I managed to get my Napoleonic miniatures on the table for another solo game of Neil Thomas’s One Hour Wargames. In my previous solo game I had added a DBA style command and control mechanic house rule, as well as a deck of random event cards to make solo play a little more unpredictable, both of these worked so well I kept them for this game. I had another house rule I wanted to try as well which revolved around troop quality. In the basic rules all units have 15 hits, once these have been taken the unit is removed, I like to think of hits as a general degradation of a units fighting ability (morale, cohesion, dead and wounded) rather than pure casualties once the unit has taken 15 hits it is no longer able to carry on as a viable fighting unit.
It makes sense in my mind that better quality units would be able to copy with the stresses, that battle puts on a unit, than freshly raised conscripts or poorly trained troops. The obvious way to do this seemed to be to just vary the hits total on different units. If I kept 15 hits as the basic for a regular well trained unit, I could make elite units a little more resilient with 18 hits and conversely poor quality units would become less battle viable quicker so only had 12 hits. There was also the issue of, for want of a better term, scale. in the rules and infantry unit is a battalion (800-1000 men) a cavalry unit is a regiment of several squadrons (600-800 men and horses) and artillery battery (6 guns 200 men) and Skirmishers (unspecified unit but probably company to half battalion (200 -300 men). In the rules both artillery and skirmishers cause less damage than cavalry and infantry regiments but they have the same number of hits. This was a little odd to my mind a smaller number of skirmishers or and artillery battery should be as resilient as a full regiment of cavalry or battalion of infantry so I wanted to vary the hits on these units as well. So I made a little chart.
Quality Unsteady Steady Elite
Unit type
Infantry Battalion 12 hits 15 hits 18 hits
Cavalry Regiment 12 hits 15 hits 18 hits
Artillery Battery 10 hits 12 hits 15 hits
Skirmishers 10 hits 12 hits 15 hits
Checking on the Neil Thomas rules Facebook page a while back I found a few people had tried something similar so I didn’t expect this little house rule to cause any major issues.
I decided to link this game as a narrative follow on to my last game the Battle of Zwiesel. I also decided to use one of the scenarios from the One Hour Wargames book and decided on Surprise Attack. This was rather ironic, given one of my commanders is the Duke of Brunswick, Mr Thomas states that this battle is actually based on the events at Quatre Bras in 1815 where the real Duke of Brunswick lost his life. I quickly wrote a little background to give the battle some context.
Background
Following on from his victory over the Bavarians at Zwiesel the Duke of Brunswick received further reinforcements, the following day, from his Ducal corps. The Duke decided to follow up the retreating Bavarians in the hope of destroying them completely. Leaving a battalion of Prague Landwehr to garrison Zwiesel, and secure his lines of communication, the Duke set off in pursuit three days after the battle of Zwiesel. The Bavarian commander General-Major Stengel hastily retreated Northwest heading for Bayreuth when he received news that the French GD Jean-Baptiste Delaroche was advancing to support him with reinforcements. Stengel was ordered to a make a stand at a crossroads known locally as Vierter Arm. Stengel’s rear-guard had already passed Vierter Arm so he turned them around and occupied the cross roads only hours before the Duke of Brunswick arrived from the south. Stengel prepared to make a stand while desperately recalling the rest of his command to concentrate in the face of the enemy and praying that Delaroche’s French reinforcements would arrive in time.
For this scenario the Bavarians started with a small force occupying the crossroads of 1 battalion of the 8th infantry (steady), 1 Artillery battery (steady), Skirmishers from the 5th light infantry (steady). A second column of Bavarians 1 battalion 4th infantry (steady), skirmishers from 5th light infantry (steady) would arrive along the Northern road and a third column of 1 battalion Bavarian 4th infantry (steady) and the French 5th Provisional Dragoon regiment (unsteady) (The French Provisional Dragoon regiments were formed of depot squadrons, from different regiments hastily thrown together, and were full of new conscripts hence the rating) would arrive along the western road.
The Duke of Brunswick’s entire command would enter from turn 1 along the southern road. The Duke’s forces consisted of 1 Battalion of Brunswick infantry (steady), 1 regiment of Brunswick Hussars (steady), skirmishers of the Brunswick Jager Company (steady), 1 artillery battery of Brunswick Horse artillery (steady), 1 battalion of Austrian IR10 (steady), 1 battalion 2nd Leitmeritz Landwehr (unsteady), 1 skirmishers from 3rd Leitmeritz Landwehr (unsteady)
Below is an account of the battle rather than give a a blow by blow account I’ll try and keep it brief with highlights of the most important parts of the battle.
The BattleOpening stages turns 1-3.In these early turns both sides rolled extremely well for command points (4 6s and 2 5s on a D6 was pretty impressive) for the Bavarian general these rolls were mostly wasted effort being already camped out on the crossroads and waiting for his reinforcements he didn’t need to do anything but hold his ground and try to inflict some damage on the arriving Austrian forces with his artillery and skirmishers .On turn three the first Bavarian reinforcements arrived from the northern road allowing the Bavarian generally to hold a battalion of infantry in reserve while sending out the light infantry to skirmish on his left flank in an attempt to slow down any outflanking maneuver along the western road.
For the Duke of Brunswick the high command rolls meant he was able to get his entire army on to the battlefield in the first two turns. His main problem was trying to organise his army, with so many units, all arriving along one road. By turn three he had managed to organise a battle line with the Austrian regulars and Landwehr forming the centre, his left flank protected by Austrian skirmishers occupying a wood. The Brunswick Hussars, infantry and Jagers had moved out to the right were there was more open space with the intention of out flanking the Bavarian line by attacking down the west road. unfortunately the duke had sited his artillery badly which soon became apparent although it was sited with a good view of the crossroads it soon became obvious the Austrian infantry’s advance would block the artillery’s view of any useful targets. both sides suffered a few hits from skirmisher and artillery fire but nothing major.
