"Salamanca; How to design a Wargame?" Topic

Hi everyone,
I'm looking for some help designing an exciting and fair re-fight of Salamanca 1812. I don't usually have creative block when designing games but I do in this case. This is a shame because I really like Salamanca, particularly the epic moment when Wellington explodes the myth that he is a defensive General, and the many what-ifs, such as could the French have recovered if Marmont was not struck down so early?

Any advice would be appreciated, but please bear in mind the following….

- I want to include the entire battle, not just a sub-section.
- My games are grand tactical, focusing on Command issues and manouvre of Brigade sized units. (Victory conditions are decided by 'Army Morale' being slowly eroded by destruction of units, the enemy army turning your flank or cutting your communications etc).
- I really want to factor in the situation at the start of the battle; 2 armies marching parrellel in the same direction, trying to out-pace each other. So most of the forces will be in Column of march, heading West at the start of play.
- With this in mind, i'm worried that both armies will simply march off the table edge, without an actual battle taking place!!

So how do I incorporate all these factors and still make a competitive game? I hope this all makes sense, and I can get some fresh input from you fine fellows.

Thanks in advance.
TW

an exciting and fair re-fight of Salamanca 1812.

I think it almost impossible to make any re-fight "fair". Real warfare isn't fair.

With this in mind, i'm worried that both armies will simply march off the table edge, without an actual battle taking place!!

The best way to avoid this is to set suitable victory conditions. What were the strategic aims of the respective armies in 1812? In other words why did they fight then in stead of marching off without engaging?

I believe the French army was attempting to outflank the British position, so that should form part of your initial aims for the French.

Albion Triumphant, the new supplement from Black Powder has the Battle of Salamanca as one of it's scenarios. In it the OB has been scaled down from the standard Bde level of BP to the Army level as is your plan. The OB represents 5 Allied infantry divisions and 1 Cavalry division. The French OB represents 6 Infantry Divisions and 2 Cavalry divisions. A scenario map (6x4) is provided as well as victory conditions.

This might be a nice starting point for you.

John

a tricky one, as Magard says, if the french had not strung out a bit too much , Wellington might well have had to withdraw to preserve his lines rather than fight.

hard to get that into a game.

I take it you have read Rory Muir's Salamanca.

it makes me thing the battle should begin with the british initial advance, and the french game is to react to it, rather than with the lines advancing parallel stage, or with the french turning move beginning.

one option that might work for your idea though, is making the french line 'along' the crest of some very steep hills which discourage a british attack, and then have a nice pair of parallel defensive lines which correspond to where you see the historic 'start' positions being, which tempt both sides to use them.

and then you just need something to model the french getting strung out while turning to cross the T and the british remaining compact to react to it, while still keeping the 'bottom' of the field as the only real area the armies can fight over – so they don't just face to flank and attack on turn one.

I fudged it by starting the battle after Marmont had drawn ahead of Wellington.

So The British start deployed in the vicinity of Los Arapiles, but the French are busy marching past the apparently exposed British flank.

The joker in the pack is that the British are allowed to keep one division off table which magically appears around Aldea Tejada if the French move within two miles of it. Probably not a good idea to tell the French about this in the initial briefing:)

Seemed to work when we ran it anyway.

I think your lost in a romantic dream. Here are some of your problems.

Unless you have a few days to play the game you won't have enough time to move your columns, pick your ground to fight, deploy your figures and then develop an actual battle and finish it. Your only chance is to set up the battle at a reasonable point in time where most if not all of the units are deployed. Keep in mind that if you start the game with both sides in columns you will never play Salamanca as the players will always choose different ground and deployments.

Your next problem is scale both in size of figures and what formations/units do they represent. The bigger your figures and formations the more abstract your battle will be. In other words if your using 25mm figures or your base units are brigades you will have to make a number of compromises in terrain, deployment, maneuver and execution. Probably to the point where you might call your game Salamanca, but it's been compromised to the point where you could call it almost anything. I assume you don't want to do this so your using 10mm figures or smaller with all battalions and or regiments being represented. You also have a reasonable sized table, 5' x 8' or bigger. Salamanca was spread over a pretty big area probably some 6 miles x 3 miles which even on a 5x8 is only about 18" per mile. If you really want to do a game that reflects Salamanca you will need some decent table space even with small figures and small units.

So set both sides up as close as possible. Don't worry even at this point the players will still have a boat load of challenges. Use as small a scale as possible and as big a table as possible. Follow these three steps and I'm sure your Salamanca game will be a great success.

I do see the parallel march as more of a board game sort of thing than a table top part of the battle.

But there is a game to be had trying to get that scale onto the table in an attractive way, so give it ao.

Well, the home grown rules I use will make the battle easy to do, the scale will not a problem at all if my previous wargames are anything to go by. My units are Brigades, manouvre by Divisions is relatively simple, over 15 minute turns on a 10x7 (customisable with tiles) game board. An abstract of Salamanca, sure, but who here on TMP has ever fought a wargame that wasn't abstracted? I'm not interested in individual battalions, just the big picture situation and the decisions of the C-in-C's and how they play out.

