The Dining Table Napoleon

Matthew Green’s Hobby Blog

Log in

Category: News

  • My new 1943 vehicles: the Germans

    As I was preparing the British vehicles last year, it struck me that I badly needed some German half-tracks to speed things up in German attack scenarios. I had already bought boxes of Plastic Soldier Company SdKfz 250s and 251s, so I put these together. There were three in each box, and I added an extra one of each from PSCs “reinforcements”. For good measure I also added an SdKfz 222 armoured car from my legacy collection. This was over ambitious, but we’re done now.

    First the SdKfz 251s, sometimes called Hanomags. These were the earliest armoured personnel carriers used by anybody in quantity. The Germans often used them to carry troops into battle under fire in close support of armour, though this led to heavy losses. They used this tactic at Salerno, which gives me a bit of a gaming opportunity. By comparison, though the Allies had M3 or M5 half-tracks, they were slow to use them so aggressively. I had a couple of 251s in my teenage collection (from different manufacturers), and hoped to use at least one of these. But they were seriously under scale, and really wouldn’t have worked next to the 1/72 PSC models. Also they seemed to be based on the early A or B variants, when I wanted the mid-war C (different again from the D, introduced in 1943, and which is the most commonly seen in Normandy). I decided I needed four to make a complete platoon, which included the platoon leader’s version with a 37mm gun, though I have no idea whether they used these in Italy!

    The models were an early PSC release (fitting in with their initial focus on Kursk), which means that the model is a bit more basic than I was used to, and the instructions very vague, with no explanation of the options. The model is quite chunky, as usual – PSC scale them up from their 15mm (1/100) versions. I had a little difficulty in fitting the top hull section to the middle bit, which necessitated the use of some putty. But the models do the job and are good value for money. PSC provide crew figures (2 in the front, 4 in the back and a gunner), which I used. These figures are a bit chunky and not nearly as nice as AB castings (which would have been available as an option, for quite a bit of extra money). By using some spares from the platoon leader, and the 250s I was able to up the crews by one in each of the ordinary vehicles – still one short of the actual crew. It was a bit of an awkward fit in places, and I tried to get the layout slightly different in each model. Also I used the loader form the 250 for the 37mm gun, and a figure with binoculars. I added an aerial. I’m not sure they were all equipped with radios, but I decided to be generous. The aerials were scale 1m, which looks a little short, so upped it to 1.5m for the platoon leader. Some stowage was added too, but sparingly. Pictures tend to show these vehicles quite clean. Mostly these came from the kits themselves.

    Next come the SdKfz 250s – the alte version, still in widespread use in 1943. Unlike most half-tracks, this vehicle was purpose built for that mode, and was accordingly more robust. It was used a lot by the German reconnaissance forces – hence my interest, as I think interesting scenarios can be built around reconnaissance forces. Once again I opted for a platoon of four. The leader is a 250/11 with the sPzB 41 anti-tank rifle. This was dismountable, and the kit provides the dismounted carriage both in a folded version to be carried on the back, and the deployed version. I will do a dismounted version when I next do some German infantry, using some surplus crew figures from the PaK 38.

    The kit was from PSC, but a later issue than the 251, with more options and better instructions. The crew was of similar quality to the 251 kit (and the machine gunner identical). It was the usual chunky fare but fitted together a bit better than the 251. Only three crew were provided per vehicle, when there should really be five. You can’t see that one is missing from the front seat though, so like the 251s there is just one short in the back. It would have been very awkward to try and fit more figures in. I used some of the figures from the 251s to give some variety as well as having the machine gunners pointing in slightly different directions (which mean a bit of surgery to the lower legs in a couple of cases). Aerials and a bit of stowage were added.

    Finally there is the SdKfz 222 armoured car. I had kept one back from my teenage collection, taken form the old Airfix reconnaissance set. This contained one of these armoured cars, plus a kubelwagen. I kept the latter too, but it is hopelessly under scale, even for 1/76, and unusable. A pity because I had gone wild with the reconnaissance set and I have two or three lots of it unmade and unpainted. The Airfix 222 is a bit of problem as the turret just isn’t right. It’s too small, doesn’t have the mesh covers, and it would be very hard to add a crew figure. But the PSC kits came with a turret for the 250/10 version. So I wondered if I could marry these turrets with my Airfix models to get a platoon of armoured cars. The good news was that notwithstanding the scale difference (1/72 to 1/76), it looked about the right size. The bad news was that it is modelled with the mesh cover closed – in pictures it is always open. I manged to fit it to model, and even to perch a crew member on the back of the turret (there are photos of them doing this). So I thought I would give it a go. By 1943 the SdKfz 222 was a bit passé, as its off-road capability was a bit limited. I think it had largely been replaced by the 250/10. Never mind it’s what I’ve got.

    Painting the half-tracks provides a bit of a challenge given the partially enclosed nature of the vehicles. I usually like to assemble then paint, but that was clearly impractical. So I assembled the top (including the machine gunner attached) separately from the rest, and then gave it all the darker base coat. I then completed the assembly. That meant I couldn’t reach the lower deck portion of the models to provide any paint detail there. That was OK though – these are only wargames quality after all.

    As with my previous two attempts at mixing the dunkelgelb main colour, I struggled to get a satisfactory mix. After thinking I had achieved it, I took against it and decided on a remix and repaint. That meant the paint went on a bit thick. Though building up paint in layers with slightly different shades is a recognised painting technique, this was clearly overdone. And I’m still not 100% with the result, which is a bit too grey and has a hint of green (though that was partly down to the wash). Dunkelgelb came it in a wide variety of hues during the war, so there is no such thing as accuracy – but I had hoped for something a bit lighter and yellower. As it is I ended up with something very close the old Humbrol “authentic” shade, so it is well within the realistic range. This is the third successive time I have struggled with this colour and painted many more coats than I originally intended, so there is still a fundamental problem here. One difficulty may be that I have been using student colours, which tend not to dry true – though since this is a high volume job I would like to make these cheaper pigments work. But also I’m attempting to reach the result with a three hue mix (plus white), with yellow ochre, Prussian blue and terracotta red. This leaves far too much room for variation. I need to experiment with two hue mixes. Yellow ochre and black may work (though this is the traditional mix for olive). I am even thinking of using a brighter yellow and purple (my attempt with yellow ochre and purple not working so well when I tried it). This is not an advert for my practice of mixing paints from artist’s colours, rather than the usual paint by number approach using hobby paints.

    Like my other German vehicles so far, I didn’t paint any camouflage patterns, though olive green and red brown were issued for that purpose. I don’t see it much in pictures form Italy in 1943, and I went a bit too wild on this back in the 1970s. I might try this on some later vehicles, based on a degree of historical evidence. The crew figures were painted in uniforms with various shades of olive, sand (i.e. faded olive) and grey. As before I don’t have good sense of what they should look like – photos are a bit scarce. But at least it’s reasonably consistent with the infantry I have already painted.

