A game of Blucher at the MWS november meeting

Played a game of Blucher today at the MWS meeting.   Hal was the game master, Dave had the Austrians, and I commanded the French.

The Austrian army had two infantry corps of 6 infantry brigades and two artillery brigades and a Reserve corps of two grenadier brigades, two cuirassier brigades and two light cavalry brigades.   Their objective was to defend their position and the two objectives of the village in their left rear and the hill in their center.

The French had three infantry corps of four infantry brigades, a light cavalry brigade, and an artillery brigade.  They also had a cavalry corps of two cuirassier brigades, two dragoon brigades, a light cavalry brigade, and a horse artillery brigade.  Their objective was to defeat the Austrians and capture the objectives.

Dave placed his two infantry corps on the left and center and the reserve corps on their right.    I spread two of my infantry corps in a line on my right and center, kept the other infantry corps in a tighter formation on my left, and placed the cavalry corps in reserve behind the junction of the left and center infantry corps.   My plan was to attack Dave's right flank and roll his army up.

Blucher uses a dice activation system where three dice are rolled.   The resulting number is how many units can be moved.   With a maximum of eighteen and an average of ten/eleven, the French were normally going to be able to activate two corps per turn with a maximum of three.  You can activate an entire corps if the units are close enough to each other,  followed by individual units, and then finally using the overall commander to activate any units within two base widths of the commander.   Once the number of units activated equals or exceeds the dice total that player can no longer activate any further units.  Except for cavalry which cannot fire and horse artillery which may move and fire, units can either move or fire.   Infantry units that do not move may adopt a "prepared formation, which gives them a melee advantage against cavalry, but makes them more vulnerable to fire.

I moved first each turn.   For my first turn I was able to activate the two right flank infantry corps which advanced towards the Austrians.   I made a mistake by moving the artillery forward instead of firing with them.    Dave's turn saw his two infantry corps being activated and all four artillery brigades firing on my middle infantry corps artillery driving it from the field.   For the rest of the game, when I was able to activate it the right flank artillery kept up a steady fire on one of the infantry brigades in Dave's left flank corps, knocking it down to one remaining fatigue point.   Artillery has a limited ammunition supply and the number of firing dice is reduced as it continues to fire.   I was down to my right corps artillery last fire when Dave was able to activate his left flank corps and pull the damaged infantry brigade back and place another in the line of fire.

While the right flank was firing, I moved my left infantry corps forward and began firing its artillery. My center infantry corps would remain inactive for most of the game until the final few turns.  My left corps continued its advance and the cavalry corps moved forward also with the two dragoon brigades  and artillery leading.  Dave countered by charging his two cuirassier brigades at my dragoons.   The rules have a requirement that charges must be made against an enemy unit that is closest and able to attack the charging unit.   Even though Dave's cuirassiers had more combat dice than my dragoons my die rolls were better and his cuirassiers were repulsed.

Diagram of the battle

I followed this with fire from my horse guns and charges by my dragoons into his cuirassiers, destroying one of them and inflicting more damage on the other. The cavalry action was to continue as Dave added his light horse to the cavalry melee.  Unfortunately for them they charged into my cuirassiers and were forced back.  By the time the cavalry melee ended, all four of Dave's cavalry brigades had been destroyed.  My cuirassiers had advanced beyond the hill and were now threatening to turn his right flank while the rest of the cavalry corps remained near the center.   His grenadiers moved to protect the flank and his center corps started to shift units to help the right while the forward infantry assumed prepared formations.  Before it was destroyed his last cavalry brigade was able to eliminate one of my dragoon brigades which had been weakened by artillery fire.

As my cuirassiers maneuvered to extend his line, my left flank infantry corps advanced on the two grenadier brigades. and eventually drove them off the hill on Dave's right.   The final few turns of the game saw my center corps advance and threaten his weakened center along with the destruction of one of the grenadier brigades and an Austrian line infantry brigade on my final turn.

The game ended with the Austrians losing four cavalry brigades and two infantry brigades for a total of six units which was their break point and the French losing three units.   Break points are determined by totaling the number of infantry and cavalry units, dividing by three and rounding up.    This gave the Austrians a break point of six and the French a break point of seven.   While artillery units are not included for determining the break point any artillery unit that is lost does count towards it.  I had lost two of my artillery units in addition to the unit of dragoons.

Thanks to Hal for putting the game together.  I did not take any pictures of the game as we were using top down cards for the units.  While I did enjoy playing the game, the activation system makes it difficult for a coordinated attack with multiple corps.   Armies with large corps like the Prussians at Ligney will find it difficult to activate more than one corps per turn unless it is a multi-player game with each player commanding only one corps.

Update: added a couple of photos taken of the game by Mike O'Brien.  French are blue and Austrians are yellow.   These were taken after the Austrian cuirassiers had been destroyed (cards in left rear of photo) and just prior to their light cavalry (two brigades at bottom of the picture) engaging the French cuirassiers.   The French left wing infantry corps is at the bottom with their cavalry brigade at the very bottom of the picture.  The cavalry corps is just above and in front of them.  Austrian grenadiers are on and at the small hill at the bottom center of the picture.   The French cuirassiers would eventually end up just above the forest at the bottom left and their infantry corps would be occupying the hill.   Two Austrian infantry brigades are headed towards their right flank (cards turned 90 degrees near the center.  French artillery brigade that had been driven off is at the right edge of the table next to the drink cup.

