6mm Tents

 While playing around with my Baccus ACW armies and various scenarios I realised that some tents would be useful as both scenery and status markers. My 6mm Napoleonics have a few tents which I made out of paper, but I wanted something more substantial and which I could use for a range of periods and scales. 

I did a bit of research and Irregular Miniatures seemed to be the best bet, doing a range of tents in different sizes in a mixed pack in their 6mm accessories range. I got two packs which yielded a dozen  tents, which I'm sure will be plenty.

First up are these two big tents, which will be useful for Army HQs and suchlike. I undercoated them all in mid grey then did these in VJ Iraqi Sand with a light drybrush of pure white. I think offwhite looks more like weathered canvas.

Then there are are half a dozen mid sized tents. These are a pair of ridge pole tents, also done in cream.

And a couple with what look like external ridge poles. 

I decided to base them as the tents are all slightly different sizes, but putting them on the same size bases equalised them to a certain extent. In retrospect, I should have probably done the bases in earth brown flock to make them more generic, but the blended turf is OK. I edged them in brown which breaks it up a bit.

These two sag in the middle so obviously don't have ridge poles. I did these in Dried Earth with a white drybrush, but they ended up looking much like the Sand ones.

There were also some much smaller pup type tents which I based in pairs on the same size bases as the larger tents. I did these in Dried Earth too. Being smaller, they will do for my 2mm stuff as well.

The bases mean they all line up quite nicely into tent lines, should I wish to do such a thing. Ideal for parades! 

The only outliers are a pair of what I think are supposed to be Bell Tents, but tbh they look more like yurts to me. I painted them up anyway and based them on pennies, I'm sure they will be useful for something.

I'm pretty pleased with those. They were inexpensive and painted up well, and are a useful addition to my ever growing selection of 6mm terrain bits. I've got a couple of scenarios in mind already which will make use of them.

Gitschin 1866, Portable Wargame with no toys

 John put on a PW game covering Nachod (also in 1866) a couple of months ago, and I was keen to give it another go as the original rules were aimed specifically at the nineteenth century. John had used a pre-publication version and I wanted to try it with the rules from the original book which had some importance differences.

The other thing I wanted to try was a different set up. The Skype+Camera thing is fine as far as it goes, but there are often comms issues through the sessions and the biggest problem is player orientation. My APW stuff is all in 6mm and making any sense of what was going on at all would have been quite hard remotely without doing big bases, labels etc. I was interested in trying something a bit different.

 Early in lockdown, Simon helpfully pointed out a site with some game assist software specifically aimed at the Portable Wargame : https://www.cottonreeltank.org/cafelunar/gamecabinet/gridgame/

There are a series of packages covering various iterations and periods of PW, and very kindly, the source code is also available for download. The main thing it offers is the ability to manouvre graphical objects across a background in a rather easier manner than e.g. using my mapping software or Powerpoint Slides or whatever. My programming skills are rather antedelivian, ending somewhere around C and SQL with a smattering of Java, although I did spend a moderate amount of time doing HTML database applications.

This is all written in javascript, the hackers delight (whoever thought allowing browsers to execute code was a good idea?), but it is fairly easy to pick up. Back in April I spent a lot of time playing around with it with a view to doing double blind operational games and I became reasonably competent at editing the unit database, replace the tile based terrain system with maps and fiddling around with the functionality. I made a lot of progress setting up a WW2 map based divisional level operation, but for whatever reason I never quite got around to running a game with it though.

Anyway, fast forward to August, and I thought I may as well try and run a PW game on it, what it was originally designed for. I did do some customisation, I modified the unit database to remove all the tricornes from the figures an instead have Prussians in picklehaubes, Austrians and Saxons in shakos with re right uniform colours and facings etc. I also replaced the terrain tiles with my own map, scaled to fit the virtual figure bases and added some extra markers (explosions, activation markers etc).

I picked Gitschin as a scenario, as it is an interesting battle and made a change from Prussians trying to cross mountain passes into Bohemia. The scenario was based on the Wyre Forest Gamers one for Fire & Fury Francesa, plus some mods from Wavros account of the battle. 

Here is the basic setup. The Austrians have to hang on to Gitschin until the end of the game while also linkng up with the Saxons (en route from the south) and then withdrawing the Austrian army intact! The whole position is one of those surveyed by the Austrians in the eighteenth century. The big hill in the middle has cliffs on its north and west edge, which makes this an outstanding defensive position. 

Meanwhile two entire Prussian armies are en route via the north and west roads, each with a division as a vanguard.

A Prussian division. Four infantry regiments, artillery battalion and HQ. I was pleased with how the Prussian flag came out, and if you look very carefully they have all got the right cuff and shoulder colours etc. The gun carriage is also Prussian Blue.

The hardest thing was modelling the infantry as the standard PW doesn't really model the tactical gulf between the Austrians and the Prussians. Regiment for Regiment the Prussians were at least twice as combat effective as the Austrians, if not four times as effective based on the relative loss ratios as the Prussians had breechloading rifles and were dispersed, whereas the Austrians had muzzle loaders they hadn't been trained to fire and also deployed in dense assault columns which made them into dense targets. 