    The next adventure was the wash. I decided against using the Windsor and Newton peat brown ink I used for the British vehicles. It has a bit of a red tint which I thought would make the dunkelgelb look wrong. Something like this happened with the Panzer III models and the Quickshade, which has a similar hue. So I decided to have a go at mixing my own with yellow ochre and black ink, diluted with water. This proved very tricky. It took me quite a bit of time before I reached a version that I felt brave enough to use on my models – a sort of olive green. This was fine where it pooled in the recesses, but gave the models a slight greenish hue elsewhere else. It took the models even closer to the old Humbrol colour! I think I’ll try something else next time, though I have large quantities of my mix left over. Should be fine on olive drab (I used it on my jeep too).

    For decals I used just the balkankreuse. I considered ID numbers (as for the tanks), but this was a bit awkward with the stowage items, and anyway you rarely see them on this sort of vehicle. For the 250s I used spares from old Airfix Pz IVs. A bit chunky but OK. For the 222 I used some from the old Airfix recce set. The black and white weren’t properly aligned, which was a pity! For the 251 I used slightly bigger ones from a set I acquired commercially at Salute in 2017 at significant expense – black and white ones on the sides, and white ones on the back doors. These decals are very sharp and much nicer than the old Airfix ones (though you have to cut them out carefully), but the back door ones were a bit tricky as I had to cut them down the middle so as not to obscure the crack between the doors.

    The decals were placed on a surface prepared with polyurethane gloss varnish, and sealed with the same substance. I’m not sure the first step is strictly needed given that I prepare the surface with Microset – but the flash is invisible. I might experiment without next time. After this I sprayed the vehicles with matt varnish. As with the British I painted a bit of “matt” varnish (which gives a rather unpredictable level of sheen) onto some highlights for a bit contrast – flesh, small arms, straps and helmets. This was a good move for the machine guns, which look much better, and I think it works on the helmets too. It is a technique I will develop as a complete matt finish doesn’t quite work.

    Finally came the dust patina. I experimented a bit on the 222, as the most dispensable of my models, and overdid it bit. The others turned out fine, though I did apply some extra to the running gear afterwards as the mix had become too diluted.

    That’s going to be it for a while on my 1943 stuff. I have a stack of stuff still to paint, and plans for much more, but my Napoleonics are feeling neglected, and also some terrain stuff to do. Plus I have some domestic credit to build, which means a bit of a clearout in the spare bedroom where I do my painting.

  • 1943: vehicle arrivals. The British

    All 16 vehicles

    This week at long last I completed a batch of 16 vehicles for my 20mm 1943 Italian theatre project. I started this back in October, but a trip to Australia, Christmas, flu and other stuff intervened. I had thought it was a good move to do large batches of vehicles in order to clear the plastic/resin/pewter mountain, but this was probably too big, especially as it covered both sides. But it is an important reinforcement which will enable much more variety in any club games we play with my 1943 stock. In this post I will look at the seven British vehicles.

    First come three Bren carriers, giving me a complete carrier section. A British WW2 force without carriers is like a pub without beer. Apart from the rimmed helmets nothing looks more British. Also carriers give the British side a mobile reserve – which matters since they didn’t use armoured personnel carriers at this stage. And a common theme of this batch was to strengthen reconnaissance forces, which is another role for the carrier section.

    The models are from my teenage collection, from which I kept six Airfix carrier models. They aren’t particularly nice, and they are 1/76, when I prefer 1/72, especially for the smaller vehicles. But it seemed a shame not to make use of the inheritance. I crewed them with the AB Universal Carrier set. These are lovely figures, not entirely suitable for 1943 Italy (1944 Normandy more like). Getting them to fit into the models was a challenge, especially the ones seated in the back. I added various stowage items, including weapons – though I was unable to get Bren guns sticking out of the aperture in the front – in fact it was a bit of a struggle to find any suitable spare Bren guns, which barely feature in the various sets of parts on sale. But I did manage a PIAT and a 2in mortar. It took me a long time to get everything sorted out and positioned reasonably plausibly. But it was worth it. The figures and stowage lift the final models to a new level. One issue is that these crew figures will stay in place even when they have disembarked and take their place on the table on foot. But it was impossible to devise a system of removable figures, and doing up spare debarked versions felt excessive. I have the same issue with my German half-tracks.

    Next come a Loyd carrier and a jeep. These are metal models bought from SHQ. They worked out OK, and metal models have a satisfactory weighty feel, but I don’t think I will get any more. The models are a bit vague when compared to the crispness of the Milicast resin ones, which is the main alternative for the odds and ends. The crew for Loyd was from AB, again, and like the Bren carriers, help to lift the model. There are jeep figures from AB, but I bought these from SHQ as I was worried about a size mismatch on a model advertised as 1/76. The figures are indeed smaller – but they are also vaguer. The Loyd provides transport for my 6pdr AT gun. I had three Airfix ones which came with my carriers. I have one in deployed mode, and one towed, as it is hard to get these models to serve as both, though in theory you could.

    And finally for my recce forces I have a Humber armoured car and a Daimler Dingo scout car. The Humber is one of my teenage leftovers: a Matchbox model that now looks pretty unobtainable. It is the desert version of the Mk III, so not actually right for 1943 Italy (the spare wheel should be at the side, among other details). I managed to get the turret hatch open and insert a Milicast resin commander. These aren’t as good as the AB figures, and a bit smaller. That’s OK for a 1/76 model. The stowage was as per the original model, which got the balance right. I am very pleased with how this one has turned out. I wasn’t that keen on it originally, in its desert sand coat, but with a bit of TLC and a new scheme and it is transformed. In fact I am now very attracted to the Humber armoured car: a sturdy vehicle that looks as if it would have good off-road capability.

    The Dingo is a new 1/72 plastic S-Model – there were two in the box but I left the other one for later. This is quite a fine-grained model with a few fiddly parts – unlike the chunky Plastic Soldier Company models that are my mainstay. But a big drawback is that it is modelled with the hatch closed. In photos you never see this vehicle with the top closed over. As a scout car it would not be functional like this. It wouldn’t have looked right. I had to cut the top cover and file it down to make it thinner to represent it folded back. I then inserted purpose-made crew figures from AB. There is no inside detail, but the AB driver has a wheel, and this suffices for wargames purposes. The other modifications were the addition of two aerials and replacing the Bren gun. The version with the kit was very delicate – whereas the Brens with my figures are much chunkier. Doubtless the delicate version is more realistic, but it would have jarred with the AB crew. I used one of my few spare Brens. The Dingo is a versatile vehicle that can be used for recce, artillery/mortar spotting or as a command vehicle (they were often commandeered for that purpose). And less vulnerable than the jeep: wargames rules seldom allow its small size, speed and manoeuvrability in getting out of trouble.

