Progress and Digressions

This post was written a year ago, but never published...

It is high time to do that now, in anticipation of more good stuff to come, I trust.

I see it has been quite a while since I put anything up.  In January I looked forward to playing Aspern-Essling by May (everything was ready, including printing of the army counters), but for one reason and another we have not had a public battle at the club since then.  The delay has dragged on so long, in fact, that I decided in the end to take a step that I always meant to take eventually.  I have ordered troops from Baccus, initially enough for Aspern-Essling, then in following orders for a replay of Friedland and, with the addition of Bavarians, for 1805 and Austerlitz.  That will keep us for a while, and then a small number of Prussians will enable us to do 1807, and a large number to do 1806.

Nevertheless, things have not been entirely static.  Mini-playtests have allowed the Throne & Altar rules to be refined further and they are now close, I think, to a final form.  Meantime, in anticipation of the promised 1805 campaign next year I have been at work on three parallel projects.

Friedland AAR - January 2019

This month we finally played the long-planned Friedland game, using the latest version of the T&A rules.  I received Greg Wagman's kind permission to distribute complete rules to the players beforehand, and I know that at least some generals read them in the day or two available, but only two of the players had actually played them before.  More on that below under "Game Notes".  My thanks to the many people who signed up for the game - on the Russian side John, Angus and Geoff, and on the French Robert, Dennis, Steve, Anthony and Gordon.  Special thanks to Steve and Gordon, who remained good-humoured and engaged, even though their troops never actually made it onto the table!  Special mention also of Angus and Anthony, both playing their first Napoleonic battles (at least in this form), who handled their respective commands with skill and aplomb despite their inexperience.

With that said, what happened?

Troop Quality

The third axis of troop characteristics is quality - this is a combination of moral confidence, unit cohesion, including esprit de corps, and level of training.  All (or almost all, anyway) wargaming rules reflect this in some way, often by sorting different units into categories such as "raw", "trained", "veteran" etc.  Throne and Altar does it with a numeric rating, which unlike Altar of Freedom varies between units.

I mentioned in an earlier article that AoF represents degradation of unit effectiveness, including casualties, by means of "fatigue" points.  In AoF, if a brigade accumulates more than four such points it breaks.  Once enough brigades have broken, the entire army breaks and the battle is lost.  This number (the army break point) is known in advance, and is calculated based on the scenario designer's judgement of the general state of enthusiasm of the army

National Characteristics

The first axis of troop differences I identified as having to be addressed in a Napoleonic rule set was the tactical roles filled by various troop types.  This has been dealt with already.

The second was tactical doctrine, by which I mean the differences in behaviour for ostensibly identical troop types across different armies, and even the same army at different time periods.  It includes also the effects of differing cultures and social relations between members of different armies.  The relations between officers and men were quite different, for example, in the British army as compared with the French, for the societies they came from were founded on different principles.  Likewise for Austria, Russia and so on.  The differences discussed below are all expressed on the battlefield as simple bonuses and deficits applied to certain troop types.

Troop Types

To alter a set of rules written for the American Civil War to be suitable for Napoleonics, a number of changes need to be made.  The first and most obvious is the range of troop types available.  All of what follows (in terms of actual modifiers, move distances etc.) can be found on the Quick Reference Card.  This post sets out the thinking behind the rules - the justification and reasoning, to give y'all something to take issue with.

Foundations

I wrote a few weeks ago that I would expand, in due course, on the Throne & Altar rules, and I want to do that in a couple of steps.  I have already said that the rules are based on Greg Wagman's Altar of Freedom.  First, I want to give an overview of those rules, and then I will go on to set out what changes I have made to make them suit Napoleonics rather than ACW.

Bailén AAR - August 2018

At the August meeting of the Northern Sydney Wargames Club we played the first public test run of a set of grand-tactical Napoleonic wargames rules that I have been working on in odd moments.  I will post more on the rules themselves another time, but want to start with an after action report while the event is still fresh.  I do have to say, though, that the rules are based closely on the Altar of Freedom ACW rules written by Greg Wagman.  My rules, in homage to Greg's, are called Throne & Altar, with reference to the counter-revolutionary principles that animated the opposition to Revolutionary and Imperial France.

I give my thanks to the four players who commanded during the battle: John and Michael on the French side, Robert and newcomer Tony on the Spanish.  The battle was hard-fought and tense, with serious plotting going on throughout.  Although the scenario puts the French in a very difficult position (as they were historically) the outcome remained in the balance until remarkably late in the day.

With that brief introduction out of the way, on with the game, which represents the battle of Bailén in 1808.  A French corps, of fairly indifferent quality and laden with the loot of the city of Cordoba, is trying to escape pursuit and get back to the safety of Madrid.  Having marched all night, they are horrified to see, at dawn, Spanish troops blocking their way.