Back to bases

In this article we will be discussing some of the various issues in representing the War of 1812 and battles of a similar scale on the tabletop. In particular we are looking at the battle of Chippawa. Lets start with a picture of the army outlined in the earlier article we I looked at the American OOB for the battle.

The above picture shows almost the entire American army for the battle of Chippawa with 30cm ruler behind it to give an indication of how much terrain it covers. The bases shown here in the picture are the one introduced for the Napoleons battles rules and are 20cms wide.While it is not clear the area covered by the American army covers a distance of about 40 cms. This means the battle can be fought on a small table such as a coffee table.While there is some appeal in this idea. I have a bigger table that I wish to use. So we need to look at unit sizes or unit representation.

This works out into two options that I can see. Bigger bases or more bases, not to mention a mixture of the two.Both options involve more figures but not more units. For me this should not be hassle as the units shown are only part of what I have painted. Though rebasing is always a pain. The number of bases may be an issue of ergonomics as reducing the number of bases makes it easier to handle the units as indeed these bases can be fiddly.The current fashion here is the Napoleonic field of glory is a 4cm base with 8 figures on on it. Which is two of the NB bases. Rebasing opens up the ability to fit in other players and their rules sets. It also has the ease that everything is on the same sized bases.

Recommendation: Rebase to 4cm bases.

So what are we representing with these bases. The basic unit of infantry we are representing is the battalion of foot. A battalion can be further divided into a number of subunits. Using the British as as an example you have wings or half battalions. Each wing divides into two divisions and each division into two platoons and so on. Each subunit being comprised same number of files or at least as equal it can be.The smallest possible subunit is the section of five files and three sections a platoon, giving the smallest battalion a strength of 120 files or 240 rank and file.

Now that is what the drill book has to say. Reality is a completely different thing. The first is that smaller units are often combined into larger units. At Chippewa the American 9th and 22nd infantry are combined into a single battalion. This is a nice clean example of what can happen. Other examples during the war are less clear, you have both sides run brigades of multiple battalions that are smaller than the TOE of single battalion. Are these grouped together into a single battalion. Then there are the various adhoc taskforces that are created both on the battlefield and in the wider campaigning area.

From this there are three conclusions that can be drawn.

Conclusion: The platoon is nice but impractical
Conclusion: An even number of stands
Conclusion: There a minimum unit size.

Dealing with the last two together it  it would appear that the smallest possible unit consists of two stands. One advantage of the war of 1812 is that you can pretty much track down the unit size for all the battle.

125	14th infantry	Crysler's Farm
144	89th foot	Crysler's Farm
150	1st infantry	Lundy's Lane
150	light	Crysler's Farm
171	1st foot	Lundy's Lane
184	advance	Crysler's Farm
200	2nd lincoln	Chippawa
200	9th infantry	Lundy's Lane
200	11th infantry	Lundy's Lane
225	12th infantry	Crysler's Farm
225	13th infantry	Crysler's Farm
225	16th infantry	Crysler's Farm
240	89th foot	Crysler's Farm
246	5th Pen	Lundy's Lane
250	bn 10th infantry	Chateauguay
250	ny militia	Lundy's Lane
275	8th foot	Lundy's Lane
300	22nd infantry	Lundy's Lane
300	23rd infantry	Lundy's Lane
300	9th infantry	Crysler's Farm
300	11 infantry	Crysler's Farm
304	49th foot	Crysler's Farm
321	33RD INFANTRY	Chateauguay
336	inc militia	Lundy's Lane
341	24rd infantry	Chippawa
350	light infantry corp us	Chateauguay
354	25th infantry	Chippawa
375	25th infantry	Crysler's Farm
376	glengarry	Lundy's Lane
380	25th infantry	Lundy's Lane
400	8th foot	Chippawa
400	1st foot	Lundy's Lane
415	maine and new hampshire vol	Chateauguay
416	11 infantry	Chippawa
425	89th foot	Lundy's Lane
425	21st infantry	Crysler's Farm
432	21st infantry	Lundy's Lane
460	100th foot	Chippawa
500	1st foot	Chippawa
541	5th Pen	Chippawa
549	9/22 infantry	Chippawa
591	4th infantry	Chateauguay
635	103rd Foot	Lundy's Lane
651	22st infantry	Chippawa
700	31/31st infantry	Chateauguay
762	11/29th infantry	Chateauguay

Well I haven't done them all yet but a quick peruse of three books bu Donald Graves( Fields of Glory, Where right and glory lead and Red coats Greyjackets) has given me a list of 46 to discuss. The list is somewhat arbitrary and not fully representative except of those battle covered. But hopefully we can learn something from them. So lets look at the largest and smallest.

