Nachod - Portable Wargame

Ah, Nachod, how may times have I done this battle? It is one of my favourite battles of the Austro-Prussian War as Steinmetz's overextended Corps fends of Von Ramming with the 'cavalry' on the way to the rescue in the form of his second division. It is a perfect size to test Corps level rules, and an interesting scenario as the arrival of reinforcements on both sides swings the force ratios, while the extreme asymmetries of the Prussian and Austrian weaponry and tactical doctrine require very different tactics from each side.

My last outing was reported here: https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2018/03/simplicity-in-practice-squared-and-1866d.html

John decided to put this on using an early version of Bobs Nineteenth Century Portable Wargame for one of our weekly Skype games. We had even more players than for Operation Goodwood, making it one of the biggest games we've tried so far, but this version used the 'playing card per unit' activation system so hopefully OK for multiplayer.

The scenario was based on the one in Neil Thomas's 'Nineteenth Century Wargaming' book although I usually use the version the Wyre Forest gamers did for their APW variant of Fire and Fury. The latter has detailed victory point scores for doing various things (mainly capturing particular geographic features) while Thomas's scenario doesn't apprarently have any obvious victory conditions at all apart from his usual one of beating the enemy through exhaustion. We had a further injunction to to lose our guns (something the Prussians had a particular horror of in 1866), but putting them at the back of our 50km march column kept them quite safe I thought!

The general situation. Unfortunately a bit hard to make out on the monitor. There is  a wooded hill in the bottom right defended by half of Tims Prussians. The rest of the Prussians are coming on from the northeast. Bad Austrians are coming up from the southwest.

The first Austrian brigade faces off against the Prussians. Our chaps have needle guns with a range of 1 square, while the Austrians very unfairly have muzzle loading rifles with a range of 2. The slightly odd geometry rules mean that our guys can only fire orthogonally while the Austrians can shoot all around.

I have no great problem playing with squares but it is this sort of thing which drives me nuts. I usually allow ranges measured on square tables to include a single diagonal (thank you Peter Pig) which eliminates such silliness and means units can engage at range 1 all around.

More Austrians are appearing and the Prussian cavalry turn up and promptly charge the flank of some Austrians. Again, more square related issues. Neil Thomas very wisely rules that you can't flank charge unless you already start behind a flank, but we rapidly found that flank charging was the way to go as there were no restrictions to stop you just marching past an enemy unit, wheeling and getting stuck in. We were probably too spread out.

The genuine remote gaming experience! The 'hand of god' moves stuff on the table.

More Austrians and Prussians roll up. One issue with the geometry of this battle is it is fought Northwest to Southeast, which doesn't work very well with a square grid where you can only face north, south, east or west. Whichever way units turned, they always ended up exposing a flank. Tim C decided the way around this was the standard boardgamers 'table edge creep' and his guys crept along row 1 right at the bottom. I guess re-orienting the map so we fought along the grain might have been a solution.

The action is becoming general as the Austrian Corps artillery and Simons brigade engage the Prussians from the northwest. One thing which was working OK was the melee rules. One thing I've always thought a bit odd was the way in the PW it is more effective to fire (if you are stationary you hit on 4+) whereas the basic to hit in melee is 5+. With the flank attack modifiers, melees usually got a 4+ from the flank while the defenders only hit back on a 6. This encouraged flank attacks and discouraged frontal ones. Very clever and I'd missed this design feature in our WW2 playings. 

My chaps (the red ones) are all coming on now. After a staff conference we decided to attack in the north, while hard pressed Tim fell back in the south. Shortening the front was the only way to counter the superior Austrian numbers.

My guys piled due west, joined by one of Tims regiments and we got stuck into Simons brigade and the  Austrian Corps artillery. I put my General in the middle supporting all the orthogonally adjacent units. The close range needle gun bonus and General bonus all helped, and the Austrians hadn't figured out that stacking their Generals with each unit just meant they died faster so we rapidly obliterated them 

More of this went on for a while. I sent a couple of units to hold up the Austrians moving from the south but we mainly turned our attention to the Austrians sitting in the open to the northwest, concentrating on their weaker units with the war winning move/fire/charge plus general bonus combo.  

After a few more turns of this the Austrians became exhausted and the game was over. The Prussians still had two exhaustion points in hand, so it was very much like the real thing with the Austrians beaten but the Prussians in need of a bit of reorg before marching off to link up with the rest of 2nd Armee.

That all went pretty well I thought, and some of geometrical oddities are easy enough to fix and common to all square grid games. I do like the exhaustion point mechanism in PW, it stops sides fighting to utter destruction (a downside of some of the Neil Thomas rules) although in both cases they are just a means to an end. I'm not convinced about the quality differences in PW though. One of the interesting things in the APW are the asymmetries in infantry tactics and weaponry, and the Prussians generally inflicted a 4:1 loss ratio in infantry combat, which didn't really come across here. Conversely the Austrian artillery was vastly better (and numerous), which again wasn't really reflected, although their guns did actually managed to fire in the game, unlike the Prussians who just tried to stay out of trouble.

