BBB: 10 Years of sharing the love!

 

It is 10 years since the publication of 'Bloody Big BATTLES!' in October 2014. I therefore feel I should mark the occasion with a few reflections.

We didn't set out to publish a ruleset. We just wanted to play some good games! This journey began 15 years ago with a remark by Dave Whaley in 2009, when he suggested we get back into wargaming the Franco-Prussian War. As the BBB introduction says:

'Our ambition this time round was clear: we wanted to tackle the major battles such as Gravelotte; to fit them on an 8’x4’ or smaller tabletop; and to fight them in their entirety, in a single evening, with typically 4 players. However, a survey of existing rules soon showed that there was nothing out there that quite met our requirements. Consequently we were obliged to write our own.'

After about three years, we had a solid set of rules that we were happy with and playing regularly - so happy, in fact, that we realised we ought to share the love and publish them. It then took another two or three years to refine and polish the rules until they were fit for publication, as well as writing and playtesting 25 scenarios to publish in the rulebook and in the companion 'Bloody Big European Battles!' scenario book.

BBB and BBEB were duly published 10 years ago. Their birth announcement was the first post on this BBBBlog. BBB was well received and obtained many positive reviews, which I have collected here. A lot has happened since then.

Most importantly, BBB itself met our stated ambition and has stood the test of time. Within our own core group at Oxford Wargames Society, it remains our staple diet, with someone running a BBB game at OWS virtually every week. We have refought literally 100s of different historical battles. The group itself has grown and thrived as wargamers of all persuasions are attracted by the happy gatherings in our corner of the village hall. It's great - we play a different battle, from a different war, producing a very different game, every week - without having to wrestle with a different ruleset each time. That plus a great bunch of mates has meant the past fifteen years have been the best in my wargaming life.

Nor is this just the niche obsession of a few Oxfordshire folk. BBB is not a commercial enterprise, simply an endeavour to share the love for wargaming big C19 battles, so there is no professional marketing effort to promote it. Nevertheless, the ripple effect of positive word-of-mouth has created a large global community of enthusiastic BBB players, as witness:

- 1,000 members of the BBB io group (join this and you can find lots of free scenarios and other useful stuff in the group files, including QR sheets in French, Italian and Hungarian!);

- 1,000 members of the BBB Facebook page (big thank you to Alan Millicheap for creating and maintaining this popular and active site).

That community includes a lot of excellent, seriously knowledgeable, creative people, many of whom have written scenarios and even additional BBB scenario books for their favourite campaigns. Let me list those published so far:

Bloody Big BALKAN Battles! (Dr Konstantinos Travlos)

Bloody Big Battles in INDIA! (Dr Mark Smith)

Bloody Big HUNGARY '48 Battles! (Chris Pringle)

NAPOLEON's Bloody Big Battles! (Dr Mark Smith)

Four more books on the Peninsular War, the American Civil War, and battles in Africa are in advanced stages of preparation. Further down the road, for those with more esoteric tastes, we hope to produce books on the Taiping Rebellion and the Russo-Japanese War. I'm sure it won't stop there: folks are tinkering with Seven Years War, Great Northern War, First World War ...

By popular demand, we also run an annual convention of BBB participation games, the BBB Bash Day. Its fifth iteration was in Daventry last year. You can find a report on it here, with links to reports on previous ones. Planning for the 2025 Bash Day has already begun, so watch this space.

So far, so good. What about other future plans? Maybe it's worth saying we are not planning to publish a 2nd Edition. Not to say there's nothing I would change - with the benefit of 15 years' experience, I can see things that could be refined - but the ruleset has proved so robust and popular that I don't feel a new edition is necessary.

What we are planning - and what I know will be popular - is to publish a pdf edition. This should be available via the SkirmishCampaigns website in the next few months.

There are so many people to thank: Dave Whaley for starting it all and being the heart and soul of BBB; Scott Fisher of SkirmishCampaigns for some crucial input early on and for publishing it; all the retailers who have supported BBB (especially Brigade Games and On Military Matters in the US; Caliver Books and North Star in the UK); the playtesters already acknowledged in the front of BBB; others who've joined our gang at OWS since - Luke & Ben A, Matt B, David B, Mark J, Crispin M, Bruce McC, Phil N, Nick O, Nigel S, Anton Van D; loyal partisans Alan Millicheap, Konstantinos Travlos and Vincent Tsao, for their invaluable support over the past decade; all my US buddies, especially Scott, Mark F, Rob G, CB and D Sean, who've indulged me running ACW BBB games for them (they have the right headgear, the right liquor, and the right accents); Jim Owczarski for bringing it to his Armchair Dragoons audience; and all you other great comrades I've met and interacted with at shows, online forums, etc., thanks to our shared enthusiasm.

