Victory snatched away at Albuera (1811)

While I am focusing on ACW, Mark is forging ahead with his collection of Napoleonic scenarios for the Peninsular War. The latest to take to his table is Albuera. This is a relatively well-known battle that seems popular to refight, judging from a quick web surf. May as well add one more blog post to the crowd!

Background in brief: while Wellington was confronting Masséna along the centre of the Portuguese border, further south his subordinate Beresford was besieging Badajoz. Soult marched to relieve the fortress. Beresford moved to occupy a blocking position on the ridge behind Albuera. Rather than simple frontal assault, Soult chose to leave part of his force to pin Beresford by demonstrating against the Allied front, while most of the French army moved around the Allied right flank. When the Allies changed front in response, Colborne's brigade was famously left exposed just as a sudden storm limited visibility and damped their muskets, allowing French cavalry to charge and shatter the brigade. Despite this setback, the Allies eventually firmed up their line, then advanced to counterattack and drive the French back. Thwarted, Soult gave up and withdrew.

Here's how it went for us. (9-photo AAR, then some Reflections.)

Initial Allied set-up, looking east from behind the Allied line. Mark used a 2.5D system for the hilly ground: dark lines are contours defining the slopes of the ridges between the streams ("Level 1"); polystyrene hills are the highest points ("Level 2"). Albuera village is top centre, with the Albuera river in front of it. White labels indicate that some Allied formations are fixed in place until Turn 2 or Turn 4, so long as the French maintain a pinning force in front of them. Doesn't that Allied right flank look open?

And here's the French force threatening it. The scenario gives the French a choice of deployment areas: either along this road on the Allies' right front, or in the SW corner of the table (beyond bottom right of pic) - thus further from the Allies, but behind their flank and across the stream obstacles. White counters indicate victory locations: two hills and a bridge in this pic. In addition, Albuera itself was an objective, as were the two roads leading NW or W towards Badajoz. (And British infantry - see the Reflections.)

Latour-Maubourg's formidable cavalry leading the French advance. Mark rated most of these as Shock (the purple counters, worth +2 in Assault) and the rest as Aggressive (+1) on the basis of their performance in the battle. These columns are advancing through Spanish woods that are really just pastures with shade - widely spaced olive trees etc, with cattle grazing among them.

As the French commander, I chose to disrupt that tidy column and shift most of our infantry to the outflanking move: Girard's division, Werlé's brigade, and the grenadier reserve, seen here. That left Godinot to do the pinning and Gazan to attack the angle of the Allied position. (Figures are Baccus 6mm from Mark's collection.)

My columns moved swiftly forward and deployed for battle. Zayas's Spanish turned to face us.

So much for outflanking and catching the Allies on the hop. By Turn 3 they had formed a pretty solid-looking line.

I tried working round further left to find some advantage. Meanwhile, Mark had launched a converging attack on the angle of the Spanish line. This made a dent but exposed him to Allied counterattack. On his right, large Allied units had become unpinned and were threatening to overwhelm our pinning force.

Time for me to act, then! I launched coordinated assaults. On my extreme left, I did manage to break a Spanish unit and establish myself on one of the Badajoz roads. We were less fortunate elsewhere, though. On my right, I committed my grenadiers in support of a charge by Mark's cavalry. My own cavalry failed to join in, while Crispin rolled 11 and 12 for his firing and blew Mark's precious dragoons and lancers away. That left my grenadiers embarassed and outnumbered 3:1, so they were destroyed in their own assault. The photo shows the aftermath, on the final turn: our line has become very thin, we are just trying to hold on our left, while launching two desperate counterattacks on our right to fend off the Allies from one of the hilltop objectives.

Close-up of those counterattacks. My infantry managed to keep the Spanish infantry at bay, but Mark's last cavalry brigade was vaporised by Portuguese musketry (of course). I had a couple of batteries out of pic lower right to cover the hill, but these were unable to stop any of Crispin's allied units upper right, all three of which made full movement rolls on the last turn and captured the hill.

Until that point, we had held 3 objectives - enough for victory (in fact, our high point was 4 until we lost the bridge again) - but when the Allies retook this hill, they denied us and we had to settle for a bloody (in both senses) draw.

