Lutzen 1813

Had a fine game today at the War Office. I recently read Helion's Lutzen and Bautzen: A Wargamer's Guide, so was interested to find that Milton Soong was testing a scenario for Field of Battle 3rd edition.

Prussians in foreground, French in background.

10mm figures, four bases to a battalion.

Milton plans to run this at Hurricon next month, so was interested to know not just how we liked the rules but whether we could get thru the scenario in four hours. With Mike and me commanding the Prussians and John the French (Jacob from last post turned up partway through to help him), we began with a "scripted" advance onto the field - Lutzen was a surprise attack on the French.

Field of Battle is a card-driven system, using dice steps from D4-D12 for rolls which are always opposed. However, while this does give the "inactive" player something to do, it's still a UGO-IGO setup. On the other hand, a single turn can have many back-and-forths between the sides.

In each "phase", the players roll initiative on a D10. Winner chooses to go first or second in this bound, and both sides draw the dice-difference in cards. Once both sides have spent all their cards, they roll init again. This means that players can have anywhere from one to nine cards during a bound, and a few can be held over for later use. Once all the cards in the deck are gone, the next turn begins. So a single turn can (and did) last a long time - it took us four hours, Milton's time limit for a table at Hurricon. While that doesn't sound good, we actually got a lot of playing on both sides during that turn!

Each side also has a supply of objective counters, in our case coins:

The stone-on-a-base is used to mark hit points
or "UIs." When a unit takes more than three,
it is eliminated.

These are traded between players when objectives are taken, or given to the GM when casualties are taken, and returned when casualties are rallied off. Run out of the ones in your bag, and morale failures suddenly become more critical and can end the game at a stroke.

It should be noted that my partner, who claims to be constitutionally unlucky, rolled over a dozen ones in the course of the game, and rarely rolled better than half the number possible on the dice. I made up for it, mostly.

Mike had the only artillery. As the objective villages were on my (right) side of the table, he asked me not to envelop them until he was in position to enfilade the French left flank. I forgot this and in my first move, got far too close to the enemy (long range for musketry is six inches):

At this scale, the house represents the Built-Up Area
of Gross Gorschen, defended by one French battalion.

The French were either grenadiers or veterans, not sure which, so their standard die for combat was D12+2. Most of mine were Landwehr, at D4 or D6. This is boosted by cover, First Fire, etc, and reduced by supporting units, terrain, etc. Firing can be done at any time by the active player, but reloading requires an "infantry fire" card - play it and you can fire, reload and immediately fire again if desired.

By a combination of a great die roll on my part and a poor one on John's, his garrison broke and fled the village after a single volley.

If, for example, I have a D10 for firing, boosted to D12 by first fire, reduced to D10 by cover, and boosted again to D12 by point blank range, and I roll, say, a 10 whilst John rolls a 3, I have beaten him by seven. If a second battalion fires and beats John by two, this loss is increased to nine.

For each three difference (Delta for short, as in spaceflight's Δv) the loser loses one Unit Integrity or hit point. Four lost and the unit is eliminated, two and it routs. If the winner's roll was an even number, something else nice happens, such as a free formation change or (in the case of combat) the loser is disordered. Two UI - or "rocks" as Milton put it because he represented them with tiny boulders placed behind the unit - and they must retreat, even from a nice bastion of a village.

I couldn't get into the town because I hadn't gotten enough 8" move "segments", but it was now ready for me to seize next turn.

As both of us have fired but neither has
yet reloaded, this is indicated by cotton.
Each unit has a "rock" to indicate UI loss.

It was still our turn and we had three "move" cards in the deck, so I did eventually move a battalion into the BUI and started concentrating my second brigade on the other.

This failed pretty miserably.

The advance, once a move card or extra move "segment"
permits deployment into line.

The road between the Gorschens is bloodily contested,
both sides losing units and the French light infantry
finally driven off.

But my dice rolls in Klein Gorschen weren't as lucky
as those in Gross Gorschen. Even outnumbering my
opponent two to one wasn't getting me into the village.
And we can see French reinforcements in the distance!

