Wipeout on the Weser

What follows is an account of the mighty clash of arms that took place at Call to Arms 2025 with myself and my good friend the Baron von Driberg (BvD) on the one side, fielding a 6th Coalition Army of Prussian, Russian, British and Hanoverian troops; and KT and TT, père et fils, on the other, commanding the French.

The rules were Neil Thomas' Napoleonic Wargaming Rules (NTNWR), which KT and I tried out a few weeks ago.

As usual, it was the spring of 1813, so in line with the times the French, Guard troops excepted, consisted mostly of hastily-raised conscript battalions. The Coalition Army, however, was scarcely any better, as it contained numerous barely-trained reserve and landwehr battalions. There was only a small scattering of regular infantry on either side.

As was their right, given that I had laid out the table, the Ts chose the side containing the town of Dappol, which seemed to have the best defensive prospects. The Coalition also had a fair bit of cover, however. Dividing the battlefield was the River Weser.

The French were organised into three main divisions:

On the left, commanded by TT, was the cavalry of the Imperial Guard and two of the Emperor's best infantry regiments: the Grenadiers a Pied of the Guard and the 13e Legere.

In the centre, commanded by KT were two more excellent regiments: the 67e de Ligne and  the Chasseurs a Pied of the Guard, supported by the 3e Suisse and the 8e Cuirassiers.

And on the left was a mass of low quality conscript battalions supported by the 4e Chasseurs a Cheval and some artillery.

The Coalition dispositions broadly mirrored these, but were rather weaker in reality.

Facing the Emperor's best troops were a collection of similarly proud units, but they were somewhat overcrowded in the narrow space west of the river.

The Prussian centre looked solid enough, but was also a little hemmed in:

The Prussian right, however, consisting of reserve and landwehr battalions, was worryingly weak.

Much to our surpise, the French went immediately on to the offensive, with their cavalry boldly out in front, which caused no end of confusion in the Prussian ranks.

The 4e Chasseurs a Cheval were perhaps a little too bold, however, and the Prussian 2nd Dragoons prepared to strike!

This went very well at first, but they were to be very badly shot up by the French infantry over the next few turns.

The Swiss, meanwhile, were closing in on the 9th Reserve Regiment, with another French line regiment close behind. With only Landwehr in support, the Prussian right was looking severely outgunned.

It was time for a counterattack. This was led by the 6th Reserve Regiment, which did not go well at all, but the Russian Leib Grenadiers were able to mop up the 67e de Ligne in the following turn.

Meanwhile, east of the Weser, TT and I did a lot of marching and countermarching without really achieving very much.

In the end I felt that there was nothing for it but to go in hard with the Garde du Corps.

Although the Empress Dragoons obligingly ran away, this was to have no effect whatsoever on the outcome of the battle.

On the right things started to go very badly wrong when the Leib Hussars charged the Chasseurs a Pied. This barely troubled the Chasseurs, whereas the Leib Hussars were sent back reeling ...

... where they were then rapidly finished off by the 8e Cuirassiers. This left the 9th Reserves hopelessy exposed to an assault by the Chasseurs a Pied.

The Leib Grenadiers were not well placed to do anything about this!

We knew we were really doomed, however, when KT announced that two battalions of Marie Louises, advancing quite unnoticed and unopposed on the far right, had reached our table edge. Under NTNWR this forced us to remove four of our close order infantry battalions.

Having been badly smashed in the centre and otherwise woefully outsmarted, BvD and I decided that it was time to throw in the towel.

This was a crackingly entertaining game. I think it lasted about 10 moves or thereabouts, which was not too bad considering. What's more, a succession of old friends stopped by to say hello, which was very pleasing. It was great to see you, Chaps.

It was a grand day out and no mistake.

Have a great weekend,

WM

Götterdämmerung

Yesterday a battle was fought. There were about 650 troops on the table:

With some very exciting action:

I won't have a full report for another week as I'm off on my travels today to spend a glorious week exploring Dunedin and the country thereabouts with two clever, beautiful, and brilliantly witty ladies. I'm hoping this will help me forget just how comprehensively and distastrously I was defeated!

