Vapnartak and storage

This last weekend was Vapnartak in York.As usual there were some nice games on display but mainly the York show for me is about catching up with fellow wargamers and doing a bit of shopping.

As usual the show that roughly coincides with my birthday saw me making some fairly significant purchases. This year it's a big birthday and a couple of friends and son Jamie had offered to pay for some toys. With the plan to do a four-player Siege of Puebla game I need a few more Maximilian Adventure units so a visit to the Foundry stand seemed like a good way to pick up some stuff that friends could contribute to.

Two units of "Foreign Legion or Filibusters" plus a personality pack will, added to a few similar models I already own, give me the basis of a French line infantry unit in campaign dress. They will fight alongside my existing Turcos in the streets of Puebla.

I also got a pack of Mexican infantry and a Mexican personalities pack. These will serve alongside my existing red-jacketed state militia as an opposing player force. The personalities pack contains a nice general officer figure who will play a perhaps-important role in the game.

The other purchases were:

A Venetian house kit that was only a tenner at the table-top sale. Being designed for big 32mm Carnivale-style miniatures the doors are huge but with a little converting I reckon I can adapt it for Puebla.

Irregular Miniatures supplied some more Franco-Prussian War models so I can play Bloody Big Battles in 6mm. When I've painted them, Froeschwiller should be within my grasp.

And finally I invested in some self-adhesive magnetic sheet from Magnetic Displays. These have already been added to my 6mm unit storage facility. For years I've been keeping my expanding 1/300th scale WWII and Moderns collection in two Ikea filing cabinets mounted on the workshop wall:

The shallower drawers for the armies:

And the deeper ones for terrain:

The nice thing is that the drawers come out and can be used to transport stuff to games. However, I'm running out of space so with the aid of Lego bricks as spacers and PVC board or MDF off-cuts I've made some of my drawers double decker!

A couple of loops of insulating tape let me lift the top layer out and the newly acquired magnetic sheets stop the models sliding off. My 1/300th units are based on artist's mounting board and many are backed with self-adhesive ferro sheet, also from Magnetic Displays.

As you can see below, the extra space is badly needed!

New top layer - assorted Germans

In need of a new layer -
assorted 1940 French

I also picked up some more ferro sheet so I'll be spending some time increasing the proportion of the forces that stick to the magnets!

All in all I really enjoyed Vapnartak. It was great to catch up with so many wargaming friends and acquaintances. The only downside was that I didn't manage to off-load the old SOTCW banner. I really must get it to a current committee member somehow!

Coulmiers, 1870

It's too early to report on progress with the Muddy River Blues campaign but in between adjudicating on map moves I've been trying out Bloody Big Battles.  I've been playing, solo, the Coulmiers 1870 scenario available from the BBB community at Groups.io

Coulmiers is a smaller battle featuring inexperienced Republican French against poorly motivated Bavarians. I've had to use virtually every vaguely in-period village or town base to get the terrain required.

The French were attacking from the west (left in the picture above) and trying to force the Bavarians back far enough to capture five out of eight objectives in the eastern third of the table.

To make things interesting I diced on some home-made tables to decide on the tactics (or is it strategy at this scale; one 30mmx30mm base is about 1000 men?) to be used by the two sides. I ended with the French launching a concerted attack aimed a Coulmiers with the plan to fan out from there to capture nearby objectives. The Bavarians would counter this by centring their defence on Coulmiers and using their meagre cavalry force to screen the flanks.

A keystone of the Bavarian defence was the village of Baccon. This was partly fortified and occupied by a small brigade from 1st Bavarian Division backed up the divisional artillery.

Baccon in the grey square in the centre.
I've removed the buildings to give the
Bavarians room to deploy.

The Bavarian infantry holding Baccon would hold on until game turn three, significantly disrupting the French timetable (seven turns allowed for the scenario).

BBB in 6mm doesn't really support taking gorgeous game-in-progress photographs (there are lots of markers on the table) but it does give a good impression of really large battles swaying to and fro.

In the pic above we can see the French army converging on Coulmiers. The Bavarian infantry have been driven from Baccon and only the dug-in artillery remain. They will soon be over run.