Therefore, my heartfelt thanks to everyone for your support and encouragement over the years. That's what really makes it all worthwhile and motivates me and the gang to keep building the BBB project. Here's to the next ten years!

ACW: Cold Harbor - more than just a frontal assault

My previous post reported on our game of the 1862 battle of Seven Pines / Fair Oaks. That took place just across the Chickahominy from the battlefield that is the subject of this post: Cold Harbor (1864).

The background to the Cold Harbor battle is this. At the end of May 1864, Grant's Overland Campaign was stalled in front of Lee's formidable defences behind the North Anna river. After some inconclusive skirmishes dignified with the name of the Battle of North Anna, Grant decided to sidestep with a big left hook. Lee was expecting this, but Grant achieved some surprise by crossing the Pamunkey river further east than he anticipated. Nevertheless, Lee reacted quickly and established a defensive line around the Totopotomoy creek. Over several days, Grant and Meade attempted an alternating succession of frontal assaults and left or right outflanking moves, while Lee scrambled to plug gaps and either dig in or counterattack. The final Union assault at Cold Harbor was an assault too many and was bloodily repulsed. Nine days later, Grant upped sticks, marched away across the James River, and moved his strategic point of attack to Petersburg.

Unlike Seven Pines, Cold Harbor doesn't seem to be wargamed often. (Honorable exception being Greg Wagman, who's done it with his Altar of Freedom ruleset here.) Could that be because it is perceived as a grim, one-sided, misguided, failed frontal assault that cost the Union 4,000+ casualties in half an hour? Last year I devoted one of my "Reflections on Wargaming" essays to the question of whether frontally assaulting redoubts can make a good game. The answer was a qualified 'yes', but it needs some thoughtful scenario design to give both sides enough interesting things to do.

For Cold Harbor, my approach was not to limit the game to the climactic couple of days of frontal assaults, but to exploit BBB's elastic scale and stretch it to include all six days of action between the Pamunkey and the Chickahominy leading up to the final assaults. Rather than have five Night Intervals, I allowed just two to represent major strategic redeployment phases during the operation. I made the victory conditions revolve around the Union commanding crossings over the Chickahominy on the way to Richmond, while keeping its own line-of-communications bridges over the Pamunkey secure.

I took a ton of photos this time. I've selected and annotated about 20 below. If you don't have time or inclination to admire all of these, you might want to skip to the end to read some reflections prompted by the game.

First, some eternal military wisdom, presumably from Sun Tzu:

OK, back to more serious noodle-free matters, starting with a plan view of the whole battlefield to get you oriented:

This depicts a 26x18km stretch of country between the Pamunkey (top edge) and the Chickahominy (bottom edge). It's a bit hard to see the woods for the trees ... basically the irregular green-chalked shapes are open farmland, with a lot of woods in between, cris-crossed by a network of roads. Buildings are landmarks but not significant built-up areas. Because of the large ground scale and close country, I limited rifle range to 3" and artillery to 6".

The Union masses are the dark bases in the NW corner. They have the option to cross further east, but with some risk of delay. Mark and Matt as the Union commanders declined that and opted instead for the guaranteed, concentrated bludgeon, leaving just a couple of cavalry units to threaten the Confederate right flank.

The Confederates are in their historical starting positions, grouped in a rough central triangle where Lee held them until he could divine where the true threat was. Crispin and I commanded the Confederates. (Crispin also created the terrain, provided the armies - 6mm Baccus figures - and hosted the game.)

How long can the Confederate cavalry screen in front of Littlepage Bridge hold up the Federals?

Lee's men scramble to respond to the massive threat to their left. The cavalry have managed to fall back and throw up breastworks. They're already backed up by some of Hill's corps doing likewise. (The scenario allows troops to dig in.) Unfortunately, Early is going to be late ...

A different story on the right. Hardly any Union at all - just some cavalry at the Dabney Ferry on the Pamunkey (top left) and at top right on the road from Old Church to Cold Harbor. Unfortunately this is enough to distract most of Anderson's corps to guard New Cold Harbor (right centre) and screen the Pamunkey.

The main battle develops on the left. The Confederate cavalry survives a massed Union assault and falls back on its friends. Union columns probe left and right as the blue horde seeks to spread out into a battle line. Determined rebs await behind their hasty fortifications. (Away on the right wing, minor fencing continues.)

