"Napoleons Old Guard Grenadiers vs 42nd Blackwatch" Topic

Hypothetical question.
All things even, a Bn of Napoleons elte Old Guard Grenadiers clash on the field of battle with a Bn of the 42nd Blackwatch.
Each can choose an overall commander and one regiment of Cavalry and one artillery battery of their choice as their only support from their perspective armies.
Who do they choose and who wins?

Russ Dunaway

I would bet my money on the Grognards.

Sorry, expat Scot. Blackwatch every time

Old guard, Guard lancers, and a 12 pounder foot battery, commanded by Napoleon.
Highlanders with a 9 pound foot battery, and the 1st Dragoon guards.
Commanded by Wellington.
If that's all each commander has. I'll take the French.

If the Guard attack in column and the 42nd are in line then, despite the supports who can cancel each other out, the Watch will win .. in my opinion.

Head to head, Guard v. Black Watch, rate of fire trumps guts.

If you mix in cav and arty it's a toss up. It stirs in too many variables.

So we're now admitting that the Highland Regiments, or at least the Black Watch, are the best British infantry and not the Guards Regiments?

To echo cavcrazy…Old Guard, 12pdrs, and Vistula Lancers (seemed to be effective at Albuera).

Tactics will determine the winner, both side horse will have at each other then the winning cavalry threatens the opponents infantry who have to form square then they are done for…pick the best cavalry you can!

Whichever side's supporters cheer the loudest

Too many variables IMO
EG
Wellington would pick a reverse slope and maybe even one with mud in front of it to reduce the effectiveness of the french artillery.
He had some success picking those reverse slopes historically.

The Brits won virtually every time against Nappy's all-comers. The Guard faced them on a couple of occasions and on both occasions they got trounced. Anyway! Force of habit has the British win, no matter what French/French allies they are up against.

Either the French or the Germans would win.

Straight up my money's on the Grognards (slight edge) – and as to nsolomon99, I thought that was a given (here the nod is to my wife's Caledonian forebearers)

you all talk terrain and column vs line, in an engagement head to head, these three units I would bet on the French, they traditionally move quicker, tactically the British Cavalry are inferior than the french, Wellington said he would not like to see if I remember 3 squadrons of British vs 3 french and less so as the numbers increased, he was watching British Cavalry in the peninsular breaking French Dragoons only to see the Dragoons rally an the pursuing charge hell out at everything cavalry force routed by a reserve squadron, the heavier artillery, the french win, unless one of you gentlemen want to lead a battalion column straight into a wall of death

And yet all your blather and lather counts for nothing in the historical sense. The Brits almost always win, and even in the rarified air of a defeat, the Brits still give a good account of themselves. Oh! the 9pdr/block-trail and RA/RHA crew, were excellent, no matter what 'Arty' thought of them. A regiment of KGL Cavalry too.

Pretty funny that you should choose a german cavalry regiment to support the Black Watch. I thought the British always won?

Ahem – Polish Lancers?

Now,now, I said "guard lancers"…I never specified Polish or Dutch!
I could switch them out for French Hussars just as easily. The British cavalry had a bad habit of over extending themselves at the time.

On break for Christmas…I will have to game this with the guys and let you know what happened.

The Old Guard were excellent combat troops but it must be said the Highlanders have an impressive tradition of military service. I would say the Old Guard win but the fight would be more interesting than if the Old Guard caught a garden variety British line unit in the open.

I would choose Cuirassiers and French Guard artillery 12lbers for the French and Household Cavalry for the British. Oh, and Mercer's battery because he seems to have been able to be everywhere at once like magic.

I knew someone would be along to claim that the winner of a hypothetical British-French encounter would be the Germans. Some people just can't help themselves.

In a few posts' time someone will be along to point out that much of the (optionally, "so-called") British army was Irish. This is a personal favourite of mine, a bit like pointing out that the Scots Greys were Scottish not British, or that the Welsh Guards are Welsh not British.

May be somebody should post this question on, say, a website dedicated to wargaming and members could- oh. Wait…

(Many of the 2nd Royal North British Dragoons in 1815 had been recruited in the English midlands, where they had been stationed for the greater part of the previous twenty years)

I suppose I could have asked -- yet again a series of question as to the results of China invading Taiwan or Russia invading the Ukraine --- however I thought I would, and will continue to stick to subjects that I think have broader appeal with regards to Wargaming ???

