First and second Schleswig wars

Started by Cazino, 01 January 2021, 11:57:29 AM

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Cazino

Hi,

Whic rules would you recommend for the above mentioned Wars ( 1848-1850 and 1864)?
European armies. Different weapon types. Different training and morale. The battles aren't as jog as ACW or Franco-Prussian wars.

I've looked at Black Powder, Rebels&Patriots ( just letting a unit be a batallion or company), Neil Thomas 19th century wargaming.
Maybe Volley and bayonet? BBB ( but could be too big).

Scale: preferably 6 or 10mm ( as Pendraken has minis for those Wars). 6mm is harder to find something suitable for.

Lord Kermit of Birkenhead

First Welcome to the madhouse - there 2 rules be rude to Phil (Tecno) and ignore Nobby(FSN). Of the rule sets you have mentioned Black Powder is thew most flexible and plays well. BBB - the author is a member and they were designed for the Franco-Prussian war so shoud be suitable.
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Duke Speedy of Leighton

Cazino.
Hello and welcome.
I would recommend BBB (and I'm sure someone will explain later) or BP.
You may refer to me as: Your Grace, Duke Speedy of Leighton.
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Steve J

Welcome on board first of all :). I would recommend BPII and Neil Thomas' Wargaming 19thC Europe for 'normal' sized games, which for me is say 12-16 units per side. For full scale battles you can't beat BBB, as they are superb rules. For skirmish actions I too would go for Rebels & Patriots. If you go down the 1" base route, then you can play all these game with one set of figures. Hope this helps?

Cazino

The 1" base? Tell me a bit more about that.
I reckon it's a couple of minis on a 1" base. Square?
And are you talking 1 base- 1 unit or more bases?

Btw, I might switch inches for centimeters, to get more play area.

And Thx for the answers.

fred.

By 1" base, it means a 1" square base. Which you can get 4 infantry on in two ranks, possibly 6 if they are shoulder to shoulder, or 2 Cavalry

This is a handy size as you can then put a number of bases together to form different sized units for different rules. The downside is that 1" square bases are a bit fiddly, and for a game like BP you could end up with a number making up a unit. One solution to this is a sabot base to hold the smaller bases together. If you are not sure of rules then having flexible basing is very helpful.

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Steve J

As Fred says, you can use a number of 1" bases to form your unit, depending upon the rules and your personal taste to a large extent. So my mid-19thC armies have a Battalion comprised of 4 bases, with three figures to a base, as that works for me. If playing BBB for example, then the number of bases may go up or down slightly, or with a skirmisher base added.

Chris Pringle

Happy New Year, all! And thanks for all the generous mentions of BBB.

Hi Cazino: while BBB is designed to make big battles playable, it uses an elastic scale, and folks have written scenarios that prove it can scale down pretty small.

As far as the Schleswig-Holstein wars are concerned, I'm rather proud of the Dybbol & Als scenario for 1864 in the BBEB scenario book. There's also a scenario for Isted (1850) and one for Oeversee (1864) freely available in the BBB group files:
https://groups.io/g/bloodybigbattles
Why not take a look at those and see if look like the kind of game you want to play?

Good luck with finding a ruleset to suit your taste.

Chris

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paulr

Welcome Cazino :-h

BBB does indeed seem very popular, I use Volley & Bayonet for Napoleonic and American 'Revolution' / 'War of Independence', I know several people who enjoy V&B for later periods

Are their any other gamers in your area, what do they play?

I would strongly recommend 10mm and the service from Pendraken is outstanding :)
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Shedman

Howdy

I recommend Bloody Big Battles (BBB) even for smaller battles including down to skirmish level. It works very well for solo games

The Dybbol & Als scenario, covering the battles of February through to June 1864 in one 11-turn game is excellent.

Alan



Cazino

I'll take a closer look at BBB. Would I need both BBB and BBEB?
VB will also get a second look.
Are any of these doable with single base units?

Paulr,
I'm also looking at rules for AWI actually. Been looking at BP since their AWI supplement is very good.
There are and aren't other gamers in my area. We all have different focus, but I have 1 or 2 I can duke it out with, so I'll be getting the minis for it myself.

paulr

I have pulled together the late Greg Novak's wing scale variants of Volley & Bayonet from his posts on the old Yahoo vnblist.

They give a very good game with each battalion being 2-3 stands. I'm happy to share a copy with you if you have a copy of the V&B rules

This thread reports on a couple of refights of Guilford Courthouse using the variant http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,14025.0.html

I can very strongly recommend Pendraken's AWI range
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Cazino

I think I found the Wing scale somewhere. I dont have the rules yet, but I think I will get them.
What are your basing dimensions?
1 problem I have is Space. My table is 3 foot on the smaller side. It's probably 6 or 8 on the other. Would that be a problem?