Waterloo: "I have never felt so emotionally immersed in a game!"

The grand projet of compiling a book of BBB scenarios for all of Napoleon's bloodiest, biggest battles approaches completion. One rather important ingredient of that set is Waterloo. We first visited this for the bicentenary in 2015, when we did a demo game at our local military museum; reprised it later that year; then I ran it for my US buddies in 2016. Mark has now taken my original scenario and tweaked and polished it a bit. This week we playtested his version.

Everyone knows Waterloo. Napoleon is trying to prevent Wellington and Blücher from combining against him, so he needs to beat Wellington before Blücher turns up. In game terms, he has to hold 4 of the 5 Objectives for a win or 3 for a draw. These are Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte and Papelotte, which define the Allied line (Papelotte also represents a wedge between Wellington and the Prussians); and Plancenoit and Mont St Jean representing the French and Allied lines of communications. The French also lose an objective if either of the two Old Guard infantry units becomes Spent. (I know there are wargamers who think it is stupid to make Hougoumont an objective. I refer you to my essay, 'Victory Conditions in Wargames'. See also the thoughts at the end of this post.)

Dave donned Picton's top hat. Crispin put on his Wellingtons. Phil, with his particular affection for d'Erlon's corps, took the French right, leaving me to command the left and the Guard. Mark refereed and controlled the Prussians once they arrived.

The Allied line looked dauntingly solid. Phil and I decided not to attack it head-on. Our plan was an initial right hook with both d'Erlon and Lobau, while we built a grand battery to pummel the Allied centre. Reille was to shift right and sit behind the grand battery to keep us balanced. As for where to commit the Guard, that would depend how the first few turns went.

Eight pics below tell the story of how this plan worked out, followed by some reflections on the game as usual.

View from behind the French centre. Allied position on the ridge at top of pic. Hougoumont behind its orchard top left, La Haye Sainte top centre, Papelotte next right. D'Erlon's corps in the lead upper right, followed by Lobau around La Belle Alliance middle of pic. Reille is queuing up lower left, with the Guard bottom left. The Corsican ogre himself lower right, complete with Mameluke. (Nice armies, Mark, but come on - flock those bases, please!)

British view from behind a thin red (and green, black and blue) line along the sunken Ohain road atop the ridge, with a few reserves behind the centre in and around Mont St Jean, and garrisons posted forward in the three defensive bastions of Papelotte, La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont. Note how the left is hanging in the air. This is what our right hook targeted, much to Dave's consternation.

One last panoramic pre-game shot, this time from the west. Top centre and left of picture are the woods through which the Prussians will eventually emerge. The Allied right is also somewhat open, though Hougoumont is an obstacle to any left hook and there is also Chassé's Dutch-Belgian brigade in Braine l'Alleud just out of shot at bottom left corner.

French Turn 3: plan view of almost the whole battlefield (still couldn't quite get Chassé in). D'Erlon was slow to move out, thanks to a series of poor activation rolls, but there are now six French units across the stream upper right beyond Papelotte and Smohain/Frischermont. Saxe-Weimar's Nassauers (not 'masseurs', Dave - that's a different game) have been expelled from Papelotte and are now Spent.

Close-up of the exploitation from Papelotte. Lobau's men are about to complete the rout of the Nassauers, then pile into Picton's best infantry and shove them back as well.

Now the French plan evolves. Lobau's success and the menace of Milhaud's cavalry on the Allies' left flank have drawn every reserve away from the Allied right. The grand battery has formed with Reille behind it in the centre. The time is right to commit the Guard and Kellermann's cuirassiers in a left hook. not least because there isn't much space anywhere else. Here we see them advancing along the ridge that leads around the left of Hougoumont. Green cubes denote 'Aggressive' and the purple counter 'Shock' - good things to have on your side when it comes to the assault.

The high point of Lobau's and d'Erlon's attack. Out of shot to the right, one of d'Erlon's divisions will storm an Allied artillery position and deliver deadly fire into the flank of the Hanoverian Landwehr bottom right. Top left, Allied reserves frantically march east to contain the breach. Top centre is our nemesis, the Household Brigade, kept in hand by Old Nosey himself. These heavy cavalry are about to unleash a series of devastating charges.

No photos of what ensued on the French left as I was too busy actually doing it. The left hook ran into some murderous Allied volleys but managed to push the supporting units back from Hougoumont. The Old Guard stormed the chateau, then survived a sanguinary counter-attack. The Allied right was in tatters, its fragile Dutch-Belgian formations Spent and the British ones severely reduced.

'Die Teutschen kommen!' The Prussians began arriving halfway through the battle. They reached the environs of Papelotte at the same time as the Household Brigade smashed d'Erlon. Lobau was unable to resist this fresh force on his flank and was brushed aside in turn. Papelotte was retaken, though the Prussian focus there meant Plancenoit was never threatened.

