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.

===

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.

NBBB is published!

What better day than the anniversary of Waterloo to announce the publication of the long-awaited and eagerly anticipated "Napoleon's Bloody Big Battles!" scenario book to accompany the "Bloody Big BATTLES!" ruleset! 

"Napoleon's Bloody Big Battles!" is written by Dr Mark Smith (who also wrote the "Bloody Big Battles in INDIA!" scenario book). The 16 scenarios in NBBB cover the biggest battles where Napoleon commanded in person after becoming Emperor:

The Wars of the Third and Fourth Coalitions (1805-1807) – 4-scenario mini-campaign
          Austerlitz                                     
          Jena/Auerstedt                             
          Eylau                                           
          Friedland                                     
The War of the Fifth Coalition (1809) – 3-scenario mini-campaign
          Eckmühl                                      
          Aspern-Essling                             
          Wagram                                       
Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia (1812) – 2-scenario mini-campaign
          Borodino                                      
          Berezina                                      
The War of the Sixth Coalition (1813) – 5-scenario mini-campaign
          Lützen                                         
          Bautzen                                      
          Dresden                                      
          Leipzig                                         
          Hanau                                          
The Final Battles (1814 & 1815) – 2 stand-alone scenarios
          La Rothière                                  
          Waterloo

The hyperlinks above take you to reports of some of these games being played over the five years or so this project has taken to complete. As those reports show and as I can attest, small-scale figures on a regular 6'x4' table can still produce an epic experience and a grand Napoleonic game. In connection with that, let me quote 'Shugyosha' of the 'Wargaming Everything' blog, who has embarked on an ambitious endeavour: 'The Ultimate Napoleonic Wargame Rules Review and Comparison'. He had some very nice things to say about BBB:

"When thinking of the biggest battles of the era, [...] BBB makes it actually possible in a manageable time frame. [...] Among all true army level systems it is probably the best middle ground between playability and period flavor. This might sound like a compromise, but it is not. BBB stands on its own, and for me among the very top.!

NBBB is printed and shipments are en route to BBB's usual loyal retailers right now. I should like to take this opportunity to thank them for their support - between them all, they have bought out the whole first printrun already! I'm sure their confidence will be rewarded.

Happy Napoleonic gaming!

===

Update 8 July 2024: first full review of NBBB is a nice enthusiastic one on the "Wargaming from the Balcony" blog. Manteuffel's verdict: "For BBB enthusiasts with an eye on the Napoleonic period, this is a must buy."

            

Defence is not king! Lule Burgas (1912)

A friend of mine writes school textbooks. A few years ago he did one in war and society for the UK history curriculum. I reviewed the chapter on 1750-1914 for him. I thought I was doing him a favour but in fact I caused him a problem. I found two bones of contention in it.

One was the claim that war did not change significantly between 1750 and 1850. Napoleon and Clausewitz might disagree with that.

The other debatable claim was this (I paraphrase): 'the foolish WW1 generals had not learned the lesson of the previous 50 years that, because modern weapons had become so lethal, the defence was king'. I pointed out that (a) the attacker gets to shoot too and (b) the lesson from virtually every war of the previous 50 years was that the attacker wins. The Crimea; Italy in 1859; Denmark in 1864; the ACW; the Austro-Prussian War; the Franco-Prussian War; the Russo-Japanese War and the Balkan Wars, with the latter two being proto-WW1 warfare with WW1 weapons: the attacker wins, the attacker wins, the attacker wins. The difficulty for Paul was that the debatable claim was not his, but he was required to make it because it was actually in the curriculum ...

Which brings us to this week's wargame: Lule Burgas (1912), the fourth in our ongoing campaign from the "Bloody Big Balkan Battles!" scenario book. This was the largest European battle between 1870 and 1914. The attacker won.

The historical situation was that, just four days earlier, the Bulgarians had defeated the Ottomans at Kirkkilise. The battered Ottoman army established a new defensive line at Lule Burgas, but its right flank was open. Ottoman reserves were rushed up to fill the gap and clashed with the Bulgarian 3rd Army, while the Bulgarian 1st Army took Lule Burgas. After a three-day battle, the Ottoman defense caved in and retreated to the fortified lines at Chataldja.

The scenario revolves around four objectives: Lule Burgas itself on the Turkish left; Karagac in the centre; Bunarhisar on the right; and Congara in the rear. Both sides need to hold two of these to draw or three to win. The five annotated photos that follow reveal how the game went.

