Action at Vado del Caballero

Early birds - the first of St Paul's Italians arrive on the French right

Today’s post is about an actual wargame, not a dandelion extractor, nor the architectural integrity of Liverpool waterfront. I thought it was probably overdue.

My dear friend Chester visited yesterday. Chester and I have been fighting miniatures battles off and on for fully 30 years, but he has no previous experience of using the Commands & Colors rules, so a suitable Napoleonic episode was set up, and battle was duly joined.

To get us started, I reproduce here our context notes and OOBs, slightly edited to remove private jokes and similar.

Action at Vado del Caballero, Castilla Vieja, Feb 1812

As a result of an administrative error, a French supply convoy has been ordered along the wrong road, and is headed for an Allied controlled area. In fact the situation is worse than this for the French, since Wellington has ordered Maj.Gen Karl, Baron von Alten to probe this very region with the Light Division and a brigade of light cavalry.

Gen de Divn Darmagnac of the French Armée du Centre has been despatched from the Madrid region with a rather motley force, mostly Italians and afrancesado Spaniards, to get there quickly and secure the area around the key river crossing at Vado del Caballero.

This is basically an encounter battle – neither side is really aware that the other is there. The main objective for each force is to defeat the enemy and retain control of the area. The Allies have the additional support of a couple of small groups of guerrilleros – they should be used with discretion. The French have a good-quality battalion of dismounted dragoons – since this unit consists largely of men from the elite companies of the 19^th and 22^nd Dragoons, they count as grenadier infantry.

Forces engaged (including CCN categories and “block” strengths) are:

French Army – mostly detachments from the Armée du Centre – including the Toledo garrison

Genl de Divn Darmagnac

Genl de Bde Verbigier-St Paul – Italian brigade

2^nd Italian Light Infantry          [Italian LT – 4 blocks]

1/3^rd Italian Line Infantry        [Italian LI – 4]

2/3^rd Italian Line Infantry         [Italian LI – 4]

1/5^th Italian Line Infantry        [Italian LI – 4]

2/5^th Italian Line Infantry        [Italian LI – 4]

Regt “Dragoni Napoleone”      [Italian HC – 3]

7/1^st Regt Italian Ft Artillery     [Italian FA – 3]

Capt Genl Casapalacios – Spanish brigade

1/1^st (Castilla) Lt Infantry        [Spanish LT – 4]

1/2^nd (Toledo) Line Inf            [Spanish LI – 4]

2/2^nd (Toledo) Line Inf            [Spanish LI – 4]

1/Regt Royal-Etranger              [Spanish LI – 4]

Bn de Marche, Drag Provisoirs  [French GR – 4]

Col Vial – Light cavalry

13^th Chasseurs à Cheval           [French LC – 3]

22^nd Chasseurs à Cheval          [French LC – 3]

26^th Chasseurs à Cheval           [French LC – 3]

5/5^th Artillerie à Cheval            [French HA – 3]

Allied Army

Maj.Gen Karl, Baron von Alten

                Lt.Col Barnard – 1^st bde, Light Divn

                                1/43^rd Ft (Monmouth)              [British LT – 3]

                                1/95^th Rifles                             [British RL – 3]

                                3^rd Bn Ptgse Cacadores             [Portuguese LT – 3]

                Maj.Gen Vandeleur – 2^nd bde, Light Divn

                                1/52^nd Ft (Oxfordshire)            [British LT – 3]

                                2/95^th Rifles                             [British RL – 3]

                                1^st Bn Ptgse Cacadores           [Portuguese LT – 3]

                                Troop ‘I’, Royal Hse Art         [British HA – 3]

                Maj.Gen Geo Anson – light cavalry

                                11^th Lt Dgns                            [British LC – 3]

                                14^th Lt Dgns                            [British LC – 3]

                                16^th Lt Dgns                            [British LC – 3]

                                Troop ‘A’, Royal Hse Art        [British HA – 3]

                Unattached

                                1^st Cruzados de las Espinas     [Spanish GU – 2]

                                2^nd ditto                                 [Spanish GU – 2]

                                Avila Volunteer Artillery           [Spanish FA – 3]

Scenario – action commences at first light. Each side gets 5 Command Cards, French move first throughout, and victory requires 7 “banners”.

First move (French first) – place up to 4 units/leaders on the field, anywhere up to 5 hexes from your own baseline, but not within 2 hexes of the enemy.

