Welcome

Welcome to my wargaming blog,
I'm Dave and live in Morpeth, Northumberland in the UK.
This may or may not be a regular thing, we'll just have to see how it goes.

I am a painter/collector of figures first and a wargamer second. My thrill in this great hobby of ours is to place that final well researched & painted unit into the cabinet. The actual gaming with the figures is an important but secondary experience, we all like to win, but it isn't the be all and end all of it, being with good friends and having fun is.
Hope you will enjoy reading this blog as much as I will writing in it.
Just to remind the visitor to scroll down the various pages and click on 'older posts' to see more.
Dave.

Monday 22 April 2019

10mm WSS, Cutt's assault column, the game.

Having set out the troops for the assault on the village of Blenheim here we go with the refight. Now baring in mind that I have adapted David Browns General de Armee rules to the WSS period maybe I had go through the fairly small changes first.

1) Movement is movement in both periods though artillery can change formation or move making it that bit harder to manoeuvre them about.

2) Naturally all things skirmish have been removed.

3) Squares are still there (as they were at the time) but a discipline test must be taken to form if cavalry are within 25cm [15"] whereas in the Napoleonic set it was only 15cm [9"]. This forces the unit to change formation when the cavalry are that bit further away. It is of course more advisable to keep lines of infantry on either of the units flank thereby encouraging the linear tactics of this period.

4) British cavalry use the 'cold steel' rule vs the French caracole (pistol shot) cavalry, giving the British cavalry a +2 in the charge. The French have a limited fire capability before contact is made.

5) Infantry vs infantry, I made it more difficult for them to charge in as the brigade needs three ADCs to do so whereas in the Napoleonic version it only requires two. This means that it is very much more difficult to send a whole brigade into the assault, you must wear the enemy down by fire first, even then in the infantry charge results a unit is more likely to halt and fire rather than actually charge in. They can still do it but again I tried to make firepower more important.

6) With firepower, platoon firing British, Dutch and some German state infantry get both an extra +1 combat die and fire on the superior volley fire casualty table compared to the rank firing French and Bavarians. As you will see from the write up below I based the French on a greater depth but narrower frontage to the platoon firing British etc. This means over a brigades worth of front the French have two extra units firing. I needed to compensate the better platoon system but not make them supermen, seems ok so far.

7) Dismounted dragoons and all cavalry are classed as small units, this makes them more brittle and discourages frontal charges on infantry units.

I think that's about it. The game;

Cutt's column begins to cross the Nebel stream still out of musketry range of the French.





Blood's British artillery.


The third brigade swings right to flank the village with cavalry support.




I won't go into too much detail but even given the fact that the French were throwing particularly good dice, the British infantry battalions suffered considerable casualties with gaps starting to apear in the lead brigades ranks.





Without actually re-fighting the engagement(I will leave that for another day) Palme's British cavalry broke the French Gendarme cavalry and chased them from the field allowing the flanking force to continue to envelope Blenheim.




In the face of this the French heavy battery withdraws.



Following the mauling of the first Brigade, the second Hessian brigade moves forward to take its place in the line.




A few shots of the brigades in front of the village, gaps again appearing with one Hessian unit actually routing.




Finally the closing photographs, the British/Hessian assault has ground to a halt and more French units are moving into the village from the rear.



Now keeping in mind that I still have the third British brigade (composed mainly of Hanoverian infantry) to complete, they would be following up the first and second line to pressurise the French in the village. The French would as they are now doing, draw into Blenheim more reserves from the centre of their position thereby leading to defeat.
Though only really testing the firing mechanisms I felt that the game followed history reasonably accurately. Blenheim was a tough nut to crack and cost the British so much in the initial assault that Marlborough decided to surround the mass of French troops in there, mask them and win the battle in the centre. I think that given more even dice (typical when your trying to test rules for the first time) more pressure would have been put onto the French, though they did suffer quite considerably.
Next time I will re-fight Palme's cavalry squadrons vs the French Gendarmes.
See you then.
Dave.

12 comments:

  1. Wonderful looking table and miniatures

    https://www.10mm-wargaming.com/

    Take care

    Andy

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  2. A great looking battlefield and game. It is especially interesting as I am slowly working on a similar project. In my case I am doing 1 to 1 units in 2mm and doing the big cavalry battle and Oberglauheim. So basically the next section along to the one you are doing.

    I am afraid I don't know the General D'Armee rules very well but I thought a few historical notes might help you. The first thing to say is I don't think trying to use a Napoleonic set to do this time is generally a good idea. It looks similar but is totally different really.

    So on your comments above -

    1: Basic movement speed would be slower in this time but I am not sure that needs to be reflected in the rules. There are of course no assault columns. They are not using cadenced marching at this time which means any kind of formation change, wheeling, etc is a lot slower/more difficult than later in the century.

    The artillery is basically immobile at this time - a combination of them being very heavy and having civilian horse teams who disappear as soon as (or often before) the first shot is fired. At Blenheim the Confederates did manage to move some guns forward and this is famous because it was very unusual.

