"Greatest Fictional charge in your game" Topic

Good day to all

What was the largest assault you have lunched in a non-historical scenario you have played in 19th century war-gaming?

How many units?

Did it work?

With Respect
KTravlos

It was a Carlist War game, part of a campaign.

I had been beaten in the 2nd game when my campaign dice went badly against me and I started very outnumbered.

In the third I was even more outnumbered but a village in the middle of the table meant the enemy was going to have a hard time getting their numbers to bear on me on a broad front.

There was a little space on my left and much more on my right.

The enemy advanced evenly across the table and I fought a delaying action on my right and sent my forces up the left.

They were able to punch through the forces on that side and make it onto the enemies flank and rear.

After that it was just cleaning up.

I had about a dozen units of infantry and three units of cavalry for the final game. The enemy had about 18 units of infantry and five units of cavalry.

During a 15mm acw Fire&fury campaign my friend launched what I consider to be one of the greatest assaults never to grace the real civil war. Set in the Trans-Mississippi, the Rebels under Earl Van Dorn and Ben McCulloch assaulted the stalled Union army under Curtiss.

The Union position was basically an artillery redoubt in the centre flanked by light works held by Infantry and dismounted light cavalry. McCulloch's men, two divisions under Hebert and Churchill formed up on the wings, leaving their combined artillery to screen the yawning gap between the two divisions.

Already on the back-foot and thoroughly dazed by the previous engagements that had uniformly gone the Confederates way … Curtiss with a roughly equal force to the Rebels looked on from the redoubt as Hebert and Churchill overwhelmed and crushed both wings simultaneously sending the Federals fleeing to the rear in almost total rout!

To say it was glorious simply doesn't do it justice! played out at our wargames club we had people stopping their own games to come over to watch!

ACW campaign game, basically five Confederate corps trapped and trying to bust a Union line of four (later reinforced to six) corps

One beat-up infantry corps and the cavalry corps managed to break through, but the rest were repelled/trapped/shot to bits

Pretty much ended the game in that theatre – good game, though

Fictional battle in the Eastern Theatre ACW. Our 28mm figures are based in 'regiments' on 6 x 2 inch boards; more than three dozen of them (about 700 figures) with about 12 guns in support looked pretty good as they punched through an exhausted Union line. Guess who was on the losing side?

ACW game, maybe not the largest, but the funnest. I was a Confederate Cavalry officer, Johnny Reb game. Holding a crossroads with two regiments, watching as all the Union Infantry in the world was marching, in column, down the road towards me. Figured I was gonna die, so I charged one regiment down the road, hoping to stall them until my reinforcements arrived. When all was said and done I had chased every Union Infantry regiment off the road in disorder and was still able to get back to the crossroads without losing a man.

During a Napoleonic game back in my college days (early 1970s, playing a set of home rules loosely based on "Column, Line, and Square") there was a huge cavalry charge/counter-charge/melee/scrum in the middle of the table. But nobody remembers the exact details because of what happened on a flank.

One French dragoon regiment (30 figures strong) charged three British infantry battalions which had only been given advance orders with no firing (Oops!). At the time dragoons were heavy cavalry and had an impetus hit of 1:1. The three British battalions were in a column of lines. The French dragoons hit the first and wiped it out; continued their charge; hit the second and wiped it out; still continued their charge and had just enough distance to hit the third British battalion, wiping it out. The player who was controlling that brigade got so discouraged that he gave up and never played with us again.

Jim

My best charge was in a GNW Piquet game. I moved all of my cavalry from one flank to the other whilst the enemy powerlessly looked on – then I charged.

Piquet is one of the few systems that might allow this – The enemy couldn't move (because they rolled rubbish dice and had a rubbish sequence deck) whilst I positioned myself before charging. No ugo-igo in a Piquet game.

Yeah, that's why we quit playing Piquet. We had the same thing happen a few times while playing ACW. It's not much fun to just sit there because of bad dice rolls and not be able to do anything but watch yourself get run over.

Maximillian Adventure game modeled after 2nd Puebla. My command was a Division of Mexican Cavalry (using Fire and Fury) of 25 stands in 3 Brigades. When the dust settled (3-5 turns later) my target (the FFL) was spent and the only stand in my Division was my commander. The rest were either shot down or routed. BUT the FFL did not succeed in its mission for releiving the Austrians.