Above we see a typical BBB unit - the Regiments de Marche forming half of the 1st Brigade of the French 16th Corps. They previously lost a base and because they had skirmishers, the base removed was that representing them. As a result of losing that base and of being Raw troops, they are now Spent and will be both harder to activate and less effective in combat. 

Their firepower is further reduced because, last turn, they rolled 11 or 12 when firing. This had a significant impact on the enemy but meant that the firers become low on ammunition. 

Finally we can also see that the unit is Disrupted. We can think of this as meaning that at least some of the companies and battalions making up the unit at pinned down by enemy fire. They will be harder to get moving and less effective when firing. They may even break and run!

The battle went as far as game turn 6 before I called it a day as the French had no possibility of reaching the required number of objectives.

The French in Coulmiers - the red marker indicates one of the two 
objectives the town represents.

My first impression of BBB is very favourable. The rules are superbly laid out; not with gorgeous colour photos but with clear rules, helpful examples, and a minimum of extraneous verbiage. It's really easy to find what you need to know and a double sided QR sheet (included at the back of the book or available to download) gave all I needed to run the game.

It's so clever how by using a few statuses for any given unit (Disrupted, Silenced, Low Ammunition, Spent and a couple of others) we get a clear mental picture of a brigade's current combat status). The rules around these statuses (and how to get rid of them) encourage realistic employment of your troops. 

All this is done without adding complexity. For example the system for Movement manages to combine movement distance, command and control, and morale into a single 2D6 dice roll! Fire combat is equally simple, also using a single 2D6 roll, and manages to factor in casualties, disorganisation and morale effects. Finally The Assault (short range fire and hand-to-hand combat) is done with simple opposed die rolls and reflects all of the factors you'd expect.

I think the best praise I can give to the rules is that in playing them I felt like I was commanding an army of several divisions and not a brigade pretending to be an army.

Just arrived...

 ... from Caliver Books.

In line with this year's plan to make better use of existing toys, I've gone back to the search for a set of rules that will encourage me to get the Irregular Miniatures Franco-Prussian War models back out of storage. I wondered if Bloody Big Battles might do the job.

I quite enjoyed Principles of War but it doesn't really cover whole battles in a war as big as the FPW. I suppose you can squint a bit and say a single POW unit is a brigade or a division but... nah, not really.

Having looked at one of the scenarios available on line (a draft version of Spicheren) I think I have enough toys to do it with BBB. A brief flick through the rules suggests that maybe I need to add a few more to do the larger battles but that can be left for a later date if I decide these are the rules for me.

As I'm still waiting for one of the players to provide orders for the Muddy River Blues campaign, I thought I'd have a quick go at trying out BBB. I picked a couple of the grid squares from the Froeschwiller scenario.

This sees the 7th and 8th Brigades from 4th Division of II Bavarian Korps attacking Ducrot's 1st Division around Nehwiller.

The game started with 8th Brigade marching in column into the woods west of Langensulzbach. No problem, though they were slowed down by the woods and by having to cross the Sulzbach stream.

7th Brigade, however, were more problematic. Despite the presence of General von Hartmann, they failed to get moving thanks to a lousy die roll. Units in BBB have to dice to see if they get a full move, a half move or no move at all, or maybe even a retreat or rout (if they're already disrupted).

To make things worse, the Bavarian Korps artillery came under fire from their French counterparts and were "silenced". This would men that they'd have to withdraw on the following turn. 

On the French turn, I restricted myself to pivoting Ducrot's Zouaves to be in position to fire at the Bavarians when they emerged from the woods. I replaced the village base with a Post-It note because a unit's facing is crucial.

On game turn 2 the roles were reversed for the Bavarians. 8th Brigade's column got lost in the woods and didn't move at all, while 7th Brigade trundled forward across the Sulzbach and onto the Woerth-Langensulzbach road.

Having got there they came under withering Chassepot and artillery fire from the French. The result on the Firefight Table was "1" - this saw them lose a base (one of their original five) and become Disrupted and, because they are classified as "raw" troops, all Spent. This would make them harder to move forward in future and less effective if they ever got to assault the enemy. In addition, the lost base is automatically their "skirmisher" base so they become marginally less effective in fire combat.

The French had clearly found a position magnifique and they decided to remain in place.

