day.  I did not employ command radius which would go a long way to prevent this spreading of forces. 

Rather fun game for a couple of free hours on a nice holiday afternoon.

Game of Montereau from the other side....

Battle of Montereau by Jean-Charles Langlois

David, one of the able Austrian commanders of our large historical Napoleonic Battle of Montereau (1814), completed a fine write-up of the game from the Austrian perspective.

You can view part 1 at:  link
and part 2 at : link

If you missed my original entry: link

French artillery park

Finally finished the French artillery contingent for the Waterloo campaign.  For many wargamers it would constitute their artillery batteries for their Shako or Black Powder rules, but for the big-boy ratios I am working with, heck this is it.
Actually the six guns up front do look the part of one actual battery!

The line batteries are in the first row. In the second row,  line horse batteries on the left, the Young Guard (1814) - or those line units in overcoats - next to them, then the 12 pounder Guard foot batteries with finally the lone Guard horse battery in the second row on the right. 14 guns in total representing some 460 cannon in total. All are Perrys.

I must interject that we wargamers all deal with silly ratios. 1:20, 1:33, 1:100 or 1:2,500. It is really all in perception.  I want a high level, player is a corps commander thing.  It works. It looks good on the table. I still get to use 28mm figures. 

Battle of Hanau - more pictures

First thing:   thanks to Bob E., Bob S, Ron P., Ian Mc., Garland R., James C., Rod F., Preston, and Lance G., for being patient students of these new rules Seth and I used for the game.  While I thought I was a bit rambling in my introduction to this historical scenario, the concepts behind the rules, and the rules themselves, several of you told me this benefited both your understanding of the game and the play itself.

Here is a picture taken by Kevin of me - in the light green shirt - babbling on  discussing the finer points.....

Photo of the "introduction" as taken from the Allied side of the battlefield

This shows the a key terrain piece of the battle, the town of Hanau.  Made by Seth from paper card and the fortifications of hard foam, it is both very good looking and light!  He is an architect by trade so it is natural he took on this task.  The town will no doubt be useful for other battles.

My French Imperial Guard.  The wheel on the black block indicates the artillery is limbered.

I just like the angle of this photo and the panorama of the battle. The game was on about a 7' by 5' table but still had space.  I know I could put on Waterloo on the same sized table!

The French regular cavalry.

While the Imperial Guard is in the fore, Marmont's 'corps' leads with the dark blue overcoated Naval Artillery Regiments who played a large part in the 1813 and 1814 battles.

The scope of the rules and thus basing of the figures are for the corps and not the battalion. Thus only the really significant terrain features are shown.  It is for the lowly majors to worry about such things as hedges and ditches not the corps commander as portrayed by the player.  Thus the 'clean' field of battle.

The Battle of Hanau - the actual game!

Finally, after the months of build up, with planning, rule play testing, and of course the painting etc., the game was presented at Enfilade 2013.

We took considerable time explaining the concept of the rules, the history of battle and the extremely poor but historically accurate deployment of the Austro-Bavarian army, and the objectives of each side and of course the rules themselves.
Seth and I are very pleased that the players gushed with praise for the game and seemed to be very pleased with the results.  That is pretty good for Napoleonics!

The game pretty well went to historical form - or would have had we not had to shut down.  The Allied center was very fragile (in spite of forgetting to downgrade half the troops as they were Bavarian Landwehr Kreis units!) and so kept retreating as not to be eliminated.  Unfortunately the player with Drouot, having the cream and very much the majority of the French force, was extremely cautious and would not be told to take advantage of the enemy weakness even after having given him a d6 roll of six more (!) movement as a bonus from Napoleon.  Had he been more aggressive, the game would have gone the path of historical battle and the French push through the Allies we speculated.

The initial deployment of the Allies per history. The River Kinzig was uncrossable except by the one bridge (upper right) which is almost in the French area!  Thus 1/3 of the army was cut off. The photo also shows the fortified town of Hanau which Seth built specially for this game. He did a wonderful job.  Built from paper houses and foam to be light weight.

The Allied center as seen from the French perspective. The near woods have the French forces yet to be disclosed.

The Austrians attacking over the bridge against poor French marshal McDonald. Lance, playing the Frenchman knew he was the anvil for the Austrian hammer.  

I had made some blank element stands from those from which I had removed figures, so placed them on the table (lower left) to indicate possible French coming from that direction.  The historical Bavarian commander thought that likely in any event.  The Allied commander thought that too as he kept some of his force facing that direction as you can see.

The Allied left flank as seen from their side. This photo is from later in the game as removed elements produce gaps in formations

The French emerge from the forest

A good photo of McDonald's command.  Historically this was both McDonald's and Victor's Corps which were in name only.  They were extremely under strength and were composed of very weak and fatigued regiments most of which could only count 100 or less soldiers in the ranks!

In reserve....

Well sometimes you just have to.

The Battle of Hanau is an interesting Napoleonic engagement as it has a very powerful but small Imperial Guard contingent of artillery, horse and infantry, together with a small and weak support contingents emerging from a forest vs a twice as large but poorly deployment Austro-Bavarian force.
With a scenario like that many things can go wrong.  In our case, we made the Allied effectiveness too high despite having told ourselves to note to downgrade. And it is important to put the right personalities to the command to account for that.  This failed, due in part to the unfamiliar players.  The atrocious dice that a couple of them had to endure did not help.

