Down the Wargame 'Rabbit-Hole'

Good grief, but I didn't think a wargames campaign would take up so much time purely in the setup! I've surprised myself, to be honest, but wanted to at least check in to say progress is ongoing. I'm currently working with a massive hex map I've made, by printing and taping twelve A4 pages together to produce a massive folding map of a fictional area. Whether the map covers a fictional continent like Europe or some minor Baltic Enclave beneath the notice of history, I haven't yet decided (or much see the need to ever decide!)

I am currently detailing the countries as per Tony Bath's advice, which is strangely 'against the grain' as far as I'm concerned. Normally I'm all in favour of reducing detail in a campaign to make play smooth and easy, but this system of Tony Bath & Co. goes the very opposite way. Everything, down to the population of farmhouses and the national budget is detailed by following his advice! Contrary to my expectations, this actually helps with the detail, as I feel I 'own' the creation far more with this sort of detail at my fingertips. Quite a pleasant surprise, I must say. I shall post again soon, with some map info and the basics of how one of my countries works. Back to the Exchequer!

Campaign Plans

It's been quite a while since I was wargaming anything SYW-related, to be honest, but the itch has not gone away. I have resolved on a new project for my nations of Aschenbach and Luftberg, in order to re-launch the enthusiasm. I was campaigning over the small province of Muckenmire, but things have degenerated and slowed so much it seems pointless to become bogged down in it. Time to man up, accept it's halted, and park it for a while. Maybe in the future I can pick it up again (the advantages of detailed record-keeping!)

So, what now? I had toyed with the idea of a large campaign which took on board some of the lessons I had learned from the Muckenmire campaign. I liked the hexes & movement, but felt I had allowed too small an area and clogged it with fortresses - possibly realistic, but something of a struggle to campaign in for a game. I also had higher ambitions, as a flip through the old rulebook 'Warfare in the age of Reason' by Tod Kershner saw the campaign system catch my eye. For those who don't have this, it's basically a full SYW campaign map, with the whole of Europe shown, plus the American Colonies & Indian Subcontinent included.

I liked the notion of something big-scale, but there was one problem: I had Prussian and Austrian armies, but no others - and I had sworn a solemn oath to myself that after long months painting the pair of them, I was never again painting a large 18th-Century army! I abandoned the idea, but the potential still remained and I turned it over and over in my mind.

Finally, another two sources of information/inspiration arrived! On a whim, I got the 'Campaign Cartographer' software for myself to let me draw good-quality maps (after just one too many uninspiring hand-drawn black & white effort) plus I ordered a copy of the old-style classic 'Setting up a Wargames Campaign' by Tony Bath.

I am currently reading through this and sketching out ideas, but I think that I am generally clear on the plan I have: Aschenbach and Luftberg fighting each other through a large map littered with minor principalities and duchies (who, through the influence of their powerful neighbours, just happen to have extremely similar uniforms) plus some colonial footholds that the two superpowers can scrap over through land and sea! I'm still reading onwards, but I shall keep you updated on my progress so you can see how things develop.

Battle at Grossenbasch

After a break over the xmas holidays, I thought I'd share some pics from a one-off fight I'd had. At random, I decided to just put each full army on a big table and fight out a stand-alone battle. Normally I have been recently doing this on the floor of the living room, but the knees don't take well to it! Instead I broadened out the dining room table by the simple method of putting down some sheets of MDF board to widen it from a small-ish rectangle into a large square area - and then I crammed every bit of scenery I had onto it, to make the terrain as challenging as possible.

After a brief setup, I was off! Each army advanced from it's setup area, rapidly gravitating towards the defensive positions around - of which there were many. Below is the Luftberg army in it's deployment zone, about to occupy a small hill to its front.

Below we have the Aschenbach army, which has the space for a more linear setup to the front, and guns packed on a hilltop behind.

The battle opened with the speedy Aschenbach advance in the centre, between the two areas of woodland. The centre offered only a narrow corridor for advance between these obstacles, so brigades of infantry went through one after the other. The object for Aschenbach became to have the two leading line infantry brigades swing left and right, leaving the enemy centre set up for the third brigade (made up of Grenadiers) to break through. The terrain is tough however - a stream on the left, a hill to the right, and an enemy-held village right in the centre!

Disaster looms! The Aschenbach infantry cause terrible casualties, but by trying to swing out and widen their front, they expose their flanks to enfilade fire as the Luftberg line bends back and becomes concave! The bluecoats flee, and the Luftberg line begins to advance. With Croats also sniping from the trees, could this be a total collapse for the Aschenbach army?

The grenadiers occupy the gap between the two woods, and crush the Luftberg advance with their steady volleys. The advancing tide is turned back, with the possibility of breaking the Aschenbach army part now rapidly fading - those grenadiers have sealed up the bottleneck like, erm, a cork in a bottleneck!

Sensing a loss of Luftberg strength, the grenadiers advance out to press on the enemy line. Luftberg units prove equal to the chance with their supporting batteries however, and the Grenadier advance is held - also thanks to some pretty aggressive counter-charging by the lively Hungarians!

And so, with the see-saw infantry battle over, the battle peters out in a standstill. The cavalry on each flank maintained a watchful hold on each other, waiting for one side or the other to gain an advantage in the centre before attacking. Sadly, that never came decisively for either side. The ground in the centre was certainly torn up, with an Aschenbach advance, then a Luftberg one, then a second Aschenbach attack, followed by yet another Luftberg counter-attack. As it turned out, the grenadiers were battered enough to pull back and hold the line long enough for all the batteries of artillery to be lined up in a protective screen. Each army had lost heavily, but neither had prevailed. I suppose the Aschenbach King can simply go home dissatisfied, but the Luftberg General will have a job writing to his Emperor and spinning this as a victory!