The largest is the 762 men of the combined 11th and 29th infantry at Chateauguay. This is close to being a full strength unit but is still short of that mark.As such while you should be able to field this as your largest normal unit you may need to go larger.

At the other extreme is the smallest the 125 men of the 14th infantry at Crysler's farm. Fortunately we have the opportunity to dismiss it from our list as a unit. Graves describes it as moving as part of a column with the 11th infantry. This allows us to create  the 11th/14th infantry with a strength of 425 men.  Its possible that this is so.

Moving up the list the next is not so east to dismiss. Its the 144 men of the 89th foot under Captain Barnes also at Chysler's Farm. Its role in the battle was to provide supports to Lt.Col Pearson,s advance guard of light troops. So by rights they should be counted as part of his command and eventually raising the possibility of forming a battalion under his command. But Pearson is wounded and his command retires away from Barnes command. Leaving them independent for the rest of the battle.

There are also a number of units only a little bit bigger than Barnes command. So to keep the math simple 150 men smallest to 750 men largest or five times greater.

Conclusion: If your smallest unit is two stands your largest will be ten stands with the possibility of being larger

150 men for your smallest unit equates to 75 men per stand or about 35-40 files.This slightly smaller than the original Black powder cold steel. Now how does this translate into the other arms of cavalry and artillery, A cavalry file is allocated approximately 50% more frontage than an infantry file which roughly equates to a meter. So a cavalry stand has 24-26 files or 50 horse.An artillery section of two guns also fits neatly onto a base with a frontage of about 25 meters.

So the basics are done.Of course the hardest part is making a plan and sticking to it.

The Battle of Chippawa

Okay now that I have posted Black Powder Cold Steel. Lets look at a particular battle. In this case the battle of Chippawa. This battle has the advantage of being not to big and both forces being relatively equal in size.

For sources I will use Donald Graves Red Coats Grey Jackets

American Order of battle

First Brigade

Ninth/Twenty Second Infantry -549 Men/5 stands
Eleventh Infantry- 416 Men / 4 stands
Twenty Fifth Infantry - 354 Men/ 4 stands

Second Brigade

Twenty First Infantry - 651 Men/ 7 Stands
Twenty Third Infantry - 341 men/ 3 Stands

Third Brigade

5th Pennsylvania Regiment- 540 Men/ 5 stands
Native Warriors - 386 Men / ? Stands

Artillery Battalion
Biddles Company - 3x 12pdr
Ritchies Company - 2x 6pdr 1x 5.5in Howitzer
Towson's Company - As above
Williams Company - 3x 18pdr

Harris's Troop of Dragoons - 70 men

Now lets look at some questions and issues about translating this OOB into the rules.

The first thing to note is that apart from a few troops the Second brigade along with Biddles and Williams's companies did not participate in the battle. They are included for completeness. There maybe more questions about the accuracy of this OOB that can be discussed later. This is instead about translating an OOB into BPCS.

It is also assumed that the infantry fight in two ranks. There is some dispute if the Americans fought in two or three ranks. Though most source agree on two ranks there is at least some evidence for some units being in three. This is a question to be looked at later.

Next is the issue of scale. The first brigade has a total of 13 stands of foot only one more than a game of DBA. Is it enough or should the scale be increased? An important issue that will need to addressed sooner than later.

While I have listed an OOB translation for the infantry. There are none for the cavalry, artillery or natives. Here again the issue of scale appears and some design decisions have to made.So lets put this issue to one side for the moment and look at game scale in a later post.

Black Powder Cold Steel

You might have noticed one thing about me is that I have a fondness for Command Decision. Included in the second edition was this little variation that took the basic mechanic and transposed them into the horse and musket period.

Now I have never played these rules but they have had some interesting ideas that have always intrigued me. The most interesting of these was the basing and figure system which allows for a more detailed representation of a unit but without necessarily increasing the complexity. The traditional game uses a fixed ratio of representing figures to men such as 1;20 1:60 and so on. In this case you have a fixed representation of a units frontage of 50 men while the depth varies according to the number of ranks you have. So a battalion in two ranks has three time the frontage of one in six. It is such an elegant solution that I am surprised it has not re-appeared in any other set of rules.