À tout à l'heure

WM

Gunning for Glory

The Emperor is reviewing his newly reinforced artillery:

While waiting for His Majesty to show up, the newly-joined 3rd and 4th line batteries go through their paces:

The Imperial Retinue finally arrives:

The batteries come into action:

Fire!:

The Emperor is content!

Napoleon: Take a deep breath, Gentlemen. It is the scent of Victory!

Apologies for the delay in posting these. The guns are Claytons which had been woefully miscast and took a lot of recarving to make them presentable. I think it was worth it, however, as the French gun line is looking quite respectable at last.

The 3rd and 4th Batteries go into action next week at the Wellington Warlords Call to Arms 2025 event. There'll be quie a few troops on the table. A report will follow.

Have a good weekend everyone

WM

War breaks out in Wellington.

During Call to Arms 2024 last year, K walked up to our little vintage game to tell us that he'd been a wargamer for years, and that he even had some 20mm Napoleonic armies. He uses them to fight battles with his son, who he had with him.

Well, one chat led to another, and a couple of weekends ago we met at his place for a battle. K uses the delightfully simple, fast-play and very entertaining rules to be found in Neil Thomas's Napoleonic Wargaming, published in 2009:

The rules don't have a catchy title, so I'll just have to refer to them as Neil Thomas' Napoleonic Wargaming Rules (or NTNWR). These are not the same as NT's famous One Hour Wargame rules.

What attracted me to them is that they have a variety of quirky but really quite fun looking game mechanics, while also being entirely compatible with my 4-bases per unit organisation.

The scenario we played pitted most of Wallmoden's Corps, albeit beefed up a bit with Prussian dragoons and the Russian Leib Grenadiers, against the flower of the French Army in 1813, commanded by K. He had much better cavalry than me but also a lot of terrible infantry, so it was going to be an interesting match.

As luck would have it, I was able to seize the wooded road in the centre with two of my best infantry regiments, the 73rd and the Russo-German legion. This was to have very important effects.

British infantry are especially deadly in NTNWR as they fight two deep, which gives them devastating firepower. However, they're also very slow moving as they're not allowed to form assault columns.

Wallmoden's left flank was cunningly refused, forcing K to make a long march around the flank to get at it. The Feld Battalion Bremen were only classed as levies, but the Prussian 2nd Dragoons, I hoped, would scare off any attempt to assault them.

On the right were the Estorff Hussars and the Lutzowers. These were by far my worst troops, so I hid them behind the woods. The Lutzowers were so bad they couldn't even form line and therefore had greatly reduced firepower. Not too far off, however, were the crack Leib Grenadiers and my Russo-German battery.

What makes NTNWR different is that it's an I-Go-You-Go system and firing, charging, melee and morale have all been radically simplified, so it clips along at a great pace and there's real scope for tactical suprises.

The really radical bit though, which has a transformative effect on the gameplay, is that close-order infantry units may only assault other infantry if they have a numerical superiority in terms of the number of bases they've got left. This forces players to attrit their enemy before attempting an assault, producing a linear style of deployment that, to my eyes, is very similar to actual Napoleonic warfare. When the charges finally go in, however, they're devastating, and there's very little prospect of recovery from a poor morale result.

K's sent three battalions against my centre to keep it occupied while manoevring against my left. I had every confidence that my Dragoons would make short work of  his Chasseurs, however. The Guard Grenadiers looked a bit menacing though.

Supporting the attack in the centre was the Foot Artillery of the Guard, which had a much better chance of hitting than my Russo-German gunners. They were firing at long range at troops in cover, however, but K made up for this with some oustanding dice throws.

Sure enough, it was first blood to K, with the 73rd losing a base. I had them rated as only average troops, so they were quite lucky to survive the resulting morale test. This was not a good start, and my dice throwing was so dreadful that their much vaunted firepower was not having any effect.

If I'd been commanding the French, I probably would have assaulted the 73rd there and then, but K was worried about my dragoons and so decided to charge them with the 4th Chasseurs. This set off a running battle between the two that lasted for the rest of the game.

Meanwhile, on the left, K decided to have a pop at the Leib Grenadiers with the Empress' Dragoons. NTNWR seemed to suggest that three-deep infantry in line should have a fair chance against a frontal charge by cavalry, so I decided to give this a go.

