Fighting Again

French on the near side - they lost the real battle, because General Marchand,
who was depping for Marshal Ney, underestimated the opposition. The Emperor
was not best pleased.

Here I am, still with soot on my face and wet boots from Saturday, and I've got another battle arranged for tomorrow night. The French and the Spaniards will be at it again - the excuse this time is a rematch of the Battle of Tamames, October 1809 - unusually, for me, I've borrowed one of the published scenarios from the Command and Colors user site. I have tweaked it ever so slightly - some minor changes in the OOB, and I have no intention of using the guerrilla rule.

Because my visiting generals are new to C&C, I've gone for an open battlefield, and we'll use the original card set, just to keep things simple and moving along.

If I'm spared, I hope there'll be a few pictures. I can go for months with no wargaming at all, and suddenly I have two within a few days. Can't be bad.

Raab 1809

General view from behind the French left, near the beginning. The replay of
Eugène's echeloned attack, starting with the cavalry on the far flank, is
already beginning to fall apart. The river is fordable throughout, and in theory
should have been a manageable obstacle, but it was heavy going...

After a postponement, our game based on the Battle of Raab duly took place at Chateau Goya yesterday, and a very fine day it was. I was the French commander - Eugène de Beauharnais - and my only mild regret is that I managed to lose, so history was overturned. To be more accurate, I should say I was defeated - my opponents did a very good job, and it really was a most enjoyable day.

I shall perform an elegant cop-out here and point you to Stryker's blog, where he has published pictures and a report which are so good that I really have very little to add - apart from my compliments and my thanks to Stryker and Goya for their enthusiasm and tireless courage, and for their excellent company, and especially to Count Goya and his family for their kind hospitality.

...from behind the French right, where the cavalry attack has already been repulsed...

Late in the day the French did much better - even managed to get some troops
across the river on the left - the only area where they really had any sustained success.

In theory, there were bonus Victory Points available for capture of the village,
but there was never any likelihood of this happening. These lovely Austrian infantry
were securely established there.

Higginses - the infantry in the French centre wait for Eugène's master plan
for how to defeat the Austrian centre - this bit did not go well.

Battle of Uclés - 13th Jan 1809

Artilleryman's view - near the end of the day, the boys of Vilatte's battery can still
see the Spaniards on the south end of the ridge opposite - unlike the real battle, in
which the Spaniards on that flank melted away like snowballs in Hades

The scheduled game based on Uclés duly took place yesterday afternoon, and it was the most excellent fun. My visiting generals were the famous Stryker and the rather more shadowy (though equally intimidating) Goya - splendid fellows, both, and more than ready to accept the eccentricities of the house rules and generally muck in, in the interests of the game.

Our game was not an attempt to replay the actual B of U, of course, but I shall refer to the real battle here and there, to set the context. Let's start off with some historical scene-setting... [there are pictures at the end if you can't be bothered with this bit]

When Sir John Moore and his army threatened the French communications at the end of 1808, Napoleon diverted a great many troops stationed in central Spain to support Soult in the pursuit which eventually ended with the Battle of Coruna and the evacuation of the Brits. One side effect of this was that for a while Madrid was relatively lightly defended, and there was a real chance for the Spanish Ejercito del Centro (commanded, briefly, by the Duke of Infantado - why do so many of the Spanish generals remind me of Gilbert and Sullivan?) to take back the capital. Infantado wasted a lot of time, pondering over alternative grand strategies which included marching off to attack the French lines of supply in the north, and by the time he actually did something it was too little, and far too late.

He detached two sections of his army, which got as far as Tarancon and Aranjuez, at which point they found that the French had recalled much of the missing manpower and that any action against Madrid was now impossible, so they combined and withdrew to Uclés. The commander of this expeditionary force, Mariscal de Campo Venegas, placed a small advanced guard in the little village of Tribaldos, and lined up the rest of his army along a north-south ridge which is bisected by the monastery town of Uclės and by a ravine containing the (fordable) Rio Bedija.

Marshal Victor, with his I Corps (one division absent) and the dragoon division of Latour-Maubourg (detached from the Cavalry Reserve) arrived on the field at 8am, brushed the Spanish advanced guard out of Tribaldos, and sent his infantry forward in two wings - Vilatte's Division attacked the Spanish left (and rolled it up very quickly), while Ruffin's marched around the Spanish right and intercepted the fugitives as they retreated. Infantado never appeared with the promised reinforcements - the Spanish army lost something like 6000 prisoners and was effectively wrecked. Infantado was relieved of command, and history proceeded...

