My most recent club game was a “small Ligny” – excluding the action on the eastern flank, and the final commitment of reserves by Napoleon. This was not in fact a serious refight – the main aim was to familiarise ourselves with the Horse, Foot, Guns rules, which we are due to use for a “big Waterloo” game (including Wavre and Grouchy) in a month’s time. This latter game, put on by somebody else at the club, promises to be very interesting. We will use 2mm troop blocks with the lovely Ferraris map as the playing surface.
Still, Ligny (two days before Waterloo in 1815) is an enduring fascination of mine. I want to do a full version of it using my own rules – and a “big Ligny” too, incorporating Quatre Bras. It is a very demanding test of a grand tactical rules system. To date I have tried Blücher and my own adaptation of Bloody Big Battles; both failed – the French didn’t stand a chance. There are two big challenges: fighting in the villages, and Prussian command and control, where the two and eventually three corps became intermingled, and where the (division-sized) Brigades were sometimes broken into pieces ad-hoc. How would HFG do?
We used my own version of HFG, which I produced nearly 10 years ago – as the original’s scope was too wide (1700-1910, naval support, etc.) and densely-written (by Phil Barker of Wargames Research Group fame). These were designed to work with my basing system. I felt it would be easier to use these rather than the originals, which were slightly updated (V1.1) since ten years ago. I fought two battles with the system (Waterloo and Salamanca – both described on these pages – search for HFG) before moving on.
Each element was about 2,000 infantry, 1,200 cavalry or 20 guns. The bases corresponded to French infantry brigades or cavalry divisions – with a couple of extra bases for Vandamme’s corps. For the Prussians I used one element for each regiment – though in practice they mixed the regiments up. On numbers they should have had a couple of elements more – but the OB I was using did not account for losses at Gilly the day before, and I gave them an addition of Chateau Ligny as a strongpoint, without deducting anything for the garrison. The landwehr I graded as inferior, but all other troops on both sides were standard. This is a bit generous to the Prussians. The French were probably better quality in general, and some of the newer Prussian regiments were not tip-top, especially where they represented elements of different formations thrown together. Still HFG has only three quality grades, so fine-tuning was not possible. Elite would have been reserved for the French senior Guard (at Ligny, but not on my table). For the Prussians I got a lot of pleasure from using my collection to get figures closely approximating the actual regiments in 1815. The French were my hard-working 1809 miniatures, so not especially realistic.
The board was thrown together quickly. The playing area is just 3ft by 3ft. It was thrown together very rapidly from elements that I had in stock – the hills in particular only vaguely reflect the actual terrain. Ligny brook was treated as an area of slow-going. Ligny village was treated as two built-up ares (BUAs), separated by the brook. St Armand was treated as parkland/orchard (slow going, cover from artillery, but otherwise limited impact), with Longpré, where most of the fighting on that flank took place, was treated as a single BUA. I used my new Geek Villain “Field of Glory” battle mat – which was glorious, in spite of not being to scale. I used 6mm buildings, as anything bigger doesn’t work at this very compact ground scale. I shouldn’t be using 18mm miniatures – but I’m not building 6mm or 10mm armies up from scratch! There is more than even the usual disconnect between figure and ground scale (but if that’s all right for Rapid Fire!…).
We played for about 3 hours, packing up for the club AGM, which took place at 2pm. I wasn’t counting the number of turns. HFG turns represent a short time interval (10-15 minutes), so there are meant to be lots of turns, but it was inevitably slow at first. We only really got as far as the opening stages of the battle. The French, played by Malc, massed all their artillery in the centre, and proceeded to drive off the outnumbered Prussian artillery opposite. Meanwhile Gérard”s corps tried to pile into Ligny, Girard’s division into Longpré, and Vandamme worked round the French left, eventually joining the attack on Longpré. The Prussians, played by Rod, gradually moved their second line – from Pirch II’s corps – round to the right flank. Gérard repeatedly tried to break into Ligny, and only succeeded in the last move before we broke up. He only lost one element – but not to the fighting in the BUA but to a single Prussian artillery battery posted on their left, out of range from the French artillery. It was the only destroyed element on either side during the game.
Girard and Vandamme’s attacks on Longpré were just as futile, and never broke in. Given that historically the French did break into both places fairly quickly and then started a seesaw battle, sucking in almost all the two Prussian corps’ infantry, this didn’t seem to be reflecting history. It was also rather dull and slow game play. HFG was not a good system for this battle. A more appropriate trial game would have been smaller and on more open terrain.
On the two Ligny problems, I don’t think HFG handled the first (BUAs) at all well. Part of our problem was unfamiliarity with the rules. In HFG there are two phase of combat: “firing”distant combat” and close combat. Infantry can’t move into close combat without starting from within firing range. When attacking BUAs this initial firing combat is critical, and the defenders start with a big advantage. It’s important to get this right, or otherwise your attack won’t get to the close combat stage – which is also at a significant disadvantage unless you can get a “silenced” result in firing combat. If the French had got this sequence right, they would have done much better at Ligny – not so much at Longpré.
Still I don’t think the rules capture Napoleonic BUA combat well. Fire combat before the sides closed was not important historically. In practice defenders could only mount skirmish fire at the edges. Most of the combat in the interior took place in the streets, without much cover. There was a lot of close-quarter fighting with little or no advantage to the defender – unless they could organise on a strong point with a secure perimeter, such as a churchyard (and even then this usually needed to be prepared in advance to be properly effective). The rules seem to framed for later 19th century warfare, with far more effective firearms, and where soldiers used the local cover to much better advantage.
On command and control the rules did pose a challenge. The corps commanders were “command parties” which were mobile but only have a small command radius. Army commanders can’t give direct orders to units not under direct command. With Prussians’ large corps this made it hard going. That wasn’t unrealistic – though historically the battle was controlled by the army command, with the corps commanders having only a limited role, it ended up in a similar place.
Another thing to learn from the rules is that because the turns represent a short time period, you can be patient, building your position before launching an attack, and using long artillery bombardments (five or six turns, even).
My earlier criticisms of HFG stand, however. The biggest of the is that it doesn’t capture attritional combat well – the gradual wearing down of armies. It is a low-probability/high impact system, which I don’t really like, though this works better the armies and timescale. The fact that both sides must dice for each combat and add up combat factors slows things down, though this speeds up with practice; this matters when you need to get a lot of turns in. Although I can think of ways of improving the system a bit, I’m not investing in it – I’m going a different way.
The journey on my big battle rules continues. I got quite a long way with a new activation system inspired by Lasalle II on my BBB-based system, but I realised this was not going to work in the multi-player games that I want to play. Instead I’m working on some other ideas:
- Instead of multi-based units in contact, in formations analogous to lines and columns (following BBB), I want to try moving each base as an individual element – a bit like HFG, except that the elements are smaller (say 1,000 infantry rather than 2,000, with a 30mm frontage rather than 50mm), and each subject to damage before being removed. This follows Bruce Weigle system for his 1870 series.
- I want to use a card system for quick resolution of morale. A bit like the Twilight rules, combat will be resolved by alternating morale tests.
- I’m thinking of using a card system to drive the turns too – but this is undeveloped in the Napoleonic context. The central idea is that all moves are standard (say 6in), but not all units can move every move.
My idea is the develop a series of systems with common elements to cover WW2, Bismarck’s wars, Napoleonic and the Great Northern War. I’m close to testing the WW2 system, and I am thinking of moving to Bismarck’s wars next. Meanwhile for Napoleonics I’m playing very enjoyable mid-sized battles with Général d’Armée 2.
