"WSS - Great Hall Games - Austin" Topic

We played a large WSS game at Great Hall Games in Austin on Sunday. 20 foot long table and well over 1000 figures of 28mm Front Rank figs. Carnage & Glory II rules were used.

Photos shown here

link

We had 5 players per side. Carnage & Glory II worked excellent and is highly recommended. Overall play time was 4 1/2 hours.

Each side had about 21,000 men. Ratios of Foot to Horse to Art was taken from suggestion in GaPa army list books.

The French started the battle by charging the Maison du Roi at the center of the Anglo-Allied line. Horrific casualties ensured on the French horse and the attack was readily repulsed. As historic, C&G makes a frontal attack on fresh enemy lines very difficult.

The battle then turned to the wings, where each side had cavalry wings. On the French right, there was a back and forth battle against the Allied Dutch/Prussian horse that continued unresolved at the end of the game. On the French left, the engagement against English was touch and go for awhile, but ultimately the British horse prevailed.

By the time the British were emerging victorious on the left wing, the French foot lines had advanced to engage the Allied foot across the battlefield. However, the victorious English horse were able to take the French foot in the flank, resulted in many captured. French army morale broke and a general retreat was declared.

The Anglo-Allied Army has suffered losses of:
[ 11%] 2553 men of all arms incl.[ 1%] 402 prisoners of all arms
[ 6%] 1150 bayonets
[ 29%] 1289 sabres
[ 28%] 114 artillerists
8 cannon[s] lost

The French Army has suffered losses of:
[ 41%] 9048 men of all arms incl.[ 10%] 2228 prisoners of all arms
[ 38%] 6090 bayonets
[ 55%] 2825 sabres
[ 26%] 133 artillerists
8 cannon[s] lost

Losses include 4 standard[s]:
Du Biez Regt [1]
Du Roi Horse [2]
Royal Chevau-leger Horse [1]

General De Blainville – Severely wounded

Terrific looking battle. Thanks for sharing the pictures.

Steve

Great looking figs and terrain.

I was I'll yesterday, so I missed it. It looks really nice.

It was a great game and an even greater looking game. I had the honor of being "Marlborough" for the day. The victory was due to my excellent subordinates.

Beautiful figures, fabulous terrain. Too bad the French lost as I am partial to them.

Excellent display, good game. The Marlburlian period is one of my favorites.

It was a very enjoyable game. I was one of the French foot commanders. It seemed very realistic just standing there waiting for the cavalry to come to a conclusion, getting plinked by long range artillery until getting to a point where we charged. My Swiss Guard took the guns but by that point I had no flank support and became hors de combat.

And weirdly, not a single dice thrown during the game. I didn't miss it even though I thought I would.

Here's the slideshow of the game.
link

Good game just like the Franco-Prussian C&G game put on at the Hot Lead convention.

Excelent looking game, they way a game should look, how many figures did you use and how big was the table.

hors de combat.

That is now Ladies of the Evening de Combat!

Gunfreak, I think I heard Jim say there were about a thousand figures all together. The table was about 6x18-20 feet.

Shagnasty, our CinC was saying the same thing about his subordinates except using the word defeat!

Joe is right. The table was 6x20. Terrain was set up by LSHM-Austin group roughly based on Ramillies. Very nice layout by the folks in Austin.

There are around 800 foot and 300 horse figures. All Front Rank.

I think the biggest issue with the game for the French was the non-recognition of how Carnage & Glory works. My thought is that most current rule systems have failed to reflect the historic need to soften up the enemy. In Carnage & Glory, you really can't just charge a fresh enemy unit. Even a poor morale unit can stand there for at least one fire, and that fire can be devastating.

Also, Carnage & Glory properly reflects the effect of moving and firing. If you move over 75 paces and fire, your fire is reduced effectiveness. So in the present game, the French foot moved a full move (over 75 paces) into close range with the Allies, who remained stationary. The resulting fire exchange was about 2 or 3 to 1 against the French.

The better tactic is to move up to just outside of musket range, dress your lines, then move up 50 paces and fire. Next turn do the same. 3rd turn do the same, at which point everyone will be at Close range. At this point, you will have units showing the effect of all this fire, and you then move into close combat against the enemy showing morale weakness. This is historical, but I have found that most players do not act methodically like this. They just move up as far as they can and start firing. Most rule systems do not penalize this. C&G does. That's one reason I believe it such an excellent system.

After dozens of games using the C&G WSS, ACW, AWI, ECW and Napoleonic modules, I have yet to run into results that are counter to what you would historically expect. Nearly all of the time, bad results can be directly tracked back to non-historical tactics on the part of players.

I take a large bit of the responsibility for the French demise in that I should have stressed this ahead of time to the players. The Allies decide to just hang back and await the French assault, so they really benefited from the French rush to engage frontally.

Looks great. Who did the flags?

Flags are scans I made mainly from Robert Hall's plates that I bought.

Good looking game, Very flag intensive too. Congratulations to Corporal John for the win.