Rocoux 1743

 In the aftermath of COW we were all a bit gamed out, so Tim put on another mid eighteenth century Table Battles game. These generally involve battles I've never even heard of, and this one was no exception, being Rocoux, which took place in 1743. It does feature our old mate Charles of Austria, notable for never winning a battle and this one had a confusing set of participants. Apparently the Austrians were actually Dutch and the Prussians were French in this one, although there were some actual Austrians present under Charles, although they contributed nothing. All something to do with the Pragmatic Alliance I gather.

Anyway, Russell, Jim and I drew the Prussians/French while John and Mark were the Dutch/Austrians. The Dutch were pretty good, being able to mass up command dice and benefitting from 'linked formation' bonuses. The French however had a powerful Grand Battery, and were able to deploy in depth to absorb losses. Our units were also much bigger, typically 6SP vs 4SP.

The Dutch (left above) had two wings, the inert Austrians who acted as a reserve of SP and a rearguard, not yet in action. We also had two wings , our grand battery and the deep columns (which needed a double on them to activate).

The first couple of turns didn't go well, our guns lined up to bombard the enemy, but they kept attacked, forcing them to react and drive the Dutch off again. This quite put us on the back foot.

We started to build up dice on our wings to attack, although unlike the Dutch we could only put one dice per turn on a unit. You can see we've got a blue dice on two of the wing units and doubles on our deep columns.

Meanwhile the Dutch kept up relentless assaults, first using up our 'deep column' reserves (they are down to 1 SP above).

This is very bad, we only start with one morale chit, so we need to kill an enemy unit quickly as if they rout even one of ours, we lose at once.

Then the Dutch pummelled our Left Centre, which was rapidly reduced to 1SP. We just couldn't get the command dice out in sufficient quantity to either activate the guns (they needed a straight 4) or to allow for counterattacks from our own units (they need doubles).

Although we finally got one decent attack lined up on our Left, the Dutch attacked once more, routed our Centre Left and with that the game was over. Total wipeout. We obviously badly mis-played that one as usually these scenarios are much more balanced. In all the excitement we all completely forgot about the option to shift SP from one unit to another, although we were playing so badly I don't think it would have helped.

Having finished in 25 minutes, we set it up and tried again.

This time we tried to be a bit more canny, and largely discounted the artillery. Instead I wanted to work up some local superiority through spoiling attacks so we could get a three SP advantage locally, which in turn would trigger the mighty 'oblique attack' bonus.

Honours a bit more even here, although the Dutch kept attacking furiously. We've got a decent spread of dice, our reserves activated and we are able to keep chipping away at the Dutch right.

When we've taken losses, we've used actions or reaction to shift SP around. Waldecks Centre Left is still at maximum strength about to attack the weakened Dutch Right.

We finally managed to achieve the magic 3SP superiority, and the extra hit bonus routs one of the Dutch units! One morale chip to us, and one off them. 

And its pal soon follows suit! Two morale chips to us. Now the Dutch only have one left. That is more like it!

We have an awful lot of dice on the left, but the Dutch Rearguard is not in action so we can't attack it. It transpired that we had read this wrong, and the Rearguard should have been committed if any of the Dutch right wing units routed. This is slightly frustrating as we have lots of combat dice and nowhere to go. Meanwhile the Dutch keep pounding our right and we are running out of SP to move across.

The Dutch Rearguard is finally in action so we have something tonattack, but our units are all quite weak now.

We give the Rearguard a right kicking and reduce it it 1SP. But then, curses, our Right Wing collapses and the morale advantage swings back to the Dutch (3 vs 1). 

We are so close to wiping out the Rearguard, but it is not to be, and one more devastating Dutch attack takes out our Left and with it our morale collapses.

That was a much better game, and we played the French far more effectively. The Dutch are more straightforward but the French take a certain amount if finesse. We nearly had them there, and I certainly don't mind losing in those circumstances.

These bigger TB games can be a bit hard to manage as there is quite a lot going on. My second monitor has broken, so I can't really see the cards on my small laptop screen, so that is something I need to address fairly quickly and buy a new monitor. 