As we approach the first Night Interval (end of Turn 4), combat becomes intense. In battering at the front of the Confederate left wing, a Union division has exposed its flank to Confederate counterattack (the 'L' of CSA troops left of pic). This will go badly for the bluebellies. However, right of pic, a Union threat is developing against the thinly guarded rebel centre. (Again, the relatively quiet rebel right wing is not shown here.)

Situation at first Night Interval. Both sides have received reinforcements. 'Baldy' Smith's XVIII Cps has landed at Dabney Ferry to extend the Union left (top right of pic), while the Confederates have scraped together miscellaneous units from Richmond and beyond to shore up their own left. Just out of shot to the right, that one Union cavalry division is still loitering, threatening to seize either Old or New Cold Harbor and drawing off Confederate units to protect them. Apart from that - it's a Thin Grey Line facing an awful lot of Yankees.

Part 2 starts with a bang. The Union weights its right to pound the rebel defences in front of Winston's Bridge, only to be repelled and then counterattacked in flank ...

... while something very similar happens against the Confederate centre left, east of McKenzie's Corner. The Union hammers away against the Confederate left wing for three turns with little reward.

However, war has broken out in earnest on the Confederate right. Two Union divisions smash through in the centre and then assault a desperate blocking attempt by Confederate cavalry (lower left) covering Mechanicsville (out of shot beyond lower left corner) . The first of several more Union divisions are emerging from the woods along the top edge and will drive back the few Confederate defenders in that sector and advance towards Cold Harbor (lower right). And those Union cavalry are still hanging around out east.

Close-up of that Union assault on Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry. They survived! But had to quit the position.

The second Night Interval has been and gone. No reinforcements this time, just some frantic shuffling of units to reinforce success or fill holes. Turn 8 now, and it's the same story as before as the Union right keeps bashing its head against a grey wall.

On the opposite wing, Lee has found one of his best divisions from somewhere to smash into that dangerous Union incursion in the centre (left of pic). That will prove enough to thwart it. But look at that lone artillery unit guarding New Cold Harbor (lower right edge) and the Union cavalry above it.

The Union cavalrymen decide it's now or never. Sabres flashing, they charge the Confederate guns! Will this be their moment? Will they capture that white Objective marker? No - the gunners hold their nerve; the cavalry is repulsed.

"Here they come agin, boys!" The last couple of turns see more waves of general assault against the Confederate left, mostly with the same lack of result. However, watch the unit in the centre with the red counter (half-strength artillery unit) and the black counter (infantry low on ammo) along with Bobby Lee's command stand (the cavalry base behind it). More about that soon.

Close-up of some of those massed assaults. Ever felt outnumbered?

See Lee flee! That unit with the low ammo? On the last turn, it cracked under the pressure, abandoned its earthworks, lost its guns, and retreated across the Chickahominy, taking General Lee with it. Too little too late for the Union, though, as there wasn't time to follow up and capture the bridge.

Let's finish with a couple of shots from the Union point of view:

The Confederate right is looking very ragged and threadbare. Baldy Smith's men have breached it thoroughly (from the lower right of pic) and are advancing into undefended open country, but too late to reach the objectives near the Chickahominy. Top left, the Union cavalry makes one last charge and expires.

The Confederate left isn't in great shape either, that line looking seriously dented and buckled in places. However, it has held for just long enough to claim victory.

The butcher's bill: at 2,000 men per base, that's a lot of Union casualties. (The Confederate pile was much smaller.) Of course, most of these 36,000 aren't dead or wounded - a lot of them are just seriously demotivated - but it's sanguinary enough to do justice to the historical losses of around 13,000.

Reflections:

Don't Try to be Too Clever, Part I: Victory Conditions. Usually, BBB scenarios feature half a dozen or so objective locations, mostly spread across the middle of the table (typically representing the extent to which an attacker has or hasn't breached, broken or outflanked a defender's line) with maybe a couple near one or both sides' baselines to represent lines of communications. This time I opted simply for river crossings or locations commanding them: four along the Chickahominy (the Confederate edge) and two on the Pamunkey (the Union edge). This didn't really work as there was little prospect of the rebs threatening the Union edge, while the Union got no reward for getting close. The guys rightly recommended I revert to a more normal format with intermediate objectives. Second draft will do this and stick to what we know works.

Don't Try to be Too Clever, Part II: Union Entry Points. I tried to recreate the doubt in Lee's mind by recreating Grant's options of where to cross. However, the way I did this just made crossing upriver a much better idea than the historical crossings further down (and I don't think this was really because we're smarter than Grant). I'm going to redraft it so that most of the Union forces must arrive via one of the two main historical crossings, while giving the US players free choice over just one corps. That should be limited enough to keep it simple for the players, while still allowing some flexibility for cunning plans.

