"Re-fighting the Peninsular War" Topic

I'd like to undertake a re-fight of the entire Peninsular War – does anyone have any advice?

I'm also unsure whether the campaign should be solo, or I should try PBEM. The tactical battles will have to be solo affairs. Although not exclusively a solo gamer, neither am I regular face-to-face player.

Any thoughts would be gratefully received.

PS There is a longer, more rambling version of this post here for those who like to read about another gamer's campaign woes link !

The problem with refighting a war is what do you do when the side that lost a battle historically wins it? Do you settle for a "refight" at the strategic level, or do you refight each historical battle as a series of "linked games". The latter approach is what Don Featherstone did back in the late 60s or thereabouts.

BTW, your link doesn't work.

I was thinking of re-fighting the war as a campaign rather than a sequence of battles. I have re-fought a lot of the battles as single actions over the last four or so years.

Regards

that could be very tricky.

There are a lot of unusual campaign type events which keep it going for far longer than it should.

And its not like the Med in ww2 when you can just have one side run out of petrol to stop them short of an early win and rebalance things.

I think I would be tempted to run it as a solo campaign, and then get the guys around to play the battles with you as umpire.

I can't think of any other way to avoid some campaign winning yet totally a-historical early end in 1809.

There did seem to be a giant Bungee attached to the back of every victorious general until 1813 to stop them expoliting victory, and it will be very hard to get players to game along with that – especially if the bungee becomes ever more contrived as the thing progresses.

link

Is an excellent vehicle for gaming the entire war or single campaigns.

EDIT forgot to say you could easily maneuver on the game map and play out the battles in miniature.

In Donald Featherstone's book:

link

he suggests playing the battles in series as is, and just awarding points for victory, etc, and then totaling the whole at the end to determine a winner.

I was thinking of re-fighting the war as a campaign rather than a sequence of battles.

OK, so a "recreation" at the strategic level only, then. Fair enough. Bear in mind that such a campaign will bear only a passing resemblance to the actual War – although that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Having played many campaigns over the years, I think the best method is to have a map of connected locations. In this way you may for example get a battle occuring at a well known place (say, Salamanca), rather than a non-descript place somewhere in Spain.

im trying to recall any good board games which try to cover this.

Wasnt there a GMT one using space to space movement a few years ago?

I'd be inclined to take a map of Spain, divide it into zones and use RISK style mechanisms for movement and attrition, to create something playable without overtaxing my brain.
Or, focus on one campaign and use Paddy Griifith's Generalship Game from Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun (Ward Lock 1980, now reprinted in John Curry's History of Wargaming Project).

A good campaign map.

murat.ca/maps.htm

Or, focus on one campaign and use Paddy Griffith's Generalship Game from Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun (Ward Lock 1980, now reprinted in John Curry's History of Wargaming Project).

I have been tempted at points to use these rules – the Generalship is an excellent game. The only problem that I have with it for using to generate tabletop actions in this context is that it seems quite finely calibrated, so a general's actions in terms of reviewing/scouting/supplying have an effect of 2-5% on a Corps, which is quite hard to replicate in a tabletop game. That is not to say that the problem is at all insuperable, just that it might need a degree of re-working.

Regards

I'd take part

Where do you hail from?

F

Wellington by GMT is the game Keraunos refers to. Only played it once but seems quite good.

Whirlwind wrote: "I'd like to undertake a re-fight of the entire Peninsular War – does anyone have any advice?"

A very ambitious plan and in my thinking would require a lot of attention to detail.

We wanted to do something similar for the SYW. We chose to start with the Bohemian campaign of 1757 rather than approach the war with a broader line from France to Russia.

This gave us the opportunity to fine tune the movement recording system, such that we could make night marches, force marches and determine what time of day we wished to engage in battle.

The major battles of Prague, Kolin and Leuthen were not played out, but we selected instead the possible events that took place prior to and after the great battles.

We found this far more enjoyable and brought a greater appreciation for the period than otherwise.

Cheers,

A friend and I recently replayed the Danube Campaign of 1809. We found a good map, setup basic rules for movement and recon and got another local gamer to act as our GM. We then issued orders and he took them and mapped the moves out and did some seat of his pants dicing for possible issues that came up as well as scouting. It was quick and dirty and didn;t follow the actual campaign worth a hoot but it was a great deal of fun.