    As for painting and finishing, the carriers (both sorts) were done up in infantry colours based on a much used picture of three carriers coming out of a landing ship on Salerno beach. The main colour is SCC No. 2 – the standard colour for British army vehicles and equipment in the mid-war, sometimes called Service Drab or Khaki Brown. This is not a colour you often see on modern restorations (or at all in fact), and colour photos are rare and unreliable – so unlike other colours it hard to know how it actually looked in action. The colour swatches in various publications show a dark brown with a slight reddish tinge. Photos and colour drawings from the time suggest something a bit paler and duller, not at all far from the khaki on soldier’s uniforms. I struggled and it took three goes before I decided I had something I could live with. This was closer to the swatches than the pictures, though still quite close to uniform khaki. I used the usual raw sienna base, with some blue, white and raw umber. Some red got into the early mixes but was pretty much gone by the end.

    The Humber and Dingo were done up in recce regiment colours, using the two tone scheme of Light Mud and Blue Black. Having pioneered this with my Royal Scots Greys Shermans, it was quite straightforward to get to the mix – using Raw Sienna, Prussian Blue and white (the same three pigments I used for the British uniforms). It may have helped that I was using artist quality paints for this, which dry truer than the student colours I often use for bulk jobs. The disruptive patterns were largely made up, as there was not an official pattern for either vehicle – though for each there was a photo to get started with. I did the jeep in olive drab. Jeeps were painted up in Light Mud/Blue Black, but I think they were mostly left in their original colour. I reached this using Yellow Ochre and black, with some white. Olive drab presents difficulties for modellers. The swatches and official mixes all show something very dark; the pictures of vehicles in the field show something lighter. Modern restorations (and modern art work representations) go with a lighter version too – but more chromatic than you would expect from the “authentic” version weathering. I went for something paler than the swatches, but greyer than the modern interpretations. I looks right to me and I will use this colour in any future models needing this colour.

    After the main paint work I gave the models a wash in peat brown ink, a little diluted. This was instead of the Quickshade I had used before (but not the jeep – which used the same mix I used for the Germans, which I will describe next time). This shade doesn’t discolour the vehicles the wrong way, as the colour schemes are variations of brown anyway. It worked fine as a substitute for Quickshade.

    For decals I wanted enough to give the vehicle a period feel, but without the hassle of full serial numbers and vehicle names, which with my OCD tendencies would have taken ages to fix. For the British this meant the characteristic Arm of Service badges and the red and white ID flashes. I was going to do divisional ID badges too (for the 56th division), but I had printed these on transparent decal paper. Given the trouble I had with transparent decal paper on dark backgrounds for my Shermans I decided to skip these. They were an indulgence anyway: vehicles at Salerno and for much of the Italian theatre didn’t use the divisional badges. I didn’t do any markings for the jeep. The decals were my own, printed on white decal paper, which meant I had to cut them out right to the edge – which was a little inaccurate at times.

    After a matt varnish aerosol spray I did a little touching up with some paint-on matt varnish, which dries to a slight sheen. I did this because otherwise the varnished vehicles look a bit too flat. This varnish went on to the flesh, the weapons and any binoculars and earphones, and also on any helmets not covered in netting. I’m not sure this is entirely right for the flesh, but it works well for the weapons and equipment, and I think a little contrast is a good idea.

    Finally comes the dust patina. This time I used a purpose-made product: AK spatter effect accumulated dust. I bought this at Salute and it was my first serious job for it. It takes quite a bit of courage to do this on models you have been working months on in the knowledge that they could be ruined. The product is quite thick, and it is textured. It works very well if dabbed on with a paint brush in areas where you want it to be thick – it is good for spatter effects, as its name suggests. But I also wanted a weathered patina effect for the whole vehicle. I used a diluted version dabbed on with an old paint brush. I wasn’t at all sure about this as I was applying it, especially with the odd grains of texture effect which dotted the models a bit. I had to be careful it didn’t pool too much in the cracks. Putting it on with a cotton bud (which is what I did with my paint mix on the Shermans) didn’t work with this product. I was worried that I had overdone it; it was quite heavy on the Loyd carrier in particular. There was too much in one or two places (the wheels on the jeep, for example), but actually it was a little underdone in other places (on the wheels and running gear on some models, where it needs to be thickest). Once it had all dried and I got used to it, I decided that it worked well, giving the vehicles a nice used look. It worked especially well over the decals, helping to integrate them into the paintwork. My technique will doubtless improve over time.

    Next time: the Germans.

  • A BBB version of Shiloh

    End of Move 2 I think the French attack on the Prussian right develops

    Last night Terry and I used my cloth for the Altar of Freedom game on Shiloh to refight a Napoleonic version using our version of BBB. It was fought using my Napoleonic French and Prussian armies. It is interesting to compare the two systems.

    The distance scales are the same, which meant there was not problem in using the same terrain layout. The main difference in game layout is that BBB is played using brigade units (two or three to a division), while BBB has division sized units. Each AoF brigade corresponds to two BBB bases. That means a two brigade division has four bases and a three brigade one six. That makes BBB a bit more compact, but the frontages are broadly similar using the 40mm bases for AoF that we have being doing. Using the recommended 60mm bases would mean that two brigades could cover five inches easily and six at a pinch. A BBB equivalent division would cover four inches. Artillery units are pretty much the same between the two systems. Cavalry is different mainly because of the different cavalry role between the Napoleonic and ACW eras. In BBB we use a much lower figure ratio, since firepower is unimportant. A typical BBB cavalry unit is a brigade, the same as AoF, but it has a bigger footprint.

    In putting together the armies I wanted to keep my standardised 1815 units rather than do a new lot of labels. The French took the Confederate role. Bragg’s corps of six brigades translated into three four-base divisions, but otherwise the conversion was quite simple. Command and control was harder. I did not provide leaders for the counterparts of Polk and Breckinridge, but Bragge and Hardee’s counterparts were on the table, as well as Johnstone represented by Napoleon himself. On the Union side all the divisions were three brigades, so it was quite easy to give them Prussian six-base units as equivalents. I divided them into two corps, each with a general, and a commander. I gave the French a slight quality edge: with one Aggressive infantry unit (the Young Guard in the reserve corps) and veteran cavalry. The Prussian had one Raw infantry unit.

    We started a bit earlier than a normal club night and got three hours of game time in. In that time we played four and a half moves. That was no quicker than AoF, in spite of the smaller number of playing pieces. But there were only two of us (rather than four) and more did happen. The French (played by Terry) started with an aggressive assault on their left and centre. This went badly, with some effective firing by the Prussians, followed by a good close combat result. In the second move one of the French units was destroyed, and that left three of the smaller French units facing off against two Prussian ones in a static stalemate. I was mulling a counterattack.

