Solferino

[cameronian]

New book, anyone read it, any comments ?

[mollinary]

A bit tricky I am afraid Cam, as I understand it has not been published yet. I think Helion are advertising it for publication in March next year. I have a copy of the original Italian, picked up in October from the author in Solferino itself. It is a mighty work, with masses of detail, which I think may be causing translation problems.

Mollinary

[Le Manchou]

Solferino is the battle I plan to organize this winter!

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Sounds great!

[Chris Pringle]

Solferino will probably be one of the games on the schedule for the BBB Bash next April.
http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,13279.0.html

Chris

[Chad]

I have it on order from Amazon

Chad

[cameronian]

A bit tricky I am afraid Cam, as I understand it has not been published yet. I think Helion are advertising it for publication in March next year. I have a copy of the original Italian, picked up in October from the author in Solferino itself. It is a mighty work, with masses of detail, which I think may be causing translation problems.

Mollinary

Awaiting publication ..... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggghhhhhh!

[cameronian]

Solferino is the battle I plan to organize this winter!

Manchou, its ages since you put any photos up, how is the grand project coming on ?

[Le Manchou]

Well, the paintings are finished but I still have 40 1870 campaign maps to bring to France, last time i sent a good number of it by post, the French customs emptied my bank account, so I plan to bring only five of them in my luggage this winter. I might ask Ronan to help me with photos in January or February.

[cameronian]

Excellent, keep posting.

[holdfast]

As Mollinary says the Bruno Dotti book is available in Italian and I have an e-mail contact for him, so you can get the Italian version if your Italian is up to it. There are a lot of maps and illustrations but the maps are black and white and not a big as they could be, so the book really needs to be translated in order to fully understand each of the maps which tend to cover a smallish section of ground in detail.
Good luck to anyone planning to wargame the action. The terrain is as varied and as difficult as any i have come across, particularly the contrast between the precipitous slopes in the centre of the battlefield and the plain to the south which is flat as a pancake, albeit with a lot of crops that limit visibility.
Custozza 1866 is actually a more interesting battle with less epic terrain and needs fewer troops.
It is very interesting to note that Clam Gallas is a corps commander here and is still a corps commander in 1866, so by then he was quite  experienced, contrary to some of the accounts.

[Chris Pringle]

Hi Holdfast,

I agree the Solferino terrain is a challenge to translate to a wargames table. I actually found Custozza pretty tricky too. But I managed it, to my satisfaction anyway, and they both feature in the "Bloody Big European Battles" scenario book for BBB. If you want to see the maps I did for them, you can find them (and many more) on Flickr. This is my Risorgimento album (just Magenta, Solferino and Custozza):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/127771552@N03/albums/72157648315433590

Chris
Bloody Big BATTLES!
https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BBB_wargames/info
http://bloodybigbattles.blogspot.co.uk/

[holdfast]

I have been pondering how best to respond.
Now I have done some BBB I am really impressed with the general mechanisms, but I remain I'll at ease with the way terrain is represented. The battles don't have the granularity of RF&F and the trouble with terrain in general is that a little bit of it goes a long way and can affect different armies in different ways. When we used BBB to do Kgz on one table the advance of the Elbe Army was somewhat impeded by the wet gap at Nechanitz,. When we did the Problus scenario, the Saxon Corps and Austrian VIII Corps versus 3 Prussian divisions, we really saw how the rickety bridge at Nechanitz acted as a choke point in a way that was far more in line with the way choke points, be they bridges or minefield lanes, really works, and I really felt that we had captured the essence of the action. I felt that our Problus scenario illuminated the challenges facing the commanders, whereas the BBB battle produced a less vivid picture.
My conclusion is that BBB is really good for battles on plains with consistent armies of similar makeup, but it is less convincing when it has to allow for complicated terrain and for large differences in troop performance. 
It may be that we are just trying to boil down too many factors, for I cannot think of another Rules set that works any better at this huge scale.

[Leman]

The problem that BBB solves for me is that I will never be able to field the figures for RF&F and table size is also an issue. A couple of months ago I played Little Round Top as an RF&F game down the club. It took four weeks and frankly became a chore. Last week I played First Bull Run using BBB. It took 2 1/2 hours and was an absolute blast. I know that I would have made an absolutely dreadful army officer as I find the nitty gritty of military tactics a bit tedious (unsurprisingly I lose most of my games), but I do enjoy a fast and furious game and accept there will be compromises to realism.

[Chris Pringle]

Hi Holdfast,

Thanks for your thoughtful comments. On your Nechanitz point: if there's a fault it is in my scenario rather than the rules. You could rule the Bistritz (or stretches of it) to be an impassable river instead of a fordable stream if you wanted.

Not sure what you mean about "less convincing when it has to allow for large differences in troop performance"? The various Troop Quality ratings (Raw, Trained, Veteran), Attributes (Fragile, Aggressive, Tactically Inept, Skirmisher), and command & control (Passive, numbers of Generals) allow for troops and armies of widely differing character to be represented and to perform very differently. What did you find unconvincing?

Chris