Spicheren revisited

[Leman]

Fought the battle of Spicheren again yesterday, using BBB, after about 10 months since its last outing. As the French I made some silly mistakes, but fortunately towards the end of the battle the Prussians were evidently tiring and it became difficult to move their troops. Consequently the French hung on to three objectives for a very hard fought draw. However, my mistakes:

*Starting a number of French units in march column. They were immediately hit by Krupp artillery fire as I had erroneously assumed they were far enough away.

*Attempting to push the French artillery too far forward - hit whilst limbered.

*Occupying the Rotterberg. Sounds obvious, as the French had occupied rifle pits there, but in reality, at the scale of the game, this overcrowds the Rotterburg. Sacrifice it and hold the area around Spicheren and also the Giffert woods as there is more room for manoeuvre and more cover.

Consequently I think I was quite lucky.




French troops around Spicheren




Forbach




A general view looking down the valley towards Saarbrucken.




Prussian troops massing to attack the Giffert wood area, and down the valley to Stiring Wendel.




General Frossard.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

The schoolmaster serves another lesson! Well done sir. Great report.
How did you deal with the altitude changes?

[FierceKitty]

Any train on those lines is in trouble.

[Chris Pringle]

Great to see your lovingly crafted Spicheren layout get another outing. Hard-fought draw - always a popular result!

Chris

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

[petercooman]

Looks great!

[Leman]

Any train on those lines is in trouble.

Indeed! although the lolly stick approach does enable the lines to bend and give the impression of a raised trackbed, this one providing level 1 cover.

[Roy]

looks really nice.

I honestly thought the rail tracks were one piece castings, so interesting to find out they're on wooden sticks.

What are the figures 6mm Irregular? (this is a guess)

[Leman]

The schoolmaster serves another lesson! Well done sir. Great report.
How did you deal with the altitude changes?

The fleece was laid over cardboard which had been cut out to the shapes shown on the scenario map. The first layer on the table is some redundant styrofoam terrain squares. The cardboard terrain was then secured to those by the judicious use of long map pins, and the throw then went over the lot. Rivers, streams, roads and most of the trees by S&A Scenics, plus some trees from TimeCast. Town buildings are 3mm from TBM, Spicheren is a single piece from the Peter Pig Hammerin' Iron range, other buildings are unknown very small metal 6mm and Paper Terrain 3mm, railway is 3mm Paper Terrain on lolly sticks.

Steep and gentle slopes were dealt with simply by having a copy of the map next to me.

The figures are a mix of Irregular and Heroics and Ros. I happen to think that the Irregular figures work particularly well with BBB, although they do need a 30mm frontage to save cutting up the figure bases. The command is a Napoleonic command base simply given a paint job and a tiny bit of scalpel work on Frossard's head gear. He has a couple of members of the Guard Guides assisting him.  

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Superb Leman. Thank you

[d_Guy]

Stylish as always, Leman. Bravo!

I particularly like the vignette where one of General Frossard's is giving the dispatch rider's horse a sugar cube! Sweet! 

[toxicpixie]

Cracking!

Love the paper terrain rail line - very sneaky idea

[sunjester]

Looks very good indeed. 

[Westmarcher]

Good stuff, Andy. Still to play my first BBB game. 

[ronan]

Lovely !

( BBB is really a good game !  )

[fsn]

Not really my thing, but very impressive!