And the ED's bounced right off! What was worse, they also got raked at short range by the RGL gunners and were then charged in flank by the Estorffs ...

.. who were victorious! I think K must have forgotten they were lurking behind the woods.

Things really started to go south for K from this point as the RGL and what was left of the 73rd finally started to find their marks, aided by the RGL artillery firing at short range. Within a couple of turns K's three centre battalions had sufferred catastrophic casualties, made worse by failed morale tests.

It wasn't all bad though. The 4th Chasseurs were also victorious, as it happens, but this still left K with only two viable battalions: the Guard and the 3rd Swiss. Neither had made much impact, however. Although the 4th Chasseurs had seen off the Dragoons, they were down to a single base, and the Guard was about to become rather isolated.

The Swiss, meanwhile, had spent the entire battle in the woods taking fairly ineffective pot shots at the Lutzowers. They were too far away to be of any assistance.

We called it a day at that point. It was such good fun that we've decided to do it again with armies twice the size at Call to Arms 2025, which is at the end of August.There'll be two generals on each side to manage the mayhem.

For those wondering about my French artillery, I'm hoping to have something to show in a few days.

Have a great weekend,

WM

Gunners on the Go

It was my birthday this weekend, so I celebrated by finally putting the varnish on to my new French line artillery gunners.

The figures are sufficient for two batteries. They are vintage Hinton Hunt French Artillery of the Line 1807-12, being:

FN 30: Officer, pointing, x1
FN 31: Gunner firing the gun, x2
FN 32: Gunner holding cannonball,x2
FN 33: Gunner ramming home, x2
FN 35: Gunner, ammunition carrier, running, x1

It's taken me a full ten years to get round to actually painting any of these. I think the officer is my new favourite figure.

There's the guns to finish and all the basing up to do, but a line up of the all the Phase 1 and 2 French artillery (6 batteries, no less) shouldn't be too far off now.

I hope you all had a good one too,

WM

All Buttoned Up

The 2nd Light Infantry Battalion, King's German Legion, are ready to make their debut.

They've been finished for a week now, in fact, but I was too busy chopping wood in the back garden to set them up for their photo shoot before now. It really was a massive tree that fell down.

They are to be the skirmish element for Wallmoden's Corps. In reality, only about half the 2nd KGL Light Infantry was sent to join the Anglo-Hanoverian forces in Germany in 1813, but I thought I ought to paint up a full battalion so they would also be ready to occupy a certain farmhouse in Belgium.

Major Georg Baring's men filter through the woods ...

... and form up in line

 Major General Wilhelm von Arentschildt takes temporary command.

The battalion faces to the rear, showing off their dinky little havresacs. I'm not 100% sure that this is what those weird little bulges on their left hips are supposed to be, but they look OK.

Wallmoden's Corps forms up.

The figures are:

Alberken:

BN 4: Rifleman Officer x 1 (converted);

BN 3: Rifleman on Guard:x 22; and

Hinton Hunt:

BN 20 British Rifles bugler x 1.

I cannot thank Aly Morrison and Mark Dudley enough for providing me with these charming figures. As soon as I saw them I knew they'd be exactly right for Wallmoden's forces.

One of the things that made them so appealing for me was that, unlike much of the rest of the Alberken range, they do not look like Hinton Hunts. The big question then was: what were they?

I was starting to think they might be Jacklex conversions. Rob G then sent me a picture of a Jacklex ACW gunner, which looks to me as if it may very well have been the base figure. 

Exhibit A:

Jacklex ACWs were certainly of the right vintage for this, but it's his legs, wee pinched face and oddly sloping upper arms that clinched it for me.

I've been given a few other delightful presents recently. Here are two of them below, with a KGL light infantryman for scale.

The cottages were given to me by the Armchair General, who thinks he bought them in the 80s but can't remember the manufacturer. They're really nicely sculpted and seem to be made of rubber, as they're a little bit squishy. If anyone knows what they are, please do say so in the comments. I'd love to find out what else was in the range.

The 2nd KGL Light Infantry are the last of the Phase 2 Coalition infantry. I think it'll be some artillery next.

Best wishes

WM