Meanwhile, Mike was slowly advancing, thanks to poor opposed rolls. Even when there is no combat, the opponent always rolls a standard number for you to beat, usually on a D8. Depending on the difference, you can move one, two or three times. Infantry move 8" and cavalry 12". Despite his slow progress, on our third move card he received reinforcements, a cavalry brigade including horse artillery.

While he threatened the French infantry on his flank with these, he was unable to use his guns on the squares, so still little progress was made. At least the French musketry were reduced by a die type due to the square formation, as only one or two faces of the square would be firing at a target. As the turn wound on, the French also got cavalry for reinforcements, so despite more firing than melee the fighting on this flank didn't go far.

John and Jacob take instruction from the GM. The
center is visible, with French advancing while Mike's
Prussians approach the third objective BUI.

Mike got thrown back and so did I.

Having driven off my center from the road between
the Gorschens, Jacob was able to spin round and hit my
attackers in the flank (center right of this picture).

"Run away...!"

But more centrally on the table, I held the objective securely, especially since with the start of the second turn we had a fourth move card which got us another brigade of reinforcements. Rather than reinforce failure on our right, I sent it to support the captured objective and prevent the enemy from retaking it.

John had obtained French reinforcements on his right (our left) and with fairly even forces both in numbers and composition, he and Mike were stymied. Their side was almost too crowded at the point of approach to move. Infantry were in square so that cavalry couldn't deal with them, but the cavalry were in the way of guns, who in turn were menaced if they did get into position - the classic rock/paper/scissors of Napoleonics.

While John strongly holds the central objective (top right),
he can't move off it into the center of the picture because
of my reinforcements (center right) supporting my objective.
In turn, I can't menace him, because out of view to upper right
are his reinforcements eager to retake my objective.

This felt very much like a standoff, but we ended the game at this point. Since it was a playtest for Hurricon, and game tables have four-hour slots, the plan was to see how much game we could get through in a four-hour block, and we were well into the fifth hour.

However...!

While Mike and I had had some spectacular defeats (in part due to his ability to throw ones in a tight spot), having entire battalions deleted at a blow, the French had been worn away much more steadily. John and Jacob had lost fewer battalions, but had more with one or more casualty markers, and for each they had paid with a token.

Remember that we each had a bag of coin-tokens, giving these up when taking casualties or trading them for objectives. At this point John revealed that his bag was empty. Ours still had six tokens left. Had I not seized the center objective, the French would still have two tokens and the Prussians four. While it isn't a certain recipe for failure, if you lose a morale check without tokens to give up, the game is over.

So my one spot of good luck at the start of the game had allowed the Prussians to weather their steady run of bad luck. Pruessens Gloria!

In real life, the French, surprised by a morning attack, were pushed back across the entire "table" before managing to gather a counter attack. In a full-length game of three or more full turns, this would have been achieved - in our case sometime during the second turn, as the French side, now bereft of tokens, would have broken at some point.

We thus managed to fight to a decision in five hours. This doesn't sound good for a convention demo game limited to four hours, but then we only had three players for half of it, and there are six player slots. Milton also commented that one of the expected players would be familiar with the game and could be a co-GM at need.

John felt - justifiably, I feel - that the IgoUgo method was problematic in the game, as a side could only provide dice targets while the other was turning cards. As a surprise attack, the Prussians had automatically gotten initiative. While we were turning over initiative regularly (as after a run of cards the other side got its chance), Prussia had gone second in one round then first in the next, thus getting two rounds together without response. A game where we activated alternate units rather than alternate sides might have been preferable. The cards allow you to activate every unit with the appropriate ability - move all units, fire all infantry, rally off all casualties - though you must still pass an opposed roll with each unit to do so.

Milton pointed out that a "normal" encounter battle would have likely been much more even; the French were likely to lose this historical scenario in any case.

All in all, a successful playtest, and all of us enjoyed it enough to try again sometime. I would like to see how a more generic encounter battle comes out. As I've been delving into ECW and Jacob's personal interest is in Middle Ages, the rules do cover pike-and-shot as well. 

