"Two rule-sets, one battle" Topic

Has anyone ever actually played this?

Seems so natural to us. Think of any battle which began with an advance guard seizing an objective before the main army brigade or division comes up.

Being more au fait with the Peninsula, I'm thinking Oporto where a handful of lights jumped on a small boat, crossed the River Douro, seized a seminary, controlled the crossing and thus instigated a more general battle. In fact there are plenty of battles which began or found a focus around a small objective, like the Encounter on the Coa, Rolica, Bussaco or many of the Pyrenean battles. Perhaps even Slavkov (Austerlitz) or Vitoria could be imagined this way.

So you begin with a small objective using skirmish rules. The players fight it out and as soon as one side seizes the objective, you automatically reinforce the men involved; platoons become battalions, cannon become batteries, troops become regiments etc. The main forces enter the table and you switch to division-rules with battalion-sized units.

There's something very magical about the change of perspective this gives to the play.

That's an interesting situation.

Jim

Original idea!

Interesting, but I'd be hesitant to follow it exactly. I've run into preliminary fights with smaller forces and a different acale and rules, and I like that. But swapping out platoons for battalions changes the ground scale greatly, turning a tiny bridgehead into a huge one. And I think sometimes you'll wind up with battalions, regiments and batteries in positions they'd never have been place in but which were fine for smaller forces. Might work better for WW2, possibly?

But yes, I'd love a skirmish/RPG 28mm game to decide who begins the 6mm battle with possession of the bridge.

robert piepenbrink
"But swapping out platoons for battalions changes the ground scale greatly, turning a tiny bridgehead into a huge one".

Sure. Works best for a single objective on part of the table. For example, with something like a bridge or a cross-roads surrounded by some trees, the moment of widening out the scale when you upgrade the units is pretty seamless as the scale of the unused surrounding terrain was irrelevant. After the action, the loser just has to retreat a decent distance before both sides upgrade. If either side doesn't have the minimum number of men left for a squad or a platoon (whatever your skirmish unit was), the unit is lost.

For something like a house objective, you're imagining it in a village. When you widen out the scale, you are now imagining that the house model from the previous skirmish action represented a series of simultaneous fights in a number of houses in the village.

Anyway, seems to work. I also like the idea from battle reminiscences when the description shifts from the immediate concerns of a few men fighting at a crucial point, to then encompass the whole battle.

So I might try this within a battle too. Something like when the first men of Loison's division traipsed up the Busaco escarpment and encountered Black Bob Craufurd and a few men of the Light Division. Or for WW2, the Battle of Outpost Snipe during the Second Battle of El Alamein, where a single anti-tank gun crew held off a German armored advance. The idea would be to fight the skirmish action for a limited number of moves, then deploy the up-graded forces to previously decided positions.

When several French regiments in line were pouring a terrific fire into his company cowering behind trees and bumps in the ground, Sir John Kinkcaid, then a new officer, recalled that the example of a particular veteran rifleman named Priestly, who forsook his shelter to fire back, galvanised the whole battalion to follow suit with the result that first their immediate attackers, then the rest of the enemy were driven back.

Kincaid probably wrote with greater regard to the vagaries of a soldier's perspective than to the cumulative efforts of hosts of individuals; nevertheless he touched upon a truth known to the best commanders, that all too easily gets lost in the grand scheme of history, when he wrote in his 1835 book,

"The greater part of the victories on record, I believe, may be traced to the individual gallantry of a very small portion of the troops engaged; and if it were possible to take a microscopic view of that small portion, there is reason to think that the whole of the glory might be found to rest with very few individuals."

Interesting, and a very similar conclusion to that reached by S.L.A.Marshall in his study of American infantrymen in WWII.

arthur1815
"Interesting, and a very similar conclusion to that reached by S.L.A.Marshall in his study of American infantrymen in WWII"
Which gives more importance to the commanders interest in morale. Good morale is not just for preventing soldiers from cowering, but to relax them so they can think and take advantage when martial chances present themselves.

Sounds like a great idea.