For our game, we started with the position as the French arrived at 8am - Ruffin's (left flank) force was kept off the table, to be marched on as Command Cards allowed. To give the Spanish (me and Stryker) rather more than their customary zero chance, their infantry battalions were at full strength (many of the units on the day really had less than 200 men) and we adopted a scenario rule by which militia units did not count for a Victory Point if eliminated - this justified by the fact that the Spanish army would be neither surprised nor demoralised if the provinciales left early. We used a hybrid form of Commands and Colors, using the updated card packs from the Generals, Marshals & Tacticians Expansion (#5) and, since we had a big battle in hand, on a stretched table (17 x 9 hexes), we also borrowed the idea of the extra Courier Rack command hand from the Epic Expansion (#6). 10 Victory Points (VPs) to decide the day. There was an extra 2 VPs available to the French for each of the town hexes of Uclés which they captured, but this was always unlikely to happen, and in the event they never got close.

Rather than ignoring it and advancing around it to attack the Spanish left flank, Victor attacked the village of Tribaldos immediately - forcing the Spanish advance guard to remain and contest the place. That rather set the flavour for the rest of the day. Instead of being a brief mopping-up operation, this sector began to look more like La Haye Sainte, and, though the French did eventually take the village - eliminating Venegas' only unit of line grenadiers and the 2nd Bn of the Regto de la Reina and killing Brigadier Avellano (who was only painted a week ago!) - it cost them a lot of time and men - the sweeping right flank attack which won the day in 1809 never really got under way at all (not, of course, that we were intending to replay the historical battle).

Turning his attention to his left, Victor brought on Ruffin's Division, and managed to draw some very helpful cards to speed this process up. Thereafter there was a bloodbath on the French left - it has to be said that Ruffin did not have any luck at all with his dice-rolling mojo, the Spanish light cavalry (which was not very formidable) caused more of a nuisance than we expected and slowed things down by forcing units into square. In particular, the despised milicias provinciales on the northern ridge performed heroics - remarkable shooting, for one thing.

At this point, I regret to report, we ran out of time. The VP count stood at 7-all, and the French looked likely to pick off a few more, but my guests had to catch a train, so the deadline was not negotiable.

We had been fighting for about 3½ hours at this point, which by C&C standards is quite a long time, but Baron Stryker was making his first venture into the world of C&C, and, though he picked the game up commendably quickly, necessarily we still spent some time on explanations and conferences over card play etc. We probably made a rather stodgy start after lunch anyway! Though we agreed an honourable draw (an astonishing success for one of my forays with the Spanish army), in truth I think the French probably edged it because they had also eliminated a non-scoring militia unit, and were certainly well placed to finish things off - though it might have taken a little time, since they had lost momentum on their left. Also they had such appalling dice that they deserve a little extra credit for what was achieved. However, in my role as General Venegas, I shall graciously acknowledge all applause and honours which may come my way - to quote Bernard Montgomery, the boys done exceptional.

Afterthoughts? Hmmm - it was always possible that the game was too big to play as an introduction, but I picked it because the ability to play out a large action logically and with clear development is one of the strengths of the game system. Given the size of the action, we might have done better to use the original Command Cards - they are quicker in use, less longwinded, and require a lot less reading than the new ones! I wasn't convinced that the extra Courier Rack hand was much of a help, but Goya thought it worked well, so the jury is out on that one.

The double-retreat handicap rule for the Spaniards actually produces interesting results - on one occasion a battalion of Regto Ordenes Militares, about to be blown to pieces by a massed musketry attack, retreated out of range at the first volley without suffering any casualties, to the fury of Marshal Victor, and it is a commonplace for the French to be unable to catch up with Spanish units retreating from melees.  

All in all? Excellent - I had a great time, and we have agreed to reconvene soon for another fight - next time I fear there will be a mighty Austrian-Prussian coalition - I believe there is painting going on as I write. I am pondering the logistics of taking my French troops and my wargame on the road - should be OK. My van should do the job nicely - just have to put the troops securely in magnetised A4 boxfiles and, if we are to play C&C, I must wrap the battleboards in old duvets (my van is often mistaken for a travelling doss-house), and secure everything with bungee cords. Right.

My thanks, once again, to my colleagues - a lot of fun.

***** Late Edit *****

By special request of Mr L Gunner, here's a game OOB [note that the Spanish army is the actual units I have available, which is not hugely dissimilar from reality; the French army is the historic one and, since my cupboard armies are mostly VI Corps and the Armée du Centre, the parts of the various units were played by similar units with different numbers!]