Fire and Fury at a recent game at BV. I'm playing Confederates and I have a very small mounted brigade which finds itself within charge range of a large Union infantry brigade in march column. Charged the column, swept them from the field, then (on the follow through) hit the next column behind them and routed them too. Then found my winded cavalrymen with another two brigades in line firing at them, shrugged off the fire due to some awful Union die rolls, extricated them and brought them home intact for tea and medals :)

Not the largest charge ever (I reckon that was in a 20mm Napoleonic game when we played mega games with thousands of figures during the holidays at school), but in terms of bang for buck one of my most successful :)

It was in a seven years war game (Konigskrieg rules). I had the Prussians and was facing the British-Hanoverian army (my friend just finished painting it). I committed over 20 regiments of cavalry on my left flank and there was a monster cavalry battle. When done I had three cavalry regiments in tacked and had "won". Needles to say the army dined on horse meat for weeks.

I played in a fictitious Napoleonic Battle where I commanded a portion of a French Cavalry Corps. I had the 2nd, 3rd, 9 th, 11th Cuirassiers as well as the Saxon Von Zastrows and the Garde Du Corps. I threw them into a vicious charge against a Russian Cuirassiers formation and beat it back only to be thrown back myself by Prussian Dragoons and Hussars. My formation was a wreck but had exhausted the majority of the Allied cavalry for the battle. What I left out was that I did it against all orders and was never allowed command of such a large Cavalry formation ever again!

During an ancient's battle we had an impassible river dividing the battlefield but had a strong roman stone bridge crossing it. My opponent, the romans, had blocked the bridge with his strongest unit the Praetorian guard. He smiled at me and said you will never cross this. I replied you want to bet? I then proceeded to charge my elephants across the bridge, which since it was stone could support their weight and massacred his unit. It was glorious and the look on his face when the elephant came charging was priceless.

OOPs, just notice this was posted in ACW section. Just make the romans federals and my confederate elephants got him.

Although while playing Johnny Reb II with some people I had a brigade of colored infantry attacking a confederate position when I had some bad firing rolls and ran out of ammunition, the confederate player smiled and though I would withdraw. Instead I issued a fix bayonets order and we charged! He failed his morale roll then rolled snake eyes causing a massive confederate morale implosion in the defensive line and my bayonet charge rolled up 7 confederate regiments. I was never invited back to play with that group again (sigh).

Excellent stories. Booo to groups that cannot deal with the vagaries of fate! Friction!

Greatest charge I ever saw was in one of Ron Prillaman's Alamo games. It started somewhere in the middle of the 2nd Mexican wave. The Mexicans were overwhelming the Texicans holding the North and West Walls. There was one Texican who was still on the West Wall fighting and pushing over ladders. He had thrown down at least 2 when he was noticed. He then proceeded to fight off another ladder assault and kill 2 more Mexicans advancing along the wall. At this point he was the only defender on the wall, so he decided to leave. (I'm going to call him T from now on.) T joined a group of 4 Texicans down on the ground backed up against a wall. They were charged by 15 Mexicans, and all everyone was killed except T. At this point he was the only defender outside of the Chapel.

Now T charged a unit of 12 Mexicans that was wheeling a cannon towards the Chapel. He killed them all. T received a charge by another 20 Mexicans and he killed every one of them. Now standing alone against a horde of Mexicans he decided to climb the ramp in the middle and re-raise the Texican flag. This drew the attention of pretty much every Mexican. A fresh unit of 30 charged him and he fought his way through them and killed them to a man. Somewhere in all this he also destroyed another 20 man Mexican unit. At this point he rolle the cannon down and killed another 5 Mexicans. At this point all the Mexican players were scared of T and they just shot him. I think that he was killed at least 10 times over, but he had an incredible run of dice.

Melee was a comparison of die rolls. Texicans get a +1, Officers get a +1, Outnumbering your opponent is a +1 and a tie means re-roll until one guys wins. You fight until that melee is done. So pretty much T had to beat the Mexicans on an even die roll that many consecutive times to win the combat. When he rolled a 2 the Mexican player rolled a 1. When the Mexican rolled a 5 or a 6 he would roll a 6. It was the most incredible run of die throwing I've ever seen. He accounted for over 120 Mexicans from when we first noticed him. He blunted the Mexican attack so much that the Defenders held out on that wave. T was a hero that day.

Looking back to then original post…I love the idea of an assault that has been 'lunched'; presumably right on time at Beer o'Clock? Or possibly behind schedule at Quarter past Wine? Or washed down with an entente cordial?

Oh my uglyfatbloke, is this all you got out of the post? Such a pity. Mayhaps you should drink a bit and be merry! :p

I was cic for a large confederate army of 10 brigades, I gave instruction to the 5 division commanders to attack from right to left one turn at a time by the fifth turn the far left division just advanced and occupied empty ground. By this time th whole federal line was warped in towards the center to meet the increasing pressure. The far left commander wrote of his glorious advance and seizure of all his objectives to the Atlanta newspapers. Then proceeded to bivouac his division while the other four drove off Thomas' army.