However, in the meantime, the grand battery had done its work and Reille had taken La Haye Sainte. Counter-attacks were bloodily repulsed and the Allied centre was largely shredded as well. Little stood between us and Mont-St Jean! Albeit our right was collapsing even faster than the Allied right and centre.

Thus, as night fell, the French held Plancenoit, La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont - another classic BBB honourable draw.

Reflections:

Waterloo - it's a classic. Obviously it gets played and replayed so much because it is so famous and such an emblematic pinnacle of a quarter-century of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. But it also gets replayed because it has genuine replay value. We players try all sorts of different plans to prove that we're smarter than Napoleon. Left hooks, right hooks, smashmouth, combinations thereof, and the ultimate question of where to commit the Guard ... Mark described our French plan this time as 'very elegant'. Maybe so, but it still didn't work!

Identifying (and identifying with) units. Another good thing about Waterloo is that the commanders, formations and regiments are so familiar. It definitely helps bring a game to life when we can talk about 'committing the Household Brigade' rather than 'those red cavalry', or say 'stand firm the 52nd!', or when Dave can command his beloved Nassauers, etc. That in turn helps with players' engagement with the game. Quote of the night: 'I don’t think I have ever felt quite so emotionally immersed in a game – from frustration to elation to admiration to regret and finally despair!' (and bear in mind this was not that player's first rodeo).

Marshalling large forces. Echoing what I said after January's Borodino game, with over 20 units a side you really feel as though you are shifting weighty masses of troops around the table. Committing the Guard becomes a much more substantial decision when it's five potent units (plus artillery) rather than just one or two. It definitely gives a meaty, bloody big battle feel and makes it easier to pretend you're a Marshal of France.

Hougoumont: red herring or precious prize? I mentioned the fact that some think it is stupid to make Hougoumont an objective. There is certainly a case to be made that the historical French attack on Hougoumont was poorly planned and executed and didn't need to happen when it did. I am less sure about whether Napoleon could have ignored entirely. In our game, it wasn't my initial focus - I wanted to win by scrubbing away the weaker and less well ensconced units supporting it - but the chateau was a thorn in my side, and I actually found I needed to storm the chateau to break the line behind it anyway. If Napoleon wants to ignore the chateau, that means ignoring the Allied right. What does he do instead? As the scenario stands, the French don't have to take Hougoumont to win, but making it an Objective rewards them if they do capture this key to unlocking one sector of the Allied position. I think that's reasonable.

Bash Day IV brief report (Leeds 2023)

Pre-COVID we ran three Bloody Big Battles 'Bash Day!' conventions in 2016, 2017 and 2019. I see all three reports mention 'by popular demand' and 'convivial' and I see no reason to break with tradition now. Hence: by popular demand, we were all set to run Bash Day IV in 2020 when plague struck and cancelled everything.

By the time normality returned, our BD IV organiser, Colin, had emigrated to Yorkshire and become a member of Leeds Wargames Club. LWC is blessed with its own large premises, Hicks Hall, thanks to the generosity of the late Brian Hicks. LWC kindly let us have the use of the hall to take Bash Day oop north and away from Oxford for the first time.

Colin has put a full report with plenty of pretty pictures on his own blog here, so I will try to avoid duplicating his comments in making my own. Do read his as well.

Numbers were smaller than the previous events in Oxford, as distance made it unfeasible for quite a few regulars to attend, but BBB is about quality rather than quantity and we met some high-quality people for the first time. I'm only sorry I didn't get to chat to everyone as much as I'd have liked.

The Union V and XII Corps massed at the Chancellorsville crossroads, nestled in the heart of Virginia's famous rubberised horsehair woods. Battlemat and armies generously loaned by their creator, Crispin (much appreciated, thank you). Chancellor House also hand-crafted by Crispin. I don't usually bother with unit labels but I made the effort for Bash Day and they did help, especially the highlighted text to note distinctive unit attributes (yellow and green to show XII Cps is Fragile and Raw etc).

I ran my Chancellorsville ACW scenario, of which I'm rather proud, and it did not disappoint. On Day 1 everything that could go wrong for the Confederates did go wrong and they looked likely to be steamrollered. On Day 2 they turned it round completely, defeated a well-choreographed Union punch in the center, counter-attacked, smashed several Union corps and turned ignominious defeat into emphatic victory. I have to pay tribute to CSA C-in-C Ian for cheerfully laughing in the face of adversity, and also to his US opponents Guy and Stephen for equally cheerfully accepting their eventual defeat.

In the afternoon I got to play alongside Tom and against Guy in Matt Bradley's 2nd Manassas scenario, kindly run by Tim Carne - a good tough scrap, recommended. (Scenario is in the 1861 folder of the BBB group files.)