The battle hots up turns 4 -8now both side had managed to organise themselves the stage was set for the Austrians to try and overwhelm the Bavarians while they had an advantage in numbers at this point though both sides command rolls let them down both sides went from rolling 5s and 6s to rolling 1s and 2s at the start of this next phase of the battle.
The Bavarians started turn four with a command roll of 1 triggering the first random event of the battle. The newly arrived Bavarian battalion’s colonel was hit by a stray bullet the men of the battalion overcome with grief immediately moved towards the enemy, from their position in reserve, in an attempt to exact revenge. In the mean time the Austrians were starting to get their act together and the Austrian regulars and Landwehr along with the skirmishers poured fire into the Bavarian battalion causing 10 hits a significant amount of damage. The Brunswick hussars also managed to get into a dangerous position the flank of the Bavarian line despite taking a few hits from the Bavarian light infantry skirmishers,
Turn five saw the most dramatic and cinematic moment of the game, The Austrians were all set to to really damage the Bavarian battle line when the duke of Brunswick rolled a one on his command roll not only paralysing his attempted attack but triggering a random event. The random event in question was “The noblest cavalry in Europe but the worst lead” this means one randomly selected unit of cavalry go on an uncontrolled charge at the nearest enemy unit doing double damage, if they wipe out their first target they can charge a second target at normal damage at the end of the charge they take 2D6 hits to represent the disorder and blown nature of their horses. In this case the Austrians only had the black hussars of Brunswick who were perfectly positioned on the flank of the Bavarian artillery when the charge was finished both the Bavarian Artillery and one Bavarian infantry battalion were wiped out leaving the Brunswick Hussars in charge of the crossroads. Sadly the dramatic charge had left the Hussars almost destroyed themselves (taking 10 hits from the charge to add to the couple they had received from Bavarian skirmishers). The surviving Bavarians recovered from their shock to destroy the surviving hussars milling around on the crossroads.
Turn 6 was damage limitation time for the Bavarians who had lost half their infantry and their artillery in one fell swoop. Luckily a reasonable command roll allowed them to reform a battle line of infantry battalion with their flanks protected by skirmishers on the crossroads. For the Austrians it was time to capitalise on the Hussars surprise charge but disaster struck again with another command roll of 1 worse this time the random event card saw the Austrian regulars fall back after a mix up with orders giving the Bavarians valuable breathing space as they desperately waited for further reinforcements to turn up.
Turn 7-8 saw the Austrians try to re-organise for another push on the crossroads. Things were complicated by the Landwehr battalion being destroyed in a firefight with the Bavarian regulars on the crossroads. As the Austrian regulars had all ready fallen back the Duke of Brunswick put them in reserve and tried to rally them (in my house rule points from command rolls can be used to rally one unit by removing 1 hit per command point used) so they would be in a better position to resist late arriving Bavarian reinforcements. The Brunswick horse artillery was moved up to support the Landwehr skirmishers and try shore up the Austrian centre while the Brunswick Jager’s and infantry moved into position to attack the right flank of the Bavarians on the crossroads. Meanwhile the Bavarians concentrated on trying to cause as much damage to the Austrians as possible while preserving their units knowing reinforcements weren’t far away. A slight spanner was put in the works on turn 8 when a command roll of one meant that a random event of a heavy downpour would mean no shooting and half movement on turn 9 meaning arriving Bavarian reinforcement would have little impact on turn 9.
The end turns 9-14Despite the random downpour the Bavarian reinforcements of an infantry battalion and a regiment of French Dragoons arrived on turn 9. The Bavarian low command roll of 2 meant the Bavarian commander decided to move the French dragoons towards the crossroads (being more than 12″ from the from the commander the Bavarian reinforcements need 2 command points to move instead of the usual 1). Turn 10 saw a good command roll for the Austrians the arrival of French cavalry meant the Brunswick infantry formed square rather than risk being charged in the rear. The Austrian regulars wheeled to their left to try and block the Bavarian reinforcements arriving along the west road. Meanwhile the Austrian cavalry and skirmishers peppered the Bavarian infantry battalion holding the cross roads. The Bavarians launched the French dragoons at the Austrian regulars they did some damage but were forced to fall back meanwhile the Brunswick Jagers were destroyed by fire from the Bavarians.
It was starting to look like defeat for the Austrians by turn 11 and things were compounded by the another roll of a 1 on a the command dice which saw a random event triggered. The commander of the Brunswick horse artillery had hit the schnapps, in his hip flask, a bit to hard and drunkenly order his battery to fall back. The Austrian regulars gave the French dragoons a volley which was damaging but not fatal. meanwhile the Landwehr skirmishers who been haunting the woods opposite the crossroads all battle managed to destroy the badly damaged Bavarian battalion still clinging to the crossroads. This success was overshadowed by the French Dragoons destroying the Austrian regulars and the newly arrived Bavarian infantry taking advantage of the road to march rapidly towards the crossroads. The French Dragoons were now running rampant destroying the Austrian artillery on turn 13. The Brunswick infantry managed to secure the crossroads on turn 12 but were destroyed by a combination of Bavarian skirmishers and the Bavarian infantry by turn 14. this left just the badly battered Landwehr skirmishers still occupying the woods but faced with cavalry, infantry and two units of Skirmishers it was clear the Bavarians had secured the crossroads of Vierter Arm and won the battle.
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May 23, 2010, 11:21:03 PM
