Rule #1: read the victory conditions!

 

Luke asked for a Franco-Prussian War game, so we wheeled out one of my favourites: Beaumont.

This is a fighting withdrawal, a situation that always makes for a free-wheeling fast and furious game. In our last go at it, I got thoroughly well beaten (report here). It went differently this time. I'll let the pics tell the story. Some reflections at the end.

French chasseurs á cheval detect the approaching Germans. 6mm Baccus figures, nicely painted for me by Reinforcements by Post (a firm that used to operate from Bangladesh and whose painters maybe weren't totally up on European flags).

And there's a lot of Germans - three and a half corps totalling >100,000 men. Each base is 1,500 men or 36 guns in this scenario. Units are large brigades.

Luke and Ben took command of the Germans, so Mark and I were the French.

The French have two widely separated corps falling back on a third behind the River Meuse. Here we have a German-eye view of Douay's French 7th Corps, which starts in the SW corner and has to cross the whole table to escape to the NE. Note how I have deployed those two brigades of its 3rd Division already facing north for their getaway. This will prove to be an error.

In the SE corner, again looking from the German side, Mark has deployed Failly's 5th Corps with a brigade as rear guard in Beaumont itself (the town in the right foreground), another covering its eastern flank against the Saxons' arrival, and three astride the road behind Beaumont ready to race for the bridge along with most of his artillery. Just visible in the top right corner is part of 12th Corps lining the Meuse to receive our fugitives.

I told Mark the victory conditions said we needed to get 5 infantry units and 3 artillery units across the Meuse.

Plan view of the battlefield to show just how far my lads top left have to go to escape, and all the steep hills and woods in the way. Fortunately it's only a 5'x4' table rather than the usual 6-footer.  At least Mark's troops lower left have a road to help them. On the other hand, they will have to contend with the bulk of the German onslaught.

Battle is joined. This is my corner at the end of Turn 1. Remember those two brigades I deployed carelessly facing north? The should have been facing east, because that's where the Bavarians at the top of this pic came from. They piled onto my flank, wiped out both brigades, and exploited into the village of Oches. Now they're in a firefight with what has become my rearguard brigade (1st Bde, 2nd Div, 7th Cps) just south of La Berlière. I've sent the corps cavalry round to bother the Bavarians' flank (top left).

Meanwhile, over to my left, more Bavarians are pouring through the gap between our two corps (top right), while a whole German corps takes on the gallant brigade in Beaumont. Mark's retreating brigades aren't forming column and retreating quite as fast as he'd like.

At least Mark's guns are getting away and about to cross the Meuse and shelter behind 12th Corps's chassepots. (Those artillery are all currently being towed, it's just that some cheapskate couldn't bring himself to pay for a load of limbers. I kinda regret that.)

At La Berlière, my rear guard holds firm. A Bavarian charge has failed, leaving one Bavarian brigade spent. Another German division arrives to reinforce the Bavarians.

Mark's rear guard likewise holds on in Beaumont and causes casualties. The black smoke top centre marks a German brigade as Spent, which explains the brown smoke showing the French are now low on ammo.

The Germans therefore commit the newly arrived Saxons to assault Beaumont from the east (left of pic). This assault is repelled by mitrailleuses on the hill (out of pic lower left). The Bavarians moving through the gap are struggling forward slowly, harassed by fire from some of my guns (out of pic to the right) as well as Mark's retreating infantry (out of pic below centre).

The Germans became 'target fixated' on my defence of La Berlière. There are now three German divisions queueing up to get in, when they might be doing better to work at least some of them past the rear guard's flank to cut off others' retreat. Even the German cavalry (top centre) that surely ought to be chasing retreaters is heading over this way to join the fun.

Similar story around Beaumont, where Mark's solitary brigade continues to detain five times its number (thanks to it fending off a huge assault with an improbable 6:1 die roll). Some Germans are at last filtering past behind it.

While all those Germans are busy at La Berlière, Douay supervises an entire division marching serenely undisturbed towards safety.

Germans are now swarming past Beaumont towards the bridges. Nevertheless, Mark's one beleaguered brigade still holds out. It must be Brigadier Asterix ...

Turn 8 out of 10. The Germans have finally disposed of both rear guards and are chasing across open country. It was around this point I realised I had made a slight booboo. I had to admit to Mark that the numbers I had told him were those we needed to achieve a draw. To win, we actually still needed to get two of Douay's brigades and another artillery unit across the Meuse. With Germans now approaching the bridges and setting up guns to command them, this was going to be tricky!

I did manage to march the infantry off. It looked as though our guns would be the problem.

Douay's artillery was theoretically close enough to escape, but getting guns through woods can be a struggle. Happily, my dice were kind and they made it.

However, as insurance, Mark had actually been obliged to have a brigade of 12th Cps advance across the Meuse so that his batteries could get away. They did so - but the infantry, pinned down by fire, could not! Consequently, we had extracted enough for a draw but were a unit short of what we needed for victory. Oh la vache!

Out of breath but exultant: panting Germans survey the fleeing French from the heights above the Meuse.

Reflections

Target Fixation. In the previous game, the Germans focused on pouring troops through the gap between the French corps, so they managed to interfere enough with the French retreat to earn a victory. This time, they devoted so much effort to wiping out the two rearguard brigades that the rest were able to get away relatively unmolested. This 'target fixation', the need to kill what's immediately in front of us rather than seeing the bigger picture, is a common syndrome among wargamers (and, indeed, in real life commanders).

Read the Victory Conditions! That's a stricture that always applies - that primary principle of war, 'maintain the aim' - and one that both sides neglected in this game. The Germans did so through their target fixation; we French did so through my careless reading at the start, so that I had to hastily correct near the end of the game. Had I not made that error, we could probably have organised our artillery's retreat better and ensured we got enough away to win.

Variables and Replay Value. These historical scenarios seem to have endless replay value. We can roll the same ones out again and again and they are still fresh and fun. That is because there are enough variables for them to be interestingly different each time. Some of those variables are due to the scenario structure, especially the fact that with BBB we can make the time and space large enough to not only provide room for manoeuvre but also provide options for both sides. The other major variable, though, is the players. Different players will approach a tactical challenge in different ways; even the same player will come up with different plans depending on whether they are feeling tired or aggressive or how they judge their opponent on the day ... so I am sure I will fight Beaumont again and I am sure it will be fun and different again.

Variables and Scenario Balance. We playtest BBB scenarios several times before sharing them with the world. The aim is of course to pitch the victory conditions so that both sides have a reasonable chance of victory, with a good chance of a draw as the 'par score'. A wise man (Mark J) once said to me scenario balance isn't that important, so long as the scenario produces a good game. Furthermore, I have come to realise that the margin of error, the engineering tolerance, in my scenario design is probably rather smaller than the variation in players' plans. In other words, players' tactical mistakes are likely to have a bigger impact on the result than any small skewing in the scenario balance.

Beaumont is one of the nine Franco-Prussian War scenarios in the BBB rulebook. These can be played as an episodic campaign in which the result of one battle affects the set-up for the next. There are another eight scenarios freely available in the BBB io group files.