With the prior approval of Pete Berry at Baccus, we had scheduled Bash Day to happen the day before Baccus's Joy of Six show in Sheffield. The idea was that the prospect of the two events would attract more people to make the trip to Yorkshire and attend both. That may have worked in one or two cases; it may also have deterred some local gamers who could manage one wargames day in a weekend but not two. I've no idea what the net effect was really, but at least it meant we could go to JoS ourselves and have a convivial time there as well. (See what I did there?)

All told it was a thoroughly successful and enjoyable weekend. We met a lot of good people, entertained and inspired some new players sufficiently to invest in the BBB rules, caught up with some old friends, and generally had a great time. The guys are already talking about planning Bash Day V!

Update: Bash Day V will be held at Battlefield Hobbies, Daventry, on Sunday 19 May. Details here.

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Sunday's entertainment at Joy of Six. Ian and the Deesside wargamers (IIRC) laid on this beautiful game of the German invasion of Leros in 1943. Cleverly streamlined rules for convention play produced a fast and close game in which the brilliant defence Mark and I planned was narrowly overcome by jammy German dice. (That's my story anyway.) Many thanks to our good hosts and our gallant opponents.

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Finally, a propos of nothing, a different recent outing:

If you are ever in central Birmingham (UK) and fancy a WWI-themed lunch of superior pub grub, you could do worse than 'The Old Contemptibles'.

Ukraine with FFT

My mate Graham spent the 1980s in Germany defying the Soviet threat. He still has a bucket-load of 1/300 West German and Soviet tanks from those days when he was winning the Cold War by playing it out on the tabletop.

We decided to dust them off to explore what is happening in the Ukraine right now. Apologies to any readers who feel current tragic real-world events are not an appropriate subject for a game. This was an exercise in technical curiosity, no political dimension and no bad taste involved. We set up a notional scenario loosely based on the Ukrainian offensive apparently in progress right now just to see how things might go. I say 'loosely' because we had only the sketchiest idea of what the Ukrainian and Russian forces look like and how they operate.

The scenario situation is that three battalions or so of Russians are dug in along a river line, some minor tributary of a larger tributary of the Dnepr. They have only a little armour on-table but a mechanized battalion in reserve. The Ukrainians will probe with three recce companies initially before deciding where to commit their main body.

 

Here is some grainy drone footage of the battlefield, looking north from the Russian side. Mostly open country with occasional villages and small woods. Light green patches are marshy ground. Yellow patches are Ukrainian sunflower fields. The main river runs across the centre of the table from left to right, with minor streams feeding it. Three bridges cross the main river. The Ukrainians' nominal mission is to take one of these for a draw or two for a win.

 

Ukrainian recce probed the eastern bridge first and found it strongly defended by two infantry companies (one dug in behind the bridge, the other in the sunflower field top right) supported by a mech company in the village in the foreground. Plumes of smoke top of pic show how Luchs armoured cars fared against T-72s' 125mm rounds and BMPs' missiles. However, Ukrainian troops have got into the village top left and are about to bring down lots of artillery fire on the Russians.

Then the Ukrainian scouts snuck away to the west to investigate the central bridge. Amazingly, they found it undefended! (Rather than plot a prepared defence and map it, I had scattered twice as many counters as I had Russian units, then rolled a D6 as each was 'bumped'. On 4+ I deployed a company, otherwise it was a dummy. I had five or six counters around this bridge but they all evaporated. Our rationale was that the Ukrainians must have struck a seam between units like at the famous 'Bull Bridge' during Operation Bluecoat in 1944 - perhaps between the Wagner group and the Russian army?) The Ukrainian recce promptly jumped in and seized it, backed up by some prowling Leopards top of pic.

 

We decided that would probably trigger a Russian counterattack, so over the next two moves I brought on the reserve mech battalion. Here the first two mech companies approach from the southwest (we made reinforcement arrival points semi-random).

 

Graham's artillery fire had been singularly ineffective until now, struggling to roll any 5s or 6s. This is the reason why - he was using a couple of D3s. His luck improved after we realised this.

 

The Russian counterattack develops as a third mech company arrives from the southeast to envelop the Ukrainian defenders of the central bridge. Unfortunately for the Russians, the Ukrainians have decided to reinforce success, so more Leopards and Marders are arriving top of pic.

 

The ruleset we used was 'A Fistful of TOWs' (FFT). Combat in FFT is swift and lethal. Within a couple of turns, most of my mech battalion was burning wrecks as superior NATO equipment and training demonstrated the quality gap. The Ukrainians lost a few as well, but with their armour virtually all gone, the Russian infantry - though numerous - had no real option but to hunker down in their trenches. We stopped there, but the Ukrainians had secured a draw and looked good for an eventual win.