(Part of Spanish) Ejercito del Centro (MdC D. Francisco Javier Venegas)

Adv guard in Tribaldos (Brig Beremundo Ramirez Avellano)

Combined grenadier bn (Regts Reina & Africa) & 2/Reina

Husares Españoles & Granaderos a Caballo Fernando VII

Right Flank (MdC D. Augusto Laporte)

1/Murcia; 2/Guardias Walonas; 1/Irlanda

2/Granaderos Provinciales de Andalucia & Bn de Campo Mayor (ligero)

Milicias Provinciales de Cordoba, de Granada & de Jaen

Foot battery

Centre (in and around Uclés) (Brig D. Pedro Agustin Giron)

Burgos (2 bns); 1/Reina; 1er Voluntarios de Cataluña (ligero)

Caz a Caballo de Olivenca & "Voluntarios de España"

1er Husares de Estemadura (Maria Luisa)

Left (Brig D. Antonio Senra)

1/Cantabria; Ordenes Militares (2); La Corona (2); Africa (2)

Bn de Ribeiro (ligero) & Mil Prov de Ciudad Real

Foot battery

French I Corps (Marshal Victor)

Division Ruffin

Brigade Barrois: 96e Ligne(3)

Brigade Lefol: 9e Léger(3); 24e Ligne (3)

Art à Pied

Division Lapisse (absent)

Division Villatte

Brigade Pacthod: 27e Léger(3); 63e Ligne (3)

Brigade Puthod: 94e Ligne(3); 95e Ligne(3)

Art à Pied

Corps cavalry

Brigade Beaumont: 26e Chasseurs à Cheval

From Cavalry Reserve: Division Latour-Maubourg

Brigade Perreymond: 1er & 2e Dragons

Brigade Dolembourg: 4e & 14e Dragons

Brigade Digeon: 20e & 26e Dragons

Art à Cheval

   

The struggle for Tribaldos - the French got bogged down a bit here - the elegant
white Lego block marks the flank section

Venegas' cavalry took this strange position - mainly to oppose the French
dragoons - there weren't many left at the end, but  they did all right

General view from the Spanish right flank, prior to Ruffin's arrival - units with
yellow cube markers are the militia...

Rather odd picture of Tribaldos, with the Spaniards gone, but a lot of time lost

Ruffin's Division appears on the French left...

...more and more of it...

...and things get very sweaty here for a while - the Spanish light cavalry look as if
they are on a suicide mission, which ultimately I suppose they were, but they forced
a couple of battalions into square and slowed the attack down...

...view at this stage from behind the French left attack - the town of Uclés
is in complete calm in the background...

Shrewdly, Venegas withdrew some militia from the end of his line, and replaced them
with the more warlike Regto Irlanda (light blue uniforms) as the French gained a
foothold on the ridge; the Irlanda were destroyed, very quickly! - overall the militia performed better...

As the day came to an end, the French were well positioned to make further progress
on their left, and the Spanish were getting a bit sparse at this point...

...but we ran out of time! Venegas might regard himself as lucky to achieve a draw,
but he will certainly dine out on his success for years. 7-all - you can see the VP markers.

Here are a few incidental pictures, commemorating a wonderful event in the history of the Spanish army's adventures at Chateau Foy:

Since some of the Spanish artillery wore red waistcoats, and since some of the
NapoleoN figures are without jackets, it amuses me that I have a battery of
gunners in what look like Arsenal strips - non-British readers, do not worry about
this - British readers, worry if you wish

Here are some of the Milicias Provinciales - they may be the regiment of Cordoba,
 or maybe Granada - it doesn't matter - whoever they are, they were great

Some of the French units which were badly damaged attacking Tribaldos, resting
at the rear. The more observant students of military history may note that Marshal
Victor and generals Pacthod and Vilatte are also resting at the rear. I have nothing
further to say about this.

The town of Uclés, on its hill, with light infantry in the town and line infantry in
the woods. No rape or pillage today - it would have been a good day for a picnic. 

Since they didn't get mentioned much, here is the Spanish left flank, still in place at the end.

Good company, an entertaining game of toy soldiers, complete with Bellona bridges and Merit trees - what more could you ask?

Uclés - Set-Up (2)

This is an approximate kick-off position for Saturday's game. The French are on the right hand side, marching on to the field at 8am - Marshal Victor will probably wish to adjust his positions a bit, and he still has another division to appear on his left sometime later. From left to right on the French side you see Latour-Maubourg's dragoon division, and Pacthod's and Puthod's brigades of Villatte's division. The backward-facing artillery are on the march (I may sneak a limber team on there, for appearances).