Reflections

Nice to fight a classic battle! In a 2018 post, I mused on the merits of different ways of studying classic battles. One of those, obviously, is the 'learning by doing' of a wargame. Mark's scenario certainly explains Albuera well.

Choices, choices. It was nice to have a choice of deployment areas, hence several possible plans of attack. This not only makes the one game interesting, it opens up replay value for future games.

Precious units. The scenario had one unusual objective: we French could earn an Objective by making any British infantry unit Spent or destroyed (representing the near-scandal caused by the destruction of Colborne's brigade). This made our Allied opponents, Crispin and Phil, rather cautious about committing their most potent troops. We felt this worked well.

Rubbish units. The Spanish cavalry continued their suitably dreadful form. When I first approached them, they Evaded. Being Fragile, they spent the next several turns failing to rally from the resulting Disruption, before finally rolling so low that they quit the field without having struck a blow or even caught a whiff of powder. Hilarious.

British too ponderous? There was some post-game debate about whether the British on the left should have a General on-table to help them move faster (Phil having been frustrated by their inaction at times). I felt it was OK, my view being that the British army doesn't really transcend linear warfare and become a truly modern manoeuvrable force until Salamanca in 1812. But better-informed readers may leap in and put me right here.

The Seven Days Battles (ACW) - all in one evening

My current project is to create and play BBB scenarios for all the biggest battles of the American Civil War. In several cases, I am exploiting the BBB ruleset's elastic scale and making a single scenario cover battles so large in time and space that most conventional rulesets would split them down into several different smaller actions: Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg ...

Perhaps the most extreme example is the Seven Days Battles. In an area of some 30 x 15 km, between 26 June and 1 July 1862 (ignoring a preliminary skirmish on 25 June), Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia fought four substantial battles against McLellan's Army of the Potomac: Beaver Dam Creek (Mechanicsville); Gaines's Mill; Glendale; and Malvern Hill.

Of course, I could just write conventional scenarios for each of these. No doubt eventually I or another BBB enthusiast will. But I think these are less interesting individually than as episodes of the larger whole, and anyway, I'm sure they've been done that way many times before. I therefore wrote a scenario for the whole Seven Days. Ambitious! But feasible - as we proved this week.

The historical background is the Peninsula Campaign, McLellan's attempt to capture Richmond by advancing NW up the Virginia Peninsula, taking advantage of Union naval superiority. After a couple of months of slow advance involving a few actions of moderate size, the main result of the otherwise inconclusive battle of Fair Oaks (aka Seven Pines) was that the Confederate C-in-C, Johnston, was wounded and replaced by Lee. Within a month, Lee planned and prepared his attack. Leaving a small force under Magruder covering his own right, he massed most of his forces against McLellan's right wing, both attacking it frontally and outflanking it from the north. Over the next few days, the Union army was driven back, forced to switch its line of communications, and eventually gave up and escaped by sea. However, Lee's repeated attempts to envelop and crush it had failed, ending in an especially costly repulse at Malvern Hill.

Our scenario compresses all this into a 6'x3' table and 9 or 10 game turns (originally 12, but that was too many), punctuated by two nominal 'Night Intervals' that are really strategic pauses and resets, given that each turn represents about half a day. You'd think that might work out kinda funky, but in fact it seemed to go pretty much as per the history without feeling silly or 'gamey'. Let me explain with the help of eight photos, followed by some Reflections.

Send a gunboat! This represents USS Mahaska and USS Galena on the James River. Malvern Hill just visible top right of pic. Model from Crispin's collection.

OK, let's get you oriented with a view of (almost) the whole battlefield, looking north. Confederates are on the brighter green bases, left and top of pic. The force top right is Jackson's, poised to fall on the Union right flank and rear. Their ultimate target is the Union line of communications, the rail exit guarded by Union cavalry, centre right edge. Top left is Longstreet, about to assault Beaver Dam Creek. Centre left, Magruder has a thin screen protecting the Confederate LOC rail exit.