Looking north up the Turkish lines. Lots of lovely muddy brown rivers, custom-made for me by Rob Owens of Rob's Scenics. A cavalry brigade foot of pic covers the Turkish left. IV Corps is entrenched behind Lule Burgas (the town with the marsh in front of it); I Cps holds the centre; II Cps in the woods. III Cps and XVII & XVIII Provisional Cps are poised to enter top right. Red and white counters mark the four objectives. (Turkish figures are a mix of Irregular Miniatures and Heroics & Ros 6mm.)

View of the same Turkish deployment from the Bulgarian side of the table. The scenario uses a large scale - this 6'x4' table represents a 60km front; it lasts 9 turns with two night intervals, each turn being 6 hours; the armies are both over 100,000 men, so each individual base is 2,000-2,500 men and units are brigades of 6,000-10,000 men. Because of the large scale, there is a simple scenario special rule that fire cannot cross more than one river. This worked rather well.

Halfway through the battle, the Turkish left has been turned. Will, commanding Bulgarian 1st Army, chose to send the Sborna Division south of the River Ergene to outflank the Turkish trenches, while the Sofiyska Div threatened the front. Day 1 was spent moving into position and exchanging inconclusive fire with the defenders in Lule Burgas. This photo on Day 2 shows empty trenches as the Turkish units in them and the town have been routed, leaving Abdullah Pasha alone, embarrassed, and hoping John's finger can bring reserves from the centre in time. (Proxies of proxies: the 'Bulgarians' are actually my Greek army for this conflict, which uses British WW1 figures from Irregular. I'll need a different solution for the 2nd Balkan War battles between Bulgarians and Greeks! Entrenchments and railway also by Irregular.)

Meanwhile, the thin line of Nick's Bulgarian 3rd Army clashes with Dave's Turkish reinforcements in the woods. Bulgarian cavalry hold the Bunahisar objective (foreground); Turks hold Congara (top centre) and Karagac (top right). On Day 1, the wide open space in front of Karagac was a scene of carnage as the Bulgarians advanced into a deadly storm of fire, the survivors falling back at dusk and then shifting their effort further left. At that point, Nick was struggling to see how he could possibly avoid defeat.

The game produced a wonderful climax on the last turn. Both sides held two objectives, which would have meant it was a draw. However, in attempting to capture Bunahisar on their right and to hold and then retake Lule Burgas on their left, the Turks had drawn forces away from their centre, exposing Karagac. Two brigades of the Balkanska and Sofiyska divisions were close enough to assault Karagac, which was held by two Turkish brigades. Bulgarian fire had scrubbed away would-be supporting units and Bulgarian QF artillery wiped out one defending brigade. Both attacking units got the full moves they needed to reach, albeit one of them still in march column. Defensive fire held off the Sofiyska, but the Balkanska assaulted from the march - and emerged victorious! It was a splendid end to a game that at one stage had looked nigh impossible for the Bulgarians.

Reflections:

Blenheim in the Balkans. The battle had a nice shape to it: initial fencing along the front, a turning movement on the Turkish left, then essentially a big fight on each flank that made the Turks thin out their centre and make it vulnerable to the victory blow. Kudos to Will for having the vision four turns earlier to get his Balkanska brigade into march column and race it across the battlefield to where it was needed.

Other plans are possible. As is usually the way, I can see other options for both sides. The Turks could deploy differently with more attention to their left flank and to fields of fire. The Bulgarians could try what seemed an obvious approach at first glance: weight their attack heavily to the left, avoiding most of the dug-in Turks and going for the three village objectives rather than the tougher town. Certainly worth replaying to see how it goes with different plans and different players.

Limiting LOS. I noted in the Kirkkilise report how that similarly large-scale scenario might benefit from some line of sight limit. The scenario special rule here did the job.

Quality tells! All the Bulgarians were rated Aggressive. Most of the Turks were Fragile. On Day 1, while they were mowing down advancing Bulgars, the Turks had the best of it. Once the Bulgarians developed their own firing lines and set up their artillery and started dishing some out, Turkish units evaporated rapidly. And, of course, the quality difference swung it in the final assault.

Nice terrain. Rob Owens's rivers had their second serious outing (their first having been at Kirkkilise). Definitely an improvement on the usual blue felt. Now to attend to the roads, and then the woods ...

What a good game! I embarked on this one with some trepidation. Assaulting against an entrenched enemy with equal numbers of troops and modern weapons? It didn't look too promising. But the space for manoeuvre on both flanks actually enabled a mobile game, and it was a bold dash in the centre that decided it at the end. The shift in fortunes and the epic climax meant the game really told a story.

Thank you to Nick, Will, Dave and John for being engaged and enthusiastic and tackling the challenge in good spirits, and to Konstantinos for a fine scenario.