Two further days of solo play (and a lot of rule reading and checking) brought my second "practice" siege game to a close. The result will become apparent in the photo gallery.
View of the siege from the British No.3 24pdr Battery
I resumed the game with the British pushing ahead to develop their 3rd Parallel.
British Sappers zig-zagging forward to mark out the beginnings of the trenches for the 3rd Parallel
And, because of one of my Peninsular War tweaks, the trenches themselves are dug by infantry units, with Sappers in support
The new trench starts to grow some gun emplacements
...on both flanks
Confronted by this fine display of digging, the French couldn't resist sending out a Trench Raid to try to destroy one of the new emplacements before someone occupied it
Just like that bad boy who used to flatten your sandcastles at the seaside, they wrecked the emplacement, and then scampered off back to the fortress, giggling hysterically
The British were assembling their big guns in the 3rd Parallel now, while the French fortress guns tried to do as much damage as possible
The British 24pdrs now started to bombard the old stone wall - you can see the damage chips building up - the big ones are 10 hits each, the mummy-sized ones 5 hits. The British were supposed to be unaware of the true strength of the wall, but an early piece of successful espionage found out that 40 hits would create a breach. The spy in question was, very unusually for the British, of excellent quality. Sadly, he was subsequently captured and "persuaded" to reveal the size of the British powder stores to the enemy
As the damage to the wall worsened, Thiébault sent his Sappers to attempt to repair it, while it was still under fire. These brave chaps managed to repair about 3 hits-worth, but it was hopeless, and when the total damage passed 30 hits the wall was technically unreparable anyway, so the Sappers - miraculously unhurt - withdrew back into the town
I'm not sure what was going on here - Thiebault had a great idea about shifting his biggest mortars into the old castle, but it wasn't very useful. Thiébault himself was killed around this time - reportedly by a shell fragment - I think I may have a look at the mortality rates for general officers in Vauban's War - maybe this can be calmed down a little - that's two commanders lost in 2 games thus far!
When the next "Leadership" card was turned up, GdB Valladière was duly promoted to CinC, but the French Leadership Dice now went from a D12 to a D10, because of the less experienced Governor
Inevitably, the wall was breached, and the British 24pdrs turned their attention on the earth "Fausse Braie", which was rated at only 20 hits
Belatedly, the French heavy guns started to inflict some damage, and silenced two of the British 24pdrs (the ones with two white counters)
A smart move - on a "Siege Move" card, Sir Thomas Graham withdrew the two damaged 24pdrs, sending them to the rear where the chances of rallying/fixing them was better, and replacing them with a couple of 12pdrs to keep up the bombardment of the earthen bank
Almost for old times' sake, Valladière sent out a couple of Trench Raids, to try to inconvenience the bombardment as much as possible, but they were sent packing very quickly
The Morale Points indicator (which is supposed to be a secret to both parties, which is a bit tricky in a solo game!) shows that the French are not in good shape - 6 pts from disaster. On the other hand, the British were rapidly running out of powder, much having been consumed during their extended (and disappointingly ineffective) long-range exchange with the fortress guns. Thus an assault was becoming a pressing necessity, and the optional "Assault" card was duly placed in the British card deck.
However, an assault was not possible until the Fausse Braie had been breached - still progressing - I think we're up to 13/20 of a breach at this point
It collapsed soon enough - the stand-in 12pdrs were useful in getting this job done
The way is now open - Valladière had everyone rushing around inside the town, and got some of his Infantry to make a warlike appearance on the walls. The Sappers were commissioned to go to read the rule book, to see if they could barricade the back of the wall, or demolish the houses inside the breach
The "Assault" card arrived too soon for much to be done by the defenders
Graham was allowed to call up an extra 6 battalions from the troops outside the Lines, to bolster his assaulting force - the British now had a huge numerical advantage
At this point, the game had become a tactical wargame, using Commands and Colors - the heavy siege and fortress guns, and the heavy mortars, may not be used in the tactical game. Two British battalions, including the 88th Foot, took one of the hornworks by escalade, and captured a battery of 24pdrs
The French garrison were right on the edge now...