 

And to finish: a parade shot of just a fraction of Graham's collection that never made it onto the table. M113s, Jagdpanzers, Gepards etc, all in functional factory finish.

Reflections:

Just a Game: The first thing to say is that this bore little relation to reality. I just read yesterday that Ukraine is reporting advances of "200 to 500 metres" in fierce fighting, whereas our game of bold armoured manoeuvre produced a relatively swift and easy 3km+. I suppose what is actually happening is more like a WWII infantry assault against prepared defences, with lots of fire support on both sides to pin everyone down, and the Russians apparently conducting "manoeuvre defence" - planned fighting withdrawal through successive defensive lines - rather effectively. Our game was closer to a hastily improvised defence (albeit with trenches): none of the minefields and obstacles that I am sure the Russians have, minimal Russian artillery rather than the considerable support and effective fire plans they evidently have, we underrated the infantry's anti-armour weaponry, the undefended bridge was a highly unlikely fluke, and I played the Russian infantry as essentially passive rather than reacting as intelligently as they seem to be. Also, having read some studies that comment on the effects of drone surveillance and the resulting need for dispersion and mobility, I would have liked to add some scenario special rules to reflect those, but as I last played FFT a decade or so ago and Graham had never used them, that would have been a complication too far. All that said, I suppose our game with its unrealistic and unsuccessful Russian tactics at least partly illustrated why they have opted for the alleged manoeuvre defence instead.

Quality vs quantity: always a good match-up. You could say the game was rigged in that we rated the Russians as "Average" in FFT terms and the Ukrainians as "Good". This quality difference then plays out in both to-hit rolls and saving rolls. This really told once the HEAT and APFSDS started flying.

Lack of practice makes imperfect: although Graham and I are both broadly familiar with the characteristics of the modern kit we were using, how that translates into tabletop interactions using an unfamiliar ruleset is a different story. Our inept fumbling and consequent poor tactics probably made the game even less realistic than it already was.

Get the toys on the table: the gap since my last post betrays the fact that I've gone a few weeks without a game. It was good just to push some models around and roll some dice; doubly so because I rarely get to play a moderns game and some variety in gaming diet is both healthy and refreshing.

Unpredictability makes for interesting games: the semi-random mechanisms for revealing Russian defenders and for arrival of reinforcements worked very well, producing surprises of both pleasant and unpleasant varieties for both sides. While the undefended bridge was improbable in the intended real-world setting, it is by no means without precedent in other real-world situations, and it was great for creating a game narrative and giving both players something unexpected to react to.

Recommendations for future research (as academic papers usually end by saying): Notwithstanding my previous blog post about what dull games frontal assaults usually are, I just might try a more serious version of this, making a proper effort to set up a thoroughly prepared Russian defence - complete with successive defensive lines, obstacles, fireplans and planned withdrawals - and then try to crack it with a similarly well thought-out Ukrainian plan. It would take some effort but that could be justified by the reward.

Can frontally assaulting redoubts make a good game? Düppel (1864)

How many games have we all seen or endured that are just a boring line-out, wall to wall troops from table edge to table edge, with few tactical options beyond grinding forward and hoping to roll high?

How much more painful is it when one side is entrenched and has virtually nothing to do except keep rolling fistfuls of firing dice?

OK, I know it is possible to revel in such games simply because of the occasion and the spectacle. People will refight Pickett's Charge, or the Charge of the Light Brigade, and it will be awesome just because the original was so epically disastrous and because recreating it with your buddies in glorious 28mm has to be fun, right?

But for those of us for whom a game should be about making interesting and challenging decisions every turn - no thank you. (No disparagement of any beautiful Pickett's Charge game intended, it's just not for me.) I want options, choices, the chance to make an actual plan and see it succeed or fail. I don't want everything straitjacketed and railroaded and all the important decisions already made for me in how the game is set up.

It's a cracker! Specifically - the Rolf Krake.

1/600 model of Denmark's 1864 ironclad, scratchbuilt by Crispin for his Dybbøl/Als game.

Therefore, when I was creating the scenarios for the "Bloody Big European Battles!" companion volume to the BBB rules, I was confronted by a conundrum. The major action in the Second Schleswig-Holstein War of 1864 was the Prussian storming of the Danish redoubts at Dybbøl, aka Düppel. This war had to be covered in the book, so this battle had to be there. Not counting the preliminary bombardment, it lasted three and a half hours, costing thousands of casualties, but can essentially be boiled down to this: Prussians storm the line of redoubts; Danish reserve brigade counterattacks; Prussians commit reserves in return; Danes surrender.

That really didn't appeal to me as a game. Perhaps there could be some tactical decisions for the Danes about whether/when/how individual battalions should fall back from the redoubts, or where/when/how to move the individual battalions of the reserve brigade. For the Prussians, perhaps some nuance about which battalion attacks which redoubt, or how to exploit success, and where/when/how to commit reserve battalions. But for a big battle game that should be about manoeuvring entire brigades or divisions and that should generate some ebb and flow ... there just wasn't enough there.