The Spanish army has an advanced detachment in and around the small village of Tribaldos (historically they fell back on to the main position pretty smartly once the French appeared - they may well do the same again). The deployment on the ridge line is a reasonable representation of where they were - Laporte has their right flank, Senra the left and the commander, Venegas, the centre. The odd positioning of the cavalry is authentic, though Venegas might reconsider it this time.

So this is a tweakable approximation to our starting situation on Saturday.

The white plastic ruler on the far side of the table is an accidental attempt to pacify proper wargamers, to distract the eye from all those dreadful hexes. Just count your beads, sisters.

Something for the Weekend - The Battle of Not-Quite-Uclés, 13 Jan 1809 - set-up

On Saturday I have guest generals coming to play at Chateau Foy, so this is a special occasion, especially after the recent panic involving the cancellation of the Siege of Newcastle.

Work on the set-up is proceeding...

Our scenario for the day will be something rather similar to the Battle of Uclés - not too similar, naturally. A Spanish army under Mariscal de Campo Venegas, comprising 23 battalions, 5 regiments of light cavalry and two foot batteries will defend the formidable ridge which the town and monastery of Uclés bisect; the opposition is a French force commanded by Marshal Victor, who will have available 21 battalions, 5 regiments of dragoons and 1 of chasseurs à cheval, 2 foot batteries and one horse battery. I shall use the largest of my available table configurations - any larger and we need to find a bigger venue.

The Spanish Army is assembling on the Plastic Canteen Trays of Mars, as you see...

...while, in the interests of security, the French are marshalling in another room,
on the official ironing board (has it been pressed into service?) - formidable, n'est-ce pas?

I expect we shall have rather a lot of fun, but if anyone out there fancies a bet on the result, I would suggest a sporting 10 pence on a resounding French win. Some of the French are to arrive a little late, subject to the whim of the dice, as a consequence of (allegedly) taking the wrong road, but I fear this will not affect the result.

Battle of Alquèzar (May 1813) - set up

I am expecting a visit from a guest general on Saturday – not sure if we’ll have time to have a game, but I’ve set one up, just in case.

This is to be the mythical Battle of Alquèzar (Province of Huesca), which is very loosely based on a published Commands & Colors scenario (for entirely the wrong theatre of war) – a French force commanded by General D’Armagnac is opposed by the Spanish division of Pablo Morillo, with cavalry support.

General view of the field - Spanish Army on your right

French Army (D’Armagnac)

Brigade Thouvenot

4/28e Léger

Chasseurs des Montagnes

4e Vistule

Garde de Paris

Bn Grenadiers Provisoirs

Bn Dragons Provisoirs (à Pied)

Brigade Leberknödel (Duché de Stralsund-Rügen)

Grenadiers

2 bns Fusiliers

Jaeger Bn

2 Foot batteries

Cavalry:

Brigade D’Abry

13e Cuirassiers

4e & 20e Dragons

Brigade Kleinwinkel

1^st & 2^nd Stralsund-Rügen Ch/Légers

With all the recent concentration on my white-uniformed 1809 Spaniards, it's
nice to see the late-war boys get a run out - here's the 2nd Mallorca in the foreground

Spanish Army (Morillo)

Brigade O’Donovan

2. Jaen

Vols de la Victoria (Ligero)

Sevilla

2. Princesa

Bailen

Brigade Conde de Manzaneros

La Union

Leon

2. Mallorca

Legion Estremeña (Ligero)

2 Foot batteries

Cavalry:

Brigade Ducado de Fernan Nuñez

Coraceros Españoles

Granaderos a Caballo Fernando VII

Brigade Del Roque

Vols de España

Cazadores d’Olivenza

Husares de Estremadura

If my guest does not have time to fight(!), I'll play it as a solo effort - either way, there should be a report here in a few days.

  

The Realism Paradox - a thought for today... and yesterday

In yesterday's post I made reference to some siege game rules which appear in Appendix 3 of Christopher Duffy's wonderful Fire & Stone - The Science of Fortress Warfare 1660-1860 (Peters, Fraser & Dunlop - London, 1975). I've been re-reading this book recently, along with its "prequel" for the period 1494-1660, which was published some 4 years later.

At the beginning of this same Appendix 3 there is a paragraph which made me chuckle. Nowadays the views expressed would not be regarded as reactionary or even particularly controversial, but the loss of direction within the wargaming hobby which is described here has a lot to answer for - for me, certainly. In this paragraph is the very thing which forced me into a 10 year sabbatical, which explains my periodic ebb and flow of enthusiasm - maybe even why I have mostly done my wargaming on my own, away from fashions and from know-alls. I wish I'd read and understood this around the time it was published - I shall certainly keep it handy as a reminder now. All those games which would not and could not ever end - how much would you like the time back now?