I'm thinking I might do it with most divisions in column of march (they will need to recieve deployment orders as the combat escalates, same as in the real battle).
Maybe using hidden dummy blinds except for units within line of sight of the C-in-C's on their respective Arapiles hills. This will make the kind of hidden attack made by Packenham a possibility without having it already encoded into the game as a pre-determined event (thereby not handicapping the French to an extent where the it will be impossible for them to win).

The French will need an incentive to keep marching around the Brits flank (i.e. a serious loss in the 'Army morale' of Wellingtons army if they can achieve it), the Brits will have to strike out at the enemy before this can happen.

Should work well, and make for quite a novel war-game experience for both sides. Any thoughts?

We started the game at the point of the British attack by 3rd Division. If you go with "marching about" the french will never fall for the extended look and hence the battle will become another mass on mass game someplace near Salamanca.

Pictures and a brief write up of our game in 2011. link

WR

Remember that Wellington and Marmont marched parallel for more than a week waiting for someone to make a mistake over more than a hundred miles. Who is going to make a mistake marching across an table top representing 2-3 miles? Oh, and do you simulate Marmont's WIA?

And if you want to balance the game, then you aren't going to have Salamanca. The French start the battle outmaneuvered with their CinC out of action.

You need to revamp your expectations. Focus on the actual situation and set the victory conditions so the French win by doing better than originally.

However, remember that it was more of a near-run thing than the results would suggest, particularly in the center.

I could never figure out how to re-fight Penninsular games. Wellington had such tight control over things, down to a very low tactical level at times.

Has anyone ever done a multi-year Penninsular board game, one which takes into account logistics, guerillas, local support and all the armies involved? Now that could be a fun game! The old 1776 game might make a pretty good model…

Remember that Wellington and Marmont marched parallel for more than a week waiting for someone to make a mistake over more than a hundred miles. Who is going to make a mistake marching across an table top representing 2-3 miles?

Yes, that was on my mind too. My plan is just to say that the area immediately to the west of the battlefield is the last place that the British can stay ahead of the French. So the British have to make their move at some part of the battlefield or they are outflanked. The British player can decide to 'allow' the French to outflank them but that will result in a serious reduction in Army morale for the remainder of the battle. But the French wont have it all their own way by any means; because of the hidden movement rules there will be plenty of places Wellington can unleash an attack and achieve local superiority. Probably I will allow the French Divisions to have march orders only, whilst up to 3 British Divisions are allowed to have pre-game attack orders.

the battle will become another mass on mass game someplace near Salamanca

there is always plenty of space on my battlefields. With plenty of room for errors by the players. I'm not a fan of mass on mass games. Unless I can create a long battlefield with plenty of space around the armies, then I won't do Salamanca.

Just thinking out loud at this point, nothing set in stone. I'm thinking the hidden movement could result in an interesting cat-and-mouse, like the real affair.
Does the French player go all-out for the outflank but risk becoming over-extended on his left, or even too light at his rear?
Does the British player go for a powerful attack, or see how the opening moves play out? If he does attacks, on which part of the field?

GMT just came out with a a boxed wargame "Fading Glory". Salamanca is one of the four battles treated in the game. It is a quickish game on a divisional level easily grasped and played in about an hour. The game really is all about the approach to battle, so you could play the game until contact is decided and then move to the miniatures table to actually fight the battle from that point on using a setup based on the game situation at that point. Very good fog of war rules in that counters are hidden with dummy units, and there are event cards that introduce a bit of chaos into command control.

If you don't want to do it that way, you can also pre-move forces on paper maps until close enough to engage. Then hit the table.

May be you can run two games: one would be the maneuvers taken prior the battle, which you can game like an off-map game using just paper and pens, and then a tabletop game that would represent the point of contact between the actual forces. If you design the off board map with chocking points, where the forces would necessarily collide if they stick to their strategic goals, then players will end fighting each other, but without 'feeling' they are being forced to do it.

AHGCs 'War & Peace' included various Spanish scenarios including the entire campaign.

In our Salamanca scenario there is apparently nothing on the British right at all, so it looks like the way is open for outflanking. No blinds or anything, so it is real surprise when the British pop up. Depends how much the players know about the battle of course.

Our French commanders were duly surprised.

Surprise (as opposed to concealed movement) is often hard or do in wargames, but is a huge force multiplier.

Get a copy of the SimTac game Los Arapiles. It is all you need.

What figure scale? What unit scale? What rules are you using? Are you trying to design a scenario for a paticular rules set or are you actually writting a new set of rules? No need to reinvent the wheel. Check out these.

link

I don't like redoing the very well known battles. If you get any other result than the historical, the feeling is that the rules and scenerio were improperly designed. Both sides start off with perfect intellegence and you better have all the march speeds and distances set up exactly right. If you get all this perfect, then the result should depend upon die rolls--- better to roll one die, declare a winner and then uncork the port and tell stories.

I think has McLaddie nailed it.

I admit I have an aversion to historical refights in general but one like Salamanca is pretty pointless if you go for a truly historical set up as the French are beaten before the start.

Fighting on the same ground with both sides being able to chose their formation or a variation where the gap on the French flank march didn't occur maybe but otherwise its not a great choice.