The Schellenberg, and why not
I'm planning to host a few games in the near future, so I've been polishing up scenarios. I have some concerns about always using historical battles - they obviously have a strong appeal, but in my experience the potential disadvantages tend to offset this. I'll explain why a bit later; I'm confident that I'll be misunderstood, and will accidentally offend someone, so let me state, right up front (before we get to that bit), that nothing could be further from my intention, and if anyone is offended I have simply expressed myself badly! - anyway, we'll get to that.
First off, probably because I am a madman, but also because I wanted to prove that my WSS rules could stand up to a big, complex action, I played a game with the Jolly Broom Man nearly two years ago which was obviously Blenheim, though of course I insisted that it was just a battle that had some similarities to Blenheim. The reason for the [childish] deception was that I didn't want people with superior knowledge pouring scorn on my grasp of the period (they'll manage to do that without my dropping the evidence into their laps...), and I didn't want anyone to judge how well my rules work by comparing the game result with the historic one (which, for reasons I don't follow, is often done).
In the event, JBM and I spent two fairly heavy evenings bringing the game to completion, and the result was historically correct, though from a detailed point of view some bits worked out "correctly" and some didn't. The main deliverable was a successful stress-test of the game systems, albeit with a page or two of scribbled notes for possible tweaks, so I was only slightly interested in a "correct" result. The good news was that it all worked out quite nicely - we both needed therapy afterwards, but it was fine - the potentially bad news was that it got me thinking positively about pushing my luck and setting up some more historical scenarios in the future!
I have a strong fancy for Schellenberg, which, as I'm sure you know, took place just a short distance along the Danube from Blenheim, a few months earlier. It's unusually well documented in English for a WSS battle - because, of course, that famously handsome British general and hero, the Duke of Marlborough, won the day. [Hurrah!] This week, the Imp of Perversity raised his irritating head, and I spent two (very interesting) days reading everything I could get my hands on about the battle, with a view to seeing if I could set up an enjoyable scenario.
I'll rush through this a bit, since I do not wish to shine bright lights on my pathetic understanding of the history, and also because it is probably boring.
Compressed narrative: For political reasons, the Allied army was jointly commanded by the D of M [Hurrah!] and the Margrave of Baden [who?]. Prince Eugene was temporarily out of the picture since he had been left behind to distract the French in the Rhine / Moselle area.
The Allies needed a safe bridge over the Danube, and Donauwörth was thought to be ideal. The small town was walled, and it was overlooked by an adjacent fortified hill, the Schellenberg, which had delapidated defences dating variously from the 13th Century to the 30 Years War. The Elector of Bavaria sent a strong corps of veteran troops to defend the area, commanded by an old friend of mine, the Piedmontese Count D'Arco (who appears - and dies - on my battlefields with great regularity, like a character out of a soap opera), and D'Arco set to work repairing the defences, with large gangs of civilian labourers.
D'Arco was heavily outnumbered by Marlborough/Baden's force, but if he could hold out for long enough there was a French army rushing through the Black Forest to support him. When the Allies arrived to the north of Donauwörth and its bridges, Baden was pessimistic about a direct assault, and recommended that the Allies put the place under formal siege. Marlborough overruled him, since
- they did not have the equipment or the time for such a siege
- any delay would increase the likelihood of the French force's arrival
- delay would also give D'Arco's labourers more time to stiffen up the Schellenberg
- he reckoned (correctly) that the defenders would not expect an immediate assault
And therefore the Allies attacked the Schellenberg as soon as they arrived. [Hurrah! etc]
Righto, that's what happened. This all sounds quite exciting, but I was put off using it as a scenario for a few reasons:
- if the Allies are forced to attack immediately, it has to be on the old works on the Schellenberg, and the lie of the land (including the surrounding forests) means that there is a very limited stretch of the North wall where these attacks can be made
- D'Arco's garrison may, if they are very lucky, keep them out for a while
- so the game becomes one extended scrap over a single area, hardly any choices to be made, just a slugfest; a game of conkers...
Don't get me wrong; I think this is still potentially interesting, but I'd rather try it as a solo game before I subject any invited guests to such an action. Therefore, after two days of checking OOBs and various narratives, I shelved the idea. I'll continue to think about it, but won't use it as a scenario in the immediate future.
Which brings me onto what might be the contentious bit, though I do not mean it to be so.
I've written a few times over the years of my views on historical scenarios. Like everyone, I use them a lot. A lot of the advantages are self-evident; there is always a little pseudo-academic buzz in the background that, in addition to playing with toys, somehow we are analysing history, and I'm sure we are. I'm very positive about all that. However, especially if it is a well-known, well documented factual event, there is also a very good chance that all the players will read about it, and it becomes very difficult to avoid everyone thinking in terms of what actually happened (who did what, and when), how well it worked and what else they could have done. These factors are absent, I would contend, if the battle is mere Pretend-Be. This is also information which the real commanders, back in the day, did not have - so much for realism! [I jest...]
Even if the scenario is accurate and unbiased, and the rules present the variables and the unpredictability of war in a reasonable manner, in theory the whole thing still goes to blazes as soon as someone rolls a die. Most people will accept that this is all fair enough; it is, after all, just a bloody game.
A Sad Story from Long Ago
The reason I mention this at all is that I am [confession time] still slightly scarred from an event a good few years ago, when I was invited to a very fine weekend session involving 6 players, in a big house in the country, at which we were to fight a very famous battle on a fabulous big battlefield. I shall not say which battle it was, nor even which period (though it was one with which I was not, and still am not, overly familiar). By some logic I cannot remember, two of us (that's me and one other attendee) were given command of a major chunk of the attacking side.
During the coffee break before the game started, my colleague and I agreed that, since the plan actually followed by our historical predecessors was a complete failure, we would do something wildly different. We agreed it with our army's Commander (at least I think we did...), and we rushed into action as soon as the cups were tidied away.
Immediately, our host, game organiser and umpire was obviously uncomfortable with this unauthorised version of his battle developing on the big table in his library, but the game inevitably took on its own momentum, so we thought we were OK. In fact not. Our host had very thoroughly and ingeniously built into the game a complicated series of timed events - arrival of reinforcements, rivers being unfordable, all that - which made less and less sense as we got further and further from the historic flow of the action. In the end, we were forced to abandon the event lists, which all went down rather badly, and certainly affected the outcome. Oh - in case anyone cares, I have to report that our alternative strategy failed at least as dismally as the original, so we couldn't even claim any respectability on that score!
It still causes me some anguish to recall that I was a major contributor to screwing up this game [Aaargh! - once again, sorry, D__!], and I have spent some time since wondering what went wrong. Not very much, in fact, which makes it all the more scary; if we had established in advance with our host just how far we were expected or permitted to depart from history, the problem would not have arisen at all. And that's it, really. Different people, on different occasions, in different contexts, may have their own ideas of how close a historical scenario is supposed to be to a re-enactment. It just has to be a shared understanding.
I'll stop now, and go and wash my face in cold water. It is maybe worth noting that I was never asked back...!
