"1806 @ 1:10 ratio Battalions - Der Alte Fritz" Topic

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The above link will take you to the after action report that I posted on my blog this evening. We are fighting the 1806 campaign between France and Prussia, using primarily Elite Miniatures, but also including a mix of Foundry, Imperialist Enterprises, Dixon, Old Glory and some Connoisseur figures.

We are using a 1:10 ratio of figures to men, so our battalions range from 60 to 72 figures, while cavalry squadrons are about 12 figures each, resulting in 36 to 48 figure cavalry regiments.

This was our first play test, so we are still working on the rules and have a long way to go, but the results so far are encouraging. the rules are based on the mechanics of Bill Protz's Batailles de l'Ancien Regime (BAR) for SYW games.

Click all pix to enlarge the view

Crikey! That's ambitious.

Very impressive.

Hey, looks good Fritz!

Blucher gave birth to the elephant, hence the -1 modifier?

We roll a D6 to determine the charisma rating of each brigade commander during the course of the game. 1 = Poor (-1 to morale) and 6 = Elite (+2 to morale). Alas, I rolled a "1" for poor Blucher and did not want him anywhere near any of my Prussian troops. so we let him wander around in his delusions, chasing imaginery elephants.

Hollybaggeebers DAF that's amazing! Beautiful stuff and I'm beyond green with envy. As always, thanks for sharing.

Looks like someone has one of those wonderful basements like my family had when I was growing up. I'd sure love to have that sort of space again…

BTW, thanks for the images of Elite 1806 Prussians to ponder.

We are having a discussion on a different forum about how to use the big battalions in a Napoleonic campaign. In particular I am interested in how you represent the historical corps structure, and how you transfer from the campaign to the tabletop and back again.

At the start of the 1806 campaign Napoleon had 6 Armee corps of varying strengths, plus the Guard, plus the cavalry reserve, plus the Bavarians. In all approximately 172,000. These figures are taken from "Napoleons Conquest of Prussia 1806" by Petre.

I would be very interested to hear how you represent these various formations. For example how many 60-72 figure battalions would represeent Soults corps of 31,000 infantry, 1567 cavalry and 48 guns.

This is not an idle question or any attempt to catch you out. I have been interested in Napoleonic campaigns for many years, and have always had to compromise with figure ratios to make it transfer from the campaign to the tabletop.

I have taken part in large battles at Peter Guilders Wargame Holiday Centre, and as far as I can remember his compromise was to ignore historical command structure. Each corps would be represented by something like 10-20 battalions of infantry, and they were only 36 figure battalions. More than enough for one person to handle on the table, but not related to any corps structure. As far as I remember there was no attempt to break them down into divisions, and there were no divisional commanders.

I very much look forward to hearing how you handle this problem.

Incidently the photographs did not come up when I viewed the blog. But I have seen your photographs of other battles and they are very, very impressive. They are a great advetizment for the hobby.

regards

Paul

Paul: it would be nearly impossible to find enough table space to field a whole corps at the 1:10 ratio. My game set up is designed to represent Gudin's 3rd Division in Davout's III Corps in 1806. I assume that 720 men is a campaign strength for each battalion regardless of what some of the other OOBs indicate (some battalions fielded up to 900 or 1,000 men).

Within Gudin's division, there are conveniently two brigades, each having 2 regiments or 4 battalions. The French used a 9 company organization at this time, which is darned inconvenient for us, so we went with the post 1808 six company organization for our rules playtesting. Once we get the mechanics sorted out, we may go back and reorganize the battalions for the 9 companies.

The simple answer is that I select a division of a corps that I am interested in and then paint the regiments in that division's brigades. I chose Gudin's division because it was at Auerstadt and it was one of the smaller divisions. When the project is completed, I will have 8 battalions of 72 figures. If I use the 9 company organization, then I will go back and add 9 more figures per battalion so that I have 9 companies of 9 figures or 81 figures per battalion for the French.

Then I will add one division foot artillery battery of 6 gun models and also a couple of the light cavalry regiments that were attached to the III Corps in 1806. I also painted one dragoon and one cuirassier regiment as an ad hoc brigade to use whenever I want to add some heavy cavalry. Afterall, who wouldn't want to field some of those colorful French cuirassiers?

My 1806 Prussians have 60 musketeers and an extra 5 scheutzen that act as skirmishers. I place the line troops on 4 stands of 15 figures (3 x 5), each representing a grand division of two platoons (zugs or peletons). Cavalry is selected at random, but the Prussians seemed to have had a cuirassier and a dragoon regiment attached to each infantry division. I will probably have 8 to 12 Prussian btns in my division and two cavalry regiments plus foot artillery batteries of 6 gun models.

Now I could go crazy and double the number of units to field a small French corps etc. I would have to play this game on my friend Kieth's home basement tables (3 tables of 6ft by 24ft) just to have enough maneuvering space for all of the figures. At 1:10, one has to limit the upper size of one's army to what will work and fit on the table top.

Very interesting update Fritz. I'm also stuggling with a 1:10 pre 1808 force – specifically for 1796 Italy. I'm planning on having 8 fusilier companies of 8 men (campaign strength) eventually hoping to build these companies up to a full establishment of 12 men. For the grenadiers, i'm also going with 8 men to start with, probably building these up to 10 to reflect the smaller size of the grenadier company. It's all a bit confusing really..

The earlier 9 company formation is actually easier to do with double rank basing systems because any even number of figures on a base will look good. With 3 ranks, you need to have the numbers divisible by three: 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 etc in order for it to "look right". We use three ranks because that is the way the actual formations were done, but you need big battalions to make it look right. It is not a basing system or figure ratio for everyone.

Fritz

Thanks for explaining your organisation.