I once was playing the Union player in an 1862 Pensinsula campaign. I had made it to a small crossroads south of Richmond just north of the Deep Bottom area. I had two divisions, and the Confederates had fortified their two divisions around the crossroads behind light works. The Confederates were in a roughly "L" shape with one wing facing east, and the other south; I was marching from the east. Robert E. Lee himself was there to make sure everything went smoothly. Playing Johnny Reb 2, I approached the enemy line with everybody in extended line. When I got close enough I charged everybody in one turn. The Confederate line collapsed in a series of monumental failed morale check rolls and feeble firing rolls. There were more snake-eyes on that table than a snake handling church in the Appalachians on a Sunday morning. Soon the entire Confederate corps was routing off the board. It was everything I could do to catch up to them at the edge of the table. I even almost captured Bobby Lee himself. We even named the total collapse of a miniature army on the board after the Confederate player; The Abbot Maneuver. Sadly, it was the last game of the campaign. The college year was over, and many of the player's moved on. But then the next year we began an even better campaign.

Pretty cool gaming stories once more!

The greatest one I ever witnessed was during a very large Napoleonic battle we were holding at Penn State. We had maybe 10,000 figures involved and probably about twenty players and the game ran all weekend.

Now as all you Napoleonic players know, when you start a game, the first thing everyone does is have their cavalry seek out their opposite number and mutually annihilate each other :) Don't try to deny it! We all know it's true!

Well, in this game one fellow had a French heavy cavaly corps with about eight regiments of Cuirassiers and a brigade of light cavalry. And he did something unprecedented: he kept it in reserve! The other players kept telling him to send it out and he just replied "It's not time yet". This rather annoyed the other French players. But he waited and waited and meanwhile all the other cavalry on both sides had been destroyed and the infantry was battering itself to bits and the artillery was using up all its ammunition.

THEN this guy committed his heavy cavalry. In two turns it completely swept away the Allied army! Fresh troops at just the right time!

KTravlos…no, I just really liked the premise of an attack based on alcohol consumption.
'Are we ready to advance gentlemen'?
'Just a mo….glug glug glug glug….OK; ready now!'

Then I beg forgiveness!Everybody! We must chrage, get drunk., Though historically many armies stiffened the troops up with alcohol and food :p

The Battle of Tuyuti played at Historicon a few years ago. The Paraguayan cavalry wing (about 1/3 of their army) had made a few ineffective attacks on the Argentines. The Paraguayan commander complained he didn't have a chance against all that infantry supported by 4 batteries of Artillery. He finally lined up the whole corps and charged all at once. The Argentines melted like snow in July.

It was a thing of beauty and a joy to behold.

Unless you were the Argentine player.

My largest fictional charge was from a painting service that sent me a final bill and neglected to deduct the large deposit I'd paid up front … the charge was successfully repelled …

Chris

I remember playing out a fictional Austrian invasion of Serbia, c. 1885. The Serb infantry held a ridge line with infantry and guns. They had a couple units of cavalry guarding their right flank. The Austrians refused the Serbian right flank and concentrated on the left and center, and attempted to turn the Serbian position on the left. The Serb cavalry motorcycled about 10 feet down the length of the table (this being in 25mm) behind their position and caught the Austrian infantry attempting to turn the position as they crested a small hill, and routed off a division or so without taking very much in the way of casualties in return. Between the command and control rules, the terrain, visibility and rolling for the orders to go through, it required about six separate miracles to happen in the proper sequence for it to work. As the Austrian commander said to the Serb, "Congratulations. You've set military science back about 60 years."

Haha! Mallen that is awesome. Any pics?

Sadly no, that was years ago when I lived in Omaha, in the mid 90s. It was part of a Pax Brittania world-wide campaign that I believe is still going on. They manage to get a game or two a year in, so it is actually going slower than real time.

I forgot one detail: the guy commanding the Austrian infantry was a legend, known as "The Man Who Never Won." He could fall out of a boat and miss water. He eventually sold off his stuff and bought a set of clubs.

Hah – Great topic idea!

My memorable moment in the miniature military limelight involved playing the role of the Archduke Charles in an 1809 Aspern-Essling themed mini-campaign. I led the Austrian Reserve Grenadier Corps and supporting cuirassiers in a grand assault across the berm between Aspern and Essling, crushed the counter-attacking French heavy cavalry, then struck and broke the French Imperial Guard …. thus earning me (according to the game master) an impressively grand equestrian monument in front of the Imperial Hofburg Palace.

B

Excellent!