To see if indeed the rules and the troop ratios we used will produce the same result as the historical battle, sometimes you just have to have a reserve plan.  Be it a change of a rule, a change of the scenario or just bringing on reserves which, in this case, were possible but did not arrive as early, sometimes a nudge is needed.
This was the Marmont 'Corps'. It was part of the straggling mass of the chaff which was the French army after Leipzig. While only 3 very weak elements, I brought it along just in case....

Amusing incident during the game.  An announcement was made that the painting competition was currently on and any entries should be made.  Shortly thereafter the first of the 'casualties' occurred from the French side, and it was suggested by some of the players that both be put in for judging.  While totally random that my units be so 'selected' for the contest, it occurred that both won their respective catagories!  No on-the-shelve-only models for me, these were straight off the battlefield!

Games played at Enfilade 2013

Despite the collapse of a bridge on the I-5 freeway which will be driven, to get to the convention, less than 12 hours before leaving[!!] and an car accident on the freeway on the way down which left only 2 of 5 lanes available at one point due to a unfortunate person laying deceased in the middle of the roadway [!!], the drive down was not overly delayed.

I played in three games: Kevin's Air Race game, David S's Ancient Galley game and, Seth's and my Napoleonic affair.  Had a great time with all three.
I almost won the air race game but lost by a hair - due in no small part by a very unsporting 'curse' card - which reduces speed - by a player near the rear of the pack.

 In the 'row boat' game, I had no archers or catapults and a fairly speedy boat so decided on the immediate ram tactic. I missed with the initial impact (hmm, can't remember why) but the target player gave me a quick second chance the next turn and so I took advantage and got in a very good ram.  The player then grappled my ship, overwhelmed my smaller contingent of marines, captured my galley and transferred his crew to my his new prize while his boat sank from the damage I inflicted!

The third game, the Napoleon battle of Hanau, I will describe in a following post.  I did get to move some troops as I brought in Marmont's weak command as a reserve later in the game, after playing umpire for the earlier portion.

Often I don't actually play any games, or perhaps one or two only as I like to wonder around to view all the games, chat with fellow wargamers or browse the trader stand so with three I felt very busy. The convention was a good one once again and I had a good time.

Nansouty's Cavalry at the Battle of Hanau

 Nansouty's Cavalry at the Battle of Hanau

Here we have the representation of the Guard cavalry at the Battle of Hanau.
The first rank (left to right) we have the Empress Dragoons and the Horse Grenadiers- both in campaign dress, in the 2nd rank the 'Red' Lancers and the Chasseurs-a-Cheval - again both in campaign dress, and in the 3rd rank the Garde-du-Honneur and the Guard Horse Artillery.
 
I went with the campaign dress as the original collection direction was toward the 1814 campaign - and the look of that campaign was "in the mud and cold".

Prepping for the con

I laid out the complete French army at the Battle of Hanau (1813) which will be played out at the 'Enfilade!' convention at Olympia, WA in a week's time.

Each element is approximately a thousand combatants with the artillery representing some 40 guns (!).  The battle was the Austo-Bavarian attempt to halt Napoleon from retiring to France after the decisive battle of Leipzig.

These elements of the French Old Guard artillery will hopefully be the 'plow' to move the white stuff away (the Austrian infantry!)

The battle is unique as it has the French emerging from a large forest through which it has moved to face the Allies in the fields beyond before the town of Hanau.  Drouot, the Guard commander expertly brought out the Guard artillery and blew apart the enemy formations before him, leading the French past the town and back to France.  Should be an interesting wargame.


For the forest through which the French emerge I volunteered my pine forest (the Black Forest is close by to Hanau, yes?) as it would travel much better than the deciduous trees which I fear would fall apart during transport. However I did not like what I had made. (um, some, heck 20 years ago?). So I went at 'improving' them.  Not quite the before and after picture as I had already painted the rocks as they were a bright light gray originally picked up from a walkway.  But the new matching flocking I feel quite nicely blends them to the ground cloth. (looks closer in the flesh than the photo probably as the glue has yet to dry and is still a darker wet!)

Newly refurbished woods stands to the left, old to the right. The fragile deciduous trees in the background.  These are nice but to weak to make the transport.

"The Big Battle" (La Rothiere game)

These are a few more photos of the game(s) of the Battle of LaRothiere which shows the 'look' of the game.  While we wanted to do the massive battles of the Napoleonic wars, we did not feel we wanted the requirements to go to a smaller scale nor have to paint the numbers which 15mm seem to demand. 28mm is sexier! Nor did we want to go to the 20 foot long table to encapsulate all the size and terrain elements.

  For the interest of the real Napoleonic nutters with their maps in front of them, the final photo shows the Austrian (read 'Russian') attack of General Sacken against LaRothiere (middle house).  Guilay's Austrians (and actually represented by Austrians!) are moving over the bridge against Dienville (upper left buildings) and the photo shows Petite Mesnil village as the yellow house (lower right)