"OOB or not?" Topic

How many of us follow an Historical Order of Battle for creating an army, and how strickly do you follow it?

For my new french army, I decided to very loosely follow an OOB (you can find my plan here : link As you can see, I have no problem taking some liberties with my armies, as long as I feel I have some historical balance.

I was wondering how others do it, and how much liberty you take, if at all.

Sorry, let's try this again, here's the link : link

By the way, I can't make your link work.

I certainly take liberties with the OOB. For my French/Allies SYW armies I'm making it a blend of WAS and SYW. This will allow the French the option of a good general (Saxe), the guard (WAS not SYW) and for the allies, the option of fielding Dutch allies. But with all infantry in 3 ranks.

Don't understand what's the problem with the link.

Try this: click on my profile, click on my website (Clash of Empires) and go to "Building a French Army (New)"

I build mine for historical scenarios, so I stick as closely as source documents allow.

I play games loosely based on historical events so my armies tend to be large (allowing a lot of options) and game orbats (and victory conditions) are varied so as to give a good game.

De Ligne: the Gardes Francaises actually were on campaign during the SYW, contrary to popular misconception, starting in either 1760 or 1761 ( I don't have my reference books handy at work). So feel free to use them in your SYW French army. We do it in ours.

I to work from OBBs. atleat with both of my bigger prodjects,

with the skirmish battle, the size is so small that I realy can't work from it, as there's no battle.

but with my bigger ones I follow OOB's very closly

I attempt to match one OOB during the accquisition and painting phase (currently 1809).

After that it is a matter of matching what I have against an OOB to make the scenario work.

I also start with an OOB from the begining of the campaign, then I have spares for later battles

I start with an OOB in mind. That works for the battle the OOB is for. After that I just make it work, which is often pretty close.

Actually I plan to field the Gardes suisses as well and they were certainly not on campaign as their contract permitted them only to serve within France.
As for the Gardes francaises, I am not sure that they were on campaign in the SYW as I have never seen them in any OOB.
But it does not really matter, as I said before, I am doing a WAS/SYW combination and both gardes were present at Fontenoy.

I sort of wish I would have known about the group that makes up their own fictional armies, it could have made thinks possibly simpler.
I'm still very new at this and for SYW Austrians all I did was do a partial chart of the battles I know about (still learning) and the Regt's that fought in them. The column with the most battles fought in and the column with the battle with the most Regt's is my starting point. So far will dio IR #27.
Still have to do the same with Hungarians, Grenz and cavalry.

My future SYW French will be a hoj poj as I want Regt's for North America ( as many as possible) and possibly Indian with Laly, Lorraine and Sepoys. I may do other Regts such as German and Swiss in French service for the added colour on the field.

As I said I am alos new at this and will probably later on have second thoughts on what I did.

Good Luck and enjoy.

The first step for me when starting any period is to identify a battle of interest. I'll then research the OoBs for each side and replicate them exactly. As an example, for SYW, I started with Lobositz and have now moved onto Kolin. Not all the facings will match, but the unit strengths will all be correct.

Archiduc
Yes I do something very similar. A framework but with some changes and additions to flavor the pot to my liking. After all I am the general on my table not those dead guys.

Actually this is a bit girly, but when I did collect & paint I would pick units with nice coloured facings, white lace rather than yellow & neat sounding names, fitting to an OOB didn't matter because I knew I would never have enough to represent any of the battles, if they happened to have a good service history that was a bonus!

Graf,

Not girly at all; I did the same with my Austrians. I just could not convince myself to paint a unit with "Parrot Green" facings for example (an awful yellowish-greenish puke-like green).

Plus, I like my Nappys in Pinks, baby-blues, yellows and other colourful colours!

Yes, I Agree about the Parrot Green not nice.

I follow an historical OoB, as that gives me realistic forces and keeps me from loading up on goodies like Guards and heavy cavalry at the expense of militia/landwehr and other less-desirable types. But I see nothing wrong with a bit of fudging such as what you have done. (I do fudge on small details of uniforms, flags, etc. when it suits me.)

I'm building 15mm 100-Days armies for Grande Armee, starting with the units that were actually at Waterloo. Once those are done (or almost) I will go on to add the other forces that were at Ligny and/or Wavre and the Brits stationed at Hal.

Thanks Archiduc. I enjoyed reading about your organising of the French army. Would be interested in how your Austrians are currently organised too.
Regards
Max

I always go the OOB route.