Fontenoy

 John put on another eighteenth century game using his squared version of Brown Bess, this time incorporating a more significant wheeling penalty for units in line. The battle itself is one a bit less gamed as Marechal de Saxe had built a fortified position with a series of artillery redoubts echeloned behind the fortified village of Fontenoy. The Pragamatic Army (English, Dutch and Imperial) were faced with attacking this position, which was somewhat reminiscent of the German defences at Passcheandale.

Again my failing memory means I can't recall exactly who was who although Jerry was Louis XV, someone was De Saxe (possibly Pete?) and I was the Duke of Cumberland, third son of King George (Hurrah!). Tim G was the French cavalry, Simon the Dutch infantry and Tim C the Allied cavalry. My personal objective was to lead my troops from the front. Well how hard could that be?

The initial deployment. John had done a lot of work on his Powerpoint objects and icons and the whole setup looked very pretty. We gave out orders and John moved the units around on the screen and adjudicated the combat results.

As you can see from the image, the French infantry and cavalry are very easy to make out at the top of the screen and the Dutch, British and Austrians are all nicely colour coordinated at the bottom. 

Given the way the French were arrayed I thought out best bet was to march forward in a single consolidated line, chewing up the piecemeal French redoubts and units. We therefore marched straight up to Fontenoy, while the reserve units deployed behind. The right flank unit (Ingoldsbys briagde) seemed curiously reluctant to move forward against the French skirmishers in the woods so I sent a brigade to reinforce them.  

Our chaps in front of Fontenoy took some defensive fire losses but then opened withering musketry from three squares against the French.

Our left flank was looking pretty good as the cavalry moved into position but the Dutch decided to launch an assault on the French defenders in Fontenoy. This was rather premature as the attacking unit was seriously disadvantaged against the fortified town and it threw away our numerical superiority as only a single unit could melee (whereas we could all shoot).

The French reserves also did some shuffling around. The wheeling penalty made this quite slow for infantry units. Their cavalry also got hung up in a bit of a traffic jam against their own fortifications and the River Scheldt. They tried to throw a lot of weight onto their right.

The Dutch retired from Fontenoy and the remaining French garrison was shot out of the town by the British and Dutch brigades on each side. It turned out one of the Duch objectives was to launch a hasty assault on the town, which they had done, and not too much damage done to us. Ingoldsby had also finally moved up into the woods (he'd just needed a bit of encouragement) on our right.

Things suddenly hotted up. Ingoldsby managed to not just push back the French lights, but to wipe them out. The French were hideously unlucky in this case as normally light infantry can just fall back before formed troops. Cumberland stepped forward another row of squares, but the perfidious French re-occupied Fontenoy. What a rotten trick! The British infantry were now next to some French infantry though, and with 'superior' infantry and a General vs 'raw' infantry it was only going to go one way... 

The French cavalry were meanwhile performing no end of strange manouvres to be able to deploy, and their whole cavalry line sort of sidestepped one row south as the French infantry scattered in front of them.

The left flank eventually erupted into a scrappy cavalry melee, which had been building up for some time. The Dutch infantry moved up in support against the next French line and Cumberlands men easily blew away the French infantry in front of them (I was being careful to stop and reorder the line after each firefight).   The defenders of Fontenoy were looking increasingly isolated, while the French infantry reserves about faced and marched back in the opposite direction to face the British. Proper Duke of York stuff.

The caavlry melee continued as both sides fed in fresh units to replace those damaged or routed. The French were having the worst of it though. Fontenoy was now almost surrounded. Cumberland meanwhile straightened his line and poured musketry into the French inits in front. 

The French left was now looking quite ragged, and in a surprise move the defenders of Fontenoy sallied forth into a hail of musketry. Over on the right the French concentrated their fire on Cumberland and the Guard Brigade, and only the Generals presence keep the Guards from breaking (and he also survived several leader risk rolls). The crisis of the battle had arrived. 

A number of units on the French left broke (the cloud symbols), and the Fontenoy garrison was also routed. The Hanoverian brigade moved up to support Cumberland whose line was buckling under a furious French assault, but there were now four British brigades in a close supporting line. 