    But with this failure, the French decided to switch to the left, throwing in their reserve corps against the open Prussian flank. This fared much better, with the Prussians struggling to hold off superior numbers. A spectacular cavalry counterattack managed to do for a second French infantry unit, but the two front line Prussian infantry units were flagging to the point of near collapse, though the lead French infantry was similarly flagging. But they had two fresh infantry units (including the Young Guard), backed by two cavalry units, to face one not so fresh Prussian infantry unit and the triumphant cavalry. Meanwhile the wooded terrain was making the artillery hard to organise. I thought the Prussians were losing at the end (given that we had only reached midday), but it wasn’t hopeless. It was an exciting game.

    How did the systems compare? The French/Confederates were able to deliver a much quicker and better coordinated attack in BBB. The Prussians/Union were not able to organise their defence so easily. Vital movement throws failed to come up on several occasions, limiting my ability to pull the defensive line back (something that the Union did very effectively in our AoF games). Not that I can complain too much: I had good combat dice on several critical occasions. The BBB game was much more decisive. By the end of our game the French had lost two infantry divisions and a battery out of action, two spent and another one damaged (one base loss), and one cavalry unit damaged. The Prussians had lost no units, but two infantry units were spent and the other three damaged (they only had five, until the possibility of reinforcements much later). At the equivalent stage in our AoF games at most one brigade had been put out of action.

    This reflects each system’s strengths and weaknesses. In AoF command and control limitations were much greater on the Confederate side, making their attack much slower to progress, and limiting them to two or three divisions a turn. The Union side had much more flexibility. But BBB combat handles attrition much better. A lot of this is due to my modified rules for Napoleonics. Core BBB would have meant many fewer losses. This may be a fair reflection of the difference between the two eras, before the needle gun and chassepot suddenly upped the casualties.

    Another difference is that artillery movement is much more flexible in AoF. In BBB you cannot limber and unlimber in the same turn, which makes it harder to move artillery around. We have made it more flexible in our version than core BBB (so that you can limber/unlimber and move a full move), but it is still hard, as I found as the Prussian line faltered. If the infantry gave ground it effectively meant the accompanying artillery couldn’t operate; it was similarly hard for artillery support to keep up with the attack without pausing it. The artillery needed to fall back further to occupy a new defensive line behind the infantry. This is something I should have been thinking about as the Prussian player. It is exactly how the French approached their withdrawal at Vitoria in 1813, so I don’t think BBB is unrealistic.

    Overall I’m quite pleased with our house BBB system. It is working much as intended, and produced an exciting game. The skirmisher system remains scrappy and needs some cleaning up. The cavalry flowed through the woods and conducted attacks there a bit too easily. I am planning a substantial revision which will also address the disruption issue: inflicting disruption on a unit that is already disrupted doesn’t affect it. But I’m also working on something much more original that deals with some of BBB’s deeper problems. Meanwhile I think AoF works perfectly well for ACW, and represents command and control issues much better.

    One more learning is on terrain. I have constructed a terrain cloth for Shiloh, with painted masking tape for roads and revers, and patches of felt taped on for woods. It can be folded up and is very portable, while representing complex terrain much better than using just standard club equipment. Last night we put the cloth on top of another felt cloth – this didn’t work well and led to it rumpling easily. Felt needs to be placed on a frictionless surface to lie flat. I think the idea can be developed – though hills are an unsolved issue and the rivers don’t work as well as the roads.

  • Seven Days to the River Rhine: a cleaned up Iron Cross

    Last night at the club we played our first game of Seven Days to the River Rhine (7DTTRR). This is a new version of Iron Cross designed for the Cold War in the 1980s, which I (and gaming colleague Terry) also bought at Salute. Though the game is designed with 15mm miniatures in mind, we used our usual 6mm models, but kept the distances unchanged.

    In our scenario we had a Soviet attack with T72s and infantry support on a hamlet held by British with Challenger I tanks. The Soviets had a 2:1 superiority in tanks, but less for infantry, but a concealed approach. We didn’t play helicopters in this introductory game.

    So how did the rules play? The rules managed to be both very close to IC and a big improvement. Some of the changes related to technology (missiles and helicopters for example), but mostly they are just cleaner. IC is a tangle of different rules for different types of weapon, mostly confusingly relegated to an appendix and kept out of the Quick Reference sheet. Now the categories are simplified and to-hit and damage throws simply presented in a table. The armour penetration rules are simplified (making them deadlier though), and all short-range effects come in at 12 inch range (rather than 6, 8 or 12). The rules on moving and firing have been cleaned up, so that the moving target deduction now applies just to reaction firing.

    A further innovation is the use of cards to bring in such factors as off table artillery, electronic warfare, air strikes and so on in a random way. This is quite like the Battlegroup system, though that doesn’t use cards.

    How about our game? We had one big issue. The Challenger’s frontal armour was pretty much invulnerable to any of the weapons that the Soviets had at their disposal. The side armour was hard enough. And there was no penetration benefit for short range (though it was easier to hit). It didn’t help that we didn’t play the rules quite correctly, in that hits by the Russians with most weapons would still have inflicted single morale marker, which would have reduced the effectiveness of the British forces. But it was clear that the soviets weren’t going to win, so we ended slightly early, putting it down to experience.

    But the rules generally worked well, in spite of missing a few things (in addition to the single MMs for all hits theoretically capable of penetrating) we ignored the minimum range for ATGWs, and the restrictions for armour in the presence of infantry. The use of 6mm models with full distances worked fine. The rule writers do not admit to a distance scale, but if 12 inches is about 100m, as I suspect, then the ground and model scales are close to equal – a big bonus when buildings are part of the set-up, as they so often are.

    The small tweaks to IC have ended up with a greatly improved set of rules. My plan now is to ditch my IC house rules, and adapt 7DTTRR to WW2. How to deal with the cards side of things will take a bit of thought, but mostly it looks straightforward.

  • Altar of Freedom: Shiloh again

    View across table towards Pittsburgh Landing: about Move 3
    I different angle, with Pittsburgh Landing off-picture to left

    My usual club partners were intrigued enough about the Altar of Freedom rules to give the Shiloh game another go: this time as an all day game. The verdict remains mixed.

    We used Terry’s 15mm figures again, put together on ad-hoc bases, about 8cm by 4cm in size. We played these using the standard distances for 6mm figures, where the the bases are usually 6cm by 3cm: which was no real problem. We were able to take a bit more trouble with terrain. I put together a felt cloth with masking tape painted in gouache tempera for roads and rivers (with a bit of gloss impast gel for the water), and felt patches for the forests. We didn’t have access to supplies of tree models, though. The small streams and hills were ignored as of not being of major significance for this rules system. I even bought a 1/600 model of the USS Tyler at Salute and painted it up, which came out rather nicely. So the table looked much nicer, though hardly exhibition standard.

    We played the same teams of two a side as the original – I was part of the Confederate team with Terry, and Bernie and Pete taking on the Union. We started at about 10.30 am and finished after 6pm after 9 moves of the 11, with an adjudicated Union victory. The Confederates made better progress than in our first game. Our right, played by Terry, got quite close to the objective of the Pittsburg Landing, but they were flagging and the Union line was holding. My left tied down three Union divisions and steadily pushed them back, but did we put too much effort on that side? The Union strategy was to steadily retire and hold a coherent line. Only when their right had very little further ground to give did the fighting get really up to pitched battle level, and the Confederates were looking the more battered, although consistently being able to push forwards.

