"Oob Battle of Raszyn question." Topic

Greetings, I picked up "Blunders on the Danube", the 1809 scenario book. I particularly purchased it for the Raszyn oob.

In the list, the book has all Austrian regiments containing 4 battalions. Every other army list I've seen for the Austrians in 1809 show 3 battalion regiments..
My question is, was this Austrian corps different for some reason or is this an error in the scenario book?

Cheers, U.K.

Found this, appears to confirm the scenario book is incorrect. There are 3 battalions per reg:
link

There is indeed a mistake in the book. I've never heard of 4 battalions Austrian regiments in 1809.

That's why you'd have been better off getting Gill's "Thunder on the Danube" and using the OOB's found therein; far more accurate than the stuff in little Scotty Bowden's "Armies on the Danube 1809" and now better than Blunders on the Danube it appears.

Cheers Lads. I own Gill's second volume but obviously need to requisition the first.

For Raszyn, you need Gill's Volume 3 Wagram & Znaim.

Uesgui K, et al.

To address the issue as far as Raszyn is concerned, like all of the scenarios in the book, as is explained in the "Notes on using the Scenarios" on page 4:

"The Orders of Battle are as close to the actual ones as I could make them, allowing for the need to accommodate the troops to men ratio for that battle, and the organization used in Field of Battle. They shouldn't be taken too literally; while it is possible to allow for over and under strength units by increasing or decreasing their Unit Integrity by one, in practice I find this more confusing than helpful, thus I have generally avoided it. All of the units identified in the OOBs were actually present. Some weaker units may be combined to make one full strength unit, and in other cases, especially the very large Austrian units in the early days of the campaign, others may be broken down into more, smaller units. That sometimes means listing a 3rd battalion [or 4th} where none in fact existed, and often times listing fewer battalions than were actually present… but the total numbers of troops, and their general types will still be correct."

The Raszyn scenario, as is noted in the information included, is set for a ratio of 1 unit of Infantry = 600 men. Given the large size of the Austrian Regiments, especially at the start of the war, some compromise was necessary to accommodate the translation from the OOB's (and yes, I used Gill as the basis for many if not most of them) to the tabletop, and the Field of Battle rules themselves. There is enough information included to adapt the scenarios for use with most other rules, and deliberately so. And yes, I am well aware that the Austrians did not field 4 battalions in their infantry regiments… but I felt using that convention preferable to adding up to 2 battalions of different regiments that were not actually present!

Gill's work is amazing, and I encourage *everyone* with a serious interest in the 1809 campaign to purchase all thee volumes of "Thunder on the Danube", as well as his earlier "With Eagles to Glory" on the states of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1809. That's the best way to encourage John to continue on writing more of exactly the kind of books that we wargamers enjoy most. Of course, that will cost you in the vicinity of $150. USD Then there are other sources to consider as well….

However, even a work as outstanding as Gill's still leaves you to do the work of converting the maps, accounts and OOB's into a wargame scenario, tabletop map, victory conditions etc. I can tell you that each of the Twenty scenarios (23 if you include the three Wagram sub-scenarios) took at least 12-16 hours of work to do the above, to say nothing of playtesting them, and tweaking things as need to give a good warGAME as well as a reasonably accurate scenario historically. By the way, in terms of value, that amounts to less than $2 USD per scenario!

In conclusion, if modeling the exact individual strengths of each unit present from small to enormous is critical to you – this probably isn't the scenario book for you, at least not without Gill in hand to reverse engineer the compromises I have made to fit the battles into the particular wargame "box" that I was working with. I dare say the same would be true of *any* scenario book, especially when adapted to a different rules set. Indeed, in that case you don't primarily want a scenario book, but rather a set of Orders of Battle, for which Gill is superb and probably the best available.

Thanks for your interest,

Peter Anderson (author)

Gill is superb and probably the best available

I think Gill is the best available and his orders of battle have more value because of his strength in revealing his sources. Like any good academic, his references are first rate. The reader knows how he arrived at his numbers – whether from Krieg, an Osprey, or informed guesswork, etc.

Which was all fully explained by the author in the release announcement on this site, which the original poster seems to have forgotten having read (and replied to).

Which was all fully explained by the author in the release announcement on this site, which the original poster seems to have forgotten having read (and replied to).

Ha! How right you are, Geir! Good one, Peter!

In fairness to all, everyone has slightly different expectations of these kinds of products. Also, we read a lot of things, and it is easy to forget the explanations that we may have read, especially if they run counter to said expectations.

I personally think that designing good scenarios that both reflect history and are fun to play with at least a reasonable chance of "victory" (sometimes defined as doing better than they did in real life, etc.) is one of the hardest things there is to do in our hobby. I think I've been successful in doing that with most of these; goodness knows I have certainly run some that failed disastrously over the years as well. I know that for me, at least it is far, far easier to adapt a scenario for Napoleon's Battles, Shako, Valmy to Waterloo, or what have you to another rules set, as long as you have a basic understanding of how those rules work and the organization of forces that they use, than to start from scratch. Indeed, I have bought more than a few rules sets myself that I had intention of ever playing, just so that I could better adapt the scenarios written for them to my own "rules du jour".

In the end, what matters most, to me at least, is to use our hobby to explore history in a fashion that is entertaining and fun. Don't sweat the little stuff too much, and enjoy our marvelous if somewhat quirky hobby! :-)

Peter Anderson