"Adapting historical engagements for scenarios." Topic

Hi all,

I'm starting to collect a 15mm Russian army for Black Powder, and given the nature of the game, reckoned on adapting a historical engagement as a scenario / framework for collecting. I've decided on Priesten, i.e. the first day of Kulm. Roughly speaking, I'll have 1 BP unit = 1 brigade. I'm finding, however, that the size of brigade varies widely, and that it's difficult to fit the historical command structure into the command structure of the game. I was hoping for some insight from more experienced scenario designers on how to account for "rump" formations, stray battalions, etc. Any ideas on what level of abstraction works, or is too much?

FMB

I would say that if you are aiming to do historical refights you need a set of rules that allows you to scale your units based on their historic size or go for regiments/battalions rather than brigades as your framework.

Second what the tiger said.
Either you fit history to the rules or find rules that fit history.
If you cling to a base = one brigade (and all the same)then you have to fiddle with the OOB so all units end up with similar sizes. mind me that is what most players doing battalions have to do up to a point. As they have say bn with 12 or 18 figs but mostly can't do the needed 14, 13 17 etc. that history would need. So average numbers bases on divisional data.
Or you can play my rules whenever I will find a way to publish them ;))

Agreed. You always have to make some adjustments. It is rare to find an army organization that fits a specific set of rules. If you are set on using BP as is, you will have to change the historical organization and command structure to work. Otherwise, you will have to change the rules. With Wargaming we abstract everything, sometimes drastically. The trick is to make your abstractions fall in line with the historical record as best you can.

Good luck and good gaming!

That is why I use strength points and relatively variable frontage, much closer to what it should be. Very little fiddling to do.

Don't know Bp but maybe you could
have small, average, big brigades; use any non-destructive or nice way to show, give a simple +/- to combat.

such one or two, 3 single based figs you add to the the unit on the side when in line (where the size will show most)?

It really isn't that hard to use a set ratio of men in the OOB per unit in BP or otherwise. Divide the ratio into the totals to get the number of units, balance out the types with the troop types present (line, landwehr, Grenadiers, Dragoons, etc), and then apportion to roughly equal the strengths of the higer order formations. it isn't really necessary to worry overly abou being exactly right.

Now, of course, while not my usual ruiles, BP actually allows you to use (undefined) unit sizes – Tiny, Small, Standard and Large. You can set the conversion as desired, but it seems the author's intent is for Large to be about 150-200% of Standard, Small about 50% of standard, and Tiny 25 – 35% of Standard. That's actually quite a lot of flexibility!

For fighting historical battles at battalion/regiment/battery level with OOBs to suit I recommend Art of Command Rules. These enable large, one day battles to fought in a day.

For more information got to napoleon200.org.

The next battle in the 200 series is Nivelle (10 November 1813)

There are a lot of good rules sets that let you recreate the historical OB's. I find thats where the fun lies when re-fighting historical actions. When you look down your OB for the table you immediately start to better understand why things unfolded the way they did on the day.