In the end I just went with combat equivalence, so one Prussian regiment was the equivalent of an Austrian brigade. As Prussians were spread out in skirmish columns, and the Austrians jammed together into storm columns that explained the difference in real estate occupied.

That worked quite well as the detached Austrian Corps holding Gitschin was a big one, with five brigades (aka 'Divisions') plus an attached cavalry division, so it kept the unit count down. The Saxons I gave the same ratio as the Prussian, one unit per regiment, as they knew how to fight in supported skirmish lines and could both actually fire their rifles and all speak the same language.

  

The Austrian Corps, five 'divisions' (representing a brigade of two regiments), a full artillery regiment with three battalions and its attached cavalry division, which should have three brigades but I modelled it as two because cavalry were hideously vulnerable to rifles in 1866.

As the Prussians have two divisions with five units apiece, and the Austrians also have ten, that doesn't seem unreasonable. Due to the notorious command problems facing the ployglot Austrian army, I also reduced their activation level by one, so their median activation is five units to the Prussians eight, lets see if that is enough for the Prussians to overcome that nasty defensive position!

Numbers were low for this one and Simon and Tim C drew the Prussians, John and Jerry the Austrians and Saxons.

There is the opening setup, based on the historical one. The Austrians set up as series of interlocked flanking positions covering the routes around the forested mountain, with the guns ready to blast anyone foolish to try and walk through the gaps and the cavalry in reserve. This setup actually works quite well in PW given the move restrictions. The Austrian 2nd Div had been chewed up at Munchengratz and was held in reserve near Gitschin.

Simon helpfully pointed out that screenshots would be much clearer images, so here are a few of those. Tims Prussians came up the road in a column, which if course precluded nay possibility of retreat, so it was a good job the Austrian gunners were rotten shots. The explosions are there to record grids fired on.

Simons Prussians very bravely decided to try and storm the almost impassable mountain! Their guns also came under Austrian CB fire. I was expecting a broad outflanking move astride the stream, which was what the Prussians did irl, but that is why wargames are fun.

After a few turns the Prussians had shaken out into lines, and had even managed to get up onto the mountains. The fearsome Austrian guns had eliminated the Prussian artillery (oh the shame) and now worked over the Prussian infantry. By now the Saxons were marching on from the south (the blue figures in row 8) and the Prussian cavalry brigade had turned up.

By the end of turn 5 the Prussians had cleared the wooded hill, while the Austrians had locked down their right flank. Over in the west the Austrian and Prussian lines faced off, but the Saxons were moving up rapidly now.

We broke for the night after turn 5 and resumed the following day.

As the action resumed the following day the Austrians were starting to look a bit ragged in the west, but the Austrian artillery had manage to push back one of the Prussian regiments, and also wounded the Prussian divisional commander! (I was using the commander rules from the Napoleonic PW). Not good news for the Prussian exhaustion level.

The Prussians pushed hard and the Austrian brigades in the west finally broke and ran, the Austrian artillery and infantry were also pushed back in the centre. (I wasn't sure if artillery which had fired could retreat, but this is clarified in the Napoleonic PW). This was enough to push the Austrians over their exhaustion point, but by now the Saxons were well forward and had even pulled a sneaky flanker on the Prussians in B7.

The Prussians pressed home their advantage, including a glorious cavalry charge against the Austrian guns north of Gitschin. Sadly this was repulsed, and the Saxons put up a stiff fight in the cauldron battle in the west. The Austrian artillery also managed to wound one of the Prussian divisional commanders again, and the weight of losses was sufficient to exhaust the Prussans.

We called it a day at that point. The Austrians had held Gitschin and were in a good position to get their army off the southern edge of the table, but sadly they had been exhausted in the process. The Saxons were still a few hits from their exhaustion point and the Prussians had been fought to a stand-still and lost all their guns! So a tactical victory to the Austrians.

The game software working fine over Zoom, ad the players said it was much clearer than our more usual Webcam/Skype setup. A screenshot of the player experience is above.

The game itself went fine, more smoothly than last time. There were still a couple of geometric confusions and I'm glad we went with Napleonic version of the leader risk rules. I think rating the units on the basis of combat equivalence worked fine, as the Prussians would have really struggled against fourteen Austrian and Saxons regiments(!) instead of five Austrian brigades and four Saxon regiments. The Prussians didn't get to make much use of the superior troop quality until later in the game as they didn't leave themselves enough space to be able to retreat. Still, it all rattled along nicely and we were done in less than two hours of play.

One of my blogging pals has posed this little challenge re simple rules: https://soundofficerscall.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-allure-of-simple-wargaming.html

As the Portable Wargame is listed as one of the sets, here are my answers to his questions:

Basic Questions:

How long did the game take to play?

a. One hour and 45 minutes.

