"Dennewitz 1813-2013" Topic

The Napoleonic players of the Nunawading Wargames Association had our big January game on the first weekend of January at a member's place just outside Melbourne. This year it was the Battle of Dennewitz.

I had the honour of leading the French side as le Rougeaud, Marshal Ney.

Below are the links to the 3 blogposts it took to document the battle, plus some taster pictures.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Very impressive!

Nice…….

Excellent set up too.

WR

Looks great. Your choice of Rules …. ?

Great looking game, and I bet great fun to be part of!!

how do you reach the middle of that table?

Yes, that was my question too. But in looking at your pictures, apparently you slid the tables apart to allow the players to get into where the action was. Truly a stupendous undertaking!

Jim

Wow that was quite the undertaking. My compliments on putting on a game of this size, our group has done a few of them and they are work!!

Some nice looking figures, Calpe, Front Rank, Foundry.
Good looking terrain as well, I really like the movable tables idea. Especially for Dennewitz. I've been working on this for our group and have been a tad stumped by the table size we have. 6' wide and any length we want. We've had up to 36' for Wagram.

What rule set are you using? I see there are at least 4 different classes of troops. Elite, Veteran, Conscript and Landwehr.

I also noticed different numbers of figures per infantry battalion and cavalry regiment. Does this reflect actual numbers in the historical unit and how does that effect melee?

Cheers,
Thomas

Thanks all!

Yes, Col. Campbell has it. The tables were mounted on castors so they could be wheeled out of the way to reach the centre of the table. The outer tables were 6'x2' and the centre tables were 6'x4'. Several working bees were required to manufacture and terrain the tables.

@nsolomon and @wrgmr1, we use a home-brew set of rules called Cold Steel which is loosely based on Empire …Pauses for general booing and jeering…(I know Empire is controversial here, but we think our rules provide a balance between historical accuracy and playability). If you're interested in having a look, I've got a link to a pdf of the rules under the header of my blog Monsieur le Rosbif and Johnny Frog

@wrgamr1- The battalion sizes were determined by the historical OB being translated into the 1:60 scale demanded by our rules. Some historical units translate to being too small to be included, such as the British rocket troop. The average battalion size seemed to be around 8-10 figures for this battle.

Wow awesome setup, pics, and figures. Enjoyed reading the aar as well.

Hi All,

A the person responsible for the troops and organisation of the battle, I thought I would answer a few of the questions.

The Prussians and Saxons are Calpe, with the French, Russians and other French allies Front Rank. In total about 2450 figures. All units were based on the historical OB to the scale of 1:120. This adds to the flavor and realism of the battle, you might have a tiny unit of such as the 5th Provisional Regiment of 120 men or a giant unit such as the 1st Provisional Regiment of 840 men. All units were painted in the correct uniform.

Sadly Rosbif was incorrect as no British rocket troop was present on the battlefield.

Mistake on the previous post, our scale is 1:60

Wondefull to see what to my taste is a "real" wargame. Historical OOB, batallion sized units and a ruleset that allows command and control problems to interfere. Love it.

Exceptional writeup, I eas reading it like a thriller (off course cheering for the french). I so hoped the prussian center would buckle.

I was wondering – after such a simulation – what thoughts you are left with regarding the historical outcome. I often find myself enlightened as to what occurred historically after playing the game.

Hi Sparta,
Only two of the 15 players knew the name of the battle before the game. They fought the battle without any prior knowledge. So all the commanders decisions were based on what they were currently faced with as opposed to what had happened in the actual battle.
After the battle the I think there was an equal split between those who thought the French could never win and those who thought given another chance the French could exploit their superiority in numbers and win.
But, as with all large games we fight, command and control played a big part in success or failure.

Cheers
Down under

That is a wonderfull way to play. How did you keep it a secret? I know many of my group would have quickly guessed it from the commander names and troops??

I have always thought Dennewitz would have been a french victory if Ney had handled it proberly, but I think we must do a replay ourselves to see.

Cheers and good gaming to you

Excellent, a cracking looking battle!

I was able to keep it a secret with the help of everyone at the club. I decided the battle would be more interesting if nobody knew what the battle was so nobody would be using hindsight when planning their actions in the battle (Like what happens with every Waterloo re-fight). Everybody at the club embraced this idea, so no one started researching the battles of 1813.

When troops were allocated I didn't mention commander/army names. e.g. You are commanding 32nd Division of VII Corps. This helped disguise the battle

Also as a distraction 'hints' were given pointing towards a section of Leipzig

Clever moves Andrew. I think I will try something similar at our club.