Thereafter – units may only be brought onto the table as a result of activation by Command Card play. Leaders may not arrive already attached to a unit. Infantry may not arrive in square.

Special rules in addition to normal C&C N – the Rio Hediondo is fordable at all points, and has two formal bridges. Italian troops fight like Portuguese; Spanish line troops (incl the volunteer artillery) also fight like Portuguese, but suffer double retreats. There are special rules for guerrilleros – they may move 2 hexes and battle, they may pass freely through woods and built-up hexes; they fight like Portuguese line infantry, but a single retreat eliminates them. Guerrilla infantry may not form square.

The Action

Allied advanced guard looking for something to charge

General view of the French position around Turn 4, with the Italians at the far end

The terrain was fairly broken, with small, rocky hills and wooded areas. The Allies put light cavalry and a horse battery into the field early, to cover the arrival of the rest of the troops. Sadly (if predictably), these light dragoons were subsequently wasted in pointless skirmishes with their French light horse opponents.

Darmagnac (who was not physically on the field until the very end of the battle) had arranged for his Italian brigade to advance into the hilly area on his right flank, while the Spanish afrancesado Line troops approached rather more cautiously, along with Vial’s light cavalry, behind the river on his left.

The Spanish brigade missed a big opportunity very early in the day. The Regt Royal-Etranger, admittedly somewhat discouraged by artillery fire, allowed the British 43^rd Light Infantry to enter the nameless village in the centre of the field, a position which, vitally, they held with ease for the rest of the day. In general, the Allied light infantry made good use of their double-move capability throughout the action.

St Paul’s Italians made a concerted assault on the wooded hills on the right flank – at first this went very well, St Paul doing a fine job replacing fatigued units with fresh battalions, and, though the combat ebbed and flowed a bit in this area, it looked as though they must take this position, an impression which was heightened by the unaccountable rout of the 1^st Cacadores and the most regrettable wreck of the 2^nd Bn, 95^th Rifles (who, inexplicably, refused to form square when charged by the Italian dragoons – a decision which was still being agonised over in the Indian restaurant after the battle).

Never underestimate a guerrillero in a wood

Eventually St Paul ran out of luck and men, and failed. One of the big surprises of the day was the performance of the Spanish guerrilleros. Two small, informal “battalions” of the Cruzados de las Espinas were present – my first experience of trying out my extension to the CCN rules to cope with these irregulars. These “GU”-class troops have some definite strengths – especially in speed of manoeuvre and their ability to move through broken terrain – but they are brittle – a single retreat will eliminate them. The 1^st battalion were briefly exposed to long range cannon fire and, though they suffered no casualties, were shaken into a retreat, from which there could be no return. This was more than made up for by the outstanding valour of their colleagues in the 2^nd battalion, who successfully held a wood, under the personal direction of General Vandeleur, and managed to break the final assault of the Italians (partly thanks, I am reminded, to some very, very lucky dice-rolls).

Oops! - George Anson goes on a surprise holiday in Verdun

That did it - the 1st Castilla fail conspicuously to take the village

The battle was very finely balanced throughout – eventually, both sides had 6 victory banners, but the day was won when the Spanish Castilla Light Infantry rather rashly stormed the 43^rd in their village. The 43^rd played a FIRST STRIKE Command Card, and duly wiped out the men from Castile with a single roll of 3 dice. Game over. One very silly moment came when the Allied commander left the cavalry commander, General Anson, isolated - he did, admittedly, have depressingly few cavalry to command by this point - and he was promptly taken by the French - a very easy victory flag for them (as if things aren't hard enough...).

Command & Colors Notes

Not a lot to say, really. A RALLY card and some fortunate associated dice rolls allowed a rather battered British RHA battery to return to full strength in a key position at a critical point in the battle, which rather led us to wonder where the guys had been. That was an influential moment, but these things are always welcome anyway for generating excuses.

We took all day – probably 5-and-a-bit hours to play the game, which is very slow for CCN. That is partly due to having to consult the rules a lot, but mainly because of the difficulty of bringing forces on to the table as the Command Cards allowed. The encounter scenario worked very well, however, and this kind of set up brings a lot of interesting challenges.

And I did learn (the hard way, again) that a square is a dashed good idea in the face of cavalry.