...and the final touch was applied when the 74th Foot stormed the breach, and eliminated the last Morale Point. With a practicable breach and zero Morale, the French were obliged to surrender. Toro was in British hands
I'm still a bit shell-shocked by the experience - good fun, and very educational, but a lot of work and I have a big long list of things in the rules I need to look at again. As a siege, the narrative is pretty reasonable, I think. I got to the 8th turn (the British had enough powder left for about 2 more turns, accidental explosions notwithstanding). Since I started with the 2nd Parallel in existence as a trench, and my previous game suggests that it takes about 5 or 6 turns to get that far, at two turns to the week the Siege of Toro took about 7 weeks from starting the 1st Parallel - again, reasonable for the Peninsular War.
I may add another post to discuss the rules, and how the game went, but I'll give that some thought. At the moment, I am left to ponder what earthly use the Coehorn Mortar is. I decided to purchase some for the British, and they were a waste of time. Potentially lethal at short ranges, but useless for anything else - maybe the Coehorn Mortar is a weapon for the tactical game? Hmmm.
If you have read this far, you have my considerable respect - thank you very much.
One of the best game reports I’ve read in a long time - with some great piccies to back it up. Loved the stone chips to depict damage too.
ReplyDeleteI put together a fine collection of bits of gravel - technical tip here, to save the indignity of pinching it from someone's driveway, a few visits to a building supplier or garden centre does the job. Look as useless as possible (easy enough for me), and ask some nice motherly lady on the sales desk if you can take a small sample of some gravel or other, since you are trying to match an existing pathway, and don't know what to order. A few such visits to different sites will allow you to get a small plastic bag of various colours and sizes (sizes for 1-hit, 5-hit and 10 hit counters). Ideally my stones would be a better match for my walls, but hey.
DeleteThank you, by the way.
I dunno, a midnight raid on the neighbour's drive seems much more in keeping with the siege setting....
DeleteThat looks to have gone very well. All very plausible.
ReplyDeleteRe: infantry digging trenches. I don’t see why not. I don’t think any army had enough sappers in any sub-period of the black powder age. The sappers tended to do the really difficult stuff like, well, sapping and suffered accordingly. And building batteries.
Loads of eye-witness descriptions, nicely summarised in Duffy's "Fire & Stone". In dead of night, a working party of infantry (who would very quickly get the hang of this, I guess), maybe 2 or 3 thousand men, would be marched to an advanced position, each carrying a fascine and hand tools, would be shown where to do the business by accompanying engineers, would lay their fascines along the line of the forward edge of the proposed trench, and then start digging, a couple of paces between each man. Earth would be thrown forward of the fascine, to build up a bank, and the motivation would be to get the trench about 4 feet deep, so that the additional protection of the earth bank would provide cover when the sun came up and the garrison's guns set about discouraging them! Certainly this is what happened in Peninsular War accounts, and I think earlier too. The infantry were sort of digging themselves into position (though they would be relieved, of course).
DeleteSomeone or other (Grattan?) recorded his concern that the engineers were very noisy, shouting instructions, and he was sure they would draw the enemy gunners' attention to what was going on.
That was really good and if I had the space, I think a siege game of this type would actually be a very good option for solo gaming, as the absence of turn by turn tactical decisions reduces the inclination to favour one side over the other, I would think. As you say, the narrative created by the game worked well and seems believable,so all up, a very impressive first outing for these rules!
ReplyDeleteI was pleased with the way it worked out. A full, proper Vauban-type siege with trenches being dug to the edge of the covered way would be a massive undertaking, I have no doubt. For a bigger, more ambitious game I think I'd be looking to simplify some of the procedures - checking powder consumption each turn is like a visit from O & M...
