Löttorp

Pardon?

Those familiar with Swedish geography will know that this is a place in Borgholm, while IKEA regulars may know that it is also the name of a very small, simple digital clock, suitable for kitchens, kids’ bedrooms or for use as a travel alarm.

We bought one – I think it might have been about £3 – and then we left it in its box for a while, we were so underwhelmed by the thing. Eventually, in a slack moment, I unpacked it, put in a battery and checked it out.

Useful, inexpensive little gizmo for my wargames

Hey! – what a find. As it happens, I have occasional need of a timer for Commands & Colors games, not because I wish to introduce an element of stress into them but because one of the great attractions of C&C is that it can be relied upon to finish in a couple of hours, but I have one or two occasional visiting players who like to have a lengthy think while they work out how to play their cards, and sometimes the games become overlong and lose a little as a result – rapid play is one of the strengths of the C&C system, after all. It has occurred to me that setting a gentle time limit for choosing and playing a Command Card – maybe 3 minutes – would keep us all focused and keep things moving along without hassling anyone.

So for this reason I’ve been keeping an eye open for secondhand chess clocks – haven’t found one, and to be honest I don’t think a chess clock is what is needed – too formal, and too fiddly.

Well, the little IKEA clock solves the problem very nicely. It is a cunning design – as you rotate it and sit it on the different sides, it switches to 4 separate functions – clock, thermometer, alarm clock and countdown timer (putting the hourglass symbol at the top switches in the timer). The way this works is ideal. If you set the countdown timer to your regulation 3 minutes (or whatever), then every time you turn the device so that the hourglass is uppermost it starts to countdown from the 3 minutes. If you invert it, it switches back to the clock function, and next time you turn it over to the hourglass the timer will start counting down from the full 3 minutes again. Magic – it’s simple, non-threatening and no sort of extra hassle to use – when you’ve played your card, turn the clock over. Easy.

You can even keep an eye on the temperature in the wargames room. What more could you want?

I hasten to add that I am sure that similar devices can be bought (I am not a complete IKEA enthusiast) from other stores, but this one is a little winner – great. Ours is green, by the way, but – as you see – you can get any colour you want. 

Solo Campaign – Strategy Time-Out

When I started the campaign, and the kick-off date appears to have been 24^th January last year, I hoped to play it through a single game year, ending around November 1812. I didn’t expect to keep up with the 200-years-ahead time schedule, so never seriously adopted that as an approach (though it would have been nice). I tried to avoid committing myself to anything which I was unlikely to be able to keep going. The game has slipped, of course, and the rules have sometimes caused me less delight than I had hoped, but I have kept at it (with gaps) and am very pleased that it has gone as well as it has. The delays were partly due to a couple of major family problems this year and partly (of course) self inflicted – viz. the accumulation of a pair of English Civil War armies from scratch during the same period.

I have no regrets – in truth it has gone far better than it might have, but recent developments in the game have left me with cause to ponder carefully what happens next. The Allied side are now in a strong position – the French have abandoned Madrid, have taken but then lost Ciudad Rodrigo and have almost been pushed out of Castile, but any further progress towards the Pyrenees looks unlikely. The possibility of the Spanish army cutting north behind Burgos and cutting the French supply routes has been removed with the disaster at Vinuesa, and, with about 6 weeks left before the Winter weather returns – which affects both the roads and the ability of any force of greater than divisional size to move away from the established wagon train routes – I have something of an impasse.

One of my clearest objectives in the time that is left (for the campaign – not for me!) is not to mess it up by doing something silly – fun though that might be. The Allied position, with large armies in Zamora and Salamanca, is solid enough. If they optimize the supply arragements from Porto and Lisbon, and if they get provisions from the Spanish, then the Earl of Aigburth can probably just about set up his winter quarters now, in mid-September, without retiring to Portugal. His position could be turned by a French army coming round from Galicia into Northern Portugal, but such an army would be isolated and almost certainly doomed.

