"What is your favorite battle to play?" Topic

What is your favorite battle that you play, or that you would like to play? It could be different battles from different eras.

In no particular order:

Gettysburg
Maiwand
Battle of the Bulge: 28th ID in front of Clervaux
Kolin
Pavia
River Hydaspes
Gazala: Knightsbridge box

Why is each battle your favorite?

Whatever takes my fancy at the time.

OK. Sounds good.

If limited to 19th century and WWII I guess I would go with Oriamendi.

Guilford Courthouse. Large variety of troop quality, and sometimes the militia can surprise you.

Wyoming Massacre. It's fun chasing and scalping, and seeing future political careers be born, or crash and die.

Antietam
Gettysburg
Eylau
Alamo
Rorke's Drift

Always wanted to do Sekigahara.

Najera

Today, it's any of the 1814 battles from Napoleon's Six Days of Glory. But I'm very much in the church of whatever is happening now when it comes to my favorite battles.

At the top of my current list:

Petersburg
Battle of the Bulge
Kunersdorf
Lobositz
Anything Anglo-Zulu War

Chosen Resorvor
D-day
Mons
Cambrai
Bellieu wood
Peking
Gloretta Pass
Gettysburg

WW2: Kasserine Pass
ACW: Pea Ridge
ACW: Prairie Grove
Fantasy: Helms Deep
Fantasy: Anything Stark vs. Lannister
AZW: Rorkes Drift
Sci-Fi: Orks Drift
Arab-Israeli Wars : Jerordi Defile

the next one.

Antietam in three parts. All three phases of the battle can provide some nailbiters.

Guilford Courthouse

I can only pick one? Market Garden. Lost count of how many times I've done individual actions or the entire comapign with minis, boardgames or computer games.

If allowed a list (and only counting ones I have fought more than once):

WW2: Market Garden
SCW: Jarama
WW1: Somme (call me a glutton for punishment!)
1870: Froeschwiller
1866: Nachod
1859: Magenta
1815: Waterloo, although Bussaco is my standard 'rules test' scenario.

Today, it's any of the 1814 battles from Napoleon's Six Days of Glory.

1814 is definitely my favorite Napoleonic campaign. It's got more variety in the two armies then you'd normally expect given their size, so lets you play with all the cool toys.

The next one that I play.

Battle of Stirling Bridge, Alamo and
Rorke's Drift.

I think I have played these three battles in every system and war I have ever played from from Sci-fi to Vikings.

That's a pretty open question! No way I can pick just 1. So here is my top 10. I will not go into why I like each battle other than to say I like the troop choices and the historicity behind each battle:

1) Gettysburgh, day 1,
2) Tanneburg 1410,
3) 4th Kawanakajima,
4) Sekigahara,
5) Battle of Terra (40k Horus Heresy),
6) Barnet 1471,
7) Bosworth 1485,
8) Towton 1461,
9) St. Privat 1870,
10) Flodden, 1513.

7) Bosworth 1481,
8) Towton 1460,

Um … I think those should be:
7) Bosworth 1485,
8) Towton 1461,

Dates corrected. Thanks for pointing out my poor memory Margard ;-)

Hands down Gettysburg as I have been there 100s of times, lead battlefield walks there used incidents from the battle in leadership training, and have wargamed about every part of the battle in almost every scale from 6mm to 54mm.

Borodino is a close second followed by Wagram as both battles have many different angles to wargame the battle from.

VR
James Mattes

Talavera 1809 – because it has lots of Spanish and some Germans to go with the usual French and British. It's also a legitimate chance to beat Wellington.

Albuera 1811 because it is of a manageable size but still enough toys to be pleasing to the eye(s), solid performance by the Spanish, cool cavalry and balanced commanders.

Stones River 1862/63 (December 31st-January 2nd) because it starts in dramatic fashion and the Union player has the challenge of hanging on. If no over-whelmed the odds shift and additional days of combat will favor the defender.