The Bludgeon and the Rapier. While those major strategic questions need tweaking, the lower-level stuff felt good: the balance of forces, the troop ratings, the terrain, the limited LOS. It produced the right tactical feel, with the two sides having to play it differently. The Union, with over 50% numerical advantage but needing to advance, was constantly trying to pummel and envelop; the Confederates, with a quality advantage but barely enough units to hold the line, had to choose judiciously when and where to counterattack. It also produced a well balanced game overall (VPs aside) and was close enough to the historical result in terms of casualties inflicted and ground taken.

Wargame or Boardgame? People occasionally say that once a tabletop game gets to this ground and troop scale, you might as well play a boardgame with counters. I disagree. I think the format of this scenario (and others at a similar scale - thinking here of Chancellorsville or Spotsylvania, and hoping to repeat it for the Seven Days Battles and for Petersburg) lets it straddle the line between tactical and operational level. The Night Intervals, with a scenario rule for strategic redeployment, brings in those large operational decisions; but then the regular turns in between are normal tactical tabletop wargaming. It works for us, anyway.

ACW: Fair Oaks / Seven Pines (1862)

The current serious BBB project - for probably the next three years - is to develop a full set of scenarios for the 30 biggest battles of the American Civil War. About half of these have already been done ad hoc over the last decade, but now we're working through them systematically.

To that end, Matt Bradley has filled one of the gaps with a new scenario for the battle of Fair Oaks, also known as Seven Pines. This is a decent-sized engagement of >30,000 a side over a couple of days. It was a kind of prelude to Lee's more famous "Seven Days Battles".

At this point, though, Lee had not yet taken over. Johnston was in command of the Confederate forces and sought to pounce on a couple of isolated Union corps on the right wing of the Union army. As it turned out, his attack was poorly coordinated, the Union managed to bring up reinforcements, and it ended as a bloody draw (Johnston himself ending up as one of the casualties, being seriously wounded).

As both sides bring on troops from various directions during the battle, it makes for a good game of maneuver, albeit some of the Union army starts the game in fortifications. The eight pics below tell the story of our game, as well as showing off Matt's lovely craftsmanship.

Matt's mat is a work in progress - he'll paint it to make it less like a map and more like a landscape - but it's attractive and effective as it stands. Roads criss-cross large woods alternating with large open areas, the whole bisected by a railroad, and with Sumner's bridge across the Chickahominy bottom left. Note the Union observation balloon there along with some of the US reinforcements. The initial three US defensive positions are upper right. CSA arrive via the roads top right and bottom right.

Casey's Redoubt in front of the Kuhn Twin Houses. 6mm figures from Matt's collection. As the unit labels show, these poor raw guys are Fragile and fire Ragged volleys.

A similar garrison defends Fair Oaks Station.

A ragged rabble of rowdy rebels prepares to attack.  Some of the Confederate units are rated Aggressive, so will have an advantage if they can close with the foe.

Aha, the proverbial lead balloon! (The balloon and its wagons are by Irregular Miniatures, I believe.) Sedgewick's division queues up to cross the Chickahominy on Turn 2.

I commanded D.H. Hill's division, the first Confederates to deploy, and opted to work my way around the Union left before assaulting. All in position among the rail fences after two moves.

The brigades of Anderson's and Whiting's divisions each had to dice to see which turn they'd arrive. We were pretty unlucky with these rolls, then further stymied by Matt's rubbish movement rolls once they did show up. Here come some of Anderson's men to belatedly back me up.

A turn later and Hill has carried Casey's Redoubt and is pressing on towards the Seven Pines crossroads (both are Objectives, marked by Matt's little flags). The three US units facing Hill will all eventually be wiped out.

Unfortunately I didn't take any more photos after that, so here's a graphic to summarise the action. US and CS flag symbols indicate the seven Objective locations:

After his (my) attack top right, Hill sent his division into the woods either side of Seven Pines to fend off the US counterattack led by Heintzelman (played by Crispin) - though Heintzelman was also anxious to protect the Blacksmith's Shop objective behind him. Dave and Matt (as Anderson and Whiting) combined to converge and clear Fair Oaks Station, then exploit up the railroad towards Orchard Station. On the US side, Sumner (Mark) formed a line that buckled and bent under their assaults but just managed to hold the Orchard Station objective and cover the Adams Farm objective on the US right as well. In the last act of the game, we held three objectives - enough for a draw - but Crispin pushed a brigade down the road towards the Seven Pines crossroads. I'd set up my guns and I had some infantry covering the road as well, so I had a better than 50/50 chance of thwarting him, but my dice let me down. Victory to the Union!