So what to do? I found salvation in the battle's prelude and aftermath: the minor outpost skirmishes in the two months before it, then the amphibious invasion of the island of Als two months later. These were not worth a BBB scenario in themselves - Als cost the Prussians fewer than 400 casualties - but they offered an opportunity to shape the actual assault on Dybbøl, to give it context and consequences, and (most importantly) to give the players on both sides more scope for decisions and manoeuvre.

It was feasible to fit all these actions on a single 6'x4' table at the modest scale of 1700m per foot. I therefore decided to treat them as three linked phases of the same scenario: Outposts Stage; Redoubts Stage; and Als Invasion Stage. Prussian numbers make Danish military defeat virtually inevitable. The trick to making it a challenge was to put the Prussians under time pressure with a turn limit. The idea is that the Danes are trying to buy time for the other great powers to intervene and lean on Prussia and Austria to call their dogs off. Thus, for each stage I set certain objectives the Prussians have to take before moving on to the next: e.g., if they overrun the outposts swiftly, they gain time for a more methodical assault on the redoubts, etc. Ultimately, they have to take all the objectives within 10 turns to win or 11 to draw; otherwise, they lose.

Crispin made a custom battlemat and rolled it out for us at OWS last week. Luke, Ben and John fancied defending the Danish cause, so Mark, Dave W and I took the Prussians. AAR in three captioned photos below, followed by some reflections.

Looking southeast across the battlefield. Top left is the island of Als, separated from the mainland by the Alssund. Pontoon bridge top centre links it to the high ground defended by the Dybbøl redoubts (the light green strips with gun embrasures). White counters mark the objectives. Prussians are marching on from bottom left and bottom right. One lone Danish brigade is forward in the lowest wood on the right; two more in the villages behind it; the other Danish division in the redoubts.

Mark commanded our left. As time was critical, his sensible advice was that we should ignore and bypass the forward brigade initially, press ahead as fast as possible, and let it be tackled by our follow-on forces arriving on Turns 2 & 3. However, I could not resist getting my jaegers into action , so I let two of my brigades get involved in a fight in the woods immediately. I did bypass with the other two, but carelessly failed to bring them on as far east as I could have.

My carelessness was compounded by a spate of dismal movement rolls across the Prussian army. One turn I rolled 2, 2 and 3 for three of my brigades, which therefore failed to move at all, while Mark did little better. Consequently, I think it took us 5 turns to take all the Outposts and be able to move on to the Redoubts Stage.

First Prussian assault on the redoubts. Our massed siege guns line the hill in the foreground. We outnumber the Danes about 4:1. The pic isn't big enough to fit all the Prussians in. The good news for the Danes is that the tardy Rolf Krake has finally got up steam and is raking the German attackers. That plus kind dice meant it took two goes before we could break into the redoubts. Turns 6 and 7 gone - we really needed to clear the remaining Danish brigade off the hill in Turn 8.

Keeping the red flag flying! That blue counter and Dannebrog flag belong to the last unit of the Redoubts garrison, a Spent 2-base Danish brigade, being assaulted by four Prussian brigades. It was swept aside, of course. However, the clock die reveals that it had survived the crucial Turn 8 the turn before, as most of our troops failed to get the movement they needed to reach it, and Danish fire stalled those that did.

We moved on to the Als Invasion Stage. We knew we needed at least two turns of movement to reach the Als objectives, so with nine turns gone it was impossible for us to take them on Turn 10 to win. A draw was still possible if fortune favoured us a little. But Lady Luck was against us - one more turn and we would have done it, but we had failed, and victory went to the gallant Danes.

Reflections:

It's a micro-campaign! I'm rather proud of the scenario structure. My Reflections on Wargaming essay on "Changing Situations Mid-Game" didn't mention this scenario, but probably should have. The three stages give two opportunities to reset and they create repeated peaks of excitement in between, as the Prussians try desperately to complete each stage and the Danes try to fend them off. The Danes also have important decisions about how many troops to commit and where during the first two stages. All told, it definitely has more options and more replay value than a straight assault would have.

Mistakes in Deployment are not Easily Rectified. Isn't that a von Moltke saying? Maybe Moltke the Younger in 1914? Anyway, I managed to prove it right this time. By letting myself be distracted by one irrelevant outpost brigade, I cost our advance precious time that we could never recoup.

The Maritime Dimension. Having a naval element in the game - in this case, the Rolf Krake (loved it) and then the crossing of the Alssund (albeit that is basically abstracted) - enhances both the aesthetic and the game interest. 