    So what of the rules? We were disappointed that the game did not play more quickly, as we had been led to believe from the blurb and one or two of the rules, though we were getting quicker by the end. The command phase, where the Priority Points are allocated, can be a bit tricky, and if two of you are playing as a team takes a little time. There are quite a few units to move around, and the turn system, which flips from one side to the other, can slow things down. BBB, the nearest rules set we have in scope, is faster, with fewer units, each side moving all its units together, and not allocation of PPs to manage. Overall we seemed to take about 45 minutes per move. The first moves took about 30 minutes, and our last moves were even quicker – so clearly there was some kind of an issue in the moves after lunch!

    We were getting the hang of the PP system, which is the most innovative part of the game. It is a clever evolution of the “PIP” system first made popular with the WRG’s DMB game, forcing players to choose which units to move and which to leave. As with our first game, the Confederates suffered with many more limitations on hows its PPs oculd be used – which was realistic enough. This pushed them into a broad front strategy, and nothing very clever was possible. It was very hard for the two corps which comprised two divisions to be able to move both their divisions in the same turn, and one of the two single division corps had a very limited PP ration. Another problem for them was that it was very hard for them to control the “turn clock”, which was therefore controlled by the Union side for all except the first and last move. That allowed them to run it down quickly, also limiting the Confederate options. However, by focusing on moving just three or four divisions in a single PP round, by giving them all three or all four PPs each, the Confederates could still get a lot done before the move closed (with four divisions on three points each that was definitely risky – so it was mostly three divisions on four). But this leads to one of the other criticisms of the game system. A lot of effort needs to put into crafting your bids – which is a bit of a distraction from the tabletop and does not closely mimic any real process of battle management.

    The movement and combat rules are very stripped down and simple. This is a bit abstract and generic, but that is a justifiable design decision given the focus on the command side. Though I’m no expert on the American Civil War, I think it actually captures the flavour of the rather loose ebb and flow of the era quite well. The main problem is that the rule book is too stripped down for my taste, and leaves too much unsaid, with only a short FAQ to help out, and no official online forum. So lots of details have to be worked out if players are unfamiliar with the rules, which clearly slowed us down. When can artillery interrupt advances to close combat? Can you shoot through narrow strips of woodland? If a unit starts on the edge of a wood, can it move at the full open-ground rate? And so on. Many rule writers (Iron Cross another case in point) deliberately keep the rule book short and loose, since adding extra detail makes the rules harder to read, and opens things out to rule-lawyers, as well as contradictions if you don’t do it quite right. I get that, but I don’t think these rules (or Iron Cross) get the balance right. We were able to settle down to a modus operandi, though I don’t think we got everything right. There’s only one thing I really don’t like and that is the total flexibility over movement and direction changes. Actually this works fine most of the time, but if a lone cavalry unit faces an isolated unit in the open, including another cavalry unit, it can almost always charge it in the flank (and without that unit being allowed to evade, as I found out afterwards). Also if a cavalry unit got into the rear, it is very easy for it to pick off generals even if they are in contact with their units. I can’t make too much of this. There aren’t many cavalry units (in this game one for Union, two for the Confederates), and moving them around requires command resources for their parent division. And historically they did harass rear areas. Flank attacks are easy in the rules by design – this is to liven up close combat, and in this context (i.e. the ACW) that’s fair enough. If I was modifying the rules, I think I would go down the BBB route of limiting direction changes during movement, but not as severely.

    So what is the verdict on Altar of Freedom? I have criticised the command system, but it has a huge virtue in being a hook to hang command characteristics of different armies on. The system invests a lot in giving different generals different characters, not only in PP allocations, but on how they may use them. These characters were in fact too much for us: none of us remembered the re-throws which different generals were entitled to. But for Shiloh it allowed the game to simulate the different command strengths and weakness of the two armies, which added a lot to the game. This would be very difficult in BBB. However this works less well in a multiplayer context. It is quite important that the different allocations from across the army are coordinated. Because of the turn clock it helps for the army to use as few different bid numbers as possible – unless you are deliberately playing for time and need to run down the clock. However this is problem with all variations of the PIP system of game management.

    Will we keep playing it? The time it took us was a bit discouraging. But we may well speed up, so I wouldn’t rule it out. If we do, I want to write down a number of game conventions to cover the vague bits in movement and combat, so that we are all agreed in advance. We were probably a bit too loose in this game – which tends to happen when you are making this sort of thing up in the heat of a game. One thing is for sure, though: playing AoF has added to my appreciation of game design!

    The Peter Pig model of USS Tyler. The rear flagstaff MIA

  • BBB: the new system is settling in

    The game at the start

    Last night I played another game at the club with my Napoleonic Prussian and French armies using my version of Bloody Big Battles. This was a totally made up scenario with two corps on each side. Two were about to be locked into a contest for a stream and bridge. Two more started some distance away and had to choose what would be the most effective way to support their colleagues. We had four players.

    My fellow gamers are getting used to the system, and doing more themselves without me needing to help them. This is gratifying. They also quite like the system: even better. We got through about five turns, as last time. The game probably needed another turn to come to a decisive conclusion. However, the French were weakening and had used up their reserves, while a fresh Prussian Brigade had appeared in their rear. They were the weaker side and perhaps I should have given them a bit more – cavalry perhaps. The scenario worked well. The gaps between the corps at the start meant that the players had to make some quite difficult choices about closing gaps and leaving flanks open.

    Different aspects of the rules were tested this time. Partly due to the way I set things up and nudged them (I was games master for most of the game), skirmishers were used much more than last time. They did what they were supposed to, shielding the main bodies from disorder and taking the early strain in fire duels, but I don’t think the players find that their use comes naturally. It isn’t clear to them when they should deploy skirmishers and when the shouldn’t. The skirmish bases are also a bit messy when not deployed. I think the system needs a redesign of some sort, but I’m not yet clear on what.

    We also played the rule on supporting artillery quite a bit – and that largely worked as intended. There was no cavalry versus infantry combat though, and no use of the square formation. The cavalry on both sides cancelled each other out.

    I am continuing to leave the system unchanged for now. I need to get a better idea of how to take skirmishing forward before making a move; I need a system which makes choices as to their deployment more natural. My thoughts on tweaks of other rules from last time mainly stand. The most radical thought I have had since is to create an idea of “hits” to reflect losses. 3 hits mean a base removal. Perhaps 1 hit happens whenever there is a disorder result from fire or assault combat. This would allow cumulative casualties to be reflected better, and is an alternative to the idea of “double disorder”, as disordered units can take hits. It would also help for cavalry vs. cavalry combat, where there is a lot of back and forward without any cumulative effect.