    2: Yes

    3: Squares were not normally used at this time, or at least actually in battles. They took a long time to form and were usually of multiple units, not a single battalion forming on as later. They were most commonly formed at the end of battles to allow isolated infantry to try to retreat. So if say the 20 or so French in Blenheim had wanted to retreat after the French cavalry had withdrawn they might have formed in a single big 20 or so battalion square & tried to march off. This didn't happen at this battle and there were no squares used by anyone in the 4 big WSS battles. They did feature in other WSS battles and in gaming terms this was usually after the battle was over - i.e. the army morale had broken and the game is over, then they form square to get off the table.

    There were occasional squares on battlefields, again usually more than 1 battalion. This should be a time consuming process - 2 or more turns to do.

    4: This is one of the myths about the era but one which, outside of gaming, no one believes any more. French cavalry charged at the gallop but in relative disorder, compared to others. They could fire as part of this but usually didn't. The Gendarmerie charged 9 times at Blenheim with sword in hand and not firing. When charged by Palmes they were in total disorder and falling back - it was a miracle they stood at all & managed any kind of action. Also what is often not mentioned is that Palmes himself 'routed' after this action because he in turn was caught, charged at the gallop sword in hand, when he was in total disorder.

    I don't have time to go into details but essentially the various tactics in the WSS were broadly equally effective, or more to the point ineffective. They were not like tactics later on and all were replaced by new tactics, similar to Napoleonic tactics, after the war.

    5: I don't know enough about the rules to comment on this but I will just mention 'A prest'. Personally I think this is another myth of the era. I thought I would mention it as if you are going to include equally mythological factors like British cavalry superiority and platoon fire then you should perhaps include this as well. Basically 'A prest' is a tactic/frame of mind that the French are supposed to be following. It is basically being aggressive and using bayonet charges a lot. There is not much evidence of them actually doing this but probably more than for British cavalry superiority and platoon fire! How that would translate into the game I have no idea.



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    1. I couldn't post all the comments so I have cut them into 2 posts.

      So continuing -

      6: A trick and complicated one this one. The evidence for platoon firing, at this time, being superior is thin at best but there is room for discussion here. Personally I would say that any advantage was so slight it is often not worth bothering about - I might give you a +1 if you are using a D100 (one hundred) for combat results. Note here this is 'at this time', later on is a different matter.

      In any case platoon fire was almost certainly used by all the units in the Confederate army and not just some. We know the vast majority did but we don't know about a few of the very small states. We also know that many other armies knew how to platoon fire, the Austrians, Russians and Swedes for example, but didn't think it was effective and so used other methods - usually rank firing. The Austrians used it against the Ottomans but not in the West. It is very likely that the other armies around were the same, the Bavarians fought with the Austrians against the Ottomans and probably also used platoon firing then. The French had a platoon firing system but they used that when defending parapets. So in short if you are going to make platoon firing 'better' then every one should have the option to do it.

      Again on your problem I am not familiar enough on the rules but the answer to your problem is two fold. The first is that the French were only deeper when at full strength, they reduced the number of ranks as the units shrank. The units would be in 3 ranks on the battlefield. I personally still put the French figures in extra ranks as this looks good but on the same frontage per man. The frontage per man is important as typically 'British' units were 50% or more stronger than 'French' units and as both would be in 3 ranks they would have, more or less, the same number of muskets firing. I am not sure how the rules tackle unit size but the 'British' should get a bonus for that.

      7: This seems right but again I am not sure what this means in the rules. The dismounted dragoons are around half the size of a 'British' infantry unit. As a rule of thumb 2 squadrons of 'British' cavalry and 3 squadrons of 'French' cavalry have around the same frontage as a 'British' infantry unit.


      I hope this helps and I look forward to seeing more about your project.

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    2. This is great information and very much appreciated, thanks for taking the time to put this together. I will take on board all that you say and mull it over time is always short but it's great that some people interact with us bloggers a bit more. Please give me even a first name, it's awful replying to Mr Unknown!
      Thanks again,
      Dave.
      P.S. Keep following.

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    3. Happy to help and yes I will be following.

      Sorry I hadn't realised it wouldn't put my name!


      Nick

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  3. After several decades away from wargaming I've just set foot back into it and, for some unknown reason, decided to give the WSS a try albeit in 28mm. Still slowly getting one British unit together as I get my hand and eyes(now helped by stronger lenses) back on track. I've never tried 10mm but I must say that your pictures are really impressive and show what seems to me to be how I would have imagined a 'proper' wargame to look like.

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    1. Very kind Michael, I do think that when on the table these troops do look rather like the old paintings of the battles, linear warfare does that though. The figures you see took about five years to accumulate and I'm not done yet but I painted lots of other stuff as well.
      Dave.

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  4. Wow, this is so impressive! Brilliant use of the scale to get a stupendous massed effect.
    Thanks for posting; keep 'em coming!

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