The French have three fair-sized armies at Leon (Marmont), Valladolid (Clauzel) and Aranda (Jourdan), and the area between this line (roughly the Duero River) and the French border is stiff with a lattice-work of fortresses held by second line troops. With the (temporary?) removal of the Spanish threat, it appears that the French are best placed to make the next step – if there is to be one.

That’s the issue – the next step. My rules include a series of external random influences which can crop up as the result of one of the weekly dice checks, or they can also crop up if I think things are flagging a bit – this can also be termed “cheating”, but why else would one run a solo campaign? These influences have worked well, without too much unseemly scripting – Joseph’s dithering between his instructions to take a more aggressive stance and his fear for his capital at Madrid, for example, has had the French marching back and forwards a few times, and resulted in the main field army now being split into three, rather than two.

So I decided that I would write down a number of options which the French might go for, attach rough probabilities to them, keeping in view some recent external directives such as the need to preserve the armies in case they are needed for Russia, and stage some Great Ritual Dice Roll.

Appropriately formal proceedings

I am not so comfortable with the idea of a GRDR, to be honest. It could result in a quick and undignified ending to something that has occupied part of my brain for the last 20 months – something which I would hope to read the notes for, years from now, without embarrassment and with fond memories. The other bit of GRDRs which doesn’t seem right is the ease with which one can choose to reject an unpopular result and declare another roll – OK, OK - this next one is definitely it…

So I took it all seriously – no messing about. I wrote out a list of possibilities for the French, which included fairly dull options such as settling down for the Winter immediately, some pretty crazy ones such as sending Marmont in a loop into Portugal to turn the Allied left, some gallant-but-foolhardy ones such as collecting the armies into bigger lumps, ignoring the exposure of the supply routes, and attacking one of the Allied armies opposing them (that would be exciting, but I can’t see why the French would do that, so it got a lowish probability), and some extreme ones like a complete withdrawal from Spain – give the thing up as a bad job. There were all sorts of mix-and-match compromises on the list as well. Once the list and the odds were finalized, I got out one of the posh dice trays, poured myself a celebratory brandy (not sure how that fits in, but it seemed to add to the formality), decided against dressing for the occasion and got on with it.

If you’re still reading this ramble, you’re probably wondering why I have taken so long to come to the point. What unspeakable cataclysm has befallen the campaign? If I’m embarrassed about it, why didn’t I just quietly re-roll and cheat in the time-honoured manner?

All right – I’ve camped this up and apologized for it too much already. It is not good news.

The orders will be cloaked in Napoleon-speak when they come, but Joseph has been advised that a strategic withdrawal from Spain is ultimately inevitable. The place has turned out to be more trouble than it is worth anyway, but the thing that clinches it is that events in Russia are going much worse than they did in actual history. As a first stage, a proportion of the troops are to pack up their stuff and start marching for Bayonne as soon as possible – if they start now they should make it over the Pyrenees before the end of November. The troops to be withdrawn are:

1. Bonet’s French division (which is mainly deployed in the coastal fortress towns on the Bay of Biscay)
2. All the Italians
3. All the contingents of the Confederation of the Rhine (and there are a lot of them)
4. The remaining troops from the Vistula Legion
5. All Garde Nationale units in garrisons (who are destined to be converted to regulars)

Nassauers - going home soon? - well, not exactly...

This has the immediate effect of reducing the total French force in Northern Spain from about 81000 to about 41000 – which is pretty much a cataclysm, right enough. In particular, Jourdan’s Armée du Centre is left with no infantry at all, so at the very least a major reshuffle will be required. It is difficult to see how the general withdrawal can be delayed much after that.

There you are – I’ve done it. I’ve even drunk the brandy, so I can’t just re-roll the dice now. There will be appropriate formal announcements in the normal campaign reports shortly, once Minister of War Clarke has thought how to break the news to the Marshals – a major challenge for the Imperial spin doctors.