My 28mm Russians are the IXth Corps from the 1813/14 campaign, with dragoons and mounted jagers- no cuirassiers or hussars. My French, Souham's 8th Division with dragoons and line chasseurs in support.

I feel that it helps to impose some discipline when putting an army together, and I enjoy the research. I'm a "line" kind of guy, with nary an imperial guardsmen in my collection.

Generally, when it comes to rules, I am pretty laid back- I want a game that gives the Napoleonic "feel", without getting too bogged down in detail or one which plays too slowly.

However, it is in researching the order of battle and in uniforms that brings out the"grognard" in me (though with uniforms I will never hesitate to bow to artistic licence in such things as what shades of blue or green to use, especially given scale distance and "what looks good on the tabletop". Visual impact is king for me).

Well I like big battalions so I am building my battalions around 1/20 scale. But I also prefer that my bases have four figures per each base for Infantry.

So for my 1810-1813 Saxons:

1st Bde 21st Inf Division: 5 x Inf Bns

Von Liebenau Battalion total men 705 so divided by 20 gets you 35.25 figures which gets rounded up to 36 figures. So this battalion would have 9 x stands (each with 4 figures) of infantry.

For me a battalion would need to have less than 650 men for it to only have 32 figures or 8 stands of infantry.

I also know that the Saxon Guard Battaion were very lucky not to have march into Russia but I would include them in my Saxon Corps. For me every one gets the chance to die. Plus why painted them if you can't play with them.

But I would follow OOB's but do reserve the right to make some small minor adjustments.

>"I feel that it helps to impose some discipline when putting an army together, and I enjoy the research."<

My sentiments exactly.

I bought all my Adler French to make up Davout's corps of 1806. I don't tend to prefer historical battles -- I like campaigns and made-up scenarios, so I am not worried about recreating the OOB for a particular engagement.

I like having units that are/were real units, I like to have lets say the 42nd highlanders as they have history, just like every other battlion, regiment, brigades, divisons cops or armies.

I like to have a spesific Divsion from a spesific battle, BUT I don't have to only fight in that battle.

My first divsion at salamanca dosn't have to only fight french at salanmanca, it can fight any other historical divsion of eaqual strenght from any other battle of the period.

so it might fight a French division from Leipzig or Borodino or Waterloo

I tend to try and do a divisional/corps OOB as the balance of troops with there attached artillery/cavalry etc comes out about right.

Max

I took way more liberties with the Austrians; the organization is based on a real Austrian corp, but the regiments have been chosen by me mostly due to aesthetic purposes (I wanted to pick the facings of my regiments). I do intend however to write an article on my fictious Austrian corps in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

I must be perverse as I don't follow any organisation at all. We game at 1 to 20 with 28mm and just use what figures we've got available. For example a French Corps of 4 divisions, each of 8 battalions (36 figs) may take on an equivalent combined Russo-Prusso force. Add the cavalry and guns and off we go. I'm always interested to read that people are recreating a given Corps or army as I've never felt it necessary. However as so many people do it there must be something in it. Without wishing to sound naive or hijacking the thread what are the advantages of using a Corps/Army structure? Are they used in points based battles or perhaps more suitable for certain rule sets. We use In the Grand Manner which doesn't normally require specific formations.

I do it for the history, it's a chance to learn about a spesific divsion, or brigade or regiment, and it's simply a war to lean more about a period I like

Bombardier: As I said above, I do it so that I wind up with believable, realistic forces. But, as Gunfreak says, it does NOT mean I am condemned to fighting only that one battle over and over. I can make up scenarios using any or all of my forces, or use them in a campaign (someday, I hope!).

My turn to agree with Don here. Basing a collection around a particular order of battle makes for a believable force with a historical "identity", but I'm not locked to any particular campaign game-wise.

For example, I'd be quite willing to game a scenario where the Czar, after making peace with Napoleon after Borodino, sends Gen. Olsuviev's IXth Division to invade India, or to have it march down the Alaskan panhandle to seize California from the Spanish. Or just as an auxiliary corps to assist old Boney in Spain!

Can any of you say what your reaction would be if faced with an historically accurate orbat of a division if that particular formation was composed entirely or mostly of 'elite' troops?
I have in mind formations like the Peninsular British Light Division, the Guards' Division at Waterloo, or the Household Brigade at the same battle – or as I have seen on the table-top the entire French Imperial Garde of 1812?

IMHO such an organisation, while historically accurate, smacks of gamesmanship.