We played the battles out with additional players using our own take on the Hail Ceasar/Black Powder rules. We came up with a rudimentary chart to see if we got back casualities after a battle. As well as some basic rules for unit degradation for forced marches, etc.

Many of the battles were nothing like you would ever see on a normal tabletop battle. With re-inforcements arriving mid fight and the threat of off board forces coming on forcing you to keep a reserve. It was well worth the effort.

As the Austrians I had good initial gains while the French were dispersed but once they got their Divisions together and brought their Cavalry to bear things turned ugly. I was forever fighting to withdraw my artillery and keep them out of the hands of the Frenchies and once almost lost one of my Corps' Baggage trains.

Hi Whirlwind,

I really like ambitious projects like yours, so here's my idea…

Why don't you use the TMP forum and its members to be the commanders in the Peninsular?!? That way you get to model in the unpredictability of human decision making whilst at the same time having a whole bunch of historically-literate & uber interested participants at your disposal.
You could fight all the battles and skirmishers yourself as solo games or with other gamers that you know, but the campaign decisions and big map manouvres are decided by TMPers.
For example, assuming you took the role of Wellington you could ask other members to take the role of the Spanish Generals/Junta leaders, the various French Marshals, King Joseph, and even Napoleon himself sending his orders from Paris?

As long as everybody was using the same map and campaign rules I think it would work well.

Awesome

Loving Warriors idea. Please keep us informed of your progress!

F

Thanks Ferg981,

I'm half tempted to try and run this kind of big TMP project myself in the future. The Peninsular would be a good choice but if Whirlwind wants to go down a different route, there's no reason why other theatres wouldn't work well.
1813 would be great, it would give us a whole host of different Nations, Armies, Generals to work with.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how this could be achieved? Would enough people be interested?

I'm thinking that the following would have to be taken care of.

- Make sure the participants wont quickly lose interest.
- A mechanism where replacements can be easily made if someone does drop out.
- A messaging system whereby one side (i.e. the French) can communicate without the enemy seeing the messages.
- A mechanism where Orders can be delayed/intercepted?
- A method to map and record where the forces are, in order to ascertain when battles needed to be fought. Probably a GM would be needed.
- A campaign calendar, again managed by a GM.

Any thoughts?

It sounds like an interesting idea. For the messaging system you could stipulate that all messages go via the GM. You could then roll to see whether the message reaches its destination, is delayed or is intercepted by the enemy.

Of course you would have to rely on the honesty of the players for this to work. But I'm sure all TMP contributors are usptanding chaps who wouldn't dream of stooping so low as to cheat.

I'm sure they are all honest chaps! But just in case, there is a way to keep it all above board; make the battle Generals different from the campaign generals.
I was thinking it could work like this;

- There is a large scale campaign map showing the approximate locations of all armies. Everyone can access this map, as this is basic information assumed to be passed on by spies/scouts etc.
- smaller detail maps showing tactical movements are the responsibility of the Corps commanders.
- The Army commanders send their movement orders to the GM. Orders to sub-commanders that are not in the same location must go through the GM too. The GM calculates the march rates each game day and ascertains if any battles are to be fought.
- The actual battles are fought by different TMPers with the appropriate armies. They should provide battle reports including results/losses so that everyone can see the progress of the campaign.

The campaign army commanders are thus dependant to some extent on the outcome of the battles but they can make the battles go in their favour by making the right campaign decisions.

Interesting ideas.

If I may add from my experience running such things…

Develop a simple AI for non-player posts. This will serve you well if a player drops out of the game or suffers unforeseen delays. Just use the AI for that character's forces and play will carry on for the rest as if all were well…which it would be of course.

I'd like to undertake a re-fight of the entire Peninsular War – does anyone have any advice?

Well do you want to do a campaign or do you want to just do a series of the major historical battles? I plan to do the latter.

I have been in several campaigns and it is difficult to do them correctly. I have found that when the campaign begins to go bad for one side they usually just stop participating. Which is a complete waste of everyones time and effort.

Then there are the terrain issues. If a battle happens to take place on the map. It is unlikely that anyone in your group knows what the terrain is like in that particular part of Spain. You will need to keep a record of the terrain in case a battle should take place there again.

That is why I prefer to do a series of historical battles in order. Historical OB for each battle. What happen in the previous battle has no bearing on the next one. People tend to stick with the campaign longer because if they lost the previous battle they still have a fresh chance in the next battle. There are usually ready made scenarios with map for each battle. Much easier to manage.