1859 Squared

Another outing to Italy in the 1850s. For this I'd had a go at converting Neil Thomas's nineteenth century rules to use squares, and it actually proved surprisingly easy. I had to resort to slight Barkerese to handle pivoting and movement penalties for some infantry types, but it was easier to explain than write down. I set it up to use the 12x12 grid I'd originally done for Minischlacht, each square  big enough at 66mm to accommodate one of my 'regiments'. Each square is roughly 400m, although the original rules don't have a stated ground scale. I set the stacking limit at one gun plus one unit of any other type (so two guns or one gun plus one infantry or cavalry unit) which seemed to work OK. Ranges were just one square per 8cm of range, ranges measured orthogonally with one diagonal allowed (thank you Peter Pig).

The generic battlefield modelled as squares, same objectives as last time, two out of the two towns and the big hill.

Bulk of the Austrians, four infantry, two guns and Jagers (iirc the rest were delayed).

The French on a broad front.

Austrians mass in the centre while the French move into position.

Things start to hot up

Brutal slugging match in the centre

Eventually the French press on, only to run into the delayed Austrian reinforcements.

A major engagement develops around the town..

Sadly, typical Austrian die rolling didn't help much.

And the French overran the Austrian flank.

Sadly it was too little, too late and with the French only controlling one town, the Austrians won.

I really like Neil Thomas's Nineteenth Century rules, they are smooth, quick and capture the flavour of the period. Replacing measuring with squares worked extremely well and both speeded up gameplay no end and eliminated all the silliness about measuring and wheeling and flank attacks. I have yet to try them with a historical scenario, but I'm looking at Palestro as although I've had a scenario done for that for (literally) years, I never got around to playing it with Minischlacht. After that, hopefully some Austro-Prussan War games.

Coming to a blog near you soon, if I can get it into the packed club games schedule.