In other news, I have not yet finalized my new apartment, but have packed up most of my stuff and also traded in some of my old 40K boxes for $120 in store credit. Combined with the store discount, that could get me even a large starter box at a reasonable price - if I actually get around to doing something with one. I also moved most of my wargames to the War Office and my boardgames and RPGs to work.

Lastly, I actually finished painting a handful of figures (with the speedpaint pens). Go me!

Til next time...

First Black Powder Game

Been a few weeks since I've posted; the usual doldrums plus non-gaming-related reading (though Lord Darcy does bring up some interesting imagiNation possibilities!). The chess club at work is going well; with a few staff joining in we usually have around 15 participants. I'm pretty hopeless at chess, and we have some really good players in the group both young and old. I prefer to teach the newer ones

Played a short-notice round of Black Powder at Das Krieg Haus. I've read Black Powder several times and am fairly familiar with the rules (7th Son's Youtube channel is an excellent teacher) but this was the first time I've gotten to play it, as the club generally prefers General de Brigade and, lately, member Mark Ritchie's Firelock.

Marko, one of our youngest and newest members, brought some 3mm French, Austrian and Prussian minis for an 1814 (6th Coalition) game. His intent was to have a loose campaign (well, operation), but instead we put together a fairly random table for a demo game without real objectives.

The board, with felt features and some very nice buildings.

Some infantry and artillery minis.

I was a little surprised to find that each base would represent a battalion or battery, as BP has much to do with formations. In practice, though, we found it easy to denote and remind each other what formations we were using. The guns had two bases per battery (see above pic) - one deployed, one limbered. Each player had about four brigades to work with, and there were some named generals, including Napoleon, on the field. We were not careful about command ranges, except with Napoleon's free reroll - he was way over on the right, so any command rerolls on the left would take a penalty!

My side of the board - in hindsight dangerously exposed, particularly my guns which I've put on the road for speed. The Prussian infantry is poised to cross the river at the village, upper left. My intent is to effectively refuse this flank while all our cavalry...

... rush over to the upper right and roll up the Austrian left flank.

This plan crumbled in the first turn, as a) the Allies got first turn and b) the Prussians rolled low enough on their activations to get multiple moves. Even at one-third scale to the moves (meaning 4" for infantry and guns, 6" for cavalry), I was already in trouble as the enemy was now close to my (still-limbered) guns.

On our first turn the French cavalry did get multiple moves of their own, and my partner Jim started nibbling at Marko's Austrians.

His at upper right are attacking Marko's cavalry,
mine are at center hoping to support next turn.

Closeup, after eliminating a unit.

I rolled boxcars to advance my guns - a Blunder! Used a reroll and this time I got snake eyes - three moves. Unfortunately, I had chosen to move as far as I could, rather than declaring, say, two moves and deploy for the third.

The head of my artillery column, up against
a brigade of sharpshooting Jager.

One battery (the second in column) managed to deploy
and fire on the Prussians just offscreen to left - to no avail.

Above: Turn Two, engaged with Jager, who accurately inflicted disorder on most of those infantry columns. My leading gun battery inadvertently charged a Jager unit - and beat it! Shades of Ramsay at Fuentes De Onoro. Unfortunately that was my only success.

Closeup of the result, with colored puffs to denote casualties.
My units have nearly all failed to make contact.

While on my left, the Prussians are heading for my back line.

Meanwhile, a bloody mess on the French right:

As can be seen by the puffball casualty markers.

Jim and Marko were trading a LOT of punches, leaving me and Mark on the left to discuss future games. Mark has run 50 games this year (!) and aspires to more in the next. We discussed using his rules to perhaps run a VBCW game. I lean towards using his 15mms, since he has plenty of interwar and WWI minis and terrain while my 28s and the club's modern 25-28 terrain are limited. There would be quite a bit of proxying, but it should still work if we can build something that looks like pastoral English countryside.

Allied Turn Three: the Prussians are way too close, I have gotta get outta here:

But the dice desert me and I can't get that far away.

End game after three turns: Basically the same as Waterloo
with directions reversed, though the Austrians are somewhat
worse off than Wellington.