I guess this means that the Allies are going to win after all. I haven’t felt much euphoria yet myself, but Wellington will be as sick as a parrot.

Wellington?

Late edit: I would welcome suggestions as to what job King Joseph can be offered next, to present this in a good light, to preserve the dignity of the Imperial family and to offer the poor beggar a little consolation. He has already been forced to give up a rather idyllic career as King of Naples to take this Spanish gig, so his feelings are not to be ignored - though it will be OK if he takes a little blame. It doesn't seem likely that the job of Tsar of Russia is likely to be an available opening, but something of that sort of stature would be good...

Solo Campaign - Weeks 33 & 34

French soldiers in the main square at Burgos, astonished by the futuristic
architecture and apparently oblivious to a Spanish presence on the
right of the picture

The Earl of Aigburth is severely compromised by the failure of the brave new Spanish Third Army at Vinuesa - the planned attack on the French communications is now impossible, and the main Anglo-Portuguese and French armies are squared up in the region of the Duero, too evenly matched for either side to risk going on the offensive.

Aigburth is also concerned that the Summer is almost over, and the marching season is drawing to an end - the roads in the mountains and on the Portuguese border are a serious problem in bad weather, as a number of the generals present have learned to their cost this year.

Week 33

Random Events and Strategic Notes

The Allied strategy has taken a severe knock with Giron’s defeat at Vinuesa. The Spanish main army is in a very poor state, and since Giron wishes to retreat to Madrid while the army is both Tired and Demoralised, he will suffer further losses on the march.

Aigburth’s intention was to have Giron occupy, or at least threaten, the areas around Tudela, Lodosa and Vitoria, which would effectively sever the French supply roads from Bayonne and force Marmont’s and Clauzel’s French forces to leave Castilla and retreat into Vizcaya. To support a possible attack on Burgos (now no longer an option), Aigburth had ordered forward the Allied siege train.

As things stand now, Marmont and Clauzel are not strong enough to take the offensive against the Allied armies of Graham (at Zamora) and Aigburth himself (at Salamanca) and, with the end of the Summer approaching, Aigburth does not consider that he has sufficient numerical advantage to advance to drive the French back, so the situation is something of a stalemate.

The Principal Junta have replied (at some length) to Aigburth’s note conveying his disappointment over Giron’s performance at Vinuesa. The following extract is significant:

“Your Excellency will be aware that the armies of King Ferdinand have had unsuccessful days before, and have always risen again to fight the invaders. The courage of our soldiers has never been in doubt, and the battlefield experience gained by this young army will be valuable – we have no reason to question the suitability of Captain General Giron to continue in command. With rest and reinforcements (of which we have an ever-increasing supply), the army will be ready to take the field again by the beginning of November. Perhaps Your Excellency and your staff would be better engaged in offering a more active threat to our enemies, rather than concerning yourself with issues which are solely Spanish matters.”

Aigburth has observed privately to members of his staff that Giron is indeed a lucky man to be the nephew of Castaños, the victor of Bailen, but also accepts that Giron and his limitations are at least familiar to him, where a replacement might be a complete unknown.

Housekeeping

The 3D3 activation throws give the Allies 6 and the French 5. The Allies opt to move first.

Moves

Allies (6 allowed)

1 – Sp B (Giron, at Guadalajara) retreats to Madrid. Since his troops are already Tired and Demoralised, this will involve further loss through desertion and men falling out on the march [Dice for every base/block making the retreat – regulars are lost on a throw of 1, irregular/militia on a throw of 1 or 2]

2 – Sp I (Irregulars of the Junta de Navarra) is placed back on the map at Caltayud, since they are pretty much ready to operate again in this area.

[Intelligence step -

• No new information.] 