But such is the fate of many ideas. But here I am again thinking that I want a good set of rules that will enable to play the War of 1812 as well as the the Latin American Wars of Independence. So maybe it is time to start again with looking at all these rules and seeing if they work. First looking at creating some lists for the War of 1812. Secondly some consideration should be made into updating them to the CDIV standard. But first I'll present the original rules as published for your information.

Enjoy

Some observations on cavalry

I am currently reading "His Britannic Majesty's army in Germany" and I just read his section upon the Battle of Minden. The battle is unique because of the attack of the British and Hanoverian infantry upon the French cavalry and its defeat of them.

This is considered an unusual feat of arms as infantry rarely attack and defeat cavalry. So how could it happen? Cavalry's power lies in its mobility and if you rely upon the sword as did the French cavalry it is specifically the ability to move forward and charge. The redcoats are described as moving swiftly forward and by moving across the front of another French unit achieved a measure of tactical surprise upon the cavalry. The French cavalry had to either charge or allow the redcoats to close to musket range, well I suppose they could also have have retired. Forced to charge the now stationary infantry a single volley was enough to defeat these cavalry for the day. This was no fluke as the French committed their second line and it suffered a similar fate. After this the redcoats moved forward pushing a bulge into the French lines and allowing access to their flanks and rear. The French now launched a third attack with their reserve cavalry to take advantage of that opportunity. Now assailed on all sides the redcoats held firm while supporting troops came upto their support and helped drive off the French. Three times infantry defeated fresh cavalry including some of the best in Europe.

Well again how could it happen? The thing that struck me was that the infantry were moving forward and forcing a response from the cavalry. Normally we assume that cavalry as a shock weapon gains its benefit as moves into contact with the enemy and functions as a single fixed value that never changes. But cavalry is a weapon based upon mobility what if as the speed of the horse changes so does its combat power. So it functions more as a ranged weapon with a short range of reduced efficiency as the unit accelerates to the charge, a medium range of maximum efficiency as the unit is at full charge speed and long range as the unit fails to maintain speed and cohesion.

Just something to think about for the moment.

A command system

Here is an idea for a command system.

It explores a couple of ideas that interest me as capturing the nature of fighting a battle.

The first is that a small unit activates easier than a large unit, the counter to that is that a large combat unit has greater combat power.

Second is that players are generals and that they are now in direct competition as commanders not as fighters. 

Third the level of combat intensity is to a degree within the players control.

Now to illustrate this I will use a stylised representation of command  with a major general commanding a brigade, a lieutenant general commanding a division, a full general a corp and you the player controlling the army.

Give each player an activation chit for each general in his army.

Players roll a competitive die roll. Winner selects a command to activate.

Roll a D10 to activate general and his command

• 10 all fail
• 9 MG activate
• 8 LG  and lower activates
• 6 General and lower activates
• 1-6 all commanders activates

A failure to activate means the chit is lost and the cycle begins again.

A successful activation allows that commander to move all his units. A higher level general will be able to exclude sub-commanders and their troops from the move. All those troops selected to move will conduct a single move with everybody moving the same distance and direction.

If there is no combat then you begin again.

If there is combat, begin resolving them. Now if the non-activating player wins a combat they will get the opportunity to force the active player to lose his activation chit by asking for another activation test. This will force the current chit to be lost. The currently active player must select the general he currently has engaged in combat.

If the active player successfully wins all combats  the activation chit is lost and new test begins. He will have the option to use that command again.

Once all the chits are used then the turn is over.

There that's the basic idea. I think it has some merit and it is ready for scrutiny.

Table top campaigning

Many years ago when my eyesight was better my friends and I got into wargaming with 6mm figures, my personnel collection is mostly Napoleonic and Microarmour. Now we play 15mm and are thinking that that perhaps they are a bit small and hard to paint and 25mm is the way to go. So the 6mm sit in their boxes high upon the shelf all but forgotten gathering dust, even ebay does not appear to interested in them.

Is there any way to make use of them? Perhaps there is, though the ideas I am going to try to outline here are still very rough.