If you want to try the scenario yourself, JOhn has posted it on the Portable Wargames io group:
https://groups.io/g/PortableWargame

I'm tempted to try another APW or FPW scenario using the published Portable Wargame rules,although I recently picked up a copy of Bobs 'Portable Napoleonic Wargame' and the Corps rules look like they may work OK for this period. Something to mull over anyway.

Kissingen 1866

I've been revisiting the late nineteenth century recently. Rifle and Kepi produces a passable Army level game, I was still hankering after something to do Corps level tactical battles. Minschlacht is great but too fiddly, the various Neil Thomas offerings are either too simple or involve bucket after bucket of dice, the Portable Wargame doesn't have enough grit and To the Last Gaiter Button was briefly interesting and doesn't work with my 6mm figures. My attempts to rework Simplicity in Practice into something true to the spirit of the original yet with more historical verity also came to naught (and as the last playtest showed here, were an utterly crap game).

So, in the end I went back to the standard Neil Thomas nineteenth century rules an had a good long look at the the mechanisms and the modelling of the relative effectiveness of the different tactical doctrines and weapon types. The overall effect I quite like, it just takes so long to get there. I went with an explicit ground and unit scale (500m squares, elements were regiments, cavalry brigades or artillery battalions) and I recalculated all the ranges and weapon effect/formation interactions in line with CRT in Minischlacht. I realised pretty quickly that the saving throws could be binned, and troop quality/cohesion  subsumed into morale throws.

I haven't quite figured out command limitations yet, but after some playtesting I felt I had enough for a grand tactical game fit enough to inflict on some actual humans. I went with Kissingen, as it is an interesting asymmetrical battle , but as it is Bavarians vs Prussians, not as one sided as Austrians vs Prussians (storm columns don't work well against breechloaders). Kissingen was in fact the first playtest scenario I used with Minischlacht, albeit based on the Fire and Fury Francesa scenario. Instead for this one I went with the more grandiose Neil Thomas version which included a much greater frontage.

So, here we have Prince Carls Bavarian Corps vs the Army of the Main in July 1866. The leading Prussian division is commanded by General von Goeben, later to have a battlecruiser named after him.

The view from the Bavarian right. A division of poor quality troops is holding the line of the River Saale, supported by a cavalry division and Jager detachments. Some of the bridges have been burned, but still provide a route for foot troops. Von Goebens Prussians are marching on in the far distance.

Prince Carl of Bavaria keeps an eye on things from the divisional artillery position. The town of Kissingen is to his left front, garrisoned by two infantry regiments.

Von Goebens Prussians. Two artillery battalions already deployed and infantry regiments marching up covered by a Jager battalion. For those interested in such things, the bridges are Irregular 2mm stone bridges, while the streams and buildings are home made. The latter date from the mid 1970s when I made a load of card buildings for WRG 1925-50.

The Prussians approach the unblown bridge covered by artillery fire and the Jagers. Infantry can only move in column (these are tactical columns, not march columns. The Bavarians are deployed in immobile firing lines which maximise their firepower and protection. I'll have a think about how to better model the formations in future. The approach in OP14 is more promising I think.

The Prussians shake out into firing lines, while the Bavarians form up into tactical columns. Over in the distance some Prussians approach the unguarded bridge. The figures are all Irregular 6mm from various nineteenth century ranges.

Meanwhile in the centre there is much excitement as a lone Prussian Regiment breaks through the Bavarian Jagers and heads for Prince Carls gun position! The Bavarian cavalry cautiously advance, wary of the Prussians needle guns.

In front of Kissingen, the Prussians superior short range firepower and unit cohesion is telling. The Bavarians begin to melt away despite the cover of the buildings.

In the centre, short range artillery fire reduces the charging Prussians to one base (less than a battalion). They however manage to close with the guns. In the ensuing melee, only one single hit is inflicted, hilariously by Prince Carl himself on the unfortunate Prussians who then run away.

The Bavarian cavalry pounces on the survivors and wipes them out. Even in their disordered and weakened state, the Prussians inflict hideous losses on the Bavarian cavalry. They were right to be wary of the needle guns.

Meanwhile the Prussians have finally blasted their way through Kissingen, leaving the town blazing behind them. They overrun the Bavarian rearguard but losses are  mounting.

The next wave of Prussian reinforcements are turning up, but so are better Bavarian troops (who have busly reoccupied the river line in this sector). The village of Hausen is firmly in Bavarian hands and it is now unlikely the Prussians will take it in the remaining time so we called it a day there.

That was a pretty good play test. John and Tim were positive and the mechanisms seemed to hang together OK. I think there was some confusion about the various formations and movement options/restrictions so I'll work on clearing those up. People are perhaps more familiar with the mechanisms used on Command and Colours and OP14, so I may as well switch to using those explicitly, as that is what the various formations and restrictions etc are modelled on.