    A less radical idea is to reinstate the rule in main BBB that skirmishers are the first base to be removed. This helps tidy things up if nothing else.

  • Back to Iron Cross

    Last night we did another Iron Cross game at the club, using the latest adaptation of my house rules. It was pretty much a repeat of the previous scenario, which we played way back in October, before my travels, Christmas and flu intervened. We had four players and I games-mastered.

    This was version 1.1 of my house rules. These are actually slightly shorter than V1.0 we used last time, as I reverted to the original rules for buildings and the indirect fire rules were a bit simpler too. They still tipped into 8 pages though.

    The game, using mainly my figures and vehicles for 1943 Italy, moved a bit faster, though we only completed three turns. The Germans tried to move too many of their forces forward at once, which did not leave them with enough command points to do the fighting, or to penetrate deeper into the British territory. Their tanks got badly mauled (three knocked out, two badly damaged out of six tanks), even before the British tank reinforcements arrived, while they only managed to knock out one M10 in return. The infantry cleared the wood next to hamlet that was the objective, without much loss (and destroying one of the British infantry sections), but hadn’t really got stuck into the main British position.

    How did the adapted rules fare? Only the mortar fire rules got a serious test: they turned out to be a bit too effective, but that was mainly because as games master I was a bit too generous with “speculative” firing at unseen targets. On reflection I think all fire must be directed at seen targets, with maybe an exception for game objectives. Smoke would be the exception. There were a couple of attempts at close combat, and I think the “super-activation” idea works better than my previous two-step one.

    A couple of the issues that I mentioned last time raised their heads. The firing rules are a faff and not very intuitive. By now the players should be getting the hang of it and able to resolve things with a quick reference sheet. The other is that cover doesn’t seem to offer infantry and support groups all that much protection. Both are core Iron Cross rules, which I’m loth to fiddle with. But the grey cells are working on it.

    But the biggest problem is that we are all in the early stages of mastering how to play the game. Holding reserves, retiring to regroup, passing the initiative are all plays that should be made more. The command rules (for example with one re-throw per turn) need to be brought in. I only discovered how useful the fall back rule is at the end of the game (I took over the German armour, which desperately needed to regroup). I should be trying to push all this onto my fellow gamers – but the truth is that I’m on a learning curve myself. But generally they seem happier with this game than with Rapid Fire, so there is plenty of scope to keep going. I need a new scenario though. This one is now stale.

    Meanwhile I’m very tempted to devise a WW2 system based on the Fire and Fury move system (used in BBB). I have taken this on in a little rule-writing project – but this for a battalion level game, and one that doesn’t pretend that platoons are individuals. That’s very different from Iron Cross, which is an unashamed company game, where at least the tanks are scaled 1:1 – though not a true skirmish game like Chain of Command.

  • Another BBB Napoleonics game

    After a six week trip to Australia, followed by Christmas and flu, I’ve had rather a long break from gaming and modelling/painting. Now I’m starting to work my way back in. Last night I ran another Napoleonic game at the club, using my heavily adapted BBB rules.

    For a scenario I dusted off an old one I had from Grand Armée days, called Three Roads. It is actually a disguised ACW scenario, reset to 1815, though alas I don’t know what the original battle was. In the GA version Napoleon’s I and II Corps attack the Anglo-Netherlands forces based near Hal under Prince Frederick to the right of Wellington’s main army. In my version it is the French III and IV Corps (reinforced by a couple of brigades of infantry) who pounce on the Prussian III Korps. Only after I put the scenario on the table did I realise that the OB was strikingly similar to the battle of Wavre, on the opposite flank of Waterloo, where the French had less infantry and more cavalry. The French have a big advantage in quality and quantity, but their force is split across three lines of advance, and they are time-limited. We played this scenario a couple of times back in the day, and it produced an intriguing game, asymmetric games often do.

    We got about 5 turns played (though one flank only completed 4 turns, it was clear where that was heading). This is probably right for the length of the scenario – the GA and BBB timescales are hard to compare. Though by then the Prussian were close to collapse (but with reinforcements coming) , they were holding one of the two bridges that were the battle’s objectives securely (being the Prussian escape route), though the other was close to falling. If darkness fell the Prussian would be able to get out, and the French had taken some pretty heavy losses. A draw. With a little tweaking this works OK for an evening game. We had two players each side, with me as games master.

    My companions are getting the hang of BBB, and things are moving much faster than before, which is gratifying (we got through 5 moves last time, but with smaller forces). One feature of play that threw me a bit was that both French players threw their infantry into combat in march column. I don’t think we played this quite right. I think this was a mistake on their part, but they didn’t think they had time to deploy into proper combat formation, and on the French left they wanted to take advantage of a bridge. I wonder if it is too slow to redeploy from march – but then reorganising your forces could be a slow business.

    My rule modifications worked OK. Artillery proved very influential: it help the Prussians a lot, as those march columns made good targets. Both sides had more artillery than in previous games with these new rules (which double up the number of bases), as I was doing an artillery-lite Peninsula scenario before – this time I used historical ratios. This anyway answered the previous issue with artillery not being effective enough – it’s a matter of quantity. Artillery can be devastating with good dice (11 or 12) but it is often ineffective. I don’t really like this balance, but it’s core BBB. The replacement of “out of ammo” with “disrupted” is simpler but clearly less harsh, as artillery tends to bounce back from disrupted quickly – though if it happens on Offensive fire, it will affect Defensive capability. Another point is that artillery is quite vulnerable to an exploitation attack, where they can’t fire defensively. This could be realistic, but I’m not comfortable with it.

    Others of my new rules didn’t have much impact. There wasn’t much infantry v infantry assault combat. Those French march columns tended to get stopped before they could get involved. The skirmisher rules weren’t really used at all. The players were too impatient, and I don’t think they’ve internalised this new feature yet. Whether this new feature is worth the bother remains in the balance. Nor did we have any artillery in direct support of infantry units – though the Prussians should have done this, and I could have guided them into doing so. So I can’t say that my rules have properly proved themselves yet. I need to give them more time. Squares were used a bit – and I did allow all-round firing, though it was ineffective.

    I am resisting the temptation to fiddle with them some more. But here are some things to think about:

    • I could make formation changes like limbering and unlimbering is for artillery: a two out of three idea. So changing formation doesn’t stop you from making a full move, but you do lose the ability to Offensive Fire. This would have the benefit of aligning the infantry and cavalry rules with artillery. Formation change could be extended to more general “reorganisation”. Though what about a a dash across a bridge in March Column to quickly change to Depth or Line before the enemy can counterattack?
    • Squares could behave a bit more like tactical squares – in which case they would need to be based on the Depth formation. Or perhaps squares in depth get a no flank benefit to infantry attacks also.
    • Artillery might be a little less vulnerable, especially to exploitation attack. Perhaps it gets an extra round of defensive fire.
    • Artillery bases in the same corps could combine to form temporary units for the purposes of movement throws and assault combat.
    • What happens when a unit that is disrupted suffers a second disruption result? At the moment nothing. Perhaps have a “Shaken” status, which takes 1 point of movement throw, and perhaps increased combat effects (no advance into a ZOC maybe, but no modification to firing and assault modifiers).