The French Army finally collapsed as the British cavalry pursued to the banks of the Scheldt, Fontenoy was cleared and the remaining French brigades facing Cumberland also disintegrated.

Phew! that was a close run thing, and a somewhat better result than Cumberland achieved in real life.

That went really well, and the simple restriction on wheeling made the game feel a lot more linear than Dettingen. Fontenoy is actually covered in the One Hour Wargames scenarios as the 'Fortified Defence' scenario, the play balance approach in that scenario is that the attackers get to replace their entire Army with fresh units once per game (!). So I think the Pragmatic Army did quite well to successfully assault such a strong position. irl Cumberland pushed fairly deep into the French position, but surrounded on all sides by French artillery redoubts, decided to save his army and withdrew again.

In the game, the French cavalry could have intervened earlier if their deployment had been prioritised by having them to interpenetrate and disrupt their supporting guns and infantry, but by the time they did get into action, the French first line had largely been destroyed. The personal objectives and unit specific (secret) rules added a lot to the flavour of the scenario and worked very well, although I'd convinced myself that Cumberland was killed in this battle,  in fact he survived and went on to defeat the Jacobite uprising later the same year. Well you learn something new every day.

The only real rules discussion we had was around our old friend - the treatment of diagonals. There were some odd instances of diagonal firing (which is fine) apparently through obstacles and friendly units, which isn't really. It partly depends how you visualise the units in the squares as to what is logical and what isn't. It is just one of those things when using grids unfortunately.

Dettingen

 We've done Dettingen before at the club using Brown Bess, but John wanted to use it as a test bed for his squared version and also as a tryout for his Powerpoint implementation of remote gaming. He'd drawn out the battlefield using multiple layers in PP, created the unit icons using NATO map symbols with suitable annotations and added some game support markers (hits, routed etc). With it being a PP slide, it is pretty easy to move the various objects around and change their orientation.

I can't actually recall who played which side, but I was British (possibly the British infantry?). I've taken photos of the shared computer screen but the are a bit grainy.

For those unfamiliar with the battle, the retreating Allied army (Dutch, British, Austrian) is hemmed in between the River Main and some forested hills, with its route cut by some wicked French in their way defending a tributary of the Main. Fortunately the French commander decided to deploy his army on the wrong side of the stream, (reputedly at the insistence of the Maison du Roi). Anyway, it gave the Allies a fighting chance at least.

The action opened with a massive cavalry charge against the Allied left flank. Fortunately our musketry was fairly decent and the French took several hits prior to contact. The French infantry also pressed forward on our right but seemed to forget the  rather large gap bewteeen them and the forest.

Our cavalry took advantage of this and outflanked them, while our infantry pinned them frontally. Over on the left, our troops were engaged in a prolonged melee with the French cavalry. The initial volleys had given us a  considerable advantage, and the only thing stopping the Maison du Roi routing was the presence of a General.

The French left was soon in fairly dire straits. Over on our left the Maison eventually routed but a fresh French cavalry unit routed the weakened British infantry. Fortunately we had cavalry in reserve.

Our cavalry intervened an annihilated the impudent French horsemen. The entire Allied right now wheeled inwards and began mopping up the French centre.

The French left collapsed, and although they did manage to rout an Allied cavalry unit on their right, things weren't looking too good.

Endgame. The French artillery was overrun and almost every other remaining French unit routed. The Allied army was able to make it escape from the pursuing French force to the south. Hurrah for King George!  

For a first tryout of the grid based set, that all worked fine as the basic mechanissms are well tested. My main observation was that it didn't seem very linear - it was far too easy to manouvre to a flank and wheel, which didn't seem very eighteenth century. This was a feature of the grid based movement movement points, but was easily fixed by more stringent wheeling penalties (on the tabletop it takes an entire turn for a unit in line to wheel 90 degrees due to the geometry of the thing), and John updated the rules to include more restrictive turning for units in line.

Otherwise, it was much the same outcome as last time we played it as the inferior quality of the French infantry puts them at a big disadvantage. The French cavalry are very good though and we were fortunate to have driven them off without suffering heavier losses. I can't imagine what trying to assault a French position on the far side of the stream would be like, very nasty indeed.