Doc Ord | 13 Jun 2016 7:30 a.m. PST |
Larry Brom had done some changes for the period-some of which I liked and some I didn't so I made changes. I gave the Prussians 1.5 firing dice per stand instead of the usual one. I had tried 2 per stand but decided that was unplayable. The Austrian rife outranges the needlegun. Austrian artillery is better with range equivalent to 4 pdr. Krupps and better hit capability. The game was a simple meeting engagement with 2 churches and a bridge being the goals. The Austrians and Prussians each quickly seized a church. The Prussian left advanced in columns to quickly get across the river but had some bad movement rolls and was shattered by Austrian artillery and infantry fire. The Prussian right finally got into firing range but had been damaged by Austrian artillery before that and weren't shooting very effectively even with the extra firing dice. The smoothbore Prussian horse artillery did some effective work galloping forward in fine fashion and the Queen's Cuirassiers routed the Austrian hussars. The Austrians carried the day by staying in un-Austrian firing lines instead of historical storm columns Now, how do you get gamers to play historically? My friend Jim took pictures and plans on doing a write up for his web site. |
Ed Mohrmann | 13 Jun 2016 8:23 a.m. PST |
Mark, IDK of anyway to get gamers to 'play historically' short of rules or scenario design forcing it upon them. |
Martin Rapier | 13 Jun 2016 8:32 a.m. PST |
Don't allow 1866 Austrians to operate in anything but storm columns? (apart from Grenzers). It isn't hard to replicate appropriate tactical formations Getting the entire Austrian right wing to attack without orders because the local commanders thought it was a good idea (as at Koeniggratz). Now that is hard. |
Attalus I | 13 Jun 2016 9:06 a.m. PST |
The Austrians should be in column if their brigade/corps is under attack orders. Line formation should be reserved for defend orders only. The Feldjagers can skirmish & could probably form a line. However, they also charged the enemy. There was a tactic the Austrians had where the rear ranks loaded the Lorenz rifles for the front rank, so it could keep up constant fire. Not sure how you could replicate that. |
Liliburlero | 13 Jun 2016 9:23 a.m. PST |
Doc, Dad didn't do the variants (1846, 1854, 1859 & 1866) for "Chassepot & Needlegun". The Jackson Gamers developed them after we moved away … :^) |
Doc Ord | 13 Jun 2016 9:42 a.m. PST |
Austrians don't have to check morale to close when in column . I was hoping that would be a stimulus to charge in column. I suppose Austrians could be required to form column whenever charging. The Austrians in my game formed line and moved just close enough to shoot with the longer ranged Lorenz. Attalus, I remember reading of a brigadier using his line units to feed loaded muskets to the jager skirmish line. How to do that on the table top? |
Doc Ord | 13 Jun 2016 9:45 a.m. PST |
Austrian commanders would often charge without orders. Perhaps with a failed roll for command control there should be a chance of a charge by the Austrians. "Black Powder" has that possibility. |
ColCampbell | 13 Jun 2016 11:32 a.m. PST |
Mark, Actually it was my Prussian horse battery that routed the Austrian cuirassiers. My uhlan regiment fought the Austrin light horse and beat them silly. Then I, like a good cavalryman, followed up by attacking an Austrian artillery battery. Bad decision, they shot my uhlans to pieces (Austrians got good melee rolls while I got bad ones) and handed the uhlans their heads. The only way I would think to force the Austrian players to use appropriate tactics would be to require their battalions to be in columns unless they were in a defensive scenario. With the meeting engagement we fought, they should be required to stay in column. That would change the calculus of the rifle fire from an Austrian advantage to a more balanced approach. I sent a couple of messages back to Berlin, by the way. One went to the artillery directorate telling them to fix the damn fuzes on the artillery shells and give the gunners more firing practice. The other went to the training directorate telling them to increase the marksmanship training of recruits so they can fire better. I was plagued by low die rolls throughout the game for the most part. My fellow Prussian, Ken H., got hung up crossing the stream with his battalions still in column and, as Mark said, got shot to rags. His six battalions and one battery could maybe have mustered a corporal's guard by the end of the game. Playing 1866 Prussians is nothing like playing 1870 Prussians, that's for sure! Jim |
