"Aggavating Bavarian Battery - Low Ammo!!" Topic

Rules are "General de Brigade – Deluxe Edition"
(GdB rules dictate that when a battery fires a 2D6 roll of two (2) the battery is now low on ammunition and reduce their fire. All subsequent casualties inflected are halved.)

Figures are 15mm. The Bavarian battery is 2nd gen MiniFigs.

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Will somebody explain this to me?

In my 15mm Napoleonic French army, I have a Bavarian 6-pounder battery that I can't figure out!!

Why does the Bavarian battery come so often to a battle without enough ammunition? This battery far more than any other battery, from all my armies, too frequently suffers from "Low Ammo" as reflected by a 2D6 dice roll of two (2)!!

Is the problem because the aggravating Bavarian battery uses captured Austrian 6-pdr guns? Maybe I didn't give them the right color to their uniforms or guns? Could it be that their pants are on too tight?

Someone help me here…please!

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Here are photos from eight ( 8 ) different 15mm fictional Napoleonic battles where the Bavarian battery runs low on ammunition.

My 15mm Bavarian 6-pdr battery.

Bavarian 6-pdr battery.

Low Ammo! Battle of Raevsky. Sep 2012.
Against the Russians & Austrians.

Battle of Trzy Orxy. Jul 2015.
Against the Russians & Austrians.

Battle of Lucha Pass. Jun 2018
Against the British & Spanish.
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Battle of Nordhausen. Jun 2019.
Against the Austrians & Prussians.

Battle of Stormthal. Mar 2020
Against the Prussians & Russians.

Battle of Die Schwarzen Alder. Jul 2020.
Against the Prussians.

Battle of Inglehart. Sep 2020.
Against the Russians.

Battle of Golden Lion. Jan 2021.
Against the British.

The Bavarians did turn up to Hanau in 1813 with low ammo, having wasted it on a pointless bombardment of Wurzburg(?) or some such.

Possibly your little lead Bavarians are just going the extra mile to prove how authentic they are?

Shall we call it the "Unlucky Battery"? No, sooner or later it's luck will turn for the better!

I think some sort of reminder should keep them on their toes. How about painting up a caisson to park behind them?

Maybe put a sign up behind them:

'The Battery of The Men Without Balls'

Get new colored dice!!!!

They're so pretty, too pretty,…
I thought 'Aggavating' was their problem…

Because it's lost its limbers and caissons. They're nowhere to be seen. A battery is nothing without its logistical support :-)

Hypocritically,
John

they are on a strike because you haven't done the bases

Line up the battery. Then get an unpainted Bavarian figure and smash it flat with a hammer "pour encourager les autres"

They filled their caissons with beer instead of ammo…low on ammo, full on beer.

Buy a pile of cannon balls and barrels of powder. Make sure they are placed with the battery.

SOMEBODY has to be the tail end of the bell curve.

Maybe their caissons are full of sausages?

I think they forgot to load their dice, as well as their caissons.

I don't recall having a particularly routy or otherwise hopeless Napoleonic unit, but I did have a pair of scratchbuilt 1/76 T-35s. These were unvaryingly immobilised on the edge of the battlefield on the first or second turn. They made no contribution to any game at all, ever. They never even fired at a single enemy.

Forget to plan for the wurst-case scenario.

A most unlucky series of double ones indeed. GdeB Deluxe is a superb set of Napoleonic rules but I don't use the double one low ammo rule. It is particularly annoying and unrealistic on turns one or two.

Buy a battery from a different manufacturer – retire these men.

In my Operation Husky game – me as umpire/scenario opposition – the 2 Inch Mortar in 2 section rarely puts smoke anywhere you want it. Left, right, long, short – on the enemy, but never on target. The Lt and Sgt have come to the conclusion they will get the Mortar team to drop smoke, then attack from there, rather than the other way round.

4th Cuirassier, it seems your T35s performed perfectly in line with their actual historical role . . . unfortunately.

Cheers,
John

particularly annoying and unrealistic on turns one or two

Friction!

Thanks for all the most thoughtful, helpful, and profound comments! :-)

I am hoping that this "Thread of Shame" will correct my Bavarian battery's behavior.

Musketballs, I'm going to take your suggestion (spewed coffee all over my computer screen) and in the next few battles, I will post a sign behind the Bavarian battery, "Men With No Balls!!"

John T.

Im not familiar with these rules, but it seems they are backwards. Im assuming that double twos are bad and cause no casualties, it should be that double sixes cause low ammo to simulate high rate of fire causing many casualties.

Blue dice are unlucky, I thought everybody knew this.

Blue dice unlucky? Not until the end.

Here are the dice colors for my various forces.

French: Blue
Austrian: Yellow
British: Red
Prussian: Black
Russian: Green
Spanish: White

Hold it. I'm old (74).

This may be the end!
I'm coming, Lord!

The photo above of me in the Prussian Eagle shirt overlooking the Battle of Gnappe, Jan 2020, the Bavarian battery was hit in the flank by Prussian cavalry and overrun!
See Bavarian battery overrun, surrounded, and surrendering in picture below.

"War is Hell."
John T.

"This battery far more than any other battery, from all my armies, too frequently suffers from "Low Ammo" (…)"

You need to break them of the habit. The next time they do 'low ammo', send them into close combat. They won't like that (and will probably die.) After a couple of times, their efficiency should improve markedly… ;-)

Dear John….
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Simple. repaint them and excise the curse.

