Wandering mind - Franco-Prussian War?

[henjed]

hello!

After initiating a short discussion on the relative merits of SYW v Nappy gaming a couple of weeks ago I have suddenly begun to hear the siren sounds of the Franco-Prussian War calling to me.

I almost set out on an FPW project a few years ago, having read the Michael Howard volume, a couple of Ospreys and the Ascoli book on Mars-de-la-Tour, but dissuaded myself by conjecturing that it was too close in style to 1914 Great War gaming which I have (very large) settled forces for (using GWSH).

What are others' views on this? I can see that there isn't the range of armies that you can find in SYW or Nappy gaming, and it lacks the colour, variety and 'verve' of the latter of those two periods in particular.  It's also less well-known and perhaps more dour - but there are (I am told) some seriously excellent books on the various campaigns which have come out(or been translated afresh) fairly recently.

Again, asking favours of the Pendraken Forum hive-mind.... is it "too close" to early Great War gaming?  Is there any one book you would recommend from a military perspective that might set out best for me the merits of the 1870-71 campaigns?

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Imperial phase, big set piece defensive battles.

Republican phase, lots or interesting, smaller, meeting engagements.

Lots of colour if you look at cavalry and Franc-Trillieurs or allied German troops.

Depends what sized battle you want to fight, and which season you want to fight in.

BBBB do both G games in an easy evening, I do Corps level with Black Powder.

[steve_holmes_11]

The "Just two nations" thing could be seen as an advantage - especially to avid collectors without impulse control.
On the other hand there are non-Prussian Germans, and various French contingents for the avid collector.

The Prussians are a bit monotone, but the the pantalons rouges add some flamboyance.

Then there's the "slight asymmetry":
 * French Chassepots outranging the Dreyse.
 * Krupps outranging the DeBanges.

My limited experience suggests it takes a well tuned set of rules to prevent this degenerating into a "range war".


I've not played, so I hope others can suggest suitable rules, and explain how they handle the specific aspects of the conflict.

[Chris Pringle]

I say do it! But then I am biased - I and my comrades created the "Bloody Big BATTLES!" rules specifically so that we could fight entire FPW battles in an evening on a 6'x4' table. Hence the rulebook includes scenarios for the nine biggest battles of the war, plus there's another 8 or so in the BBB io group files.

On "colour": Bavarians add colour to the German side; tons of variety on the French side. (Papal Zouaves, Turcos, sailors, a railway gun ...)

On "verve" vs "dourness":

These guys playing a BBB Gravelotte game in Nashville last week seem to have been having a good time!
https://www.smugmug.com/gallery/n-HChLQD?fbclid=IwY2xjawManhBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHtx8us2GllVomZ8boCmH8Xtitoe6ovJFRUMVtwDLFDmDjgHfEbpVW8V9_JYf_aem_-xVWa0RhNETBupdPUUDwHQ

More seriously: the battles mostly have plenty of manoeuvre, and the armies have very different character and doctrine (beyond the weaponry), which makes for interesting tactical challenges. The attempted breakout at Mars-la-Tour; the fighting withdrawals at Borny and Beaumont; Sedan is a surprisingly entertaining game; Loigny/Poupry is always fun, both sides having to move a lot.

If you want to see what reviewers think of BBB:
https://bloodybigbattles.blogspot.com/2016/10/collected-reviews-of-bbb-bloody-big.html

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Now I wanna play FPW! 

[fsn]

I have looked at the FPW, but then slipped back just 4 years to the shenanigans of 1866.

[henjed]

Thanks for the responses.

Will 1870 be a bit of a slugfest compared to 1809 or 1812? I probably want to game at around Corps scale, either in 10mm or 6mm (the latter, I know, an heretical leaning). I like the idea of manoeuvre and the different dynamics of the two armies. I know some battles wee arduous tests of static courage under intense infantry fire (Gravelotte-St Privat) while others were more mobile.

Although not to quite the same extent as with the Napoleonic period, there seems to be an abundance of rule-sets.

I can hear the siren voice of Helion calling me to some of its FPW titles? Where should I start (perhaps not with Helion)?

[Orcs]

Henjed, Please can you keep the thoughts in your wandering mind to yourself.   I have enough problems being distracted onto other wargames related projects by my own mind, while still having several projects on the go. Without you making me think of others I might like.

Your post reminded me of playing Franco Prussian in 6mm using Principles of war rules, and now I am thinking "Where did I put those rules" despite not having suitable armies for either side.

So next time your mind wanders, please go and get coffee......and stay away from posting on the forum.   

[henjed]

I'm a distraction to myself and a danger to others!

But sometimes you just have to give in to the voices within!

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Henjed, Please can you keep the thoughts in your wandering mind to yourself.   I have enough problems being distracted onto other wargames related projects by my own mind, while still having several projects on the go. Without you making me think of others I might like.

Your post reminded me of playing Franco Prussian in 6mm using Principles of war rules, and now I am thinking "Where did I put those rules" despite not having suitable armies for either side.

So next time your mind wanders, please go and get coffee......and stay away from posting on the forum.   

Fancy a game in 10mm,come over to LB

[Chris Pringle]

I have looked at the FPW, but then slipped back just 4 years to the shenanigans of 1866.

Yes, 1866 is a ton of fun too.

is FPW "too close" to early Great War gaming? 

