Position magnifique. 1870

First off gents, ladies et al I just noticed that the visits to the blog counter has crept over the 300,000 mark so thank you you daft sods for looking in to this old blokes ramblings. As always I primarily do this to keep a record for my senile mind as to what I do with my spare time, the fact that others are interested never fails to amaze me. Cheers.
Now, I love General de Armee, Pickets charge and most things that Dave Brown sets his mind to, the lads at the club have taken to these rules with enthusiasm and we have adapted his rules to WSS, AWI already so given that I have a large collection of 15mm Franco Prussian War figures it seemed like a good idea to give this period a shot as well. If I was starting completely from scratch 10mm would be my scale of choice as you get more bangs for your bucks in terms of ground scale  but this is what I have so that's what I will go for.
I'm not going to set out the precise detail of the changes I made as I frankly don't know how much I'm allowed to do this and don't want to tread on any toes but I'll give you the gist of my thought process. I didn't want to change the original rules too much but it is pretty obvious that the developments in weaponry would be the main factors which would need to be incorporated if this were to be a success.
Pickets Charge will prove to be the basis for the adaptation simply because it's closest in time to the 1870, adaptations will of course need to be made, the most obvious was ground scale. Breach loading artillery can fire a long way and if I'd left the ground scale as is in Pickets Charge then the Prussian artillery would have been off table in the next room, my missus would not have been best pleased to share our bedroom with German artillery no matter how well painted they were!
Practicality is also required here so that though weaponry can be fired at long range and have some effect, effective and short range is where most exchanges will be occurring and given that wargame tables are at best 6' (183cm) I needed to have the effective range of the Prussian breach loading artillery somewhere in that central half section of the table leaving 1/4 at each rear section for the manoeuvring of each side in long range only:

Long range zone

Main effective combat zone.

Long range zone

With that in mind given that as in the diagram above each long range zone is 45cm and that the batteries would deploy on the edge of that leaving manoeuvring space behind, this will leave the 70cm of the central section as the 'killing zone'. So we should base the effective range of the Prussian breach loading artillery at 70cm and the much less damaging long range at 70 - 150cm, say half casualties at that range.

Using that as a basis I then worked out the ranges of the other weapons of the period in relation to the range of the Prussian artillery. The Chassepot was known the shoot up the Prussian artillery when it pushed forward so a standard engagement range of 20 - 40cm was allocated with an extreme half casualties range at 40-70cm. This would mean that if the Prussian general wanted to place his breach loaders in effective range of the enemy then the artillery would be under some sort of fire from the French infantry. The Prussian needle gun had a greatly inferior range to the Chassepot which I set at 15 - 40cm with no extreme range at all, giving it a firing range about 1/3 that of the French, those Prussian troops were going to have to get in close!

The rest of the ranges will fall into place as I show one of the test games in future blogs, suffice to say that there were changes to the number of combat dice for both sides weapons and tweaks to fire modifiers.

Below are photographs of the initial set up of a typical assault by two Prussian (V & XI) corps on a large (McMahon's  1st) French corps in it's 'Position Manifique'.

Basic terrain I know but these show the French on the right in their 'Position Manifique'. Some French can be seen behind some hasty emplacements giving a -1 to the Prussian fire. The Prussian breach loaders are on the hills giving a good field of fire and are in effective range of most of the French positions.

To give an idea of the organisation of the forces above can be seen a Prussian division of four regiments, the divisional artillery and the detached heavy skirmish screen in front of the formed units, a battalion of Jagers can also be seen entering the village. The Prussian regiments are divided on their movement tray for aesthetic purposes only (they actually had three battalions in each regiment) but the heavy skirmish screen gives a -1 modifier to anyone firing on it compared to a -2 on a 'Skirmish unit such as the Jagers. The Prussian skirmish screen was in effect a thick firing line utilising movement and cover in order to press on up to the enemy (20cm long rang and 15cm short) they can be reinforced when they suffer casualties from supporting regiments within 15cm each movement turn with the reinforcing regiment losing on casualty in order to feed troops into the skirmish/firing line thereby replicating Prussian tactics of that time.

 Above, the French firing line behind the emplacements are in single line while the regiments in support on their right are two ranks. The two ranked infantry will gain a +1 in melee while the regiment in single rank will gain a +1 CD during fire to represent the greater firepower of the single rank but also their vulnerability in melee. Note also that the French support infantry have a prone marker in front of them, they can still fire as normal but are harder to hit, however if contacted while prone they will be at a disadvantage. French rifled artillery ranges aren't much different to the Prussian breach loaders but the do not get anywhere near the CD bonuses so are less effective.

A French regiment of Tirailleurs Algerien occupying an advanced position in a village in skirmish order. As in Picketts Charge these units can deploy into either formed or skirmish order. In this instance they form a 'Garrison' in the village.

A brigade of Prussian divisional cavalry and the corps reserve artillery.

The French 1st corps reserve cavalry brigades and artillery battery. I use the term battery but that is used only in terms of the rules, in fact these represent three batteries. This is another example of the scaling up of the original rules in order to incorporate the greater ranges of the weapons used.

A number of views of the field before the action begins. Next time I will go through a few moves and attempt to get into a few of the details of the rule adaptations.

Stay safe.

Dave.