French (5 allowed)

1 – K (Jourdan/Joseph, at Soria) marches into Aranda, to provide the left wing of the front line which the French propose to hold

2 – Q (Dujour, with a force of Garde Nationale forming the garrison at Jaca) advance into Huesca to attack Sp H (Cruchaga, with a small partida force)

3 – King Joseph’s personal HQ is now at Burgos, and forms part of Force U there

[Intelligence step –

• No new information.]

Supplies and Demoralisation

All units are in supply. Giron’s army suffers further losses on the retreat to Madrid: Regulars lose 200 infantry, Volunteers and Militia lose 600 infantry and 250 cavalry.

Contacts

French Force Q (Dujour, with 3500 Garde Nationale from the garrison of Jaca) enter the area of Huesca to attack Spanish Force H (Cruchaga, with approx. 750 guerrilas). Employing the special rule for guerrilleros, Cruchaga’s force disappears into the hills and travels across country, reappearing on the map at Alcaniz. No contact, no action.

Week 34

Random Events and Strategic Notes

Nothing new in the campaign area, but again there is concern that at least part of the French army will be recalled to France to replace losses in Russia.

General Guye has returned to active service, and resumes command of his Division of the Armée du Centre, attached to Marmont at Leon.

Housekeeping

The 3D3 activation throws give the Allies 7 and the French 7. Since they had the initiative last week, the Allies again opt to move first.

Moves

Allies (7 allowed)

1 – Sp B (Giron) rests at Madrid

[Intelligence step -

• No new information]

French (7 allowed)

1 – R (Paquerette) returns from Soria to Tudela, to resume garrison duties

2 – Q (Dujour) returns from Huesca to Jaca, to resume garrison duties

[Intelligence step –

• No new information.]

Supplies and Demoralisation

This is the weekend closest to the middle of the month, which is when reinforcements, replacements and returns from hospital are diced for – since Giron’s army is Demoralised they should not be entitled to any reinforcements, but in fact their return to Madrid had resulted in a massive rush of volunteers – there is a big rise in patriotic fervour since the capital was abandoned by the French – therefore Giron will get reinforcements like everyone else.

Detailed additions:

French – 4/28L, 1/Drag Prov, Lacharrue’s Tirailleurs, 1/25L, 2/25L. 3/25L, 1/27, 2/27, 2/50, 3/50, 1/59, 15/3 Art a Pied, 5/66, 2/86, 11 Dgns, Lanc de la Vistule, 2/2 Nassau, 2/4 Baden, Neuenstein’s Tirailleurs, 1/4 Hesse, 25 Dgns, 3 Huss, 2/2 Spanish Line, 1/Royal Etranger – each +1 block; 10/3 Art a Pied, 1/Sp Gd Grenadiers, 1/Sp Gd Fusiliers, 1/2 Spanish Line – each +2 blocks; 5/82 +3 blocks. Total increase from these additions is approx. 5400 infantry, 500 cavalry and 7 guns.

Anglo-Portuguese – 2/21^st Port, 1^st Lt Bn KGL, 68^th, 1/95^th, 1^st Cac – each +1 block; Br-Oels Jaegers +2 blocks. Total increase is approx. 1400 infantry.

Spanish – Caz de Castilla, 1^st Ft Battery, 2 Lanc de Castilla, Vols de Valencia,  Ligero del Reino, Leon, 2^nd Ft Battery, Coraceros, Vols de Espana, Hus de Extremadura – each +1 black; Tir de Castilla, Loyales de Zamora, La Union, Vols Aragon, Vols Guadalajara – each +2 blocks; 2 Princesa, Def de Fern VII, Leg Extremena, Regt del Ribeiro – each +3 blocks. Total increase from these additions is approx. 5200 infantry, 500 cavalry and 4 guns.

Contacts

None.

ECW – The Arquebus Rules

So what are the Arquebus Rules, then, Foy?

Well, since you asked, I’ll tell you.