Russ Dunaway

So! Despite historical fact, the same modern take on 'whatifs' defies this. I'd put any British regiment up against the French Guard. Oh! I'd put the Life Guards up too.

If this "encounter" could be extended until one side was effectively eliminated, not just 1 day or a set number of hours (more war-ish, less boxing-ish), I would offer the Blackwatch some allied assistance :
--- the Ataman's Don Cossack regiment : 1,200 riders to harry the opposition to death, also an astrologer/necromancer and an Orthodox priest
--- the Russian Life-Guards 1st Horse Artillery battery : 8 x 12 lber guns, 4x 24 lber "unicorns" + 36 ammunition caissons, 6 spare carraiges with 3 spare pieces, 12 large provision wagons, 12 large ammunition wagons, 2 large ambulance wagons with medical staff plus the equivalent of an artillery artisan company (sometimes also included the artillery detachment of the Guards Navy crew with 2x 6 lber guns plus the equivalent of a pioneer company …. up to a total of 17 pieces …. quantity having a quality all its own)

If the line stands its ground it wins. Their close range volley halts the column (which wasn't expecting them to stand), the column attempts to deploy to line for a firefight (which was part of their tactical doctrine but rarely needed because few enemeies in line stood), the line cheers and charges before they've managed it, the column recoils, the line recovers itself falls back on its original position.

So! Despite historical fact, the same modern take on 'whatifs' defies this. I'd put any British regiment up against the French Guard. Oh! I'd put the Life Guards up too.

Oh, I wouldnt take it so personally. I would think that putting any British line regiment up against the French Guard infantry would be a mistake. The historical facts are very set piece and failing enormous casualties from fire power, a British line unit would get swept away.

Incidentally, "what ifs" are the real intellectual challenge, the rest is just archaeology and any clerk can accomplish that. For instance, on any other day, the Anglo-Allies (And Prussians) would've lost Waterloo hands down. Frankly, spending 200 years reminding everyone that the British won is a boring, one dimensional endeavor; the real fun is "What if" the French had won?

"…"what ifs" are the real intellectual challenge … "
Perhaps if your intellect ossified as a teenager when your idea of a "challenge" was deciding whether that bunch of goblins would triumph over those elves? Historians deal in history not fantasy.

Perhaps if your intellect ossified as a teenager when your idea of a "challenge" was deciding whether that bunch of goblins would triumph over those elves?

I dont know what this is supposed to mean. I spend time analyzing thoughts, motives, reasons. It's worked for me. If I just stuck to announcing plain, train conductor like moments in time, I would only have a dry skeleton of reality without any of the flesh and blood.

Historians deal in history not fantasy.

I think this is as it should be and it has an important role. However, it isn't the most important role, it isn't the last role and it definitely isn't the only role. In any case, I know who won Waterloo and it doesnt take me years on a forum to figure it out.

Besides, although a good historian can simply give a presentation of events, the more popular ones tell a story or present a viewpoint. Maybe they should limit themselves to how far they go with their own viewpoint but certainly the reader isnt bound by this.

It is part of the fun of learning to think of what might have happened and to analyze likely outcomes. For example, intelligent people might observe a fact that someone put their hand on a hot stove and didn't get burned but it would be foolish not to analyze the low probability of not having being burned. Someone could keep bleating the fact that burning didnt occur but that would hardly help anyone to understand the nature of stoves or heat etc.

Napoleon lost but he really should have won and that's what makes Waterloo interesting.

Although people are free to be unimaginative, I find it bizarre that the unimaginative feel theirs is the only valid approach to history. If it were so, then why is it necessary to keep reminding everyone, every day that the French lost Waterloo? Do we need more books on the same battle just for the dry facts and events? Further, one would wonder why they think that fact is in jeopardy of being forgotten. You might also wonder at their motives…but then, there's that imagination getting in the way again.

In any case, it is often false to draw a series of conclusions in other areas based on a statistical result. We call that "Any given Sunday" where a "bad" team can beat a very good team. It doesn't mean that team is better, just that they were better on that day.

There's this one example where someone uses stats on Prussian performance to prove that the Prussians were bad soldiers and that means they really didnt help the British out at Waterloo. The problem is that all the analysis is conveniently commenced and terminated, cast and presented with a pre-existing, heavily biased goal in mind. One could argue that those are also "facts" but they are misleading.

