The Great Redoubt

Greetings everyone. November turned out to be a very busy month work-wise and family-wise so I didn’t post anything and didn’t play and games until the end of the month.

From a hobby perspective, the main thing I completed this month was getting the final section of WWII late-war British infantry completed along with some supporting weapons teams and command. Here’s a picture of what I got done. They don’t look fabulous up close but they look pretty good at tabletop distance and they are completed.

The only things left to complete for this army are the heavy weapons teams and a troop of Cromwell tanks. I’ve started prepping the heavy weapons crews. I have two 3″ mortar teams, two Vickers MG teams and a 6-pdr AT Gun team to do, These figures are all metal while the previous figures for this force were all hard plastic. Having mostly worked with plastic figures over the last 50 years or so, I would like to say that assembling multi-part metal models seems harder and less fun that it was 20 years ago. Assembling the Warlord 6-pdr AT gun has not brought joy. I hope to have everything done & dusted by the end of the year. We’ll see.

The other main update is that I actually played a game in the last week. The “M4” gamers meet Monday evenings at a local game store, putting on a variety of games in a variety of scales. This group appeals to me for a few reasons: first, they meet on Mondays. I’m generally doing family stuff or up at my cabin on the weekends so gaming on weeknights generally works better for my schedule. Second, the games move fast… usually done in two hours. That means simpler rules, especially since there are often 8 or more players, but that’s not a bad thing. Many historical gamers chase detailed rules in the name of getting a more historically-accurate game, but simple, fast-moving rules are appealing too. I’ve followed them for a while but finally dragged my butt out of the house and went up to see a game.

Last week’s game was 28mm Napoleonics, using a one-page set of rules based on Neil Thomas’ “One Hour Wargames.” We had 10 players and it was the first time all of us had seen or used the rules. The scenario was loosely based on the battle of Borodino, focusing on the action near the village of Borodino rather than the Great Redoubt or the Fleches.

Here’s an overview of the battlefield. French and Allied Forces on the left, Russians on the right. Pseudo-Borodino is the distance and a stream runs across the entire battlefield. In the foregound on the left are a reinforced brigade of Austrians who started the battle inactive and, considering their historical aversion to actually fighting in 1812, activating them would require rolling a 2 or less on d6. There were several other brigades on both sides that started off inactive and you had to roll to get them involved in the game. Mostly cavalry reserves and a brigade of the French Guard.

Infantry were in battalions of 12 models, and each player was commanding a small division more or less with two brigades of infantry and an attached battery or two (or more on the Russian side). I commanded a division of French, Swiss and Saxon infantry next to the Austrians and my task was to attempt to force a crossing of the stream and mess up the Russian division in front of me.

As you can see in the picture below, I managed to get my leading brigade across the stream, taking a decent number of casualties in the process. The lead regiment of Swiss infantry took most of the damage coming in but between them and a supporting battery of artillery I mangled the lead Russian brigade pretty well. If the game had continued on I had more reserves than my Russian counterpart and probably could have pushed him back. Since the game ran two hours and then we were done, this is the high-water point of my assault.

It was a fun time and I’m glad I went. The rules are very basic but did a good job of capturing the essence of Napoleonic combat. As units accumulate more hits, you have to roll morale and depending on the delta between your morale target number and what you rolled, units would either continue moving forward, halt and not be able to move next turn (i.e. your assault faltering but not yet failing), you might be pushed back 3 or 6 inches, or the unit just routs off the table. Combat is attrition-based. You take hits and there’s no mechanism to get rid of them so you need reserves to press forward as your front unit accumulate damage over time.

There’s a few tweaks or additions I would like to try, but the rules as written did their job. They kept 10 gamers entertained and we managed to get 6 or more turns done in two hours with all those models on the table. It was a good-looking and fast-moving game, which is what I’m after these days.

I’ve ordered the various book on wargaming written by Neil Thomas and look forward to reading them over the holiday break. It’s always good to get new perspectives and ideas on the hobby. Also, I plan on trying to be a regular attendee of the M4 games going forward.

Thanks for reading!