Really enjoyed it. Still very happy with CCN, and even more motivated to get to a proper test of my Solo variant while the table is still set up.

RESULT!

Von Clausewitz: On Twaddle

While re-reading Von Clausewitz' On War (I have a Penguin Classics edition of the 1908 translation by Col JJ Graham), I came across one of my favourite examples of the thankless art of avoiding ambiguity. This is from Clausewitz' own introduction.

"It is, perhaps, not impossible to write a systematic theory of War full of spirit and substance, but ours. hitherto, have been very much the reverse. To say nothing of their unscientific spirit, in their striving after coherence and completeness of system, they overflow with commonplaces, truisms, and twaddle of every kind. If we want a striking picture of them we have only to read Lichtenberg's extract from a code of regulations in case of fire.

If a house takes fire, we must seek, above all things, to protect the right side of the house standing on the left, and, on the other hand, the left side of the house on the right; for if we, for example, should protect the left side of the house on the left, then the right side of the house lies to the right of the left, and consequently as the fire lies to the right of this side, and of the right side (for we have assumed that the house is situated to the left of the fire), therefore the right side is situated nearer to the fire than the left, and the right side of the house might catch fire if it was not protected before it came to the left, which is protected. Consequently, something might be burnt that is not protected, and that sooner than something else would be burnt, even if it was not protected; consequently we must let alone the latter and protect the former. In order to impress the thing on one's mind, we have only to note if the house is situated to the right of the fire, then it is the left side, and if the house is to the left it is the right side."

I realise that the original may have lost a little in translation, but is it possible that the Bold Karl Von C actually had a sense of humour? [Actually, the regulation seems clear enough to me.]

Solo CCN - ready for testing

This follows on from my soliloquy - not quite a lament - on my lack of solo gaming since I started using the rules from GMT's boardgame, Commands & Colors: Napoleonics, for my miniatures games. I now have drafted up an approach, which might be of interest (it certainly is to me). It borrows from ideas aired on various C&C Ancients discussion sites, especially by one mst3k, but refines them a little for use with CCN, and incorporates some tweaks of mine own.

I must also thank Messrs Crick and Pearson and The Bandit of Valparaiso (surely that must be an alias?) for their email suggestions, Rafa for his reassuring comment, and especially the gentleman who asked that his comment "not be published, in case my friend sees it" - quite so - we all have to be careful, I think. Thank you all anyway.

The problem, for those who are unfamiliar with CCN, and for those who are familiar with it but would like a reminder, is that the Command Cards which provide activation in the game do not work well for a solo player who can see both hands. GMT suggest that you just play a solo game normally, and try your best for both sides, but it still takes the surprises out of it. My concerns have been that, since the cards are central to the character of the game, any workaround which does away with them or which makes other radical changes to the activation mechanism might spoil everything. I have seen dice systems, which are clever - sometimes very clever - but definitely different, and I'm not convinced. I strongly suspect that having the opponent's game-plan driven by completely random card drawings is very unlikely to give a worthwhile game, if it works at all. A real opponent would be carefully building a good hand of cards, to support his strategy.

To get to the point, my approach (still to be playtested) retains the cards (which seems best), with minimal change from the normal game pack, and has the advantage that the rules remain unchanged, to the point where a game could switch at will between a live opponent and solo play. The mechanism is not fiddly or confusing, and should not slow things down (certainly it should not be slower than a human opponent scratching his head over his choices). Ticks in the right boxes so far. There is even an element of progressive refinement of the opponent's hand as the game goes along.

Here goes.

The game is played as normal, but the opponent's hand is played blind - always face down, and is shuffled each time it is played. Fan the hand out, face down, when it's the opponent's turn to issue orders to his troops. Now we need a throw of 2D6 and a little wrap-around counting. Count from the LH end of the cards for the higher dice throw (start again at the LH end if you run out of cards), and turn over the card you reach, and carry on counting off similarly for the 2nd dice. Take out a second card. Here's an illustration of doing this for a 5-card hand, where the dice come up 6 & 5.

Choose the better of the two cards selected (from the opponent's viewpoint), and that will be the card to be used this turn. The other card, if it is pretty good and/or potentially useful for the opponent, can be put back into his blind hand. If it is not, it can be discarded along with the played card, and replaced. The refreshed hand (back up to strength) is shuffled, and placed face down once more. This way there is a tendency towards improvement of the blind hand, and there should be some consistency in the cards collected, though their actual time of appearance will be unpredictable.