Right and Wrong Ways to Divide Command. On the German side, we didn't divide very sensibly: Mark on the left had a clear sector to himself, but on the right, I had the leading forces while Dave took the ones arriving on Turns 2 & 3 in the same sector. I'm sure that contributed to my carelessness. By contrast, the three Danish players decided they didn't have enough troops to divide up, so they made the interesting decision to divide command by time instead, each of them commanding in a different stage of the game (except Luke got the Rolf Krake throughout as his stage was going to be the shortest). This meant they always had unified command and therefore a clearer, more focused approach, vindicated by victory.

Yes, Assaulting Redoubts Can Make a Good Game! (To answer my own question in the headline.) It was a rocking good time, complete with whoops of success, cries of woe and wails of dismay. Even though the Danish force was largely wiped out, the Danish players greeted each turn that they survived with jubilation. Happy days!

"Hungary 1849" reviewed: "a cracking read"!

I was delighted today to see the first review of my recently published book, "Hungary 1849: The Summer Campaign". I am obliged to Colin Ashton for reviewing it on his "Carryings On Up The Dale" blog, here.

Colin gave a very generous review to the previous volume, "Hungary 1848: The Winter Campaign". This time he is equally kind. Phrases like "Chris Pringle has again done a superb job" and "a sympathetic translation, forensically researched and presented, and a cracking read to boot!" are calculated to warm any author's heart. (As is giving it five stars on Amazon - thanks, Colin.)

I hope I might have a chance at some wargame show or other such event to express my appreciation to Colin in person, but for now let me publicly thank him here.

Golan Heights tank battle: Nafah (1973) (oh, and Ramillies again)

The long Easter weekend provided a rare opportunity for a game with Bob Mackenzie. As I'm getting plenty of BBB horse and musket action at OWS these days, I put in a bid for a tank battle and Bob kindly obliged. (Earlier in the week I also got another go at Ramillies - see brief report at foot of this post.)

The setting was the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Bob's scenario can be found along with many other good things on his website. The scenario depicts the action around the Israeli base at Nafah on the Golan Heights on the second day of the war. The Syrians have broken through on this southern sector of the Golan and are hooking right to cut off the Israeli defenders on the northern sector. The Israelis are responding by frantically scrambling troops from all directions to fill the gap.

It's a classic contest of quantity versus quality: roughly four big Syrian brigades vs three small Israeli ones. Especially in the early moves, the Syrians have a big numerical advantage which they can exploit to envelop the few defenders who start on the pitch and to race towards undefended objectives on the far side of the table. However, it doesn't take much for the poor quality Syrian units to become spent and therefore much less useful in attack and very vulnerable in defence.

The 17 photos below tell the story of the game. They're followed as usual by my reflections arising from it. (And then by a brief Ramillies photo-AAR and more reflections on that too.)

View looking NW. All Syrians enter from SE (bottom table edge). They will find a couple of Israeli units in the middle of the table and a tiny garrison in Nafah (the buildings). Syrian objectives are Nafah, the three road exits at top, and the top right hill (Tel Avital).

Not sure which is more fearsome: Israeli Centurions, or Israeli artillery (in this case, M7 Priests). All the models in this game are from Bob's collection - mostly Heroics & Ros, I believe.

More Centurions, this time supported by M50 155mm - oh, and some recce jeeps (who will wisely enter the table last after the serious fighting is over)

Had to give these exotic creatures a pic of their own: T-34/122, a Syrian conversion.

The meat and potatoes: Syrian T-62s (there were also a lot of T-55s).

On Turn 1 my 51st Brigade tried to bully the isolated Israeli delaying force. Sukhoi Su-7B joins the fun. Unfortunately the Centurions have us outnumbered more than one to two ...

Same episode seen from the other side of the table.

Turn 3. The only Israeli units are the now damaged 266th Bn, 188 Bde HQ, and the Nafah garrison. The small 2-model 82nd Bde has been wiped out. However, most of my units are Disrupted (marked by craters) and the two at right and bottom of pic are Spent and Low on Ammo (marked by hospital tents and ammo crates). The poor quality Syrian units can't take nearly as much punishment as the Israelis.

Turn 4 and Israeli counter-attacks arrive from two directions, NW and SW, hitting my front and left). Here comes the frontal hit - I think my mech bde miraculously survived this time but still had to fall back.

The hit from the left was brutal and soon put paid to any ideas I might have had about storming Nafah. The quality difference gave the Israelis a +2 advantage in every assault and fire combat. This is huge on 2D6. Oh, and my Sukhois are done for the day and it is time for Israeli Skyhawks to arrive.

The metaphorical and literal high point of the Syrian attack: 43 Bde's Mech Bn ensconces itself on the top of the Tel Avital objective and sets up its Sagger missile launchers. 

