There will be a game at the end of the month here. Since I have no sense at all, I have taken it upon myself to design a scenario. My methodology for this involves more of a pantomime than you might expect, but here you see some breathtaking shots of the stages in the development. The rule system is my
Ramekin variant on
Commands & Colors: Napoleonics.
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| How to fit the terrain features onto a hex-grid table (start off with 13 x 9 hexes) |
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| Having plotted the terrain (which has now grown to 17 x 9), and having sorted out the OOB, I now work out the starting situation - you will see that both sides have lots of off-table reserves headed toward the guns at the start |
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| And then I set it all out, with the units in place - Battle of Neumarkt-St Veit - not one of Jean-Baptiste Bessiere's best days, as it turned out... |
More of this in a couple of weeks...
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| "I never wanted this stupid gig in the first place" |
Okay I'm intrigued - and you know I have no knowledge of the period. Is this a completely made up battle or are you modeling one actually fought?
ReplyDeleteNo, it's a for-real battle. Not one that there are many ready-to-go scenarios - there's one in "Blunders on the Danube", but that's designed for Piquet's Field of Battle Rules. There is not really an excess of accounts of the historical battle, possibly because Napoleon wasn't present and the French lost!
DeleteMy main sources are Vol.2 of John H Gill's Danube trilogy and the OOBs in Scott Bowden's book about the armies of 1809.
Ahhh, scenario design, the game before the game. Hours of fun.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely - clear head needed!
DeleteSounds fun - is there an out of the box C&C scenario for this battle for comparison? Are the reserves constrained to come on at a particular time and via a particular hex or is there a certain degree of flexibility? One of the things that used to drive me crazy about the old SPI Napoleonic games I played as a lad was the gamey way you could park one of your units on the hex through which an enemy reserve unit was scheduled to enter the map and thereby delay or prevent its appearance, I would imagine you wouldn't allow any of those malarkies.
ReplyDeleteNo published C&C scenario for this one, otherwise that would have been my first port of call! Reserves will enter within a range of a few hexes on their baseline. The Bavarian Light Cavalry can enter over any bridge at any time. Molitor's French infantry have to enter through Neumarkt (the town at the top) at any time. For the Austrians, the left hand column (Hoffmeister, who on the day was headed for some town on the other side of the river Rott rather than the enemy - it was his orders, you see) have to be cued on by rolling a 5 or 6 on a D6. The other Austrians are just the continuation of a column which is already on the table. I recall the SPI trickery - explain that one in historical terms then?
Delete"I recall the SPI trickery - explain that one in historical terms then?"
DeleteIn historical terms? In sci-fi, it is called "blocking the time portal." In those games, I always allowed the reinforcements to either fight their way onto the map or shift their entry hexes.
This has exposed one of my blind spots. For a second, briefly after I read 'Klutzes' the usual way, I thought it might have been a town in southern Germany. So in other words I am one of the intended klutzes.
ReplyDeleteAnother example of a blindspot: I never associated 'Molitor' with Napoleonic generals, only that telephone number mentioned in the Day of the Jackal. Of course the street is named after him. And a rather nice looking swimming pool too. Doppeldummkopf!
Anyway, it looks a good scenario with lots of different ways it could unfold, and scope for the wargamer to try different things.
Thats right, the Battle of Klutzes - I have taken part in this game many times. No - the klutz in the title is myself. I once had a book called "The Klutz Book of Juggling", and from that point on I've always entered into things with some kind of assumption that I am, in fact, a klutz. Not out of any particular lack of confidence, you understand, merely because I found I did better with an approach suitable for klutzes. I did learn to juggle, by the way. Not great - I never turned professional or anything, but for a short while I could amaze my friends for about 10 seconds. I still look back on that with a quiet smile...
DeleteMolitor - Gabriel Jean Joseph, b.1770. By the time Napoleon came to power, Molitor had already had a distinguished military career in the Revolutionary Wars. Promoted Gen de Divn in 1801. A native of Alsace, a fluent German speaker, Molitor was frequently employed in Germany and the Baltic regions. His career seems to have plateaued a bit, though he continued to perform excellently. He provided much of the brains for Marshal Brune's successful conquest of Stralsund in 1807, and was subsequently Governor of Pomerania for a while. Served under Rapp in the Armee du Rhin in the 100 Days. Created Marshal of France by the Bourbons in 1823. Fairly recently he was in the news because he was once the owner of a Stradivarius violin which sold for $3.6m in 2010 (he bought it in 1804 - presumable he played the thing, or did he just perform air violin in front of the mirror?). His face is better known than it might be, since one of the big coffee-table Napoleonic books (Lachouque? Histoires et Collections?) published his portrait twice - once as Molitor and once as Coehorn. Since then Coehorn is often associated with Molitor's portrait online.
Another of the French army's slight mysteries - Molitor's career definitely slowed under Napoleon - on merit, he looks like he should have been an obvious Corps commander somewhere along the line. Political indiscretion? bad behaviour? Anyway, the boy done good in the end.
I suppose to an extent it made sense, the idea of sending off a unit to keep the enemy reinforcements at bay for as long as possible. I suppose the big problem was that it was automatic - if the unit was there the reinforcements could not come on at that point, no matter the disparity in strength. I remember in the Encirclement of Leipzig game if a friendly unit occupied a map entry hex for enemy reinforcements, they would instead appear a turn later on the closest entry hex that contained a road. This meant that it was possible for the smallest French cavalry unit to divert the entire Army of the North! Mind you, given the less than enthusiastic performance of Prince Bernadotte, perhaps that example is not so silly after all.
ReplyDeleteSorry, this should have been a reply to the earlier SPI comment...
DeleteFirst a tip of the Chapeau for tackling this. Scenario design is part art form itself. This is an unusual action, and one I enjoyed developing the scenario for (and playing it) for "Blunders". I am sure one of Michael Hopper's four (!) 1809 scenario books has at least one MNeumarkt scenario in it as well.
ReplyDeleteIIRC, Molitor later commanded a Division in Massena's Corps, and his Division was very heavily engaged in the defense of Aspern.
Hi Peter - I checked out the Blunders game. The Hopper books keep intriguing me, but they are pricey, and the current sourcing arrangements involve heavy postage and (I assume) import tax here. I'm still thinking about them.
DeleteFor a while I was thinking of making the scenario end-to-end of the table, but there is a risk that the troops spend all their time marching rather than fighting, and I fancied the extra space of the normal across-the-table arrangement. This game is going to be a 4-hander, so space will be useful!
Yes, Molitor was kept busy! I have toyed with the idea of a fictional campaign based around Pommerania, and he would be on the list for that!