Not at all. Plenty of manoeuvre and depth and attack and counterattack and ebb and flow and fresh decisions to make every turn, not grinding incremental advance where all the defender has to do is roll firing dice.

Will 1870 be a bit of a slugfest compared to 1809 or 1812? I probably want to game at around Corps scale, either in 10mm or 6mm (the latter, I know, an heretical leaning). I like the idea of manoeuvre and the different dynamics of the two armies. I know some battles wee arduous tests of static courage under intense infantry fire (Gravelotte-St Privat) while others were more mobile.

Actually, 'slugfest' is a word I find myself using more for Napoleonics. In Napoleonics, firepower is less, so the assault is more important, and troop density is often such that it feels like alternating battering rams. (That has a charm of its own - Borodino was great.) In FPW, firepower is greater and has longer range but doesn't yet trump manoeuvre to the extent it does in WWI. Instead, it makes it easier for a mobile and clever attacker to concentrate enough firepower to blow enough holes in an enemy line to then charge through it. Of course, the enemy then responds in kind. But it means there is movement and the situation can change quickly.

I think there were actually fewer corps-sized actions than multi-corps battles in the FPW. It really was all about those 20 or so major set-piece battles. That's why we created BBB - when Dave W said "let's do FPW", I said "OK but this time let's do it properly". I didn't want to be doing just one sector of a big battle. That's where you do run into the problem of no room to manoeuvre and limited options. The Prussian Guard at St Privat? No thanks! (Each to their own, of course, and not everyone's tastes fit with my prejudice - just trying to say that I think the most fun to be had from FPW is at that higher big battle level.)

[Orcs]

Fancy a game in 10mm,come over to LB

Thanks for the offer, I may wel take you up on that

[henjed]

I'll take a look at the BBB web-site, Chris.

The reason I play only early Great War is to avoid too much static slaughter, massive artillery assaults and 'over-the-top' death charges.  Not that August to November 1914 didn't have quite a bit of that anyway!

Of all the games I have played, GWSH has fielded my biggest armies (I have played with 3 divisions a side - I think two corps on one side in one game): but it is still one company=one base (so a division has between 55 and 63 bases, without including attached artillery) so a single base for a regiment or even for a brigade is a novelty for me :-)

[Chris Pringle]

Cheers, Henjed. If BBB appeals, great, but if it's not your cup of tea, also fine, of course. I'm not here to do a 'hard sell' (let's face it, it's only pocket money), just trying to share the love for 19th-century big battles.

On the Great War and 60-element divisions: I think it is generally accepted that a sensible structure is to give orders "two levels down" and track casualties "three levels down", and that a player/commander ideally handles 8-12 units at that 2nd level. Thus, if you're fielding two or three corps, you want your units to be divisions, and you want to track casualties at a level below that (maybe brigades, maybe battalions, depends a bit on troop scale and rules). Tracking individual companies is too granular for that scale of game, in my view. One of the essays in my series of 'Reflections on Wargaming' addresses granularity:
https://bloodybigbattles.blogspot.com/2017/05/v-e-day-games-and-granularity.html

Just from a practical point of view, the more elements and units on the table, the more decisions a player has to take and the more moves he has to implement, all of which takes time (not to mention mental effort on minutiae). I have a formula for BBB: (((total inf or cav units on both sides) x (game turns)) + 30)/100 = total game time in hours. Hence, for a typical BBB game of 10 turns with 15 units a side, ((30x10)+30)/100 = 3.3 hours.

Excuse me waffling on but I have thought about this stuff a lot and like to talk about it too!

[henjed]

I love that formula! And I think I recall reading at least one of your more philosophical blog posts a few years back. I must take another peek.

Large GWSH battles certainly become practically unwieldy in terms of moving so many stands. As the commander of a Corps, I can see that knowing what is happening to individual companies would be unnecessary (indeed unhelpful!) - although, as an avid reader of first person accounts of combat in those sultry months of August and September 1914 in particular, it's a level of detail that (for those campaigns) works for me. 

Interestingly, the effect on morale of troop losses in GWSH is measured not at a company or even battalion level but at regimental level (which of course doesn't really match across to British as opposed to French, German or Russian structures), and I have house-ruled some changes to reflect that fact. (For the BEF, these morale checks are supposed instead to take place at brigade level, but I don't think the effect on chaps in the 1st Barsetshires of seeing the 3rd Loamshires fall in thickets to their left would necessarily have been the same as that on chaps in the 1er battalion of a regiment seeing their mates from the 2eme battalion of the same regiment die in droves - but that's possibly contentious and another matter entirely...).

When I was mulling over Napoleonic gaming a few weeks back (I have a sadly butterfly mind at times), I was caught in the dilemma between that desire for granularity (to at least have one stand per named, designated, dearly-loved battalion) and the desire to fight larger battles than such granularity could easily/practically accommodate (and which would render some of those battalions visually anonymous). It reminds me of a criticism I read of the Blucher ruleset which said that with such abstraction you may as well use counters rather than figures (which I think at least in part misses the point - minis are pretty much always better than counters, however abstracted the troops they represent might be!).

But BBB and similar rulesets which rely on a certain level of 'unit abstraction' (which, let's be frank, is to found in almost every game we play) may provide me with a fresh way of approaching battles, a way which I haven't yet experienced.

Mike