My Napoleonic Game at LardEh - Wertingen1805

Following on the heels of my last post, about the LardEh games day in Hamilton, here’s a report on the Napoleonics game I ran in he afternoon.  It was the first time I’ve stepped into the role of Games Master at an event, so I was quite nervous and wanted to have the game right, balanced, fun, and looking good.   The rules I chose were Too Fat Lardies’ large battle Napoleonics rules, General d’Armee (GdA), by Dave Brown and published by TFL’s Reisswitz Press imprint.

My first challenge was to finish the French ADC chits, to go with the Austrian ADC chits I made last year.   In GdA, ADCs are like command or initiative points in other rules sets.  They are a finite number of opportunities for the player as the CinC to influence the battle by giving orders to his brigades, and hopefully getting them to overcome the friction of the battlefield and actually do what he the commander wants.   Here are eight French officer caricatures, shouting at the player or giving looks of disdain at their lack of battlefield prowess.  I wanted something to add period colour and a little humour to the game.

 Now to decide on the battle.  I have been thinking about Wertingen, the opening fight of the Ulm campaign, which in turn led to Austerlitz and Napoleon’s stunning defeat of the Third Coalition of Russia and Austria.   As the Grande Army advanced through Bavaria, two French corps (Murat’s Cavalry Reserve and Lannes’ III Corps) ran into an Austrian infantry corps under Auffenburg that Mack rashly sent swanning about on an ill-conceived reconnaissance in force.   Historically the French made short work of the Austrians, but in the GMT Command and Colors scenario which introduced me to the battle, it seemed like an even and manageable fight.  

Here’s the playlets table, kept fairly simple as I didn’t want the players interacting with terrain pieces when they could be fighting.   I find that for 6mm games with lots of troops on the table, simple is better.  The cloth mat and roads are from Geek Villain (UK), the fields are latex from Barrage Miniatures (Sp), the buildings are Timecast and the hills are scratch built.

 

Here is the order of battle, printed on individual unit markers that will be fixed onto 3D printed unit markers courtesy of Aaron at Project Wargaming.   Each marker is for a regiment or for an individual commander.  There were some mistakes that I caught when I took a closer look at the rules.  In GdA only Guards units are Elite, whereas good units like your typical Grenadier unit would be rated as Veteran.  Thus I told the players that for Elite, read Veteran, and for Heavy Cavalry, unless marked Cuirassier in the case of the two Aus units, the French cavalry are considered Battle Cavalry, which in GdA is most well horsed line cavalry (Hussars, Chasseurs, Dragoons).   The French still outnumber the Austrians 2-1 in cavalry units, with two of the Aus regiments being Small or understrength.

All is quite in the village of Wertingen.

A view of the dispositions early on.    That’s one of the voices of the Canadian Wargamer Podcast, James, setting up the Austrians at top left.  The Austrians have to hold on the road intersection for 12 turns to win.  In all the photos that follow, two bases placed together indicate a single cavalry or infantry regiment or battalion.

The two French players put both of Murat’s cavalry divisions and both his batteries of horse artillery on their left, with Lanne’s corps on the right.   The French tried to get off to a fast start, realizing the clock was against them, but had trouble coordinating their advance in the centre.

One of the Austrian players sees a chance when the French rashly push their horse artillery forward and attack with a regiment of hussars, still in column.   The Austrians suffer terribly from canister, but remarkably the survivors close, and in the melee that follows, the French gunners manfully stood by their guns and saw off the chargers.  It was one of several remarkable upset results.  Charging is always a bit of an uncertain business in GdA, it’s a two-edged sword indeed. 

 

In another case of a surprise result, the Austrians throw their horse at Lasalle’s hussar brigade that is holding Lanne’s right flank, and despite their advantage of having one regiment of cuirassiers, they are thrown back.

James realized that the key to survival was aggression, and pushed his infantry forward.   A fortunate volley drove the French light foot out of the north half of the village (the church square) and that reversal seemed to perplex the French players, who never used their four veteran grenadier regiments to full advantage after that.

On the Austrian right, Murat’s two dragoon brigades are slowly and relentlessly pushing forward, but they are too far away from the intersection and it is too late in the day for this to be a disaster.

With the Austrians firmly holding the centre of the table, and only a few turns remaining, the French players conceded defeat.

I had worried that the game would be a one-sided affair, with the French cruising to an easy victory, but in fact it was a close battle and the Austrians, ably and aggressively handled, had a convincing victory.   Most importantly, the players had fun, I gained enough confidence to run another game at another event, and I got to know the rules much better.