Similarly, because the Anglo-Allies won Waterloo it would be wrong to infer whatever one wants about British vs French soldiers (especially if they had a pre-existing bias). In fact, that sort of speculation is an even more extended form of "what if" thinking because a result does not also serve as proof for everything else one wants to be true.

>>however I thought I would, and will continue to stick to subjects that I think have broader appeal with regards to Wargaming ???

Go Russ!!!

Actually I don't bother reading all this piffle… in my first actual 'gaming' years I saw anochronistic 'fights' between multiple Brit armies (after all I live in an ex-Brit colony- so who else would locals support??!) and only ONE French army; so my choice was cast- at the age of 13/14 I was determined to raise the French, and in a style honed over the years (now decades), to be as accurate as possible…

History has so many interesting facets I don't want or need to indulge in hypothetical situations. I've left chaos analysis behind in my working life what was…
~regards d~

"Napoleon lost but he really should have won…."

"…presented with a pre-existing, heavily biased goal in mind."

My work is done…..

Au pas de Charge

The historical facts are very set piece and failing enormous casualties from fire power, a British line unit would get swept away.

Absolute rubbish! At no time did any French/allied Regiment 'Sweep away a British Regiment. But there were many in reverse. It was a volly followed with the bayonet…the Frogs hopped it sharply or got destroyed.

Shat -- the very fact that you are engaged in "gaming" also means you are engaged in the "hypothetical."
Unless you believe that commanders were 1000s of feet tall moving their troops around with their fingers as they enjoy a total view of the entire battlefield-- of course, that would all be hypothetical.

Russ Dunaway

Years ago I read in a book about Tradition miniatures that the best sellers are always the losing side: Waterloo French, ACW Confederates, WW2 Germans.

When I got into gaming as a kid, the determinant of what forces you acquired in miniature was whatever the local hobby shops stocked that you could afford.

So Napoleonic armies were all British or French because Airfix. All WW2 forces were 1/76 German, Russian or US, again because Airfix, until Matchbox came along and British became possible thanks to its Firefly, Comet and 17-pounder.

Changing from cheap Airfix plastics to something a bit off-piste, like Austrian or Russians, entailed writing off a lot of sunk cost and time, and also paying metal mini mail-order prices, meaning these new forces all took a long time to amass.

There was also no point trading up from plastic Airfix to 25mm Russians anyway unless someone was also acquiring compatible 25mm French. So there was a communality of thinking in the club back then, whereby you either bought what complemented others' "armies", or you were prepared to buy and paint both sides. If everyone's got British there's a serious lack of forward thinking going on…

What? You couldn't get a Churchill, 5.5" & Matador, 25pdr & quad, 6pdr & Carrier…. My Dear Tinplate Froggy, with such weapons I could conquer the world!

Or the living room just behind the sofa. One of them. Until my mum trod on the 6pdr.

@ Jeffers

You could do a western desert force because you had Grants and Shermans and the 6-pounder, but then you were short of Germans because no Panzer II, III etc from Airfix. For NWE the German problem went away, but the 5.5" and the 25-pounder are field artillery rarely used in a wargame, and there was no towed or self-propelled AT, troop transport, or Cromwell, nor any obvious source model to convert. It's tough to convert anything Airfix to an Achilles. You ended up with lots of Shermans.

If you went US, on the other hand, you had everything you needed for 1944-5 off the shelf. There's a half-track and the DUKW to hand, you could convert 75mm Shermans into 76mm Shermans, M36s or whatever quite easily, and so on.

Which year would it happen? Most of the Old guard brought in Russia never came back
From 1805 to 1807, the Old Guard should have the advantage
From 1808 to 1812, my money would be on the OG but it would be tough
From 1813 to 1815, the 42nd would win it

You mean there was a war beyond the desert? I think there was more to the Russians than T34s and dodgy IS2s too…

Mind you, I'm glad I got into Napoleonics when there was more than British and French available. I was made to command Austrians.

PS Jocks every time.

Is a battalion a large enough sample?

@ 4e de cuirassiers
"So Napoleonic armies were all British or French because Airfix."
So too in my jeunesse …. and to get my friends to play, I always had to take the sacré British.
:-)

@42 flanker
"Is a battalion a large enough sample?"
Hmmm …. along similar lines, I was thinking 1 bat'n infantry + 1 regiment cavalry + 1 battery (heavy) artillery is an odd mix : too heavy on horse and guns, while we were really asked about the infantry. With 1 infantry bat'n, maybe 100 horse and 2 pieces 6 lber or less would be more typical and more focussed on the infantry ?