I think the idea of copying a historical division and then using it as a corps in the campaign context is a good one. It may well be that that is what Peter Guilder did for his large battles.

When you say you are refighting the 1806 campaign are you actually running a map based campaign and then fighting the battles which come up? Or are you refighting actual battles which took place during the 1806 camaign? Or are you just putting on good wargames and basing them roughly on battles from the campaign?

All of the above work well, I was just wondering which you were using as the framework for your table top battles.

regards

Paul

bear in mind that the grenadier companies often formed ad hoc elite battalions, so 8 companies for the usual battalion should work well.

WOW that puts my 6mm projects to shame.

Not only do you have the same sized battlions as my AWI project but you have them in 28mm.

Damn you sir, damn you to hell :D

I've also got a plan to do up a few converged grenadier / carabinier battalions. Have to wait till Eureka bring out their revolutionary Legere figures though.
I'll ech Gunfreak's words too, this is simply amazing Fritz. I spent an hour painting last night and only managed to get two or three colours done on 5 figures – which still aren't finished! To build up a force that size would take a lot of time i'm imagining.

Awesome!Awesome!Awesome! More pics please!I have about 2000 Front Rank Figs painted and 1000 to go.You sir have inspired me to finish!

Wow--those pictures make me forget about all the other things in life that tend to get in the way of enjoying our hobby and plan a wargame. Wonderful painting and decor.

Everyone here can do what you've seen on the blog.
The first thing is to say never mind to multi-corps games.
Yes you can,
Bill
---
Nothing is wrong with multi-corps games.

bear in mind that the grenadier companies often formed ad hoc elite battalions, so 8 companies for the usual battalion should work well.

That might be a workable solution (doh!) that I hadn't thought of. Prior to late 1804, there were no "voltigeurs" in the French battalion organization, so I could do 8 stands of 9 figures (all fusiliers) for 72 figures, and then give each command a separate stand of skirmishers.

Did the grenadiers do the actual skirmishers before the advent of official voltigeurs, or were the rank and file trained to skirmish, allowing the btn commander to pick men from any company in the btn for skirmish/tirailleur duty?

I've been painting French and Prussians off and on since late 2006, as I recall.It was only this year that I made a commitment to the big painting surge needed to get enough figures ready for a smaller BAR style game. Amassing such forces doesn't happen overnight. It takes some patience.

<<Did the grenadiers do the actual skirmishers before the advent of official voltigeurs, or were the rank and file trained to skirmish, allowing the btn commander to pick men from any company in the btn for skirmish/tirailleur duty?>>

No, as I understand it (and I'm open to correction here), the men were selected from the eight fusilier companies and formed a separate, unofficial company (rather like the picquet companies of the SYW).

I see alt vorwards has given birth

Der Alter Fritz said: "The earlier 9 company formation is actually easier to do with double rank basing systems because any even number of figures on a base will look good. With 3 ranks, you need to have the numbers divisible by three: 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 etc in order for it to "look right". We use three ranks because that is the way the actual formations were done, but you need big battalions to make it look right. It is not a basing system or figure ratio for everyone."

I am starting something similar with 15mm battalions, using 3 ranks , "company" sized stands and close to scale (e.g. 1:100 scale) actual file spacing for the figures. The first two ranks are on one stand, typically 25mm x 25mm for 2 ranks and 3 files. The third rank is 8mm deep and in this case 1 x 3 figures. (the figure/solder ratio comes out to about 1:13)

What I really like about this, is that 2 or 3 battalions in line really look like a line a battle. The mass of men and width to depth ratio are pleasing and look like the period pictures. What you can do with the unit in movement and fire with a realistic ruleset (agurments here!) become more belivable. I think that basing rules that make Napoleonic formations look like a ACW skirmish line, just don't do justice to the period.

In response to the quote above, I find that you really don't lose much of the visual appeal of the massed line of battle if the third rank is done with 2 figures per 8mm x 25m base. It also makes it better when then are detached as skirmishers, as most nations had skirmishers operate in pairs. Also casulties can be accounted by removing third rank stands, which looks nicer than casulty markers on the table or a roster tracking system. Varied number of third rankers can be used to replicate different sized units, although I also use 4 x 3 and even 5x3 "companies" as well.

(Note that while the lateral scale of a battalion can be made accurate, the bugaboo is that the depth of the unit is ALWAYS sadly out of scale- but this is true even if you represent a battalion as one or two ranks. Even a single stand deep battalion (8mm deep @ 1mm=1yard?) is 8 yards(tabletop) rather than 3 yards(real world) deep.

If you are in open column of companies, then you can temporarily remove the 3rd stand from the tabletop and the footprint of the battalion would be correct. This might be important for figuring the spacing of units on an approach march or whether the tail of a unit is are target for a firing enemy.

However, many attacks were made in close column of companies formation, where a 6 "company" batalion would occupy an realworld footprint of about 25yards x 30 yards. The OPPS here is that the 6 "company" minatures would be 25mm wide and about 200mm deep {25 yards x 200 yards(!!??)} on the tabletop. What needs to be worked into the rules is that the actualy unit would have a 1 rank deep footprint. This is important because the narrow actual depth would (real world) limit the number of defenders who could see and fire at the attackers, would limit the size of the target for artillery fire from the flank and the attacker's ability to follow a battalion in "close column of companies" with another battalion for shock effect. Maybe the rule-meisters need to reevaluate the geometries of the column attack on line and the ordre-mixed. I guess I've rambled onto another topic…. By the way, if your scale is bigger than 1mm=1yard (e.g. 1 mm = 10 yards) all these factors become really really bad.

Bon chance 1968billsfan!,
Sounding good, satisfying and it will look great!
Good for you.
Votre serviteur,
Bill