They are a hybrid, and an incomplete hybrid at the moment. Arquebus was my working title for the framework of a computer program I wrote last year to manage solo ECW games played under a set-of-rules-yet-to-be-defined. Initially, as you may have read here before, the idea was that the underlying rules were to be Clarence Harrison’s Victory without Quarter, which I liked the look of for a number of reasons, and which I had tried out during a visit to the Kingdom of Old John last year.

Whatever your thoughts on computers in wargames, one spin-off of automating the game management is that you soon become aware of gaps in the game logic if you try to put a set of wargames rules into a computer program. So let’s see – if the melee winners fail this morale test to control the pursuit – what happens? – oh – look at that – it doesn’t say. So what exactly do artillery do if someone charges them? – well – gosh – it doesn’t say. Etc.

One big advantage of using someone else’s rules is that they have been playtested before, and you have a good idea in advance whether they work or not. VwQ is a bit different – there are people who have played them and use them and like them, but there is also a fund of recommendations for adding the missing bits – including some from The Bold Clarence himself, who has never pretended that the rules were complete or anything other than a work in progress.

So I set about redrafting VwQ for my own purposes, to plug some gaps and fix some things I wasn’t comfortable with and then – since I’d started doing it this way – I took the opportunity to simplify a couple of fiddly bits, and amend a couple of the tables to suit my own ideas. The final straw was that I eventually replaced VwQ’s trademark, card based Activation system with something else – I discussed this in an earlier post.

At this point, though the game still employs some of the mechanisms from VwQ which I have liked from the outset, much of it is changed. The overall package is definitely not VwQ, and I decided it made more sense to make a clean break, and call my evolving rule set Arquebus, if only to keep my head straight – same as the program. I acknowledge my debt to some other games, but it is a hybrid.

Briefly, I adopted an alternative Command and Activation system which I found in some of Mr Featherstone’s recently-published rules – which may or may not have close relatives in Warhammer, Blitzkrieg Commander and Bloody Barons. It ticked a lot of boxes – intuitively, it seemed reasonable, it hung together well from a completeness point of view, and it was cute enough to borrow without shame.

Well, I’ve now tried it out, and it was tedious. Clever or not, it required extra work, and I found it to be mostly irritating – slowed the game down far more than it improved it. So I’ve replaced it with a much simpler, dice-based system which has close relatives in the Portable Wargame family, and in at least one iteration of Ross’s Hearts of Tin, and even in some earlier ideas of my own (surely not?). Since this is now Arquebus we are talking about, and thus mine own, I may well replace it yet again next week – I’ll see how I feel. I am giddy with the possibilities…

The rewritten rules for Arquebus are beginning to stabilize – I have now reached a stage where I am polishing the wording, checking that I have covered everything. Once the game works, I will continue with the computer program, but make no mistake – Arquebus first has to perform tidily as a dice-&-rulers game without a computer in sight, or I shall keep working on it until it does [famous last words]. Thus there is a latest-version rule booklet (I believe I’m on Version 0.21 – which is the first amendments to the substantially changed 2^nd edition) and I was thinking that I might make it available if anyone is interested – I’m still not sure about this – it is a tweaked version of VwQ, though the tweaks now outweigh the VwQ bits, and it is not really designed to cope with anything more than the way I like to play my wargames. I’m thinking about it. The world is full of half-baked rulesets that don’t quite work – why add to the heap?

He's what? - he's redrafted Table 3? - bloody hell...

Once I’m comfortable that it works – at least a bit – I’m happy to provide copies to anyone who wants one. Hang on a bit. If someone feels moved to ask me why I don’t just be a sensible fellow and use Forlorn Hope or similar, please don’t – we’ve done that bit already.

Righto, Foy – so what happened to your Commands & Colors based ECW game?

Nothing – I have been using it and it works pretty well. As I mentioned before, I also need a more tactical game for small actions – where the Commanders can amuse themselves forming column of march and carrying out flank attacks and all that – this is where Arquebus should come in.

And it’s guaranteed hex-free, in case you care.