Hochkirch Re-fight Pics

Scandalous neglect! Sadly much real-life activity plus a total lack of opportunity has kept me from playing any games for a while, but I did recently manage to squeeze a half-sized battle onto my dining table, to re-fight the battle of Hochkirch. I won't give a large or detailed description, but shall post a few snaps I managed to take. The battle proved to be a real knockabout affair, and almost all the action took place in a 2ft x 2ft area on the Prussian flank, where the Austrian columns hit. Had I known, I would've simply written off a large portion of the field and scaled-up the area of interest, but there you go - you live and learn!

The full battlefield - Prussians deployed facing to the right, while the Austrians appear at the bottom of the table.

The Austrian attack columns

The Austrian attack columns - as seen from above

The Austrians attack the Prussian line around Hochkirch village.

The Prussians held them in a hot fight for a while, but the Austrians turned both flanks and steadily overwhelmed them by superior numbers.

Moving on to the next battle

Dear god, it's been nearly a full calendar month without any postings! Whatever is going on? Well, sadly the boring real world gets in the way now and then and weekends are fully-booked, which brings all opportunity for gaming to a crashing standstill. Shame, but there it is!

I have been toying with ideas however, primarily one about doing a historical re-fight. It dawned on me that my newly-completed armies could represent very good forces in a SYW-style refight. If I doubled the scale, a very big battle!

I checked online for some scenarios, and found a bunch of them available online for free via Sam Mustafa's excellent website for his rules 'Might & Reason' (championed here on my website on several past campaigns!) The link is:

http://www.sammustafa.com/honour/might-reason/mrscenario.html

After tabling the forces and relative sizes, I realised that the Battle of Hochkirch from 1758 was a plausible candidate for my dining room table, if I halved the unit size (i.e. represented each unit with a single base rather than the normal two.) I'm currently tinkering with scales and reduced areas, plus also trying to work out how to represent the landscape on the table (it appears that the battle map was basically a large sloping hill, with around seven different contoured heights given on the scenario map.) I was planning to make the terrain by putting some books under my grass-green throw-rug, but having 7 books mounded up at one end of the table and none at the other seems a touch ridiculous! Still, I'll contrive something roughly close enough to the historical map to let the refight go ahead - after all, with time so difficult to find, no little technical problem will cost me the chance for a tabletop scrap! So far, next weekend looks free, so I'm off to polish my breastplate and have my sabre sharpened up.

The Battle of Berkhoek

I have cracked the use of Battlechronicler, so I can now supply explanatory maps and cut down on text - always far better to get the casual blog reader to follow a battle report, I find!

The situation starts with the Aschenbach army behind the small stream near the village of Berkhoek. Their right is on a wood, while their left is near a marsh. The cavalry is on the left, while there is a small field redoubt between the cavalry and infantry to protect the line further.

The battle opens with an artillery exchange, with some troops falling on each side.

The Aschenbach line, seen from the redoubt.

The full Luftberg army, deployed in classic linear style.

The advance got underway - Luftberg planned to pin the front and quickly deliver a flanking blow with the cavalry, which would roll up the enemy line. The Right-Wing cavalry advanced rapidly, splashing through the stream in front of the enemy horse and taking heavy fire from the redoubt.

The cavalry press on and attack the enemy dragoons, flanking them and forcing them back. Elsewhere the left-wing cavalry continue to languish and make slow progress, while the infantry lines trade long-range volleys. The grenadiers push heroically forward however, showing the aggressive spirit necessary!

The cavalry battle in progress.

Presumably inspired by the example, the Hungarians cross the stream too, after the Grenadiers - one battalion of which charges and captures the artillery guns next to the redoubt in heroic style, but sadly the redoubt's defenders make further advance impossible without exposing their flanks to deadly fire. Where are the cavalry - they're surely meant to protect against this sort of thing!

The infantry lines stutter forward towards each other, with battalions being repeatedly halted in disorder by the hot fire. Aschenbach is naturally doing better here, outshooting it's more poorly-drilled rivals.

Aschenbach's line is straining as the casualties mount, but the reserve Fusilier battalion from the depot in the rear finally arrives to help out. Likewise, a battalion of IR7 refuses the flank to keep the line together.

At last! The left-wing cavalry finally roll an excellent move and ford the stream, heading deep into the enemy rear. The right-wing cavalry are stalemated, and a second attempt by the grenadiers to charge some cannons is halted in a storm of grapeshot. The line is holding, but only just - and there's nothing left to stop this cavalry attack threatening to descend. Von Hartling decides to withdraw slowly, hopefully avoiding the enemy cavalry before it can get a successful orders roll. Disaster strikes however, when Von Hartling completely fails his own orders roll - his army is a sitting duck!

Nooo! The cavalry commander on the Luftberg left wing gets the second full-effect orders roll - two turns in a row now! This incredible streak of form sees his horsemen descend onto the backs of the hard-pressed bluecoats, who promptly shatter like glass.

The disaster is total - two battalions are scattered, while a third is surrounded along with the surviving gunners. Caught deep within the milling hordes of Luftberg troops, there's nothing for it but to send out a white flag and begin the genteel process of negotiating an honourable surrender. Von Hartling does however use the time for this wisely, snatching his remaining infantry clear of the wreckage, abandoning the redoubt and falling back behind his cavalry as a screen.

Gentlemen, another glorious victory to the Elector Von Luftberg - champagne!

Technical Problems

Apologies for the delay, everybody. The battle is fought, but I am intending to post photos & the report along with maps using the Battlechronicler software - worth googling as it's a free download for your wargame maps etc. to put on your blog. Only problem is that I'm still going through the 'teething troubles' stage, getting the hang of how to use it. The results should be along soon, hopefully, so please bear with me!