"Wagram June 2009" Topic

Saturday June 20th the White Rock Gamers supported by Imperial Hobbies, The North Shore Gamers and Trumpeter Gamers put on a 25mm battlion level game of Wagram using Shako 2 Rules. The game was put on in a complex recreation room in White Rock, British Columbia, Canada.

This project was initiated 2 years ago with most of us painting figures and/or building terrain.
Michael Hopper who wrote the Shako 2, 1805 Rise of Eagles Scenario book sent Chris Leach a member of the White Rock Gamers who co-wrote Shako 2, the Wagram scenario.
Each battalion and regiment was included in the game.
This meant we had to have approx 7000 – 25mm figures ready for this day.

We divided into teams with all groups represented on both sides. Set up of the table and terrain started on Friday night. Saturday morning we all arrived with our figures and placed them on the table. Co-ordination of who would supply which divisions was done by Chris Leach. He also made up cards to place on the table Friday night with divisional make up and who supplied them. This made the set up much easier, as we also had maps he created to position where each division was supposed to be.
We started the Game at 10:30 AM and had two breaks of 20+ minutes. The game came to a conclusion at 6:00 PM.

You will note in the pictures wooden sticks which are used for artillery fire and figure movement rather than using tape measures. Dice towers were used by all, some rather elaborate.

I will not say who won the battle, have a look at the images. Everyone had a great time and enjoyed the look of our game.
We plan to do the same scenario in 15mm this September.
Our next project will be possibly Stones River from ACW or Borodino.

link

WOW 7,000 castings in 25MM! Congratualtions to our Northern neighbors.

Bravo lads! Well done!

Dave in Edmonton

Nice work guys. Perfect for demo games with lots of players. Well done. Good pics too.

What's next?

David
wardepot.blogspot.com
6to20painting.blogspot.com

Looks like a great game! Thanks for the good pics!

Mark

Wow – great work! I am working on about 400 figs for a game at our club in November, nothing like this long-term planning!

A big salute to the boys in White Rock!

Well done. Beautiful game.

Hi,
I spend a lot of time acquiring large armies, but rarely, in fact not for many years, have I had the opportunity to get them out on a table. I'm always keen to see big battles and troop density etc.
Your game and pictures are great, but are you quite sure that there were 7,000 figures involved in this game? It looks like the French battalions are 24 figures each and the Austrian battalions 16. If there were 100 battalions per side that would come to 2400 and 1600, so 4,000. The cavalty units are not large etc. Did you produce an OOB. I remember many years ago in his article on refighting Liepzig that Peter Gilder wrote about his rule of thumb of figures per foot of table edge.
If there are 7,000 then the table looks very clear and I'm doomed to many more years of collecting!

4000 or 7000, it's a great looking game.

It's a great looking game. I'm just trying to assess troop density on a table. I get into projects where I collect figures, so in the last year or so alone I have amassed about 70 battalions of 36 and 32 figure infantry battalions and 12 24 or 32 figures cavalry regiments. They now fill one huge cabinet plus a second one. I haven't had the chance to get them on to a table, but I was starting to think that it looked like an awful lot. I have much bigger numbers with Adlers where the total is well over 100 battalions per side for Borodino with about 80-100 cavalry regiments. I've always done 1:20 ratio. In 15mm I have about 4-5,000 Napoleonic figures, and when I last put them on a table, many moons ago, it was pretty packed.
I love the pictures on the net, and Joe, Lord Ashram, the Garage and Itinerant Gamers to name only a few have been inspirational.
I use these photos to gauge what looks right. The Napoleonic 28mm games at the WHC always look great and have dense troop numbers.
In Miniature Wargames Issue 4, in his article "Let's Refight Leipzig", Peter Gilder opined that he had found that the maximum number of troops per foot of table frontage was about 100 and the minimum 50. That refight involved over 8,000 figures. It was however fought on a gigantic hollow rectangular game table messuring 27ft long on the outer edges down two of the external sides alone.
It's not a criticism of anyone, but I am finding that the number of troops referred as being involved in games just don't match the numbers on display and it's confusing. I reckon they probably took the photos ar stages when the all the troops were not on the table, and if that is the case, I would be intrested to see the game in full pelt with all 7,000 figures and every unit – which would be at 1:20 ratio, on the table.
Of course the only down side of it all is that when you look at the quality of the figures on display, it sometimes makes you want to try to start over, because they are tremendous!

Thanks for all the compliments Gents!!

It was a lot of work setting it all up.
I myself painted up 350 + Austrians.

The actual count was 6042 figures. I was giving it a guess as to the total. Austrian Infantry are 16 figures per infantry battalion, French are 12. Cavalry are 6 per regiment and batteries are average 8 figures plus two guns.
My apologies if I mislead any of you.

As ColonelToffeeApple said a lot of the French reserves were not on the table during the game.
If you'd like a copy of the OB I can send it to you?