Reflections:

Learning by Doing. I knew very little about this battle before the game. I have a pretty good mental picture of it now. I love learning about history through our games.

Craftsmanship. We could play the game with bits of blue and grey cardboard, but I don't think I'd absorb it as well as I did using Matt's beautiful figures and terrain. The aesthetic matters. HQGE.

Reinforcement Rolls. Having variable arrival times for reinforcements (a) creates fog of war, (b) is therefore probably more realistic, (c) gives me an excuse when I lose, (d) enhances the replay value of a scenario as it will change shape a bit each time. The main reason I don't use this much when designing my own scenarios is simply to keep them simple! But it didn't overcomplicate this game and was definitely a net positive.

Disponibile la versione italiana dello Schema Riassuntiva BBB

Sono lieto di annunciare che, su richiesta dei giocatori italiani, abbiamo creato una versione italiana dello Schema Riassuntiva per la regola "Bloody Big BATTLES!" (BBB).

Lo Schema Riassuntiva è disponibile negli archivi del gruppo BBB:

pagina 1

pagina 2

(È necessario unirsi al gruppo per accedere ai archivi.)

Ringrazio Giorgio Miraz per la traduzione e Gianni Revelli per il suo generoso aiuto.

For non-Italian speakers: this is to announce that an Italian-language of the BBB Quick Reference Sheet is now available. This joins the French and Hungarian versions already in the group files.

Colours 2024 - Borodino

 

The Colours wargames show in Newbury is probably my favourite show these days. For a start, it's one of the closest and easiest to get to and therefore the one I get to most regularly. But also it's a nice venue - Newbury Racecourse - with loads of parking, decent refreshments available, and enough space for games and traders and everyone who wants to see them.

We (Oxford Wargames Society) always lay on a participation game. Last year we did Isandlwana, which proved very popular. Everyone knows about it and wants to say "Zulus, sir - fahsands of 'em", and Bruce's gorgeous 28mm figures and terrain drew plenty of people to the table. This year we went to the opposite extreme, from a battle of a few thousand men represented in 28mm, to a titanic contest with a quarter of a million men on the field in God's own scale (6mm): Borodino. This is one of the scenarios from the newly published scenario book, "Napoleon's Bloody Big BATTLES!".

Borodino is just as famous as Isandlwana, of course, so again there was a lot of interest. Numerous people joined in to command a corps or three for an hour or two. Best result of the day was a Warhammer 40K player looking to get into historical gaming, who we tempted into playing on the Russian side mid-morning and who then fought through to the finish (well done, Bart!).

Interestingly, there were two Borodino games at Colours - at the other end of the hall, Dave Brown was running a General d'Armee game focused solely on action around the Raevski redoubt. Hopefully a few gamers appreciated seeing these complementary games offering different approaches to the same battle, one "zoomed-in" and the other "zoomed-out".

I was on my feet for seven hours, talking virtually non-stop to all the folks who stopped by our table. Thank you to everyone who came by to get their ears bent. It was great as always to catch up with a number of old friends (let's give a special namecheck to Steve Johnson, since he's already done his own report from Colours 2024). I was so busy chatting that I wasn't able to pay much attention to the actual game (let alone do much more than a swift lap of everyone else's beautiful tables). Apologies, therefore, to Alan Millicheap, who'd asked me to take lots and lots of photos of the battle's progress. I did manage a dozen snaps of it, which I offer below with commentary for those interested.

In summary: a great day at a great show, highly recommended, many thanks to the organisers, and see you all in Newbury same time next year!

Most of the Grande Armée arrayed at the start. Eugene's corps on the left; Ney and Davout on the central heights; Poniatowski's Poles on the right; Junot about to arrive. The Imperial Guard will show up later. Figures are Baccus 6mm from Mark Smith's collection. We don't normally bother with unit labels as they aren't necessary, but we made the effort for the show.

Close-up of Davout's 1st Corps and the grand battery set up to pummel the Russian redoubts, backed up by some of the cavalry reserve. Right at the back we see Murat, facing the wrong way for some reason ... waiting for Napoleon and the guard to turn up on Turn 4 onwards, perhaps?

Aerial view of the whole battlefield (bar a few more inches either side). The labels show clearly which side is where: the French tidily divided into a central mass and two wings; the Russians grouped around their redoubts, with a flanking force in Utitsa and the woods behind it, a large central reserve, and a refused right wing behind the river.