On the third turn the Bavarian 7th Brigade failed the movement roll that could have seen them rally off their Disrupted status. They didn't fall back but they remained on the road under that galling Chassepot fire. This would see them lose another base by the end of the turn.

Meanwhile the 8th Brigade managed to sort themselves out into line of battle and make some progress towards the Zouaves' line at Nehwiller. Sadly for the boys in pale blue, the enemy's fire was enough to Disrupt them and force them to halt (actually pushed back slightly into the woods). With both Bavarian brigades effectively pinned down by the murderous fire of the Chassepot I decided that we'd seen enough. 

Bloody Big Battles has a fine pedigree in Chris Pringle's previous games TacWWII and Arc of Fire and I think it's going to repay further investigation. I just need to find some Franco-Prussian War scenarios I can manage with the current forces here at Stately Counterpane Manor.

Father's Day Bash

Having all of my June Saturdays earmarked for visits to universities with the twins I was keen to use Father's Day as an excuse to play a wargame.  Andy and Rob came over and we had another go at 19th century Principles of War.

Again, we used my (mostly Irregular Miniatures, 6mm scale) Franco-Prussian War minis in the guise of those venerable enemies the Vereinigte Freie Städte and the Grand Duchy of Lorraine. This time the VFS were allied with the Prunklanders (who look a lot like Bavarians). As the story tells it:

Following an ill-judged declaration of war by Grand Duke Albert of Lorraine, the Grand Duchy has been invaded by the forces of the Vereinigte Freie Städte and their Prunklander allies.

A VFS army under Feldmarschall von Frinck has laid siege to the city of Syrah and is bombarding it from siege battery positions spread around the outskirts.  Lorraine’s Army of the East is trapped within the walls of Syrah.

Meanwhile, a small Lorrainer army under the Vicomte de Froufrou has evaded encircling VFS forces and is now marching towards Syrah.  Lacking the strength to engage the whole VFS army, Froufrou plans to launch a swift attack on the besieging units to the west of the city thus creating a weak point through which the Army of the East can launch a breakout.

A grand siege battery sits beside the St Coutarde road, west of Syrah.  A brigade of Prunklanders guards the rear of the guns.  It is here that General de Froufrou’s hammer-blow will fall.  Other VFS forces must march towards the sounds of battle if they are to save the day.

This photo shops the battlefield before the action started.  Ignore the cardboard markers in the foreground; they were just there to demonstrate the various formations on movement bases used in POW.

Rob, as General Pinzl, took charge of the Prunklanders and Andy took the role of General the Vicomte de Froufrou.  I planned to bring on the VFS main forces subject to a die roll but in the end they only arrived at the very end of the battle - too late to make any difference.

The grand battery beside the St Coutarde road -
de Froufrou's objective.

The scenario gave me an opportunity to use my Irregular miniatures Prussian siege gun (albeit only as an objective marker).

A cluster of farm buildings in the centre of the table would prove the focal point of the battle with Froufrou launching his main attack at that point and General Pinzl's Prunkland forces maneuvering to oppose them there.

Lorraine infantry (right foreground) and artillery approach the Prunklander
position north of the farm.

The Prunklanders form into two lines north of the farm.

Meanwhile, the Arquebussiers de Grassin occupy the farm.

Andy launched his powerful cavalry on a wide flanking march but thanks to Andy's atrocious dice rolling they never really got anywhere.  We've changed the name of phase 4 of the turn sequence to "The Phase Where Andy Rolls Ones".

Froufrou's cavalry start their wide left hook flank march.

The fight in the centre and on the Lorraine right was tense.  Several units were forced back temporarily (I later discovered we'd been playing the rule wrong as regards how far a unit "retires shaken") before returning to the fray.

The Lorrainer infantry advance towards the Prunklander artillery line, masking the fire of their own
guns in the process!

General Pinzl directs the Prunklanders' defence...

... whilst de Froufrou practises an air of calm insouciance.

The crucial clash - lines of infantry meet at the farm

Prunklander fire forces the Arquebussiers de Grassin to retire from the farm.

In the end Andy was able to advance his right flank forces across the St Coutarde road.  Rob had only artillery and one regiment of Chevaulegers protecting that flank.  When the latter were routed by Chassepot fire, Andy was able to push a battalion of infantry onto the hill, take the siege battery and win the game.  The arrival of VFS infantry on the opposite flank was too late to influence the result.