Perhaps I’ve made the same fudge that the designers of the Command and Colors Wertingen scenario did by giving the Austrians more units on the table than the historical battle would suggest - from what I’ve been able to gather, the French had a 3-1 advantage.  Perhaps I could adjust that by taking away one of the Austrian cavalry regiments, but I’d like to play this though again with some other players to see if there’s a different encounter.    Hopefully I’ll write up this scenario for one of the magazine.

Cheers, thanks for reading, and blessings to you die rolls!

MP+

ADC/Staff Officer Tokens for Pickett's Charge ACW Rules

 

Hey friends:

My preferred rules of the moment for American Civil War battles are Pickett’s Charge, by Dave Brown, published by Reisswitz Press, a Too Fat Lardies imprint.   These rules give each side a varying number of ADCs or Staff Officers each turn, which help the player manage their force on the tabletop.  The same mechanic exists in Dave’s Napoleonic rules, General D’Armee, and as regular readers of this blog may recall, in April I created some ADC/SO tokens for the Austrian army.

Recently I sketched some Union ADCs/SOs for Pickett’s Charge and finished them the other day.

 

 My inspiration came from these photos of personnel from the 103rd Pennsylvania Regiment, from a digital copy of their regimental history.   The 103rd PA was roughy handled in the Battle of Seven Pines in 1862 as described here a while ago.  It gives me some pleasure to think that these old boys might approve of they likenesses and how they are being used.  Hopefully you can spot some of the inspirations for my tokens!

Making these tokens is a pleasant side project, and next up will be French Napoleonic and Confederate ADC tokens, as I ge to them.

Cheers and blessings to your gaming.

MP+

 

Napoleonic Thursday: Some Player Aides and Figures for General d'Armee

Good afternoon friends:

My first foray into General d’Armee by Too Fat Lardies/Reisswitz Press showed me that I needed some player aides to better manage some of the core mechanics, one of which is Aides de Camp.   When I served, an ADC was just a luckless very junior officer who got tasked with picking up a GOFO (General Officer/Flag Officer) at the airport, getting him to his guest quarters and turning his sheets down, and other sundry details, the indignity of which far outweighed the privilege of wearing the ADC’s aiguillette, the ceremonial length of braided cord worn on the shoulder of the dress uniform.   

n Napoleonic battlefields, ADCs were ambitious and dashing young men of good families who rode around with orders and goads from the General commanding, like the unfortunate Lord Hay at Waterloo.   In Dave Brown’s GdA, ADCs, as we’ve seen, are the limited resources of time and attention to detail that allow the player to try and exercise _some_ control over the battlefield.   So how to represent them in 6mm?

I thought of simply ordering some officer figures to single base as ADCs, but decided against it, as it would take a while to get them and paint them (Baccus is swamped with orders at present and I have no idea if other companies like Adler are any more responsive) and I already have single-based command figures in the pipeline to represent brigade level commanders.   I then hit on the idea of trying my dubious artistic skills to sketch some caricatures, starting with Austrians, so I painted some discard sabots from multi-bases in white and then went to work with an HB pencil.  I found as I went that I was remembering some officers from my military service as I went, like the fellow with the big hair and the easy smile.

 Final result.  Started colouring them with the grandkids’ pencil crayons, but the results were quite uneven and so I decided to revert to acrylic paints.   I’m quite happy with the final result.   Can’t wait to try them in my next game of GdA

Also finished this week are some skirmish stands so I can try out the Skirmish rules in GdA.   I still need to do more Austrians, but I figure the French are more likely to deploy skirmishers than their opponents.  Some of the French figures (left) are by Baccus, painted by me, and some are from the collection I purchased.  The Austrians on the right were in that same purchased collection.

Finally, since I was on a basing jag, four brigade commanders for the French.   While I could also employ these figures as ADCs, I like my approach better.

Hopefully we’ll see all this kit in action soon.    Thanks for looking and blessings to your brushes!

MP+

Revisiting 6mm With General D'Armee

There was a while back around 2012 when this blog was buzzing with excitement about my foray into 6mm Napoleonics.  I had purchased a large collection of painted Austrian and French figures, bought some new figures from Baccus, and was learning to paint them.   I had picked up Sam Mustafa’s Blucher rules and had played a few games with them, and was generally happy with my progress.   Then a move, my wife getting sick and dying, a new duty assignment, retirement from the military, remarrying and starting a new life.   A lot of things got in the way, and I think the resurgence of my interest in this period and scale has to do with being in the happiest place I’ve ever been in my life.   Funny how it all works.