What was the scenario?

a. The Battle of Gitschin in June 1866. This is also modelled as one of the One Hour Wargame Scenarios. I used the historical version of the battle I'd used for Horse, Foot and Guns (itself based on the Wyre Forest Gamers scenario for Fire & Fury Francesa).

What happened?  Anything extraordinary?  (troops holding out amidst terrible odds?  Savage attacks that tore through the enemy line?  A straight string of rolling 6s or 1s?)

a. The failure of the Prussian cavalry charge was a bit surprising. A full cavalry brigade into the flank of unprotected gun batteries fails to obliterate them? The Austrian counter battery fire was also hideously effective. 

Who won and why?

a. The Austrians. They just managed to wear the Prussians down enough to stop them.

Did you enjoy the game? Why?

a. Yes. It moved along at a good pace, the players had plenty to think about and the result seemed plausible.

Advanced Questions:

After reading the rules, how many consultations occurred with the rules during the game?

a. At least three - artillery retreats, threat to leaders, and once again, the ease of getting flank attacks.

Was the scenario created for you or did you create it?

a.I created it based on another one. It has been used before with other sets of rules.

Did any troops perform remarkably good or bad?  Was it luck or part of the mechanics?

a. I would have expected the Prussian infantry to tear their opponents apart, as they did repeatedly in the real campaign. It was a bit more of a slog in the game.

What were the victory conditions in your game?

a. The Prussians had to capture Gitschin or exhaust both the Saxons and Austrians. The Austrians had to hold Gitschin and withdraw the Austrian Army in good order by turn ten.

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!

Clam Gallas gets it wrong

I ran a scenario covering the Battle of Muenchengratz last night (APW, 1866). Historically the Austrian 1st Corps under Clam Gallas had just linked up with the Saxon Army, and decided discretion was the better part of valour in the face of converging Prussian Corps, so they beat a hasty retreat. There was a minor rearguard action, but the Prussians stormed across the Iser losing only a few hundred men as the Austrians and Saxons slipped away.

I wanted to see what would happen if the Austrians had decided to stand and fight, as their position was actually quite strong. Tim Gow and John Armatys took the Elbe Army and 1st Army respectively while I ran the Austrians. The Austrians busied themselves fortifying Muenchengratz and Musky Hill while the Prussian columns sorted themselves out. The Saxons meanwhile turned around and formed up south of Muenchengratz.

Elbe Army got in a bit of a mess during its deployment, while its lead division formed up fairly smartly, the rest lagged behind and the Corps commander rode up and down the column trying to chivvy everyone along. 1st Army meanwhile got its skates on and aggressively pushed across the Iser in the north. The leading division plunged into the heart of the Austrian position, prompting one brigade to conduct a charge in battalion columns against them. Outnumbered 3:2 the Prussians took heavy casualties from the Austrian guns and rifles, and their regiments began to waver. Their needle guns inflicted heavy losses in return on the Austrians and pinned their units. A fresh Prussian division entered the fray, which tipped the tide in their favour. The wavering division held on and it was the Austrians turn to become disordered as the brigade on their right flank was shot to pieces. Another Prussian division came into action on the left flank and the entire Austrian right flank collapsed, leaving their guns behind them. A reserve brigade hastening to their rescue was caught in march column by the pursuing Prussians and routed.

Over on the left the Saxons and Austrians contented themselves with firing salvoes of artillery over the river, while Clam Gallas supervised the evacuation of stores in Muenchengratz. They seemed oblivious to the impending disaster on their right, transfixed by the attempts of the Prussians on the other bank to deploy. Eventually the Prussians became tired of waiting and pushed a division over the Iser north of the town and street fighting broke out. Clam Gallas now decided that perhaps things were getting a bit dangerous, but his convoy was trapped in the chaos of supply wagons. The town defenders only put up a perfunctory resistance once the Prussians closed in, and collapsed after a couple of hours fighting. Clam Gallas finally managed to escape down the road towards Jicin, as the Saxons decided they couldn't take on the entire Prussian Army and retreated southwards. Sadly for the Austrian general, he became entangled in more traffic jams on the road, and a Prussian division from the north swooped down and took his whole party prisoner. This left Austrian 1st Corps in tatters, and the Saxons once more doomed to take the long road to Jicin.

I was pleased with how the game went, and fully expected the Austrians to do much better. They did inflict heavy losses on the Prussians (some 4,500 vs 300 in the original battle) but in turn their forces were all but completely disbanded, vindicating the actual decision in 1866 to retreat rather than fight. The rules worked OK (Rifle & Kepi, available on my website) but I still need to think about the transition from squares to hexes, as it introduces some facing problems which I haven't quite worked through. We are having a think about large scale Napoleonic games, and it is possible these rules will work for that, but I'll need to re-work the balance between infantry, cavalry and guns. We are trying out Leipzig Lite next week, to see if there are any good ideas therein. I've sort of worked out a Waterloo scenario, so we'll see how it goes.