Turn 6, the halfway mark. Most of my force mills around in the middle of the table. The Syrians are all rated Passive, a -1 penalty on all their activation rolls when in good order. That doesn't half slow your blitzkrieg down. No such problems on the Israeli side as their 96th Tank Bn ploughs on through my left flank. 

By now, the Israelis have got four artillery units into action. Here we see those M50s close up. All that firepower was devastating.

Turn 7. Not so many Syrian green unit labels visible now, and more white Israeli ones are pushing forward from the left of pic and in the centre. Two arty bns park on the road exits at top edge. One joins the Skyhawks in obliterating my hilltop battalion, top right. So much for that objective.

It was one-way traffic for the next three turns as the Centurions steamrollered my disorganised, outflanked, rubbish formations. Turn 10 sees me commit my last intact unengaged tank battalion - unengaged because it failed to move for four successive turns despite the bde HQ being next to it ... every artillery piece and aircraft in Israel opens up to make sure it's not going anywhere. Holding zero objectives meant I was one short of a draw. I can console myself with the fact that it's still a pretty historical result. Bob said I'd done better than he did when he played the Syrians.

In fairness, I had inflicted a dreadful toll in white metal alloy on Bob's force - no fewer than 8 strength points. That's a lot of damaged Centurions.

Against the Israelis' 8 SP lost, I think I count a mere 43 Syrian casualties. Clearly a Pyrrhic victory for the Israelis, then.

Reflections:

I do like tank games. As with C19 horse and musket, the mix of the three different major arms (infantry, armour, artillery) makes the tactics interesting and produces battles with depth and scope for manoeuvre - a good recipe for fast-moving games with changing situations.

Nice scenario. It's almost as though Bob follows his own advice - see his great essay on scenario design. Room for manoeuvre, grand tactical options for different plans, both sides having to move a lot, action across most of the table ...

Victory conditions: Bob did say he felt the victory conditions were too difficult for the Syrians. He has now adopted modified conditions based on my suggestion. The Syrians no longer have to hold objectives, they get victory points just for reaching/taking some 'high water mark' locations. The Israelis for their part get VPs by reaching locations along the Syrian baseline, representing the degree to which they cut off or crush the Syrian force. (And giving those Israeli jeeps something useful to do.)

Quality vs quantity: always a nice contrast. The game demonstrated very well how the quality difference produced the actual historical result. It prompted a long post-game discussion between us about the importance of leadership, right down to NCO level, as illustrated in many a conflict down the ages.

Knowing the rules helps. We were using Bob's WWII/Moderns adaptation of "Bloody Big Battles!", BBWW2B. On previous occasions I've enjoyed Bob's WWII and modern games but had to rely on Bob a lot because I found the rules a bit fiddly, I guess because of the wide variety of armour and anti-tank ratings and resulting complex interactions. This time, almost all the tanks were effectively the same, it was crew quality that made the difference, so I found it easier. Even so, ignorance cost me at times: eg, if I had known my Saggers were so useless and my infantry so vulnerable, I might have had 43 Mech Bn hide behind the objective rather than on top of it.

Beautiful models. Bob is a craftsman and it is a pleasure to play his games and use his armies.

===

Now let us step back nearly 300 years to the War of the Spanish Succession. Matt reran the scenario we played last August (AAR here). This time I commanded the French left wing. AAR in the photo captions, followed by further reflections.

 

Initial French set-up before the allies deploy. Essentially: beefy garrisons in each of the three main objectives (fortified villages) and also in the village on the river on the right flank. Massed cavalry on the heights guard the open ground on our right. More cavalry in reserve behind our left wing.

 

The bourbon fleur-de-lys flutters gaily over Autre-Eglise, whose gallant defenders will soon become gallant attackers to threaten English-held Foulz.

 

Marshal Villeroi himself stands ready to hurl his cavalry reserve forward to support the attack on Foulz.

 

The allied dispositions are revealed, presaging determined and repeated assaults on Ramillies itself (lower left), with cavalry in support to push back our right wing.

 

How it ended up. Red labels are allies, pale labels are Franco-Bavarian. Left of pic, early high dice for my defenders' fire soon stymied any thought Matt had of taking Autre-Eglise. This encouraged Mark and me to commit reserves and push towards Foulz. However, the marshy valley and some deadly British volleys in return stalled us. Top left can be seen two British cavalry units who must have been commanded by the Duke of York, as all they did all battle was march slowly and with frequent halts to and fro along the Foulz ridge. Right centre: Ramillies fell to the fourth British assault, I think. Mark mounted a couple of counter-attacks but couldn't retake it. However, he did hang onto Taviers, and although his cavalry were pushed back they prevented the allied horse from breaking through to the road exit objective in our rear. Thus, the allies barely scraped a draw.