On my wargaming table with my 15mm figures, the Old Guard will easily win. I have a battalion of 42d Highlanders and they have the very habit of running away in my little battles. The 42d has the worst reputation of all my British battalions! But they look good.

French Old Guard formed in Line and occupying a Ridge, repelling an enemy attack in Column. Why Mr Tyson, it is almost as if the French are commanded by Viscount Wellington round about 1810…

Au pas de Charge

The historical facts are very set piece and failing enormous casualties from fire power, a British line unit would get swept away.

dibble: Absolute rubbish! At no time did any French/allied Regiment 'Sweep away a British Regiment. But there were many in reverse. It was a volly followed with the bayonet…the Frogs hopped it sharply or got destroyed.

Yes, it is evident you constantly pore over those cases but I was answering the OP who asked a hypothetical with the caveat "all things being equal".

I hardly think that "all things being equal" entails a well trained firing unit sitting on top of a hill while the other side pants up it without water breaks and then has its first several ranks shot down.

Sorry, pound for pound, in a straight engagement most line units would be no match for the elite Old Guard grenadiers. Although I think a kilted Scots unit might give a better account of themselves.

I am confused. What values, exactly, are being tested in this hypothesis?

What values, exactly, are being tested in this hypothesis?

It's a laboratory experiment. One battalion of each, at full parade-ground strength, are placed at opposite ends of a football field. The weather is clear, the ground is dry. All the men of both sides have been well-fed and rested and have plenty of ammo. Nobody has gout or typhus. Nobody has been shooting at them. Then somebody runs across the middle of the field between them, waving a handkerchief, and the game is on. The first unit to have at least one-third of its men die and/or run away, loses.

You know; the sort of thing that happened all the time in history. It should be easy to figure out.

As a control group, we could do it again on two other fields, each time substituting one of the two with a battalion of Württemberg fusiliers who've been marching uphill all day and haven't had lunch yet, and who are a little irate to be told that they're "average troops" for purposes of the experiment.

What "values are being tested" in anything that involves warGAMING?
I suppose there are some " values" being tested for people who have deluded themselves into believing they are involved in some academic pursuit and involved in some type of " simulation" -- which I can -- with first hand experience assure you that you are not !!
As far as the football field scenario, I suppose this would work ?
However I write these possible scenarios for those with more picturesque imaginations and much
broader and imaginative minds for their own creative game plans.
I do find it interesting how it seems nationalistic tendencies seemed to appear on this particular post?

Russ Dunaway

@ Mr. Lapsang. "French Old Guard formed in Line and occupying a Ridge, repelling an enemy attack in Column. Why Mr Tyson, it is almost as if the French are commanded by Viscount Wellington round about 1810…"

Sir, excellent observation, but it was even worse. In that 15mm battle pictured above, it wasn't the Old Guard, but an average French line battalion on the ridge that repelled the 42d!!!

As a side note; in that 15mm battle, the British won……but no thanks to the 42d Highlanders!

Au pas de Charge

Perhaps if you quoted more clearly, you wouldn't have people mistakingly thinking that you are addressing them!

Sorry, pound for pound, in a straight engagement most line units would be no match for the elite Old Guard grenadiers. Although I think a kilted Scots unit might give a better account of themselves.

Those "most line units" would not be most British line units though. They 'The 1st Grenadiers' may well have had a hand in the odd battle and triumph in Europe against the Prussians, Austrians, Russians etc, but as is pretty obvious, none are British until the Guard met them at Mont St Jean and promptly melted away like a Chocolate fire-guard after suffering but a dozen casualties before ******ing off sharply under the cover of the night and mass desertion. The other regiments of the Guard who faced the 'British'were repulsed sharply and all but destroyed. Not one Guard unit came to bayonet distance of those British units who had been standing solid for hours under intense bombardment and cavalry charges.

What happened in the Peninsula? Dear old Nappy, at the head of his hoard of 130,000, watched as his Chasseurs of the Guard (The very regiment who supplied his bodyguard) get a damned good drubbing and its general (who would become a parole-breaking little ****) captured by the 10th Hussars.

Shouldn't there be a penalty against the Scotchmen for being made to fight in colourful loincloths?