Simplicity in Practice. Squared and 1866'd

I've already converted Neil Thomas's Nineteenth Century rules for squares, so I thought  may as well do the same treatment for his Simplicity in Practice rules, and do an APW/FPW variant as well.

I tried it at the club using my 6mm APW figures and my ancient old gridded carpet tiles, originaly set up for Minischlacht. The scenario was one of may favourites, Nachod from the Six Weeks War. Von Steinmetz leads his Prussian Corps over the mountains and into an Austrian Corps in a classic encounter battle.

The Prussians are coming in from the top right. The Austrians assembling along the road from the left.

Nasty Austrian Jagers ambush the Prussian artillery (it really shouldn't be at the front of the column!).

The Austrians line up to assault the Wenzelberg, they key feature of the battle,

It is all very unpleasant with casualties galore. Steinmetz lurks in the courtyard.

Prussian infantry poised to counterattack the Austrian flanks while some Austrian cavalry put in an appearance.

The Prussians manage to drive the assault off.

I've played this scenario many times before with a range of various rules, but this was all a bit scrappy and unsatisfactory. The roads in particular were just confusing and got in the way. I don't like games at this level which bother with road movement, and coupled with the NT style turn restrictions and grids it was too confusing and gamey. 

The combat system worked OK and using a grid instead of big unit bases worked alright, but the whole thing just didn't gell. So, back to the drawing board with that one, but nothing ventured nothing gained!

Munchengratz

I've been working on some revisions to my venerable 'Rifle & Kepi' rules for some time, mainly to streamline the command and combat systems. The activation and movement system from OP14 seemed to fit the bill admirably as it activated each Corps rather than each division and also eliminated the fiddly action point dice roll. That does rather restrict it to multiple Corp sized battles, but hey, I'm a  big battle sort of guy.

I rather liked aspects of the old combat system where you could resolve an entire Corps sized engagement in a single step, but the mechanism of calculating the relative combat power of each division (modified by tactical factors and individual dice rolls) and adding all the scores up, was far too cumbersome. The close combat system in Simplicity in Practice came to the rescue, as a way of generating combat value scores using handfuls of dice instead.

So, with the various revisions at hand, time to try it out on some actual players..... We've done this particular battle before, The Prussian Elbe Army closing in on the Saxons and Austrians near the town of Munchengratz on the Iser in June 1866. It essentially consists of four separate Corps sized commands with no pesky cavalry to mess things up. John took on Crown Prince Friedrich Karl, Tom was von Bittenfeld, Jerry was the Elector of Saxony and Tim landed the plum role of General Clam Gallas, reputedly better at eating than fighting.

The battlefield from the east. The Saxons are over to the left down the Iser, while the Austrians have a cordon out covering their evacuation of Munchengratz, Each hex is around 1000m.

The Crown Prince marches his Corps on and the Saxons move up to cover the left flank of Munchengratz. As it is high summer the Iser is passable to infantry and cavalry.

One Prussian division siezes a bridgehead while the Saxon artillery shells the enemy. Sadly after this point the battlefield became shrouded in smoke and there was no visual record of what happened.

Once the smoke cleared, the remains of the Saxon Army were revealed to be in full retreat, although the Prussians had suffered heavy losses in the process. One Saxon division had routed and the Elector had decided that enough was enough. The Austrian reserve brigade had moved up to fill the gap in the meantime.

Over on the road from Torgau, Von Bittenfelds Corps mounted a frontal assault against the Austrians entrenched behind the river. All very unpleasant. On a diamond, deployed units can't cross obstacles (like steep hills, woods and passable rivers), but the Austrians weren't planning on leaving their comfy trenches.

The fighting was so unpleasant in fact that the Prussian Army became shaken and the troops all went to ground. Having suffered 50% losses, it was understandable.

Corps dither (do nothing except defend themselves) if they draw a spade picture card for activation. If a Corps does dither, the HQ can issue an extra card to one subunit to activate at least a portion of the Corps. The Saxons are clearly unsure of what to do next...

The Austrian brigade south of Munchengratz succumbs to the Crown Princes concentric attack. Meanwhile the Austrians in the town have spent the last six hours (!) digging in (indicated by the little dice). Prussian casualties are around 40% at this point.

Back in the north, one Prussian division rallies and manages to fight its way across the river, supported by artillery. Less than half Von Bittenfelds Corps is left on its feet.

And in the south, the Crown Prince threatens the Austrian lines of communication. Night fell at that point and we called it a day.  The Austrians had managed to keep their communications lines open and inflicted heavy losses on the Prussians, even though the Saxons had scuttled home. So a well earned victory for Clam Gallas, and his Corps can withdraw overnight to meet its destiny at Koeniggratz.

I was pretty pleased with this, it all seemed to go smoothly and although I forgot a couple of things in the heat of the moment, it all hung together OK. Playtesting with people is always useful as it highlighted some ambiguities and inconsistencies to iron out, but the revisions are only minor. The challenge is still to keep the rules to one side of A4, but I seem to have managed it. Once I'm happy with the revisions to the revised version I'll post them as a file download here.