Reflections:

Linear warfare! With Matt's rule mods, this is a very different game. It becomes crucially important to plan a couple of moves ahead and ensure your troops are pointing in the right direction from the start. It definitely feels as though it captures the essence of 18th-century warfare. It certainly had us all pretending to have powdered our wigs and starched our lace so we could bow and flourish appropriately before inviting our opponents to fire first.

What to do with cavalry? I demonstrated again that I am a light infantryman at heart and should not be trusted with horse. (Just self-deprecating for effect - maybe I could have done better with them but I didn't do anything disastrous either.)

The fun factor of special units. In amongst all the regular field and light artillery, Matt mixed in a couple of units of siege guns and mortars with special capabilities. Siege guns rated Devastating but had to reload (miss a shot) after every shot; mortars negated one column shift for cover. Players had fun firing with these and trying to nullify them.

Beautiful models (again) - just a feast for the eyes.

Mahdists and Magyars - another fun club night at OWS

OWS's rude health continues. This week's game was so over-subscribed we had to lay on a second so everybody could play. The two battles were very different, but similar in both being obscure and both presenting very distinctive tactical challenges:

- Shaikan (1883), in which 40,000 Mahdists massacred Hicks Pasha's 10,000 or so hapless Egyptians;

- Szőreg (1849), in which retreating Hungarians fight a delaying action against imperial Austrian and Russian forces breaking out across a defended dike.

Both games were so exciting and absorbing that there is a paucity of pictures. I'll offer the few that Dave T and I did take and describe the games in the captions, followed by some reflections as usual. Two for Shaikan first:

 

Essentially this scenario is a race in which the Egyptian force has to dash from one corner of the table (top of photo) to the opposite one (bottom right of photo) and exit a certain number of units. The photo shows most of the Egyptian force being massacred mid-table, but some are about to get away - will it be enough?

 

Close-up of the one cavalry unit and one baggage train that did escape - enough for Dave T to claim a draw. He said the scenario is an interesting combination of moving fast (the Egyptians need 6 full moves out of 9 turns to reach the far corner) while being able to concentrate the fire of a couple of units to take on the big Mahdist units. As they are rated Aggressive, if the Mahdist units close they can easily wipe out one Egyptian unit and then overrun a second. 

And now two photos of the climax of our Szőreg game. (We last played this scenario a year ago; report here gives more background.)

View from the Hungarian side with one turn remaining. The imperials have broken out from their entrenched bridgehead (top right), easily cleared some irregulars out of the wood objective top left, but not advanced far enough to take the village beyond it (out of shot, lower left of pic). On our right, the Polish Legion did a great job of delaying the allied advance across the embrasured dike that runs across upper centre of pic. The Poles (pink hats, bottom right) and friends are now holding two of the three Szőreg village objectives (foreground) against three disrupted Austrian brigades (the white-uniformed chaps with the yellow Disruption markers). Thus the Austrians only hold two objectives (the dike and the wood); they need two more for a draw and three for a win.

 

The Austrians needed everything to go right for them on their final turn. Their small unit upper left got the full move it needed to seize the empty village lower left. Both units in the centre managed to rally and charge. The rockets (top centre) moved up and added crucial fire, meaning that when the Austrians rolled boxcars for their attacking fire, my defending infantry were not just disrupted or damaged but wiped out. The small hussar unit on its own could not withstand the massed assault, so the Austrians took the central village objective as well. Finally, because we had failed to withdraw some troops scheduled to retreat, there was a 50-50 roll; this succeeded and gave the Austrians the final objective they needed for victory.

A word about this last point. Historically, most of the Hungarian army withdrew without fighting because other Austrian corps were conducting strategic outflanking to north and south. The 50-50 'flank threat' rolls are incurred if any of three Hungarian contingents are committed instead of withdrawing. We withdrew two of the three. In retrospect, we would have done better to commit the lot, giving good guarantees of holding a couple more objectives, and take our chances on the 50-50 rolls. I'm sure Clausewitz would agree.

Reflections:

What a happy club! Great to have so many players and two such exciting games.

Unusual situations make for good games. I was pleased that both Mark and Crispin separately enthused about Szőreg's distinctive nature. It presents unique challenges for both sides, which makes it interesting for the players. Evidently the same was true of Mark's Shaikan race-against-massacre game.

Principles of war apply on the wargame table. I've been reading a lot of Clausewitz again lately. (Some readers may not know I've published translations of three histories by Clausewitz.) Reviewing my actions through a Clausewitzian lens, I can see I transgressed some of his advice (again). Must try harder.

Good scenario design makes for great games. As I said, both games were so absorbing, we hardly took any photos. They both produced super-exciting, tense, close finishes that came down to the last few dice. It takes judicious scenario design to achieve that fine balance. Special kudos to Mark for making such a good game out of such a one-sided massacre as Shaikan.

Szőreg is one of the scenarios in the "Bloody Big Hungary '48 Battles!" campaign book.