The balloon facing Fair Oaks is actually a US balloon, but represents the "Magruder Effect". Historically, Magruder conducted a brilliant deception by generating lots of fake activity for the Union to observe, making himself look much stronger than he was. In game terms, this meant on Turns 1-4 any Union unit trying to move within 9" of Magruder was penalised with a -2 on its movement roll.

Most of the Union forces are in the line, either waiting to fend off the Confederate assaults in the north or to launch their own frontal attack against Magruder in the south. However, the force lower right - IV Corps (Keyes) - is about to execute a swift route march around the Confederate right, into the bottom left corner of the pic, to threaten Magruder's flank and rear.

A closer look at Jackson's force about to cross the Totopotomoy Creek and attack the Union right around Beaver Dam Creek and Gaines's Mill. Figures are Baccus 6mm from Crispin's collection. Roads and rivers by Rob's Scenics.

Now we leap ahead to Turn 5. The game allows Strategic Redeployment during the two Night Intervals. This is also when the Union can choose to switch its LOC exit from the railroad to the James River. That's what has happened here. Despite inflicting historically significant casualties on the Confederates at Beaver Dam Creek and Gaines's Mill, the Union forces have suffered badly themselves, as witness the black puffs on several Union divisions that are now Spent and have been left to fight rearguard actions around Savage's Station (where that happened historically). The Union has formed a new line behind White Oak Creek, in front of Glendale (the blue counter and building centre of left edge) while still attacking Magruder (top of pic). Yet again the Confederates will try to combine frontal assault with envelopment of the Union right (again, rather historical).

Close-up of Jackson's Rebs about to overrun a Union rear guard division.

Lee about to do likewise at Savage's Station and Seven Pines.

Turn 7 and the Confederate assault against the Union line in front of Glendale is in full swing. Top left, a Union division spontaneously fell back before it was hit - a bad movement roll that was actually perhaps the smart move, pre-empting the Confederate envelopment.

Game end: the Confederates have broken through, the retreating Union army is in disarray, the pursing Rebs are rampant and (out of shot, below right of pic) wrapping round the Union right, while JEB Stuart's cavalry menace the James River LOC.

Reflections

Now that's what I call grand tactical. Or maybe 'operational'. I was really happy with how this ambitious scenario worked out. The game moved quickly all across the table (OK, it was only a 6'x3' table), with intense action throughout, and the lines pivoting through more than 90 degrees. We didn't quite get to Malvern Hill, but otherwise, all the historical sub-battles pretty much happened along the way - each only lasting a turn or two. And it did leave the Union players as shell-shocked as McLellan and the Confederates suitably historically jubilant. Operational-scale maneuver but with a tactical tabletop feel. Lovely!

Multi-day actions multiply the fun. Said it before, say it again: games with Night Interval 'resets' so often make the best games as they generate more decisions and more interesting situations. I discussed this at more length in one of my Reflections on Wargaming essays, Changing situations mid-game.

One man's 'grand' is another woman's 'busy'. To me, the opening pic looks grand: a layout like an aerial view of historical terrain, the two armies with battlelines drawn, and 6mm giving that great mass effect. My clubmate Linda wandered over for a chat. She always plays ancient/renaissance tournament games with armies that preferred flat open plains, hence minimal terrain. She said our table looked 'busy' and maybe too confusing for her - but admitted she'd like to join our BBB games for a change ...

Special rules can make a game special. This game has two. One is a provision for units to lose bases in the Night Interval if they are 'Out of Supply' (unable to trace a clean route to their LOC). It didn't come into play directly during the game, but did influence players' maneuvers and the Union decision to switch LOC. The other is the Magruder Effect, which worked very well to protect the weak Confederate right in a plausible way. And it was a good excuse to put a balloon on the table.

Victory Conditions. These have mutated through the development of this scenario (which I first drafted in 2016). I think we'll settle on essentially a typical BBB formula - three objective locations along the battleline (Gaines's Mill, Fair Oaks, Glendale) plus LOC objectives - but with a twist: rather than all being calculated at game end, the Union will earn objectives by holding them until a given game turn. That should give the right incentives, give the Union some big decisions to make about when to fall back, plus make for an interesting decision for the Union about if/when to switch LOC. And BBB games should be all about making interesting decisions.