    Apart from this some wider problems with the BBB system are becoming apparent. I have already mentioned the issue with artillery being alternatively devastating and ineffective. The activation system is a strength and a weakness. One throw deals with command friction and morale. This is very good in situations like the multiplayer setups I get on club nights. For example it was no trouble to split the Prussians between two players in this game. But it can be very disruptive. The Prussian regular unit got stuck for at least two turns, as did one of the French units. This sort of thing happens in real battles, of course, but it gets in the way of player agency. Other systems get players to concentrate command resources so that disruption is less likely to happen to areas of high priority. Perhaps this could be moderated with a bigger effect for a CinC – allowing a re-throw of a Movement Throw perhaps?

    Still with my gaming companions getting used to the system, and with my modifications getting most of what I wanted, I’m holding back on developing my own system for now. I have an 80% draft for a prototype, but I already know that it is over-engineered.

    Meanwhile the success of Three Roads means I should look at a scenario based on Wavre.

    Postscript

    Another thought on a possible rule amendment: the cavalry opportunity charge. Before defensive fire cavalry can charge enemy units within 6in that have shown vulnerability by changing formation. They require a movement throw as usual, and in any subsequent combat there is an advantage. This actually fits in with something one of the players said in our game – but it would fit well with more flexible rules on formation changes suggested above. This could be allowed for infantry too, instead of Defensive fire. Inf act it could be brought into the same phase.

  • More BBB Napoleonics

    Last night at the club I tried out my new house rules to convert Bloody Big Battles to Napoleonics, using a smaller scenario. This was a success, though I will tweak the rules some more.

    The scenario was loosely based on Albuera (1811 in the Peninsular War), but using my 1815 Franco-Prussian armies, so that I did not have to print new unit labels, as well as getting more feel for how these armies work. On the French side I had four standard 4 base infantry units of Veteran line troops. Two of these were assigned to the flank march, one to the pinning attack and one to the reserve. In support were three cavalry units. One light cavalry unit (3 bases) supported the pin attack, while a further one (using my Polish lancer figures) combined with a cuirassier unit of 4 bases to support the flank attack. They had three artillery units: one field unit for the pin, one further field unit and a horse unit for the flank attack. There were two generals. One overall (Vandamme taking the place of Soult) and one for the cavalry (Grouchy taking the place of Latour-Maubourg, though in 1815 he was the senior officer). The Prussians had two corps. One, to take the place of the Spanish, had three 4 base landwehr infantry units and a 3 base landwehr cavalry unit and a field artillery unit. To take the place of the Anglo-Portuguese were two 6 base line infantry units (Trained) and a 4 base dragoon unit, also with artillery. The Prussians were classed as Passive. This is hardly an exact correspondence on the Allied side (given that the British had the best infantry on the field), but the overall challenge remained similar. The terrain available for a club night encounter was very approximate.

    The scenario worked fine. Doing proper historical scenarios, as envisaged by the creators of BBB isn’t really feasible for a club night. They tend to be too big, and there isn’t a good way of getting the terrain relief right – real terrain is subtle and flowing; club hills are blobby – and most gamers don’t actually bother with them, using other terrain features to break things up. Since hills are probably the most important aspect of terrain militarily, this is a pity, if understandable.  Also getting the armies right takes quite a bit of prep. But you can’t beat a historical scenario for creating a narrative and interest. So my compromise is to use real battles for game purposes drawing units from historical armies, but not those f the battle itself. We didn’t quite finish this one, but we started late, and there were only two and a half of us, instead of the usual four. So the size was about right, until we speed up. I need to find a few more battles of this sort of size.

    How did it play? Terry did not follow the historical precedent. He immediately threw the reserve division into the frontal attack, turning the pinning attack into the main deal. On the flank he set up his artillery to play on the allied units, pushed his cavalry towards the Allied rear, and held his infantry back. The Prussian regulars moved to handle the flank attack, while the landwehr dealt with the frontal attack. In the former case the dragoon unit did most of the work. It did sterling service, beating off a combined attack from the two French units, and with some help from fire support, destroying the lancer unit. At the end the French cuirassiers were in the Allied rear, but allied dragoons were still facing them off. The regular infantry allowed themselves to be pinned by the cavalry, but took up the challenge of the French infantry when it eventually advanced. This infantry battle wasn’t resolved at the end of Turn 5 (or 6) when we called it a draw. Meanwhile the French frontal attack was slowly grinding down the landwehr after capturing the village, though at the cost of being neutralised itself. The landwehr cavalry managed to neutralise the French cavalry, using the stream.

    So how did the rule modifications play? The most dramatic: the new cavalry v. infantry combat table, and squares. Infantry became fearful of cavalry, and often took up square formation (on the Prussian side), limiting its effectiveness. So it played a bit like Waterloo. Whether this is overdone is hard to test. There were not many attacks by cavalry on infantry, so this aspect wasn’t properly stress tested.

    I was most nervous about the skirmisher rules, as this seemed to add the most complexity. But they worked pretty smoothly, and it captured the most important aspects. Skirmishers could shield the main body from disordering fire, but also represented a drain on strength. Cavalry was good at neutralising them, giving cavalry a further (and historical) function. The unhistorical thing is that firing is alternating, which doesn’t capture the mutual attrition aspect of this warfare, where most of the damage in fact arises from fatigue and ammunition loss. That is pretty much baked into the BBB system, though.

    The new infantry combat table was fairly influential and meant that the French attack on the landwehr progressed more quickly. Again this needs more stress testing, but the early results are promising. Finally the new artillery system, with bases representing smaller units with reduced firepower worked well. Artillery remained influential enough. Replacing silenced batteries with Disrupted ones (like infantry) wasn’t tested, and neither was their vulnerability to charge combat. Artillery was incorporated into supporting infantry units, but this it was difficult to do this while the infantry was moving. In fact in the real battle of Albuera the artillery did keep up with the infantry.

    So what changes to make? There should be some small tweaks to the skirmish rules. I think artillery movement can be more flexible – and the rules used in Age of Eagles (another system based on Fire and Fury) used, allowing artillery to limber/unlimber and move, or limber/unlimber and fire without penalty in a move (but not move, unlimber and fire). This leads me to a further thought. I have now eliminated all the causes to halve fire points except Disruption and Low on Ammo. Can I find a different way of handling these? Infantry fire with a single point per base; artillery Defensive fire at short range only. And treat Low on Ammo as Disruption instead?. I like ideas that reduce complexity!