Attacker's-eye view of the Russian fortifications: the Raevski redoubt left of pic, the Bagration fleches on the right.

Close-up of the defenders of the village of Utitsa. This brigade of regulars is backed up by some fragile cossacks who quit the field on Turn 2, some beefy grenadiers (the column on the road with two flags, our code to indicate a veteran unit), and a lot of pike-armed opolchenie militia.

Utitsa and the fleches from the Russian side. Lots of tough veterans defending the vital fortification.

The Russian central reserve. This is a mix of veteran grenadiers (two flags), trained regulars (one flag) and raw militia (no flags).

Russian view of the French centre and left wing. Lots of 2-flag veteran units and Skirmisher bases!

Battle is joined. The Russians are about to be emphatically booted out of Utitsa, having suffered severely at the hands of French tirailleurs before the assault. A different story on the adjacent heights, where an early French assault on the fleches is about to be repulsed.

On the French left, Eugene has cleared a Russian delaying force out of Borodino and is working his way around the flank of the Raevski redoubt. The Russian right wing is not allowed to move in the initial turns of the scenario. Malcolm has a hand in matters on the Russian left.

Protracted tussle on the Russian left. Grenadiers counterattack at Utitsa but are forced back, while the French hammer away at the fleches. Ding-dong see-saw action here all day.

The Russian right wing starts to rumble forward to counter Eugene. By the end of the game, the French (actually, on this flank, mostly Italians, I believe) had been forced back far enough for the Russians to retake the village of Borodino (the grey patch by the bridge upper right).

There are nine objectives on the battlefield, representing key terrain, lines of communications, flank positions, etc; the French needed to take five to draw, six or more to win. I'm not 100% sure how it turned out but I think it went like this: on the last turn, three objectives were vigorously and violently contested (Borodino, the Raevski Redoubt, and the next line of heights just behind the Russian fortifications). All three results were possible: French victory, draw, Russian victory. And, of course, the last dice of the game decreed it was a gloriously bloody draw. How very historical!

Why play a whole big battle at all?

Podcasts, podcasts, podcasts ... this reflection was prompted by Jared Fishman interviewing me on his "20 Sided Gamified" podcast, which is up to an impressive 69 episodes already, including many extremely eminent guests from different areas of our hobby. After episode 68, Jared was running out of people to invite, so he kindly asked me along 😉, together with longtime BBB player and scenario designer Vincent Tsao, to enthuse about the "Bloody Big BATTLES!" ruleset. (This was my third time on air, following outings on Scott van Roekel's "Shot & Shield" and Sean Clark's "God's Own Scale".)

I told Jared and his listeners the reason we created BBB - namely, so that a few of us could fight entire 19th-century battles on a normal 6'x4' tabletop on a regular Monday evening club night at Oxford Wargames Society. 

I subsequently realised there is a meta-question that merits answering. It's one I hinted at during the podcast but that really deserves fuller discussion. It's also a question implied a few months ago by a podcast I haven't been on but have often enjoyed listening to: Ken Reilly's "Yarkshire Gamer's Reet Big Wargames Podcast". In one of his "Brews in the Binyard" episodes, Ken was chatting with Sean and another gamer and the topic of my GOS interview with Sean came up. (Incestuous business, podcasts ...) Ken said something like, "As soon as Chris Pringle said it was all about fighting a whole battle on 6'x4' in an evening, he lost me!"

The meta-question in question is this: why should we want to fight such battles in their entirety in this way at all? Hence I am elevating it to full "Reflections on Wargaming" status with this post.

Let's start by asking ourselves what the aim behind any game might be. In a previous Reflections essay I discussed three dimensions wargames try to satisfy in varying degrees:

- exploring military history;

- providing entertaining game mechanics;

- and generating a competitive contest.

I submit that BBB does relatively well on all three counts. Long before BBB, the biggest game I ever played in was when the whole club deployed all our Napoleonic collections for a single battle. It was literally played on a basketball court. There were probably 20 players, with CinCs sending written orders by courier, and it took all weekend. What did I get out of it? As an easily-pleased teenage wargamer, I was happy to push around my little brigade and engage in inconsequential skirmishing for hours. But:

- I had no idea what the bigger picture was, the point of the battle, what crucial decisions were taken when or by who and how they worked out. Hence, it failed as an exploration of military history (at least, I didn't learn any from it);

- the game mechanics were fine, but I might as well have played a simple brigade-sized battle and had just as much fun in a fraction of the time. I'd call that inefficient;

- I had no idea who won and I'm not sure we actually finished it, so perhaps it wasn't great as a dramatic contest either.

