"Huge 10mm Gravelotte-St Privat FPW game" Topic

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to participate in a huge 10mm Gravelotte-St Privat FPW game at retired Major-General John Drewienkiewicz's house. Here's the album of pics on Flickr taken with my Fuji.

The photos are at ow.ly/2Et6F

There were ten players and four umpires. We used Keith Warren of Realistic Modeliing's "To the Last Gaiter Button" rules, which work by dividing the table into 10" squares, each of which has a stacking limit of 8 units at any one time. Units move by square (infantry 1 normally, 2 marching, cavalry 2 normally, 3 marching); they also shoot by square (Prussian Dreyse 1 square, Chassepot 2 squares, French guns 3 squares, Prusssian Krupps 4 squares). Melee is square-to-square, and must observe the stacking limits. No more than four units may fire or fight out of any one side of a square.

The little discs you can see are circular 'sandwiches' of magnetic sheet, with a pie slice cut out of the top one and numbers 1-10 showing on the lower one. As you work out all the casualties inflicted on the troops in each square, you use these to keep tabs, and then return the number to 0 once all the effects have been worked out.

All the terrain was also made my Keith Warren, and very effective it was too.

The figures are mostly Pendraken 10mm, painted by Fernando Enterprises and Andrew Brentnall, who I believe also owns most or all of them.

The table was 180 inches by 80 inches, if I recall correctly, set up in retired Major General John Drewienkiewicz's 'bothy' wargames room.

The game followed an astonishingly historical pattern, with the Prussians arriving in corps-sized waves as they struggled to find the French flank. Eventually, this massive wave, having crashed against the French defences along the line and stalled, arrived at St Privat, which began to take the full brunt of the Prussian and Saxon artillery as dusk approached. Despite a gallant resistance, it was adjudged that the hugely outnumbered and especially outgunned French right flank under Canrobert (me!) would have been forced to abandon the ruins of St Privat at nightfall and pull back.

Hope you enjoy the pics.

Henry
Battlegames
battlegames.co.uk

What a superb set-up.

I see that in this war, it was the French who deployed the "big cats"…..

link

I love my FPW Foundry armies but you just don't get to do this sort of thing.
-great looking game.

loooks great, thanks for sharing

Good to see a great 10mm game. It is definitely my main scale; not into FPW yet but it is only a matter of time.

I am trying to get a sense of troop density. Do you know the base sizes offhand.

Awesome looking game! How long did the game last?

Thanks,

John

Henry

Would appreciate your view on the rules. I have them and the set for 1866, but have not tried them as yet.

Thanks

Chad

That looks excellent. I am just painting my first figures in this period and also scale as I am using 6mm. I too am going to use the 1866 or 1870 rules.

Brilliant

Craig

Thank you. That is an inspirational looking game for both terrain and the armies.

Nicely done.

Which figures did you use, Pendraken?

Very well done and looks like a battle, which is where the smaller scales seem to really shine.

@Lentulus Can't recall precisely, but I think they were about 20mm x 15mm for infantry, 20mm square for cavalry. The man to ask is Molinary over on the Pendraken forum, whose collection this is.

@John Leahy The game lasted all day Saturday, from about 9.30am until dinnertime at about 7.30pm, then resumed briefly for a couple of hours very early on Sunday morning because the critical Prussian assault on St Privat was in full swing. I had to leave mid-morning, about 10.30am, when it was still very finely balanced, the Prussian and Saxon artillery now having turned their attention to flattening my poor 6th Corps on the French right.

@Chad47 After an initial couple of moves of head-scratching, due entirely to getting used to the thing working in squares, the rules were very simple and straightforward. Whilst not the kind of thing I would play on a regular basis, they worked extremely well for a major engagement of this kind; there were virtually no cross words exchanged (which, given the palpable tension throughout this immense game, is a huge thumbs-up), and the outcome was almost ridiculously historically correct. Very, very cleverly done. I wouldn't use them for small games where you might want additional 'granularity', but for proper army-sized encounters, I can't recommend them highly enough.

@138SquadronRAF I think 90%+ of them were Pendraken; I don't recall the make of the others, but I think they may now be OOP anyway.

Thanks for the feedback, folks.

Henry
Battlegames
battlegames.co.uk

Pendraken have a cracking range of FPW which came out quite recently -I think they were remade but don't quote me!

I don't recall any giant cats intervening in the actual battle. Was this an incursion by some 40K enthusiast with a feline-blaster mega-mew-gun?

Phots are really well done and capture the game. Why wasn't I there? Is this the house of link ?

Great images of a great looking game. Wish I had been there

IR1

Royal Marine -- yes, that's the fella.

Henry

What a terrific looking wargame. It looks like everyone was enjoying themselves. It shows the advantages and strengths of 10mm figures and terrain in their best light.

I like the close up of the handsome and distinguished cat – this coming from a dog lover!

THE most important factor appears to be that you all had plenty of LIGHT. I have seen too many games ruined by everybody squinting in the dark. GOOD SHOW !

Hi, and thanks to Henry for posting his pictures here.

To clear up one or two questions. Yes, the figures are all mine, many painted by Fernando Enterprises to their Showcase standard, others by myself, Keith Warren of Realistic Modelling, and Dave Hathaway. The figures are 90+% Pendraken, old and new re-modelled (which are, in my opinion absolutely FANTASTIC), the others are Perrin(available from Magister Militum) and some cavalry from Wargames South (not sure if these are still available). The bases are infantry 25mm wide by 15mm deep, cavalry 30mm square, artillery 30mm square. But basing doesn't really matter with these rules. Prussian Infantry Btn 4bases,, total 16 figure plus 1 officer, French infantry battalion 3 bases plus 1 officer. I agree 100% with Henry on the rules, for BIG battles they are great, tactical engagements below corps level you'd probably want more detail.

Mollinary

Henry

Many thanks. It was the use of the squares that was giving me food for thought.

Chad

Great looking table and miniatures. Awesome set up and game. It's like I told you earlier, I really don't get to play much anymore and live thru the photo's of others. Keep up the awesome work and I look foward to seeing more. What makes it even better is when I see the dials being used in games!

Thanks again for posting these!
Steve
The Dial Dude
dialdude.com

Lentulus,

It is confession time. In spite of having based thousands of the little………… ahum … men – it seems I still don't know my own base sizes! What of course I meant to say was the infantry bases are 25mm wide by 20mm deep for four figures. Sorry for being misleading. If you are interested I got a very good deal for the 25x20 steel bases from Products for Wargamers, who advertise periodically here on TMP.

Apologies again.

Mollinary

Amazing! Love the kitty picture.