This Easter seemed like a good time for a wargaming vicar to live out the resurrection by raising my 6mm collection out of their boxes and taking Dave C. Brown’s General d’Armee rules for a spin.  I had previously played Dave’s ACW rules Pickett’s Charge (PC) and liked them, and found the mechanics similar enough that GdA was fairly easy to pick up.

I decided the the best way to learn the mechanics was to take two identical forces, thus, a French division of three infantry brigades, four batteries, and a light and heavy cavalry brigade faces its Austrian mirror image.   All units were rated as Line for simplicity’s sake.   This force selection seemed to promise enough complexity to get a sense of rules that claim to be scaled from Divisional to Corps level. 

 The Austrian force of General Albert Kurvi-Tasch (dubbed by Archduke Franz Joseph “More moustache than brain”) defends the key crossroads south of the village of Schlumpen and watches as the French of General Theodore d'Ordure, dubbed by Napoleon as “the Grossest of the Gross”, comes into view.   The backdrop is not 6mm, sorry about that.

 The battle began with the light brigades of cavalry scrimmaging on the Austrian right.    Dave’s charge procedure rules were basically familiar to me from PC and are fairly simple to administer in horse on horse actions, where there is no defensive volleying to complicate things.  At first things went fairly evenly, with the two brigades somewhat battered and retiring to reorganize.   When the went at it again, however, the Charge dice went disastrously for the French: their “2” vs the Austrian “12” on 2d^ (it’s all d6 based) saw the French light horse simply dissolve.  Charges can be exciting and tempting because you never quite know how they’ll go.

 The French reserve advances through Schlumpen in a brigade column, hoping to punch a hole through the Austrian centre with the support of the heavy cavalry to their left and the two flanking infantry brigades.   As you have noticed by now, I am using small dice to keep track of casualties, though am not happy with the look.  Perhaps I need micro-dice?   I’m now wishing my unit stands had little slots for casualty dice like the cool kids have.

 Artillery can be deadly in these rules.   The two Austrian batteries in the centre have savaged the lead unit in the assaulting brigade, and checked its advance.   Ordure moves his heavy cavalry forward to open the way, and the Austrians respond.  It’s still anyone’s battle. 

 

 Austrian cuirassier and French dragoon trade blows, largely ineffectually, and the two brigades basically repel one another like bumper cars at a fairground.  For me this is where 6mm really shines as a visual scale with the clash of massed units.  I would never paint enough larger figures in my remaining lifetime to achieve the same effect.

Speaking of visual appeal, I’m quite happy with the table.  The game is being fought on a Geek Villain 6 by 4 fleece Grasslands mat, the roads are from Paper Terrain (glued to cardboard and then cut out) and the buildings are by Timecast which I really like.

 In the final clash of the game, the French columns advance on the Austrian lines.  I’m very happy to say that the two French infantry units in the centre are the first 6mm figures I ever painted, almost a decade ago now, and I’m very happy with the way they look.   At this point you may be wondering how I portray formations.  Good question.

All my units are based the same, in lines, though with French units I usually put some skirmishers in front.   However, because in my world a single base represents a single unit, I don’t have any way to represent the formation changes that GdA and other rules call for.  My core assumption then for this game is that each unit is currently in the formation that makes sense fir the situation and for its army doctrine.  Thus, here the French are in column and the Austrians are in line.   Infantry, if charged by cavalry, would go into square if they made the appropriate test.   Cavalry are generally in column.  I have enough limbers (another benefit of 6mm) to portray artillery either limbered or unlimbered.  It seems to work so far.

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 With the repulse of the French infantry (as in Dave’s ACW rules, defensive fire from an intact foe is pretty deadly), and with the destruction of the French light horse, the game seemed to be done and an Austrian victory.   

One of the features of Dave’s rules that I especially like is command and control.  As in PC, GdA uses a varied number of Aides de Camp each turn to help ensure that your brigades do what you want them to do, and reduce the chance that they might go Hesitant and spend a turn dithering in uncertainty.    ADCs can help you salvage wavering brigades, can direct artillery in intensive bombardments useful to prepare for a charge, etc.   In this game the French could have 5 ADCs a turn to the Austrian 4, but you then have to roll for their availability each turn, so you seldom have enough, which adds some uncertainty and friction - no wonder Richard Clarke and TFL rep Dave’s rules, they are a natural fit with the TFL philosophy.  

I look forward to revisiting GdA soon, preferably using an historical battle as the template.   I just finished using CCN to fight Wertingen, the Austrian defeat at the start of the 1805 Ulm campaign, and that seems a manageable sized battle to fight.    

Thanks for reading.  Blessings to you tiny soldiers!

MP+