DeleteThanks, a useful run through of a tempting rule set. One thing that I did find hard to pick out was where the player is making choices between options and how those played out?
ReplyDeleteHi Rob.
DeleteInteresting. This being a game from the Piquet family, there are many things you can do, and there are many things which come up every turn which you may choose to ignore, but it is a very procedural game. The order of the cards is random, but once a turn you are going to have to calculate the loss of powder, the progress of fires, the amount of desertion from the besiegers, you are going to have to check the weather, or test for a "Unique Event", and all of these are driven by dice rolls and tables. There aren't a lot of options - you can, of course, decide if and when to carry out "Opportunity Fire", if you are the non-active player, or when you are going to fire if you are the active player, since you do not need a card or an order to do this, but much of that hinges on the (random) appearance of the "Reload" card(s). It's a procedure - it's very thorough, you will not forget to do anything, and there is a big chance element in the dice rolls, but there are not a lot of free choices. This is not a criticism - it is just the style of game, and I find the whole Piquet range have this flavour.
Sorry if that wasn't a very illuminating answer - in my view Piquet games are particularly suited for solo play, because so much of the action is driven by cards, and there is a lot which is acting out the tabulated result of a dice roll. Certainly avoids bias, no problem with that.
This has a lot to do with personal taste, and I'm not an expert on how that works. The worst game I remember playing was a solitaire boardgame where the player was a U-Boat captain in WW2. There is a lot of dice rolling, and lots of looking up tables, and the player has the job of doing what the numbers and tables tell him. He is a clerk, basically, in a system. When I played it I was impressed by how clever the game logic was, but I felt that the ideal way to play this would be to write a computer program to do all the processing, and then when I came in from the pub I could check to see what the outcome had been.
I have concerns about prescriptive games - that's it, really.
That was brilliant, thank you for making the report so entertaining. Sounds like you were happy with it too, mostly.
ReplyDeleteI suppose a 'proper' fortress wall, rather than a recycled mediaeval one would have needed more than 40 hits to effect a breach? If so would be a much tougher proposition - maybe event impossible if powder stocks were already running low. Though I suppose you would allow for that during game set-up and have more?
Hi Chris - yes, a proper Vauban wall would be 60 to 80 hits, and you can only shoot at it when you can see the bottom of it. In my PW siege the 24pdr shot was knocking the wall down from nearly 600 yards, and it would be hitting some distance from the ground.
DeleteThere are some variations in how much choice you have in making up the hand of cards, depending on what period and who you are (i.e. you are or are not Frederick the Average), but the amount of powder you get depends on a dice roll, not on what period you are fighting. All these things can be tweaked, of course, but some experience is needed to see how the game works out in practice. The originators spent years working on this and playtesting it, so their experience must be reflected in the published rules. If I played the same game next week (I'm confident that is not likely) I would be simplifying and adjusting a number of rules. I think Piquet games are like that - they are described as a toolkit, which you can use or amend as you wish.
An entertaining read, thank you. Consequently I can see me buying a copy of the rules.
ReplyDeleteGood man - if you have experience of Piquet or Field of Battle you will find the game easier to learn.
DeleteAn excellent and interesting report. I am looking forward to reading your suggestions for amending the rules, although I must confess that I prefer to use rules as written. This comes from playing with a group where I would never know from week to week what version of the rules were being used! Having said that, whilst believing that the sapper rule is to avoid too many saps/trenches being developed, would it be a compromise that only sappers can start them but infantry can build them? Also, as both sides(in a solo game) know how many morale/powder points etc remain, perhaps, once reduced to zero, a small random addition could be made. Not sure it is worth doing but it might add a little uncertainty.