Mollinary | 13 Jun 2016 12:07 p.m. PST |
For the Austrians in 1866 the line was not a manoeuvre formation. So, why not prevent them from moving in line? This very rapidly becomes limiting, and gives lots of opportunities to the Prussians. I am not sure where the idea of loading and passing forward as an Austrian "tactic" comes from, unless it is Wawro's description of Poschacher's brigade at Jicin. If so, and I would welcome correction from native German speakers, my reading of the sources is that this is a practice used in defence of buildings and villages, where the buildings have been loopholed, , and there are not enough fire positions for standard formations. I have never seen it as a tactic for the open field. Mollinary |
Doc Ord | 13 Jun 2016 1:38 p.m. PST |
I have only read Wawro's description of Poshacher's brigade.So Austrians would move forward in columns and then form lines to shoot but such lines would not move about the battlefield? |
Ramming | 14 Jun 2016 4:27 a.m. PST |
Fontane describes Poschacher's brigade adopting a 'tiered' system at Brada, if Wawro has read Fontane then that's probably where he got it from. I'll ask our translator to look ahead and see what Ditfurth says. |
Mollinary | 14 Jun 2016 7:09 a.m. PST |
Ramming. – the best translation I seem to get for Fontane's "Etagenfeuer" seems to be "multi-level fire" . Wawro doesn't talk about passing rifles to skirmishers, but Poschacher ordering his troops to pass rifles to the Jagers. Even this seems a bit of a step if he is using Fontane as his source, as that seems to talk about handing rifles forward to the best shots. With the Jagers and line troops using different versions of the Lorenz, I think it unlikely they would have been interchangeable. And if it was just the Jagers at the front, why does Fontane not say so? Austrians manoeuvred in masses, either division, half or full battalion masses. When their main tactical plan was to charge the enemy at the earliest opportunity, and not engage in an exchange of fire, the idea of moving in one formation, getting into charge range, changing into line, firing, then changing back into mass, seems far more complex than the Austrian training allowed, and it is not described in the manuals. Where it was necessary to rely on fire they would form a line, but I would read this as normally being in defence of a prepared position, where a change over to the offensive was not planned. The heights of Brada would be a case in point, where the houses had been prepared for defence, and the enemy had to advance up a very steep slope (which would have given Poschacher the opportunity to arrange his men in "tiers" as Ramming's translator puts it. Mollinary |
Ramming | 14 Jun 2016 10:04 a.m. PST |
What is becoming clear from Fontane, who uses dozens of first hand accounts, and it surprised me, is that there was a lot more of the fire fight than I had imagined, at Hunnerwasser the eye witness talks of a protracted musketry battle with the advantage going in the end to the Prussians due to superior rates of fire and better marksmanship! Ditfurth and Strobl should help us. My understanding of Brada was the Jaegers held the front line while a proportion of the rest of the brigade loaded and passed rifles forward. I wouldn't think trained riflemen would have any problem accommodating to the different versions of the Lorenz, either the fixed iron sight or the moveable one. As we know from our many excursions Andrew, a Bohemian village is one tenth house, nine tenths garden/enclosure/wood stack/orchard. I'll press our translator to find some Austrian accounts. |
Mollinary | 14 Jun 2016 11:22 a.m. PST |
Unfortunately, Wawro does not footnote his Brada description, so we cannot know his source. I look forward to your further research. The Fontane fire fight references are interesting, but do not necessarily equate to the use of the line formation which maximises fire, they could equally be the skirmish chain, and fhey could also be the battalions deployed in division masse. We all know the difficulty, in any period, of trying to change formation under fire, even with well trained troops. |
Ramming | 15 Jun 2016 3:03 a.m. PST |
I agree completely, most of the time I wouldn't imagine the participants had much of an idea what exactly was going on themselves. Looking forward to discussing at length in Bohemia next month. |
mashrewba | 16 Jun 2016 9:31 a.m. PST |
Neil Thomas' rules are good for this -Austrians only use columns and lines can't move. |