Of course, not every 'big game' will be like that. With clear briefings, tight management, pauses to take a step back and appreciate the wider situation, and post-battle summings-up, players can get more of a sense of the big picture and how their small part contributes to it. Still, I maintain that the BBB format of playing a whole big battle in an evening has significant advantages, including:

- You get a 'big picture' appreciation of a historical battle that is impossible to obtain by fighting it in fractions or where each player is only involved with one small corner of a huge multi-player game;

- You get to make major, substantial game decisions such as shifting whole corps from one sector to another, rather than pushing around individual battalions and doing tiny tactical stuff. It has the right granularity for the size of the battle and lets you see the wood, not just the trees. (See my Reflection on getting the right granularity in games.)

- You get to finish the game! Even with a whole day, too many monster games finish up with "in the end, we ran out of time, so we called it ..." (see my Reflection on that phenomenon here.)

- Not only does the game finish, a BBB battle most often ends with an exciting climactic turn in which two or three objectives are in play, all three results are still possible (win-draw-lose) and it comes down to the last few rolls of the dice.

- As you only need a 6'x4' table, three or four other players at most (indeed, one would do), and three or four hours, it is far easier to organise and fit in than a grand weekend event. I'd rather have a BBB game every week than six mega-games a year.

- If you do have a whole weekend for gaming, you can fight several BBB battles in the time it takes for one mega-game and get to make a lot more significant decisions in the same time. (We once fought a whole 9-battle Franco-Prussian War campaign in a three-day weekend.)

- Huge games need huge armies. BBB forces are modest enough that it relatively easy to buy, build, transport and store multiple armies for multiple wars, which is good for varying the gaming diet.

I'm going to finish by reporting some recent comments by Jim Owczarski of the Armchair Dragoons that support what I've said above. Jim regularly runs online wargames through Tabletop Simulator, using many different rulesets for many different wars. For instance, last year I believe his group did a comparison exercise, fighting Quatre Bras eight times with different rules. The publication of "Napoleon's Bloody Big Battles!" has really enthused Jim and his merry grognards. He says that after a couple of games "the consensus of the Dragoons is that they want to play ALL the BBB Napoleonic scenarios". In particular, before playing Bautzen, he said "The battle of Bautzen was a strange, sprawling affair. Curious to see how BBB makes sense of it. Not too many miniatures rules have." After the game, his verdict: "it's the best treatment of Bautzen I've played on the tabletop". That seems a good point to rest my case.

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Update 25 August 2024

Well, that was a popular post! It generated a lot of feedback on TMP, LAF and TWW. These 70+ replies caused me to reflect on my reflection. Let me add the result of that reflection here:

A big thank you to everyone who responded. I appreciate all your comments (including the critical and dismissive ones – I care about your opinions too). Judging by the quantity and quality of replies, it was evidently a worthwhile question.

As far as the charge of shameless self-promotion/advertising is concerned: guilty as charged, sorry – can I make a plea in mitigation? It genuinely wasn't my original prime intention, but I struggled a bit to structure the essay, was under time pressure, then saw Jim Owczarski's remarks, got over-excited and lapsed into stream-of-consciousness anecdotes and enthusing. There is a better essay to be written on this question that actually answers it properly, perhaps enumerating types of battle and game, listing what features each provides to players, addressing limitations and practicalities …

Nevertheless, I feel my decision to just publish and be damned is partially vindicated by the wealth of ideas in all your great comments. I hoped and expected that the resulting discussion would be better than what I'd bashed out in haste, and you didn't let me down. I hope you'll forgive me if I don't reply in great detail to the multitude of points in 50+ posts. I have just a few remarks to make now:

First: I should have made a clear distinction between big battle and big game – these are not necessarily the same thing! Small games of big battles are possible, as are big games of small battles, etc.

Second: I'll readily acknowledge BBB's limitations (e.g., the lack of fog of war, albeit the activation mechanism introduces enough uncertainty to compensate for that to some degree). Other ways of fighting big battles are possible and other rules are available. All have their merits and which is the right tool for the job depends on the job and the craftsman.

Third and finally: absolutely no disparagement of anybody else's fun was intended. Tournament games, skirmishes, monster marathons on basketball courts – it's all good and all part of our rich hobby. I ain't telling anyone else how to play toy soldiers. Have fun your way! Happy gaming!

Turning flanks at Fraustadt (GNW, 1706)

I have had my second taste of the Great Northern War (regular readers will remember the first was at Kliszów) and a very characterful and indeed illuminating game it was: Fraustadt (1706). 