The only other special rule for solo play is that if either the FIRST STRIKE card or the SHORT SUPPLY card appears, discard it and draw again immediately - these two cards are not suitable for solitaire, but leaving them in the pack and just ignoring them makes it easier to switch seamlessly back to a 2-player game if need be.

One for the Facial Detail Enthusiasts

From time to time I have a look at Todocoleccion, which is a Spanish online auction site. I have very occasionally found goodies such as surplus stock of Falcata figures, which is what keeps bringing me back, but mostly I find myself gawping at a heap of overpriced dross which makes eBay look like Christie's.

Here's a fine Todocoleccion picture of a 60mm plastic Napoleon, possibly made by Jecsan, which may come as a bit of a shock to those of us who associate Spanish toy soldiers with Del Prado and similar. I include it as inspiration to the fans of facial detail on miniatures. Sadly, as you will note, the artist missed his mark with Napoleon's trademark red nose, but it probably only spoils the overall effect very slightly.

What Angel Did Next

This is pretty certain to be old news, since I would guess it is all over TMP by now, but I am informed by the man behind NapoleoN Miniatures that he has emerged from the garden shed with his new project, Napoleon at War, which looks pretty exciting. It is a book of rules, plus a range of 18mm figures, all available soon. I won't be switching scales just yet, but I shall watch with considerable interest.

Solo Wargaming - I may have lost something

Nothing serious, but I have been enjoying Ross's posts over on Battle Game of the Month about refining his solo rules, and I realised (with what must have been a pang, I guess) that I haven't been doing much solo wargaming in recent weeks and - since much of my wargaming is of the solo variety - this means I haven't been doing much wargaming. The reason is not hard to identify. My new, and very enthusiastic, commitment to Commands & Colors:Napoleonics as my miniatures rules of choice has left me a bit stranded, since the solo options for that game that I've seen thus far are not brilliant.

My in-house rules, which use a computer for activation, record keeping and calculation, do have the advantage that they support solo play pretty well. However, the simplicity and logical flow of CCN - which make the in-house game look more than a little turgid - have won me over, and recently my own rules have been unused.

I guess this is easily fixed. This morning I spent a little time fishing around on Google and there is a fair amount out there. The problem with playing CCN solo is that the Command (activation) cards do not work well if you can see both hands. A number of the workarounds I've seen use a dice system to replace the cards - I had already started thinking about that approach. Another places the "ghost" opponent's cards in an unseen stack, two cards are turned over, and the one which suits the ghost's position best is chosen, both cards being subsequently discarded and replaced. Or both players can be ghosts, treated in the same way. I have only just started thinking seriously about this, so I am not pessimistic - something will come up, I'm sure. At the moment it's a bit like "how you gonna get them back on the farm, after they've seen Paree?". The CCN game is so much better than my previous rules that I'm reluctant to use anything else, and CCN with an opponent is so much better than my solo attempts with it to date that there is a strong temptation just to find something else to do in the evenings.

I'll have to get moving on this. I've written a post-it to myself, this very morning - that should get something happening. I could try using Ross's rules, I suppose, but that would mean learning something new (ouch). Or I could try to recruit a new opponent locally, but people tend to take to their heels when they just hear about my soldier collection. Or I could try to get my son up to speed on CCN, but he is only 8, and it feels a bit like exploitation. Hmmm.

The Noble Art of Conversion

Some recent acquisitions. Two of the brigade commanders in my Allied army are mounted Rifles officers - a rarity in 20mm. After many years of failing to find suitable figures, and a couple of rather so-so attempts to produce suitable conversions, I have finally commissioned some professional work. I am pleased with them – worthy additions, I think - the donor figures are Hinton Hunt, which will offend some as butchery, though it is an old and distinguished tradition. If Marcus had produced such a figure in the first place, this would not be necessary – and one of the reasons he didn’t is probably because he assumed this sort of DIY effort would fiill the gap!

It is interesting to try to spot the original figures - my initial guess is Stapleton Cotton and (possibly) Junot, with new heads and new horses, but you may have alternative ideas. Anyway, it wasn't me, so I don't know for sure. I also received a nicely finished DN31 (Dutch-Belgian general), who will be surprised to find himself leading a Portuguese cavalry brigade in the near future.