    There is something else, while I think of it. BBB allows for the recovery of bases on the movement throw (though not if Disrupted). This was very important in the first trial game I played (actually based on the 1866 campaign), when an Austrian unit that was badly mauled by concentrated artillery fire, retired behind a slope and mostly recovered. It has almost never been used in my games since, possibly because we forgot to apply it, but mainly because damaged units are in the thick of it and usually start their turn Disrupted. In the Napoleonic era I can’t think of a case where a division got badly roughed up, retired, recovered and went back into battle on the same day (overnight is another matter).  Units disintegrated during battle and proved very hard to recover until the end of the day, even when casualties were not that great. It is quite a striking feature of the Napoleonic battle. I think this could be dropped (it doesn’t feature in Fire and Fury or Age of Eagles). There is a case for not removing units reduced to a single base, but consolidating them into rump units to fight a rearguard with, but that is something else, and an extra complexity we don’t really need.

    I think I’m really on to something with this adapted BBB. What I need to do now is to work on my 15mm armies to make them look a bit smarter and extend them a bit, especially the French. It would be fun to have Austrians and Russians too, but that’s a long way off! I still have unfinished business on my 1943 troops.

  • Using BBB for Napoleonic battles

    Our all day game with a Napoleonic scenario (not a real historical one…) was a success. We finished a well-balanced game which preserved tension to the last turn of eight. We were becoming fluent in rules, which provided a good, workable game system. What to learn?

    The scenario was the same one we tried last time: a miniaturised Koniggratz transposed to 1815, between French and Prussians. The forces were half sized, the table 80% in linear dimensions (64% by area). The game  length was reduced from 9-10 turns to 8. The terrain reflected the original BBB scenario a bit more faithfully than our first game at the club, but was still simplified. Six villages were represented, five in Prussian hands at the start. The French objective was to take five. Four (leaving two in Prussian hands) constituted a draw, which is where we ended up. Neither side was particularly close to winning, but each could have.

    The first points to reflect on are scenario design. Following the BBB scenario quite closely clearly worked. The standard BBB scenarios set a number of geographical objectives and a time limit, rather than destroying the opponents’ army. Each player controlled about five infantry and cavalry units and two or three artillery units. It took us a bit over half an hour a turn (about 5 hours in total). I don’t think we’re going to get much quicker. For a club night we’ll need to come down to a single corps each with about 3 units, with a more compact playing area (though ours was just 4ft by 5ft) and all the troops on the table at the start, and a five or six turn limit. Or the balance of the rules needs to change.

    The problem with the rules is that there is a lot of slugging to no great effect. In our whole game the Prussians lost 7 bases out of 47, and the French 10 from the same number.  Only two units lost two bases. Mostly fire resulted in opponents being disrupted, and assaults in one side falling back 3 inches without a base loss. This is consistent with earlier outings. But how to make it crunchier? My first thought was that our experience was because weaponry was deadlier in the later conflicts that the rules were designed for. Except that our  fire factors have already been beefed up, based on suggestions in a magazine article (though these were more or less the only suggestions adopted). Perhaps it’s bad luck. Only two of our many assaults had a difference of 4+, which is a decisive victory, and there were only two draws, which wear units down quickly. Or maybe it reflects inexperience with the rules. The problem is to make combat deadlier without making it more capricious – which would mean one side suffering serious losses compared to the other from an ordinary bad run of dice. The only way I can think of doing this is fiddling with the assault table to that more combats resulted in the loss of a base by both sides. That’s playing with fire, but I don’t think that Napoleonic divisions were able to survive more than two or three hours of hard infantry to infantry combat, if you take exhaustion and ammunition depletion into account.

    The next issue is Napoleonic feel. As I wrote last time, this boils down to cavalry, skirmishers and artillery. In this game we used cavalry to capture and recapture villages from infantry. The clashes between infantry and cavalry really don’t feel right. But this is an area that went badly when I last tried to tinker with it. One method might be to adopt the idea of “squares”, making infantry more vulnerable when not so formed, but less mobile when in square. Infantry also needs to be able to push away cavalry holding ground, when appropriate. But would it just be extra complexity for a slower game? Also cavalry should be more limited in difficult terrain. Funnily enough though I think the rules as they stand work fine for cavalry v. cavalry combat – better than most rule systems in fact.

    Then there are skirmishers. We effectively accommodate this with a 6in musket range. I want to use skirmish bases. In principle this is easy. All musketry would be limited to 3in range. Skirmish bases would have a fire factor of 2, but no use against cavalry.  I have crafted an elegant draft rule on this, but my fear is that it just makes things fiddlier, and that players won’t bother with it. An alternative would be to incorporate a version of the main rules on skirmishers (with a skirmish base being part of the main unit formation), and link this to the extra weapon range.

    And so to artillery. Artillery, rightly, has a big impact on the game. But each unit acts like a grand battery, while being much more flexible than was realistic, especially in evading threats. Two or more units ganging up can be very formidable. Each one is meant to represent 24 guns. One way of trying to handle this is reduce both the unit size and firepower (and also the provision for units to fire at reduced rate). The close range fire factor might be rounded down as well. We could just do this for horse artillery and give it extra mobility. In some ways this would not change things that much – given that each artillery unit would need a movement throw to move, and that artillery would take up more space (I may enlarge the bases), this could help.

    The issue with artillery goes  deeper than this, though. Artillery and adjacent infantry units are treated as separate units. On more than one occasion infantry would retreat, leaving batteries isolated. In this game the isolated artillery showed a remarkable ability to survive.  It didn’t look right, even if it was possible to rationalise it.  In fact artillery had two distinct uses: one was close support to divisions, and the other was forming grand batteries at corps or army level. The rules don’t do a particularity good job of reflecting the former, while they make the latter the manoeuvrability of single batteries. It doesn’t scale up so well from the original Fire and Fury. One idea is to allow artillery to be attached to infantry units, allowing them to fight as joint units. When not doing so, artillery would suffer an automatic walkover when assaulted, though they may still stop an assault in the fire phase (unless defending works, maybe). This approach would work better with the smaller artillery units.

    Finally on potential rules revisions I am thinking of a different treatment for built-up areas. This is to treat building models as obstacles, rather removing them when the villages or towns are occupied. The models have to be quite small (though the 6mm I use are fine), and in larger areas you have to have streets wide enough to take bases. This is a bit more complicated, but the internal layout of built up areas did matter.

    How do the rules look historically? The French outfought the Prussians: numerical equality left them with a clear upper hand. This was mainly achieved through rating the French as Veteran (with a small number of elite units counted as Aggressive) and the Prussians Trained or Raw. But the Prussians but up a pretty good fight. This feels like the right balance for Ligny and Waterloo – though how to bring the British into this is an interesting question. (I suspect many British units have to be rated Aggressive or Devastating Volleys as well as veteran; many French may be rated as Fragile). The main problem historically is that things are taking too long if one move is meant to represent one hour.

    Which leaves me with a dilemma. Is BBB broken enough to fix? If you start fiddling with settled rules systems you quickly run into unintended consequences. Or you make them more complicated to no great purpose. I hesitate.