Righto - got into the bombardment, the Allies started knocking a hole in the curtain wall. I think that in the real WSS the French garrison would have surrendered by now, but in the interests of testing most of the rules I have pushed it on.
Some interesting bits and pieces along the way; since the changes in the artillery rules, the only decent strategy the defenders had against sapping was to use lots of Trench Raids, which is entertaining, and they did pretty well - they were a major nuisance, they killed some sappers, and supporting infantry, and they eliminated one of the Allied guns [they didn't take the thing away, they spiked it].
The Allies found out that their spy (code name Heinrich) was of good quality, so they directed him to have a go at damaging the town's flour store, and he did it so successfully that the garrison commander lost 8 turns of food, and the situation started looking critical. The French Governor took some of the steps available to him to make the rations go further:
(a) he reduced the standard rations, which added 10% to the number of turns in store
(b) he requisitioned extra food from the civilians, which added a further 10%, but also reduced the Local Support rating by 1 [LS is a measure of the citizens' loyalty to the garrison]
(c) he ordered the slaughtering of all the horses in the town (except his own, naturally), which added 3 turns to the food store, but reduced LS by another 1.
There were things he could do beyond these measures, but the LS was now down to -1, which is getting close to open rebellion in the town; it only required another bad Event Card, or a heavy bombardment of mortar shells, and the citizens might just open the gates to the enemy. He already had a situation where one quarter of his available infantry was required to police the townsfolk. So he was running out of food, the enemy were battering his walls, he was in danger of being overthrown by the citizens and the morale score was not great, but we'll get to that.
This all sounds rather exciting and encouraging. All of the pieces seem to be fitting together to craft an interesting narrative.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jon - I'm pleased with the way it is shaping up - there are a few elements which still need some rework (the system for starting the game up with a unit purchase phase, which morphs into the initial morale scores, is promising but clunky) and I am still some way from an umpire-free system for mining, though Rob sent a suggestion yesterday which I haven't seen before, which might offer some answers. My next job, after tidying this session away in my new storage boxes(!), is to get busy writing up the rule revisions.
DeleteAs was said in the comments to the previous post (I think), the narrative possibilities of a siege are a major strength; the trick is not to attempt too much, I have found (over about 16 years of fumbling with the subject!), and to keep the procedures as simple as possible - if anything is too much of an admin chore every turn then it will just get dropped in the heat (?) of the action - a siege is a lot of work!
A Peninsular War siege would be quicker and dirtier - the typical fortresses can be breached from further out, and there is more focus on tactical assaults.
For all periods, I need to have better-developed victory conditions; the defender is very unlikely to win the actual battle, so I need some (understandable) definitions of what constitutes a "good" defence. And, of course, it has to be entertaining - Bruce Quarrie's "impossible" comment still looms in the background!
The massed batteries on the glacis look fabulous! It all seems to be coming together well. I'm also scratching my head about suitable victory conditions, as outside either a relieving army or some disease or catastrophe sweeping through the besiegers ranks, I can never see the defenders 'winning'. I think there are two main options, something very simple like holding out for 30 days is a marginal win, 40 days tactical etc or something made up of VPs for various things like losses suffered/inflicted, morale etc. What I usually do in situations hard to gauge easily is give each side three or four objectives of varying difficulty, and see who has achieved the most. You could even do a deck of objectives for each side ('conduct at least three successful raids', 'build the first parallel in two weeks' etc) and draw three or four for each game.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good approach - I'll do some thinking - there must be "grades of defeat" possible. I had a suspicion that Tony Bath did something on this, but can't find it, so thinking it will have to be.
DeleteYour comment "that in the real WSS the French garrison would have surrendered by now" got me thinking. Siege games really need to be situated in a campaign as with more resources and enough time the besiegers should always win. The defender can really only aspire to increase the cost in terms of time, money and men. I suppose the same can be said of battles as well, which is why so many wargames are between 'evenly-matched' armies.
ReplyDeleteThat said the governor / commandant is often key to how long they hold out, just look at how easily some of the Prussian fortresses yielded in 1806 when there was no good reason to do so. No doubt this was because fortresses were sometimes a dumping ground for duff generals while the best got field commands. Giving a player the choice of distributing his generals between the field armies and fortresses would be an interesting addition to a campaign. Look what service Massena did Bonaparte by holding Genoa in 1800 long beyond what might've been considered reasonable, or even achievable.
Also, dragging it out greatly increases the chance of disease taking a heavy toll of the besiegers in their increasingly unhygienic camps.
Hi Rob - I've been stuck with the Siege Conundrum for years - I agree that a siege makes most sense, and it's easier to set a proper context, as part of a campaign. Problem is that (in my case, anyway) the turn cycle would be weekly for the campaign and twice a week for the siege. Since the campaign can't ignore the ongoing siege and just bash on, the only way for me to run such a set-up would be to run them side by side - maybe in separate rooms - so that every couple of siege turns I pause for a campaign turn, then the two games synchronise and update each other, and then I go back to the siege for a couple of turns. This does seem to be a nightmarish way to proceed, which is why, although it hurt me deeply, I have always used algorithmic sieges within a campaign. As my old mate Allan Gallacher once said to me, if I did a full siege as part of a campaign, running the two games in parallel, what do I do if a second siege starts during the first one?
DeleteThis has always troubled me!
The WSS philosophy seems to have been that sieges killed less soldiers than battlefield action (a situation made more certain by the general reluctance to hold out to the end), and holding a fort for at least a while would tie up a lot of the enemy, who might otherwise attack someone in the field. Even a besieging force was small by army standards, and less of a logistical horror show, and the tradition grew up that, where possible, a surrendering garrison could just go home, with all their toys, since no-one could afford to imprison them - also the paroles were usually meaningless. The campaigning season was short, and the French border was packed with rather good forts, so that became a sort of Summer season for warfare! As soon as sieges became life-and death struggles it all changed forever.