The firefight at the farm continues whilst in the background
Lorraine forces approach the St Coutarde road. 

Accurate rifle fire by the Chasseurs de Monet routs the Prunkland Chevaulegers.

We all agreed it had been a fun game and it was nice to have more time to play at a leisurely pace.

The rules stood up well but I've since discovered a few things I got wrong.  The movement rates table on the playsheet is particularly obscure but I've come up with a better way of laying it out that I shall use in future games.

Bridge Demolition part 2

Game Turn 4 - Rob brings his infantry on down the north-western road. In the centre the Lorrainers await the onslaught. The square on the right of the picture is a "formed movement base" indicating the presence of as-yet-unidentified VFS troops. It will later turn out to be a dummy.

The Lorraine cavalry brigade crosses a hill on the right flank; Gendarmerie du Roi followed by Allemand Cavalry.

A turn (with only one initiative point rolled) later, the cavalry begin to turn towards the enemy.

Von Tarlenheim is clearly alarmed by this threat to his left flank.

The action on the VFS left flank develops. The Lorraine cavalry have deployed into loose order lines (I should probably have gone for close order) but unfortunately they have not managed to catch the VFS infantry before they too managed to deploy into line.

The Gendarmerie du Roi are shattered by the VFS infantry's fire. With Dreyse bullets flying around them the survivors break for the rear at top speed!
Meanwhile on the left, the Regiment Dillon retire shaken from VFS fire.

Their colleagues, however, have delayed the advance of the main VFS infantry force. By the end of game turn 8 (when time again beat us) it was clear that the Lorrainers would be in a position to blow the bridge before the VFS forces could take it. It would, however, be a damned close run thing disengaging and getting the rearguard back across the river!

Altogether, though, a very enjoyable game. I think we're getting the hang of POW.

Bridge Demolition

Rob Connolly and I had another game of 19th Century Principles of War this afternoon. We refought the first of Charles S Grant's Table Top Teasers from Battle for Wargamers magazine in 1979.

The first pic shows the battlefield layout. The two white rectangles show the entry points for the army of the Veereinigte Freie Staedte. The green line shows the limit of deployment of the Lorraine forces.

On the northern road (below) the VFS cavalry brigade is first to arrive and finds a brigade of Lorrainer infantry awaiting them.

The VFS cavalry arrive in column of march and immediately come under effective fire. The yellow markers show that the Rijkswacht te Paard, the Hohernzollern Kurassier, and the von Ratsmer Uhlans are all shaken.

The Royal La Marine (left) and Royal Vaisseaux (astride the road) regiments would stand form throughout the action.

Further VFS forces advance along the north-western road.

I'm told I have to stop playing T'Pau really loud on the stereo and come to bed now. More of today's battle later.

19th Century Principles of War – Some Thoughts

I’ve had some Irregular Miniatures Franco-Prussian War figures for years and have considered a number of options for using them. For a while I was quite keen on developing my own DBA-derived set of rules. I called them “Dans Un Pot De Chambre” after General Ducrot’s comment at finding the army surrounded by the Prussians at Sedan, “Nous sommes dans un pot de chamber et nous y serons emmerdé” (We’re in a chamber pot and we’re going to get shat upon).

The Irregular Miniatures rule-box for the period was toyed with as was an adaptation of Peter Pig’s Square Bashing. Neither really grabbed me.

I then tried Les Gens Braves and They Died For Glory. At the time I wanted one strip of Irregular Miniatures to represent a battalion so I could do the big battles of the war rather than smaller actions. With either of these rules you’d need positively megalomaniacal numbers of figures to do a major action. Is it me or is this typical of American-published rule sets?

I also looked at Volley and Bayonet. Much closer to the right scale – elements are brigades – but I didn’t like to see big, square bases teetering on the edges of hills.

In the end I settled on Principles Of War as a final option. It doesn’t really do the big battle thing but I’d reached the point were I just wanted something that would get me using the figures. If POW didn’t prove to be the rules for me then the figures were going on eBay!