Those come to mind immediately for the 19th century.

For WWII I'd say the whole or any part of the Gazala battle in 1942. Pretty much has it all.

Several favorites, but I played the Battle of Arsuf once and it was a real nail-biter from start to finish.

Quatre Bras every time! An encounter battle sans pareil; the drama, the valour, the great uniforms…

And that's just Marshal Ney!

hrm… tough call, I haven't done a lot of historical battles.

I don't like hitting the beaches, that's an exercise in masochism for the attacker.

LZ Xray is on the list for a real nail-biter as it swings back and forth, though.

Eventually I will work my way through the Genpei War, I like the battles at the bridges.

I'm building some Napoleonics for the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro, though my Light division spent most of that fight as the reserves.

Sekigahara is one I want to game, but that will take a lot of prep work. Too many dang clans there!

I suppose I could game the Pathan Revolt, too.

Part of my problem is that I prefer smaller fights, or to zoom in down to the individual level. I'm not much for operational-level games.

As long as he's not sans culottes, Sparker.

I love lots of 'em but if I have to choose it would be something from the 1809 Campaign on the Danube – Aspern-Essling; Teugen-Hausen; Linz; etc

Ardennes
Budapest
Arnheim
Kursk
Udy
Stalingrad
1st Tannenberg
2ed Tannenberg
Yalu
Peking
Bergen
Puebla
Bull run
St. Privat
Koeningsgraetz
Langensalza
Hattin
Mansurah
Nile
Kadesch

Ect ect

… Sparker, do you need some personal time alone with Marshal Ney?

The last one I won…..

Tucheband

8th Hussars relief attempt in the battle of the Imjin river.
Inchon Landings.
Battle of the Plains of Abraham.
Are but a few.

All of them

Froeschwiller
Gettysburg
Antietam
Gravelotte-St. Privat
Spicheren
Manzikert
Dorylaeum

I love fighting battles from the Ousseltia Valley, Tunisia, February 1943. There are so many components that can be mixed and matched. French continental troops with 1940 kit, French Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian troops with mid-1920s kit, Americans and Brits with then-current (ie 1942) kit, facing Germans and Italians with then-current German and Italian kit.

So Italian M13s and L6 tanks can find they face French Renault or Somua tanks, or the tables can turn and they face US M3 light tanks, or M3 medium tanks, or M3 tank destroyers (!), supported by troops in M3 half-tracks, or British Crusader Mk IIs or IIIs, or Valentines, or even Churchills. Or perhaps the tables turn again when German Pz IIIs and IVs, and even Tigers, arrive to make them all run away.

And the opportunities with infantry are even broader.

Yep, I do love my Tunisian campaigning.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

The Tractor Works. Definitely my fave, surprised I haven't seen anyone else mention it.

… Sparker, do you need some personal time alone with Marshal Ney?

Hey, its not Gay if youre Under Way!

Anyway, Pipe down Royal, don't you have a Bergan full of high heeled shoes you need to unpack….

None, actually. I prefer fictional scenarios.

Lots of things from 1809
Anythng from Gazala
Waterloo
Rorks drift

Stalingrad.

Borodino or Gettysburg.

Historical fictional battles of my own design.

Any battle played with friends.

Something mid to late war on the Eastern Front. I like Stargard.

@Rudi the german, great picks!

BORODINO!!!! (tho I dont "do" naps anymore) er, that may change. and hypothetical (jesus, mary and joseph my spelling) crimean war battles. I like to take Civil War battlefields, cut down 2/3rds of the trees and change the forces to crimean war troops. kinda wierd, but I am working on a gettysburg in Bosnia, classic fishhook, Russians internal line to defends Brits Turks NAd French way over extended.

First day of Gettysburg

Antietam

Guilford Courthouse

Borodino

Mons (WWI)

Cowpens

Shiloh

Belmont

Wilson's Creek