So I suppose it's more of an aesthetic choice rather than being more suitable for particular purposes. I was thinking about the whole thing after my original post and was wondering to what degree you take it. For instance do you use the unit orbat at full strength or if a particular battalion was down to half strength, only have the equivalent number of figures? I would imagine the latter would be less flexible when using the force outside of its particular period.
Byrhthelm: I recently fought a game in 28mm where the Young Guard consisted of four, twelve battalion divisions, all of them elite :) That said the game was on a very large scale.

That's Ok if it suits you, but can I ask, were there sufficient Line troops to justify such a massive Garde presence? If so, it must have been a massive game – and I would have loved to see it!And where was Boney? ;-)

I'd better point out that I didn't come up with the Orbat, it was a refight of Dresden at the Wargames Holiday Centre in Scarborough. The little corporal had his hands full elsewhere. There were lots of line troops as well, though not as many as in the the Leipzig game we did there last weekend. If you want to see Napoleonics in 28mm on a grand scale I'd recommend a visit.

Thanks Archiduc. I follow a similar formula. I choose the colour then the regiment becomes the lowest number with that colour. Ie I chose yellow for my first regiment so they are 2nd Erz Ferdinand regiment. The second is apple green so they became the 11th Graf Wallis Regiment. etc.

"IMHO such an organisation, while historically accurate, smacks of gamesmanship."

Honestly, while I can see that being an issue in some quarters, in my experience it has never been much of a problem. A lot would come down to the kind of people you expect to be gaming with.

In my old gaming group, we were big believers in representing forces taken from historical OOB's. Before we ever got much into a project, we used to talk about what we would and would not be fielding in order to get some kind of consensus or "gentlemen's agreement" on what would be kosher to turn up with in a game. Actually, a lot of us took a reverse snobbery in raising formations that historically were pretty lame. There is, after all, a certain "schadenfreude" to be had in having your brigade of Neapolitan conscripts stomp all over someone's cherished Prussian Guard.

In the event of gamers deciding to show up with a brigade or division chock full of the "sexy" stuff, we made it clear that in that case would either balance the scenario accordingly by throwing in an extra brigade or so for the other side, or by burdening the "überforce" player by having the remainder of his army consist of brigades and/or commanders that were utter crap. Or, we could give him victory conditions from Hell. I have always found that any consenting group of reasonable adults can usually work out reasonably balanced scenarios without necessarily having to resort to a point system.

As the players with the all-elite forces often tended to be less than stellar performers on the tabletop anyway, I cannot recall any case when they just steamrollered the opposition.

In those rare cases where people would routinely throw a hissy fit every time their darling brigade of Imperial Guard got waxed (usually through overconfidence manifested in amazing carelessness or use of unbelievably stupid tactics), we would find out what day of the week said players were unable to attend games, and move the gaming night to that evening accordingly…

If the people you find yourself gaming with aren't so flexible, then organizing your forces around an OOB probably isn't for you.

"There is, after all, a certain "schadenfreude" to be had in having your brigade of Neapolitan conscripts stomp all over someone's cherished Prussian Guard."
"If the people you find yourself gaming with aren't so flexible, then organizing your forces around an OOB probably isn't for you." (Stavka)

Two lovely points, with both of which I agree. My own historical army (as opposed to my fictional army) is the Brunswick Corps of the 100 days campaign. Not big (8 Bns, 5 Sqns, 2 Btys), and, if certain memoirs are to be believed not particularly brilliant as to quality, but oh, how I love it when they stomp all over some elite formation! (Sadly, it doesn't often work that way – but I would never change 'em) ;-)

- For instance do you use the unit orbat at full strength or if a particular battalion was down to half strength, only have the equivalent number of figures?-

I do the former, i.e. my Regiments are always full strengh, even if that was not the case historically. While I enjoy a lot researching a particular OOB, and then get all the units and organization right, my goal is to put together a versatile army that can be used for many different battles.

Actually, no matter the number of men per regiments, my units are always 4 stands, 16 figures strong. The games I intend to play (GA, ITNOG, Huzzah!, Piquet) all require that all units be the same dimensions, so to create bigger and/or smaller units doesn't make sense from a gaming perspective. And since I do want to play one day…

In GA (Grande Armee) it doesn't matter how many figures are on the stand; the strength of the unit is based on the number of actual men in the historical unit, divided by their morale rating (with better types using a smaller divisor). And, as you say, all stands are the same size (except battery stands are half the size of inf. and cav. stands).