IT was a practice by some countries (example Russia)to have reserve batteries located in a central reserve or with a divisional reserve. When the battery in action had fired off most of its ammunition (AND also had suffered some losses and had exhausted crews. A French 8 pound cannon weighted about 1,850 pounds and was served by 8-13 gunners. The gun needed running back into position after each shot, and this was done by fewer men- others were getting ammo and such. "The trail chest held 15 round shot while the caisson carried an additional 62-round shot and 30 canister shot"….At a rate 9max) of 2 rounds/minute, they could shoot all their ammo off in 50 minutes. If ten men were handling moving the gun back into position, then each man would have moved 18,000 pounds of cannon. ….. SOOO, relieving guns for fatigue and resupply and repair during the midst of a battle makes sense.

Maybe what you can do, upon a snake eyes, is roll a D6 or D10 and make that number the number of additional turns of fire before the gun has to retire to some range (and not be fired on). The range might be 2 light cavalry charge distances from the nearest enemy unit. …… OR roll a d10 and a d6 and make that the number of firing turns. The commander would KNOW if a unit was low on ammo and would plan accordingly.

do the second style at the start of the game

I'd make a house rule, first three fires the unit cannot run out of ammo. Or just grit your teeth and tough it out.

Wasn't there a failed attack against the Sikhs where the single supporting gun overheated, had to stop firing, and the troops gave up?

Afterwards there was an order to always sport two guns.

I can see why the rule was included – a '2' represents something going wrong and 'low on ammo' was decided as the explanation. But it simply doesn't sound convincing if it's in the first couple of bounds of the game. I'd just use a bit of poetic license and consider a '2' to be any number of reasons for things going wrong – maybe they didn't bring a caisson up as close as they should have, maybe the ground was softer than they thought and they needed to reposition the guns – anything that sounds credible.

Of course that doesn't solve the original predicament of the cursed Bavarian battery. John Tyson might just have to accept that his Bavarians are being punished for being on the wrong side of history ;-)

Cheers,
John

@ John Edmundson. Thanks! You got it right!

I think the GdB rules are excellent and have no problem with the roll of 'snake eyes' causing a battery to be low on ammo. Perplexing to me, and somewhat humorous, is why one particular battery so consistently comes up with "Low Ammo."

Here is what the author of the GdB rules wrote in a note on the Low Ammo rule (General de Brigade – Deluxe Edition, page 103):
"(Some players may feel that the potential to roll a double one on the first turn of firing is too soon to reflect low on ammunition or crew exhaustion. However, battles cannot be considered in isolation, thus your unfortunate artillery crew that have just roll double one on Turn One could easily have just endured a forced night march along muddy roads and left their ammunition wagons stuck in the mud some miles behind!)"

Whether one agrees with the author of the rules or not, it is obvious that he was aware that some folks would take objection to the Low Ammo rule.

Rules that inhibit good play should be ignored and sidelined; regardless of justification, the % chance IS too high; roll a third die to break the deal.
I'd say fire once at half effect that move (meaning enemy must still react to receiving fire, not hits) and then as above, retire or go silent for 2 moves if appropriate.

And more importantly- use other dice!
They are not 100% quality items! They do have 'bias' and if the common factor is those- begone devils!
cheers d

The chance to roll snake eyes is 1/6 x 1/6 or 1/36. That seems way too high for a unit going into battle and discovering on their first shot that they were out of ammo.

I agree that 1/36 is too high for that, but if you expand that out to a 1/36 chance of 'something" having gone wrong that bound, then maybe it isn't so bad. Alternatively, while not ideal, it is always possible to have a house agreement to drop or modify that particular rule – like someone mentioned, a reroll for example. Require a third 'one' and suddenly 215 times in 216 it's just a bad bit of shooting. Personally I'm not generally in favour of randomising things like that *within* a test for something else but I wouldn't consider it a deal breaker for a given set of rules that were otherwise good . . . unless perhaps if I was from Bavaria :-)

Cheers,
John

I used colored dice per army, can't be that.
I played with a ammo limit and liked it, but while allowing x amount of rounds ( in a hour) it was up to battery Commander to use them as needed. If you had 5 hours of ammo you might not go blazing away with no effect, or that counter battery fire that will show hardly any casualties.

In my fictional January, 2021, "Battle of Golden Lion" (French vs British), there was an unusual number of batteries on both sides that ran low on ammo (two of four French batteries and two of three British batteries). In the OP above, the last photo is of the Bavarian battery running low on ammo!

For those not familiar with the "General de Brigade" rules.
The first 2D6 double one roll, the battery is "Low Ammo" and all subsequent casualties are halved. If the battery with "Low Ammo" has a subsequent 2D6 dbl one roll, the battery is "Out of Ammo."
A battery running out of ammo is understandably rare…but it does happen.

Battle of Golden Lion (Jan 2021), C Btry RFA runs low on ammo and later in the battle runs "Out of Ammo."

For some games, in my feeble attempt to reflect a better supply system, I have a house rule that allows a supply wagon to replenish a battery on low ammo.
This also took place also in the "Battle of Golden Lion."

Battle of Golden Lion (Jan 2021), G Btry RHA runs low on ammo in Turn 1 and is replenished in Turn 5.

Turn 5 below.

Below at the end of Turn 5, G Btry RHA is now resupplied with Ammo!!

Thank you all for graciously letting my share my stories and pics.

John T.