"Newbie questions on FPW" Topic

Hello
I am currently painting up 15mm armies for the FPW.

I am wondering whether there is much information available on unit strengths for individual battles. I am looking at using brigade level rules, so I would only need information for brigades sized formations and above. Any information on sources would be appreciated.

If that sort of information is not readily available, does anyone have a system for allocating strengths to units for gaming purposes according to the stage of the war, battles in which a unit has participated and the like? What I am thinking of is the sort of discounts to be applied to the paper strengths of units. For example, something like a French brigade being at 20% below paper strength from the start, 30% below paper strength at Sedan (40% if it has participated in the frontier battles), etc.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thank you

Both Bloody Big Battles and 1870 rules have quite a few scenarios that can give you guidance on unit strengths. If you want to go deeper than that I can look through my library. I think I own almost every English language book on the FPW that is readily available today.

1870 has excellent OB and scenario information.

If you want exact strengths for each battle, I don't think even the French knew what they had at the time, so all we can really do is guess. I usually assume Imperial units will always be understrength due to the chaos of mobilisation, whereas the Prussians are pretty much at TOE strength.

Quintin Barry two volume history of the war. Bbb and 1870 as a start

Thank you for the suggestions. I am still interested to know if anyone has a default method of determining the strengths for units in the event that proper information is not available.

At the level I play at (divisions, Corps) just use the book strength if in doubt. It just makes life so much easier, and irl the participants didn't seem to differentiate much between divisions which had been knocked around beforehand and those which hadn't.

If a formation is a bit tatty at the start, then knock a bit off, but exactly how you do this depends on attriton models in your rules.

AA – If I remember correctly, 1870 provides standard unit organizations so you should be able to fill in holes as needed. If not, try the Tom Nutt series of booklets produced by Outpost Wargame Services. While uniform based, I think they have standard unit orgs in them as well.

The Volley and Bayonet site has some useful scenarios and ORBATS; 1 strength point = 500 men.
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… AND … BUY THESE RULES grandtacticalrules.com They will have a whole wealth of details from 1859 to 1871 that anyone in this period MUST have.

…. AND … PLAY THESE RULES bloodybigbattles.blogspot.co.uk

As said above, 1870 rules have such good research and scenarios it is a must buy even if you never use the rules.

Like Royal Marine above< i use Bloody Big Battles to play – and the rules have numerous good scenarios, even more on the Yahoo group.

…. yeah, what vtsaogmaes said and also what link says …

Thank you.

I have 1870. It provides a bit of guidance on unit strengths, but not exactly what I am after. I may use BBB (which I have) for the biggest battles, but I am likely to use a variant of Fire and Fury for most battles. It looks like I will need to come up with default strengths for units where the actual information is lacking.

Royal Marine, the scenarios look very helpful. Do M4, M5, etc indicate the strength points or does that have something to do with the brackets?

You can also check the Free Orders of Battle that George Nafziger donated to the public covering most every conflict recorded.

M66 and higher is high morale, M5 is regular and M4 is low morale. For artillery, each strength point equals 6 guns.

Thanks, but I am obviously missing something, as I can't see where the strength points are specified in the OOBs.

The German General Staff history is good for strengths.

Thanks rmaker. I was hoping that there is an alternative to wading through several volumes of Teutonic prose. Are the strengths set out in tables or OOBs (so that I can avoid the prose)?

From Wissembourg scenario:
1st & 3rd Bns, 50th Regt de Ligne M5 [ ][ ][ ]

This unit has morale 5 (regular) and has three boxes to be checked off as hits accumulate. It has three strength points, or 1500 troops.

Thank you. I thought that it might have something to do with the boxes.