Two major mistakes - putting my guns out on a limb and (related) underestimating how fast units can move in Black Powder. It can be a swingy game if you're not careful. My guns never got into action and ended up being targets, when I was going to use them to hold off the Prussians. To be fair, the game only lasted three turns, but still. Jim's half on the right was doing somewhat better, but I was not helping at all and he would have gotten pincered in another turn or two by the Prussians.

I have let Bony down. Like Grouchy if he got to the field but still effed up.

Not too bad an intro to the rules, even if it wasn't really traditional. 3mm does let you pack in lots of troops, at least. Well done to Marko, who GMed his first game for us and was confident at it.

Jim and I started in cataloging the club's book collection. He is planning a website for the club to get us more visibility. I also took with me a couple small boardgames about the Arab-Israeli wars and a 3d-printed Skyhawk which I hope to paint in Israeli colors:

Next weekend are two games I look forward to - the annual Limeys and Slimeys Regatta, and Pete Panzeri's 80th-anniversary Battle of the Bulge operational game. See you then.

Battle for Cuzco Well

Today at Das Krieg Haus we played more Tactical Combat, this time a Spanish-American War game. This was an 1898 USMC assault on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to seize a water supply that just happens to be next to a blockhouse. I was on the Spanish side.

Just the lower story - you'll see why in a bit.

Between them, Mark's versatile rules, Jim's enthusiasm for DBA, and Oriskany Jim's spectacles have revitalized the club. There are games almost weekly now, and the club is pivoting towards a more generalist set up, with "bring-your-own" battles on multiple tables. For example, in between turns Jim was demoing DBA:

Lots of armies, each with its own ready-to-go sheet and background.

That same Alexandrian-Indian matchup I still can't get the hang of.

Also: DBA on a hex board!

But the main attraction was over what is now "Gitmo."

View from the West, with a beach on the southern edge.

Three platoons of Spanish troops (15-20 strong), one of loyal Cubans, two machine guns, five snipers and five sentries hold the well, blockhouse and environs. Four platoons of US Marines, a squad of Cuban insurgents, two machine guns and a command element were out to take them. The HQ also had wig-wag signallers who could call in gunfire from a US Navy ship.

Specifically, this guy.

As usual, I had analysis paralysis and wasn't too sure when my team nominated me for command. We ended up putting one platoon into the church in the southeast, one into the blockhouse, one into the farm complex in the northwest, and one (hidden) in the farm complex to the west - this last to slow up the largest concentration of Americans. The snipers were scattered, mostly in trees. The Americans came in from the north and west:

Most of the game was spent rolling firing dice. I controlled the "stopgap" platoon on the western flank, where they were outnumbered 2-1, and held off the onslaught for about four turns.

Some of my poor bastards enfiladed
by a Colt machine gun.

The Spanish got the worst of it, but were winning on points for most of the game owing to holding the objectives - as long as we kept the well and blockhouse (worth 15 points) we could take up to 14 more casualties than the Americans but still be on top.

The problem was the damn signaller.

He could successfully signal his ship, once a turn, on a 5 or less on a D20.

Once signalled, the ship could hit its target again, on a 5 or less on a D20.

So, a 1/16 chance of a direct hit. Scatter would be at least 10cm, far enough to miss the block house.

He hit that blockhouse three times in six turns.

On turn four, I started targeting the signallers with our one remaining sniper (hit on 8 or less). It took three turns to wipe out the team, but by that time, the blockhouse was on fire and empty, save for an unmanned Maxim. (See first photo.)

At this point, we could only hope to keep the Marines from just walking on to the objective, and what remained of the blockhouse largely blocked LOS to what remained of our force. By turn 10, it was clear that no matter what we did, he could put men on the objectives by turn 12, end of game. We conceded.

The end result - some seventy casualties on each side. Since the game did technically come down to the last turn, this was still a pretty balanced scenario. Tactical Combat is a lethal game, and another aspect that kept us going was that there are no morale rules (had there been, the game might have been over a LOT quicker).

A few more pictures:

Mark will run another game tomorrow, this one Napoleonic. I hope to be there. Until next time,