Currently I play Sam Mustaffa's "Might and Reason", as well I have played his Grand Armee along with other brigade size rules such as Napoleons Battles and Volley & Bayonet. Indeed my 6mm Napoleonics are based on 15mm Napoleon Battles bases. My basic idea is to shrink these games from inches to centimetres. Normally this is done so that large battles such as leipzig can be done on a single on a single table or to allow smaller tables to be used. As such little on modification needs to be done to any of these rules to play a game at this scale. The basic 9x6 foot wargame can become an area of about 15x22 kilometres under one of the might and reason scales of 12cm to a mile. This translates into a hefty slice of southern Saxony from the border to Dresden.

For a game at this scale visability and hidden movement are important considerations. The naked eye can distinguish a mass of troops at 1700 yards, infantry and cavalry can be told apart at 1300 and uniforms at 500. With a bit of fudging this can be translated as the number of brigades can identified at 12cm, the type of brigade at 8cms and the subtype at 4 cms. So anything outside 12cms can be hidden from your opponet. Hidden units could then be replaced by a column marker of some sort. A column can be divided into 2-3 sub-units consisting of the 1st & 2nd lines and an optional advance guard. When two forces are within 12cms each player announces the number of brigades in their 1st line while all troops in 2nd remain hidden. The 2nd line may in fact be a dummy.

I like the idea of allowing for players to use a screening force and outpost lines, but the more I think about the more complex it becomes. A player can use a small column for the same tasks.

Not all troops should be deployed in columns. A static garrison can be just identified as such rather be sub-divided into 1st & 2nd lines. Further you can then roll to randomly reveal them to the other side. The idea being that eventually information about static garrison will leak out.

Once players get with 12cms then combat becomes a possibility but they will only know how many brigades are deployed in each others front line. A player may at this stage decline to advance further or they may commit themselves to move forward in order to establish the strength of the second line. Rather than move straight into fighting the battle have simple competitive die roll between the players. If the defender wins then the attacker has failed to gain any intelligence about the defender. Some possible die modifiers are:

1. Stronger front rank
2. Cavalry superiority
3. Controlling the high ground
   

While an area such as described above is tempting as a game. The problem exits that at this scale it may still not be big enough as it barely a days march across. Now while moving to 2mm or even cardboard may appeal to some and may be a good idea at least part of the idea is to use what resources I have and to maintain some visual appeal. It remains to be seen if it can work within the limitations I have set no matter how artificial.

Of course there is always room for more chrome. Some possible chrome are camps, convoys and lines of communication. Camps provide for a player to hide the number and location of troops in plain sight of his opponent, though with the problem that if you loose your camp and its associated baggage you will have to retire from the table top. Convoys provide supplies as well as the opportunity to conduct operations such as the destruction of supply convoy during the siege of Olmutz. Finally at least for the moment is lines of communication which traditionally was an objective that you wished to drive your opponent away from.

One major drawback to this as a campaign system with separate battle resolution is the need for two tables.

This could work really well if also linked with a siege that can also be played out on table.

The game would work with an umpire, even possibly without one.

So there it is, a bit rough as I said earlier and not without its flaws. But I think it has some possibility and feel inspired enough to start looking for a scenario for a test play.

Recreating the seven years war. Part 1 of X

I have almost finished reading "By force of arms" by Christopher Duffy, so now I have feel the urge to comment upon its implications for wargame design. This is the second volume of his history of the Austrian Army during the 7YW, which is the second edition/rewrite of his earlier work "The army of Maria Theresa". this volume concentrates upon an operational history of the army. Now for those ignorant sods like myself for whom English is their first only language it is an invaluable source and possibly the best you can get at the moment.

Now part of his thesis is about the evolving skills of the Austrian Army and their ability to conduct complex operations. The signature piece being the attack by multiple columns such as the attack at Hochkirch as opposed to the unitary force which is the how we normally think of the deployment of lace wars armies. A unitary deployment has the infantry in centre deployed in two line with cavalry upon either flank, the whole moving and fighting as a whole. Frederick himself using the traditional unitary deployment in many of his battles until quite late in his career, though he did have his variation of it. Nor were the Austrians alone in using it, Frederick himself used it at Torgau and the French and Prince Ferdinand in West Germany were also moving along similar lines.

So like many wars you beginning fighting the old fashioned way and by the end of new technologies and tactics have transformed warfare as we know. We are normally used to seeing this best represented through the evolution of technology. In WWII the technology has markedly evolved and matured as pretty much every weapon system at the end of the war is there at the start. WWI has similar technology changes including the introduction of whole new classes of weapons. The 7YW is also a war where many changes occur not in the technology but in how the generals approach the war.