Simultaneity is a problem if (like me) you've only got one table-top to accommodate the action. I had a quick look this morning at the WSS actions (33) and sieges (25) listed in the Appendices to David Chandler's 'The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough'. If you filter them out by region there is hardly any overlap between actions and sieges and not much between sieges. I admit my 'regions' might need tweaking as 'Flanders' and 'France' could be close to each other.
DeleteBottom line is that a campaign should make it, if not impossible, excessively risky to conduct a siege while the enemy has an army in the field. Perhaps a rule that a siege cannot be safely abandoned without additional cost if an enemy army comes within a number of days march (it takes time to pack up and get the siege train to safety). If you let the relieving force get closer the siege train is lost if the battle is lost, but neither side can avoid the battle in this circumstance. Abandoned sieges will have cost a lot and siege trains will need to be refitted before another siege can be undertaken so starting a siege that you probably cannot complete is unwise. This way defeating the enemy army clears the field for an uninterrupted siege.
Great fun Tony. You seem to be getting a lot of helpful comments - much to ponder upon. Going back a little, to variable lengths of sap being constructed, it seems to me that to get too much into this would increase the admin chore you referred to. May I suggest for your consideration that, rather than test each sap every turn, the spades (of course) from a deck of cards are used, mixed with one or more cards of another suit. Each sap phase a card is turned and if it is not a spade one sap is selected at random and no work is done on it this phase. If sappers have been replaced with infantry the mix can be varied. Just a thought
ReplyDeleteI like the use of the spades suit! I've sort of shelved any variability in saps at present - the only random is the weather - if it's too wet, no-one is digging or repairing, all fires are put out, there may be limitations on moving and firing artillery. If the weather allows it, the boys will deliver a standard sap on request (though they may die in the attempt). It's crude, but I'll go with it for now.
DeleteDoesn't the attacker only have to get lucky once, by attaining one breach, most cost effectively with one sap? But you might have a game if the attacker is incentivised to dig multiple saps, all but one of which is effectively a feint. That incentive would have to be that the defender only has enough resources materially to slow down one sap, but not many. The attacker has to trick the defender into losing too much by making sallies against the wrong sap(s). The defender can be set to surrender when his garrison falls to some level but he wins if he endures past some point in time (Massena keeping Genoa going while Bonaparte crossed the St Bernard). Perhaps you could have defender spies among the attackers so the defender knows (but the attacker doesn't know he knows) which attacking units are the best assault party, such that their positioning points (or, if a bluff, does not point) to the planned point of attack.
ReplyDeleteMuch admiring the set up - it's as if one had a drone's eye view of the real thing.
There was a famous occasion when some French(?) chap turned up in Italy(?) with cannons which were just about light enough to travel slowly along roads, and just about powerful enough to frighten people, and that was the game over. From that point, all those lofty medieval walls which had impressed everyone and protected the lovely cities were useless - a cannon would knock them over, and the higher they stood the heavier they fell. After that, it was necessary to hide the old walls behind something squishy, like a big earth embankment, or a glacis.
DeleteBy Vauban's day (which is what we are addressing in my playtesting session here), the battering guns couldn't damage an actual wall or bastion until they could see the bottom of it, which means they ideally had to have their last battery set up next to the covered way, at the top of the glacis. In a later age, someone would have called in the bombers, with heavy explosive, or used explosive shells which sank into the ground - in the 18th Century they had to use 24pdr solid shot, fired at close range with a flat trajectory, to do the business. In my test game, the final scenario with the 3 big guns (and that represents 3 half-batteries of 3 guns each) firing at the fortress wall from just across the ditch had been going at it for a week and were three-quarters of the way to having a viable breach. For the siege to get to that stage had taken about 11 weeks, so there are not many surprises on offer here.
One of the sadnesses of the scale distortions of my model is that we lose sight (literally) of the fact that the wall was invisible to someone standing beyond the glacis. It's just a convention, and I have got comfortable with it because I've been fiddling with this for a long while. The only way to surprise the garrison with a sudden big bang (apart from accidentally setting off the magazines) is by mining underneath and exploding a couple of tons of powder under the walls - that will do it, but mining is fantastically slow and also fantastically hazardous.
In my earliest wargaming period, the ECW, General Baillie (who was in a hurry) just knocked down the old walls of Newcastle from maximum artillery range, since there was nothing in the way, and those walls were built in the days of battering rams. In my later period, mostly the Napoleonic Peninsular War, Wellington (who was always in a hurry - he was pretty sloppy, too) knocked down some medieval walls from a good way out, once he had wrecked the earth fausse braie which had been thrown up in front after cannons were invented. When Vauban was this year's fashion, the only alternative to setting up the big guns right next to the walls was to starve the beggars out, or make them a tempting offer.
No lucky breaches, not many surprises. A storm was almost always just an implied threat. Bruce Quarrie was right, after all.
At least they didn't get to the point of evicting the citizens, or....eating them!
ReplyDeleteAh - you've been reading my draft rules, or at least the same sources! - in fact the garrison commander's possible courses of action do also include:
ReplyDelete"Evict unproductive civilians - add 33% to no of turns' stores - deduct 3 from Local Support"
...and the deduction from Local Support (which would have ended the siege) was the main disincentive!
As for eating them, that is off the scale for the moment. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Carrickfergus castle, which has a long and spectacular history, and the visitors get the full gory details about the time the garrison ate their prisoners...