So what’s POW like? Well, at the heart of it is a fairly conventional set of rules. Each battalion-sized unit has a strength (which may be variable or fixed) and loses strength points as it takes casualties. There’s a DBA-like initiative point system for movement within a brigade (extra movement if you’re not close to the enemy) and morale is handled by rolling under current strength on 1d20.

Where the rules do score as innovative is in the command and control system above brigade level. An army might consist of four brigades each of which is represented in the early part of the game by a Movement Base. An army gets one or more extra “dummy” movement bases depending on the overall commander’s quality. This allows the player to disguise the main focus of his attack.

Movement Bases (and subsequently deployed brigades once the base has been “spotted” by the enemy) follow an arrow that the player has drawn on his map of the battlefield. A command marker advances along the line of this arrow and the elements of the Brigade are penalised if they don’t stay within a fixed radius of this marker. Strangely this marker isn’t the General’s own element – the general flits around rallying pinned units and saying “follow me lads”.

In general I’m happy with POW so far. If I have a problem at all it’s the familiar one that many rules writers struggle to communicate their ideas to a player attempting to pick up the rules by reading them rather than being guided by an experienced player.

It takes long enough to learn a new set of rules. If you aren’t being taught them by someone who already knows them, then you should at least be spared the trouble of trying to puzzle out unnecessarily ambiguous wording. One of the sections of POW says something like “A unit may make only one move and/or formation change per turn”. That careless “and/or” renders the intent of the sentence utterly opaque. Is a change of formation a type of move? It could mean “one move or change of formation” or perhaps “one move and one change of formation”.

I asked on the POW mailing list and was assured that the latter is the case. A dragoon regiment, in our case was faced by enemy infantry it was unable to engage because they were in terrain impassable to cavalry. It may, it seems, given the initiative points and suitable flexibility in its orders, make a about-face (a formation change) and withdraw (a move) within a single game turn.

Far better then for the rules to have said, “A unit may make a maximum of one move and one formation change per turn”. No significant increase in space used but a significant increase in clarity.

I know Phil Barker’s use of legalistic language doesn’t receive universal approval, but at least it’s generally unambiguous.

FPW POW

The latest Saturday afternoon game actually took place on Sunday because of a clash with Millie’s birthday.

Our game was a first attempt at playing 19th Century Principles of War. As my Franco-Prussian War armies aren’t properly organised for a historical battle I decided to honour the memory of the late Charles Grant by pitting the Grand Duchy of Lorraine against the Vereinigte Freie Städte.

John Wostenholme and I commanded the distinctly Gallic forces of Lorraine,

whilst Rob Connolly took on the role of the VFS commander Field Marshal Langemarck.

The Lorraine forces attacked on a broad front aiming to swing round and attack the VFS supply lines with our large cavalry brigade (a regiment each of cuirassiers, dragoons, lancers and chasseurs à cheval. The coloured cards are movement bases, used to disguise the exact nature of the advancing forces.

The VFS plan was less subtle. A massive column of infantry, preceded by dragoons, was to push forward in the centre and force its way into the two villages. The superior artillery (Krupp rifles of steel construction) was to form a powerful massed battery on the left.

Rob was unfortunate with his dice rolling and the VFS column took ages getting started. The Lorraine Chasseurs à Pied managed to get into the larger village first. It proved impassable to cavalry and the VFS dragoons were forced to pull back.

Here we see General von Busch, the VFS staff officer directing his artillery to fire on the Lorraine forces rounding the village. (Prussian General element by Irregular Miniatures).

This is the VFS Cavalry commander General Hamman. (Prussian commanders by Baccus).

And, of course, Grand Duke Louis of Lorraine himself (again from Baccus).

On the Lorraine army's left, the grand flanking manoeuvre eventually saw the imposing cavalry brigade form up to threaten the VFS lines of communications. In the foreground the Zouaves, Turcos and Marines of the second infantry brigade emerge from the woods.

The climax of the battle saw the Lorrainers taking casualties around the central village but looking well set up to defend for a while. The great mass of VFStroops spread out along the road was going to be threatened by the enemy cavalry.

As so often happens with a new set of rules, we ran out of time but the general opinion was that things had generally gone the way of the Lorraine forces. A prolonged slogging match would have followed the VFS organising themselves to continue their push forward.

I think I'll give Principles of War another go.