A game of 200,000 men on 80km front - Bregalnitza 1913

One of the climactic battles of the Balkan Wars saw roughly 100,000 Bulgarians attack a similar number of Serbs around Bregalnitza in June/July 1913. The battle was fought on an 80km front and lasted a week. Konstantinos Travlos has risen to the challenge and written a scenario to make it possible to fight this battle in a short evening on an 8'x4' table using the BBB rules. Yesterday we gave it its first playtest.

 

Montenegrins in reserve behind the Serb first line.

Smoke indicates Disruption because of the Bulgarian surprise attack.

Figures and painting by Irregular Miniatures - really nice job, my photo doesn't do them justice. 

I would have flocked them the night before but forgot I'd lent out my materials ... 

BBB employs elastic scales for troops, ground and time. A small battle might use a ground scale of 1" = 100m, troop scale of 250 men per 1" square base, and 30-minute game turns; for a large battle, those scales could become 1" = 500m or larger, 2,000 men/base or more, 3-hour game turns or longer.

Bregalnitza stretches the ground- and time-scales more than most, with a turn being a full day and 1" = 833m. In our playtest we found that some other elements also needed to be adjusted to compensate. The whole battlefield had been designated as Difficult Terrain, which for a more tactical game could have been OK, but especially with Passive armies and lack of useful Generals, it just made maneuver too difficult at this operational level. Maneuver was also impeded by the slightly too dominant artillery. Konstantinos had anticipated this problem and limited line of sight to 18", but given the very large ground scale, we felt a limit of 12" LOS for artillery fire and 9" for infantry fire might be better.

Consequently the game was not as fluid as usual, as both sides mostly hunkered down in their trenches and blasted away with the guns. Oh well - that's what playtests are for. Notwithstanding, it presented some interesting tactical challenges and gave a sense of that proto-WWI firepower. And it was nice to get my new Serbian army on the table for the first time. Hopefully after the scenario has been tweaked a bit I will have a chance to get them out and fight it again.

A few more photos in Flickr.