The background is that Russia has joined the war on the Saxon-Polish side. The allies are trying to concentrate their forces. A Swedish force under General Rehnskiöld intercepts Schulenburg's allied force near Fraustadt (now Wschowa in western Poland) before it can unite with other allied armies. Despite being outnumbered two to one and facing a line of chevaux de frise, the Swedes attack. Historically, Rehnskiöld's superior cavalry enabled him to accomplish a double envelopment and then crush the allied line from three directions.

Our Swedish opponents, Matt and Crispin, were less ambitious. They went for a mirror image of the 'Swedish Leuthen' plan that worked so well in our Kliszów game. The eight annotated pics below tell the story, followed by some reflections.

I commanded the allied left, backed up by John's Russians in the centre. Here we see guns behind chevaux de frise, massed infantry behind the objective village of Röhrsdorf, and cavalry on our left wing.

Dave W commanded our right, anchored on the objective village of Geyersdorf. The whole of the allied centre was protected by chevaux de frise and frozen ponds and a stream ... which the Swedes, not unreasonably, chose to sidestep entirely, committing all their foot and most of their horse to a powerful right hook.

This view of the whole battlefield from behind the allied line clearly reveals the Swedes' intent. The weight of the Swedish army is on its start line top left (Swedish troops are the ones on green bases). Just three Swedish cavalry regiments loiter in the centre to delay any allied countermove.

The formidable Swedish attack force - plenty of pikes and 'Gå på!'.

Undaunted, our allied infantry wheeled efficiently into position either side of Röhrsdorf to face the foe's pell-mell advance. Unfortunately, while their drill may have been sound enough, our troops' fighting qualities were not - which more than offset our numerical advantage.

A mighty clash was quick to arrive. We repelled the first onslaught. Counting ourselves lucky and knowing we would have no better opportunity, we launched our left wing infantry into a massed countercharge. This actually hurled back one Swedish infantry unit (top centre) with heavy casualties. Of course, then the Swedes in turn renewed their assault with redoubled fury. As the waggon and barrel and aides-de-camp denote, our infantry were by now disrupted and low on ammo, so they were smashed back, as were our feeble horse, resulting in the scene below ...

The Swedes have stormed Röhrsdorf and command the road beyond it (a line of communications objective). They are poised to exploit their advantage, roll up our line, and take Geyersdorf and our second line of communications from behind. Top left of pic, the allied right wing has advanced out of Geyersdorf and across the chevaux de frise with the aim of rolling up the Swedish left and retaking Röhrsdorf, but with poor allied generals it is slow work. Who will roll up who first?

And the answer is: the Swedes nearly managed it but ran out of time before we ran out of troops. This plan view shows how the battle line has pivoted 90 degrees. The allies started in a line across the centre of pic, below the chevaux de frise and the stream/pond line. Our right has swung round as far as the Y junction top left, but is still too far away to threaten Röhrsdorf. Our left has been driven back most of the way across the battlefield and almost disintegrated, but one valiant Russian brigade (near lower right edge) prevents the Swedish horse from cutting the road behind Geyersdorf (out of pic, lower right). End result: a draw.

Reflections:

The attack is king! (See my earlier post on why defence is not king.) In this period of linear warfare, being able to choose the point of attack is a valuable advantage, as it is so difficult for the defender to respond by maneuver, and weapon ranges are short. Even though the Swedish plan was obvious from the start, it took forever for Dave's troops to get across from our right wing to help our left.

Options, options ... Halfway through the game I commented that I didn't see what else we allies could have done: we had to defend both villages to have a chance of victory; we had a central reserve and it wasn't enough. However, on reflection, we could have made the garrisons smaller and the central reserve stronger. Perhaps our right wing cavalry could have raced directly across behind our lines, rather than trying to fight its way through the enemy's pinning force. Our guns could have deployed differently too. We can always do better!

Victory conditions - more objectives needed? There were four objectives (two villages plus the LOC roads behind them). Both sides needed two for a draw or three to win. I think making the big pond in the middle a fifth objective and upping the Swedish victory target could be good. That would represent breaching the allied centre.

Linear warfare can be fun. I routinely mount my hobby horse with a freshly ground axe to condemn pre-Napoleonic warfare as limited and dull in terms of its gaming potential. I might cynically say that last pic looked just like every ancients or renaissance tournament game ever played at OWS: the battleline wheels clockwise or it wheels anti-clockwise and that's about it ... but actually it was thoroughly absorbing and there were enough interesting decisions to make. When and where to counterattack? How to reform our line after each Swedish assault? How to insure against Swedish breakthroughs? OK, I admit it - I had fun.