ReplyDeleteThank you Jim. Some of the tweaks I experimented with were dropped pretty quickly - some were more useful. I have some ideas, of which the ones which come to mind most readily are:
Delete(1) the early stages of a siege consist of heavy guns, in fortified situations, firing at each other at fairly long range. This achieves very little, apart from wasting ammo. Typically, a 24pdr firing at another 24pdr has a Combat Dice of D12, DOWN 2 for range, DOWN 2 for solid cover, DOWN 1 for artillery target (sparse group of men), and the opponents have a Defence Dice of D8 - so this is D4 attacking D8, which requires multiple guns firing together to inflict any loss at all. If the DD is supposed to be quality based, I can think of no reason at all why the crew of a 24pdr should be graded higher than a 12pdr, in fact the opposite might be true. I suggest that the DD for a 24pdr should be D6 - it might help a bit. There are probably other examples.
(2) Any troops in trenches or behind walls who do not have to expose themselves in order to shoot should be a non-target to anything except mortar or howitzer fire. Interesting case is mortar crews, who can fire from behind solid cover with an observer. Infantry firing their muskets (from a firing step, for example) are a target, as are guns in a battery.
(3) I seem to keep picking on the Powder Check rule - I find it an irritating example of Piquet's obsession with solving a simple problem in a complicated way - it is, in short, a rigmarole. In a non-solo game, the original Supply of Powder is randomly generated and is unknown to the opponent; thereafter the powder used since the last check may require a deduction of 1 from the store - there is a chance it may not, which depends on the Supply Die (also unknown) and the inevitable table. Thus for turns during which one army fires a small number of rounds there is a chance that there may be no consumption, so dice must be rolled and the table consulted each time. I do not intend to do this - if the dice might waive the powder loss on the odd turn, why not just give everyone an extra 40% (or something) to start with, and deduct one each time they check the powder, if they have fired at all. Some simplified approach would be fine - I'm really not that excited by the action of rolling dice. [Foy's Provisional Law: rolling dice is a method of introducing a chance element into wargames, it is not the reason why we play wargames]
(4) The rate of mortality of generals seems too high - I'd prefer if the chief part of the threat to an individual general was related to how close he had been to the action.
And there's more. No problem at all in my view, though someone will probably object to my reasoning. The game is a template - if the player doesn't care for some bits of it, or if the scenario or the historical context (or personal bias, or whatever you like) suggests some change then just agree it with all the players, which is very easy if you are playing solo!
This has been a very interesting and entertaining series of posts with great pictures.
ReplyDeleteSuch an important part of black powder warfare but generally taking a lot of resources and time to game which is rather appropriate really.
Thanks Ross - not something I would choose to do every week, but a long-standing itch in need of a scratch, and someone has to do it! I learned a lot - I've been reading about sieges for a while (not just British accounts of British victories!), and that has proved a useful background to give a better intuitive (wrong word) feel for how it works. If warfare is man's most preposterous folly, sieges must be one its most extreme forms. I'll try the WSS and go back to the ECW for next ones, I think. I have a load of artillery to produce for the WSS. I have a fancy for a small ECW siege where I can get the whole thing on the table instead of just a slice! Think Lathom House rather than Chester.
DeletePROMETHEUS
ReplyDeleteThanks, that sort of matches the impression I gained from your game. In reality I guess sieges were procedural - Vauban certainly seems to have thought so.
I have played Piquet and I like both it and marmite. I guess for a siege the key decisions are all made at the start, including when is actually the right time to attempt it (do I have the time and logistics?) and the approach to take. Maybe what I'm looking for w.r.t. sieges is the context for a series of smaller games like a campaign track...
A very enjoyable report Tony.
ReplyDeleteThe small ECW siege sounds interesting.
All the best. Aly
Thanks Aly - I was going to do some more reading about Lathom House - I have access to Lady Derby's journal (might be a little biased?), and there is a decent account in Steven Bull's book about the ECW in Lancs - Ernest Broxap gives less detail. It occurs to me that for any tactical bits of a Leaguer of Lathom I probably need to look at some kind of big skirmish-type rules.
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