The original, recreational spirit of wargaming is preserved among civilian and military enthusiasts who have devised rules which enable them to re-fight battles and campaigns of any period in the past. Unfortunately the codes of regulations even in the amateur game have become so elaborate that the participants spend more time in making their calculations and arguing among themselves than in moving their pieces. Thus a re-fought Waterloo or Gettysburg often proves to be hardly less acrimonious than the original version, and the sense of the rapid passage of time - one of the most vital elements of "realism" - is frequently lost altogether.

Christopher Duffy  1975

Toygaming - some afterthoughts

Nothing childish here...

This additional post is merely a follow-up to the previous one, after the comments and some further emails (for which thanks to Martin and Louis) and a bit more reading of the Sabin book to which I referred last time. I propose to reproduce a couple of paragraphs from it which I found thought-provoking – I have no permission to quote these, but if they interest you then I recommend you purchase the book, which is Simulating War, by Philip Sabin, published by Bloomsbury Academic, so I can sort of justify it as promotional if pressed!

Philip Sabin is Professor of Strategic Studies in
the Department of War Studies at King's College, London, UK

The passages I chose are not because I have a particular axe to grind (well, no more than usual), simply things which I felt might stimulate some interest and fire up a few neurons. It must be borne in mind that the Professor is approaching his subject very largely from the point of view of education (both of academic students and of future generals), and thus his position might be regarded as a little rarified.

Firstly, on the subject of playability:

The fetish for wargame detail and complexity famously reached its greatest extreme in 1979 with The Campaign for North Africa, a multiplayer monster with five big mapsheets, 1800 counters, and nearly 200 pages of rules and charts that seemed to cover every conceivable logistic and tactical consideration. It is said that not even the designers themselves had time to complete the full campaign game. One later reviewer wrote that: ‘This game is just too involved to be played by a small wargame club with finite resources’, but that it might be ‘instructional to a graduate history seminar’. Nothing could better illustrate the growing disconnect between the dwindling band of traditional wargames enthusiasts and the rest of society over what ‘playability’ really means. There is a reason why a popular game such as chess has only 64 grid squares and only 32 pieces, of which each player may move only one per turn. That is quite enough to generate subtleties and complexities that have engaged the greatest minds for many generations. One does not need to go much beyond these parameters to produce wargames that offer challenging and thought-provoking simulations of real military campaigns. The great majority of published manual and computer wargames are, unfortunately, too complex, time consuming or unrealistic to be used directly in an academic context, but they do offer a mine of ideas on which one’s own more tailored designs may be based. Above all, it is crucial to remember that a simple wargame that is played will be more instructive than a detailed wargame that is not.

Now on the subject of the tension between games developed for military and hobby purposes (note that the games he refers to here will normally be board-type games):

The relationship between military and recreational wargaming over the past 50 years has been decidedly double-edged. On the one hand, professional wargamers, already sensitive to the negative connotations of the word ‘game’, have often been embarrassed by any link with hobbyists, especially given the blurred boundaries between recreational wargaming and playing with toy soldiers or the popular enthusiasm for fantasy gaming. As Allen reported: ‘“This is not Dungeons and Dragons we’re doing here,” a Pentagon officer indignantly told me in a discussion of what he called “serious modeling and simulation”.’ On the other hand, many professional wargamers themselves play recreational wargames in their spare time (Dunnigan reported that around 20% of hobbyists were in the military or related government jobs), and dissatisfaction with the cost and unwieldiness of official games has often prompted officers to investigate cheaper and more accessible commercial alternatives. Dunnigan himself has been an enthusiastic advocate of this approach, although he claims that: ‘[T]he existing government suppliers of wargame technology did what they could to discourage the purchase of these “toys” (commercial wargames), as the “toys” were a lot cheaper and more competitive than the multimillion-dollar military wargame projects that kept so many defense consultants (and many government employees) comfortably employed.’

Since I am on a bit of a roll here, regurgitating the wisdom of others, I'd like to end with a fine quote from CS Lewis, of which I was most kindly reminded by the Honourable Conrad Kinch. Since the word "childish" seems to appear in, or be implied by, most of the forms of disapproval to which wargamers of any shade react badly, it is worth remembering that it is a word which, most typically, is employed by children themselves. Children, lest we forget, are also noted for their ability to learn and take on new ideas, and for an innate creativity and sense of fun:

CS Lewis

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

Personally, I am not very interested in people who know everything, though I do seem to meet a great many.