Leipzig Project Part IV

Completed the Swedish army except for Generals.    I still haven't decided on the basing of generals at this time.   This didn't take much time.   About an hour or two to repaint the grey or other colors of the figure bases and add ground foam.

Next will be the Austrians, followed by the Russians, and then the French.   I still need to order some figures for the Austrian cuirassiers and some Russian cavalry.   Though that will wait until I have determined what I need for the Seven Years War imagination armies.    That way I will only be placing one order with Heroics and Ros instead of multiple small orders.   

Leipzig Project Part Three

Except for the Generals, the Prussian army has been completed.    This included replacing missing figures, new labels, touching up paint where needed, and adding ground foam to the bases.  This was done over several days and took between eight to twelve hours including the time to make the labels.
There are actually more infantry and guns than were at Leipzig, but the right amount for three of the four corps that were at Waterloo.

 Infantry units are 32 figures on two bases representing 3000 men,   Cavalry are 20 figures on two bases representing 1000 men, and artillery are one gun plus crew on a single base representing 24 guns.

The Leipzig Project Part Two

Following on from the previous post, here are the other armies that were present at Leipzig.   The French army is organized into a Guard Cavalry Corps, Guard Artillery, Old Guard Infantry Corps, two Young Guard Infantry Corps, five Cavalry Corps, and twelve Infantry Corps.   This is more than was present at Leipzig, but since I had so many extra figures, I added the missing corps that were in other areas.

The French Guard

French Generals to left, infantry to right.   I need to paint some additional generals

French artillery.  I found enough painted guns in the spares to make all units.  Next will be painting the gunners for them

French line cavalry   Gap in the left center is for missing units.

Close up of the Carabiniers.   There were two regiments, but only about 500 total between the two at Waterloo and Leipzig.  I may paint some more to make a full unit of them.

 The Swedish army,   Four infantry units, two cavalry units, and two artillery units.

The Russian army has been organized into twelve commands.   At this point most Russian infantry divisions were very understrength.   Often two infantry corps were combined under a Wing Commander.

 The Tsar was present at Leipzig and is represented at the front left,  Russian army commander to his right,  other generals behind them, and artillery to the rear.

Russian Guard cavalry in center, Cossacks to right and rear.

Russian line cavalry

Russian infantry.

The next step is to finish  one army at a time, by painting the figure bases to match the mat board, then painting and adding any additional figures, followed by flocking the bases.  

The scale ratio for the troops is about 1:100 for infantry, 1:50 for cavalry, and 1:24 for guns.

The Leipzig Project Part One

Years ago I traded my 15mm figures to a fellow club member for his 6mm (actually Heroics and Ros) figures.  Part of that exchange was a large number of Napoleonic figures.   These included figures from almost every army in various stages of painting.  One thing he did when painting them was o use different colors on the bases to help identify units.

I had an Anglo-Allied army, some Prussians and some French that I had been painting for Waterloo.  Combining what I had and what he gave me I found I had almost enough figures to do Leipzig.   At the time I didn't bother to repaint them and went about basing them to see exactly what I had.   After getting them based I determined that I needed some more Cossacks, Austrian Cuirassiers, and some French cavalry.   I also had an excess amount of French guard with bearskins. and others.

Before moving they were used for a few games.   Since then they have been in storage.   This year I finally decided to get them out, fix anything that needed fixing, paint them as needed. and purchase the missing troops.  This is one of the projects that I had listed for this year.   It is also one that I have been dreading due to the amount of work that I expected needed to be done.

The rules I have used organize the armies into brigades.  There are several different rule sets that do this - Volley and Bayonet, Grand Armee, Blucher, and I believe Age of Eagles.   While some of them allow brigades of different strengths I settled on 3000 infantry, 1000 cavalry, and 24 guns.   The infantry and cavalry units are on two 1 1/2 inch square bases and the guns are on one  1 1/2 inch square base.   Nafziger's book on Leipzig provided unit strengths.   In some cases I moved excess men from one corps to another to bring understrength brigades up to full strength.  

The first step was to make new labels for all the units.   After making the labels and applying them to the bases, I found that I will need three units of Austrian Cuirassiers, 6 units of Cossacks, a couple of units of French cuirassiers, and maybe some units of Prussian cavalry.   As can be seen from the photos of the Austrian and Prussian armies there is a lot of work to be done.   This includes painting the figure bases to match the artist mat board I use for bases,  adding missing figures, and painting those that need to be finished.   I several boxes of excess figures that I can use to add gun crews, etc.  I am also going to remount the generals on round bases of different sizes and add new labels to them.

 The Prussians.   From left to right army commander and the two guard brigades which were in the Russian Guard Corps for the battle, I Korps, II Korps, III Korps.   The three Prussian corps were each assigned to one of the three major allied armies (Bohemia, Silesia, and North) for the battle.  I also have additional infantry, cavalry, and guns to bring all three Korps up to strength for Waterloo.   In the background are the storage boxes I use.   I got them at a discount and they will work for 15mm or smaller figures on 40mm wide or less bases.  They are about 7 inches by twelve inches and have four compartments that can be divided if need be.  Several different companies make similar sized containers.  They are stackable.   I use them for my American Civil War and ancient armies also.

The Austrians,   From left to right Advanced Guard Korps, Army commander at front left, I Armee Korps, II Armee Korps.

 III Armee Korps, IV Armee Korps, Reserve Korps.  Artillery Reserve in back and the commander of the Reserve Cavalry (cuirassiers) in back right.