Battle for the Centre (Post II)

The previous post set out a process for creating a Corps level battle set across three tables, but fighting the engagement one table at time.

This post covers the first action, which takes place in the centre, with roughly a division of troops per side.

Below - a schematic of this particular battlefield, which was created by the terrain chart in the previous post.

It will be noted that the battlefield favours the French, as the defensible terrain is on their side of the table and since they are both victory objectives, the Austrian side must work hard in this action.

You may recall that the Austrian Corps Commander is Lethargic. This means that at the start of each Austrian turn, a randomly selected Austrian infantry unit cannot move that turn. As it happens the dice were rather cruel to 3rd Infantry Brigade (on the hill) and so their early moves against the village were rather tardy.

Below - Out of interest, since I have already worked out the terrain and the forces for the whole three table battle, here is a plan of all three tables from the French perspective (today we are in the centre portion);

You will note that overall the French have a lot of defensive terrain on their side of the table, plus they also have the majority of the victory point locations. This is just what the terrain creator threw up. I rather like the fact that the battlefield favours one side (the French) and that their stance is almost certainly going to become defensive because of that.

I fancy that if I had ‘designed’ the table myself, I would have felt obliged to even out the terrain a bit so that both sides saw a bit of balance, but battle situations are rarely balanced, so I like what the random selector has done here, especially from a solo point of view, it has served up a challenge.

The system (previous post) requires that the first battle is fought in the centre. If I were a betting man, I would probably put my money on a French win …. we shall see!

Above - here is how the table looks with units deployed. The artillery of both sides has open views.

We dice for who is player 1. The French get an uplift for having cavalry, but despite this, the Austrian player will go first each turn (9 turns, plus a possible 10th).

Here is a brief overview of the battle;

Austrian guns target the French cavalry and cause them to fall back. 

The Austrians at the hill keep suffering from their Corps Commander being lethargic!

In the centre, there is an early charge by the French Light cavalry (above). The Austrian infantry fail their response test. The charge goes in and the Austrians are lucky to recoil with light casualties, but the Austrian centre is now tied down - they were intended to support the assault on the village.

Above - outside the village, a French column throws in a spoiling attack against part of the Austrian advance. The other half of the Austrian advance attacks the village, but is thrown back.

Turn 4 -   And then we come to turn 4, when we must roll on the Random Events Table as instructed and outlined in the previous post.

The French - get the ‘Ney type commander’ result and they are obliged to immediately launch their light cavalry to attack the nearest enemy, even if doing so takes more than 1 move.

The Austrians - get reinforcements as the Corps Commander calls upon support from his left flank - they arrive in the form of the heavy cavalry brigade, two regiments of dragoons.

The reinforcing cavalry (above) fall upon the flank of the French column in front of the village that just launched that spoiling attack …… they are swept away by the dragoons. 

This turns the table in that sector of the battlefield and a renewed Austrian assault on the village takes it (above), ejecting the French garrison. While all this has been a great success for the Austrians, they will suffer the absence of the cavalry when they play that battle on the Austrian left flank!

As for the ‘Ney’ type charge, once again the Austrian infantry fail their response test, but they manage to retain cohesion, while falling back.

Above - on the French left, amongst the fields, the French 1st Infantry Brigade have taken heavy casualties, but still hold the fields and as the clock ticks, it becomes clear that the Austrians will not be able to eject them.

End of the game - even though many of the units in the game have taken heavy casualties, with some wavering, the surprising truth is that only one unit has actually been removed from play (the French infantry swept away by the cavalry charge).

If we count up the victory points, the French get 2 VP’s for holding the walled fields. The Austrians get 2 VP’s for holding the village, but also get a VP for the destroyed French unit, giving the Austrians a win in this part of the battle.

That was a genuine surprise to me at least. Almost certainly the arrival of the Austrian cavalry was the thing that swung the outcome, though now that Austrian left flank must fight without the cavalry in the next battle.

I am thinking of tweaking the scenario builder set out in the last post, to have each flank battle on Turn 7 be influenced by the news coming from the battle in the centre.

On this occasion, both flanks will be told that the Austrians are winning in the centre and this will cause all French units involved in those two battles to test their resolve at the start of turn 7. Each French unit will take a Morale Test. If a testing unit fails, it will fall back 6” and take a disordered marker.

I think this helps knit the relationship between the three battlefields a little more and is gentle enough as not to be too dramatic.

Anyway, that’s it. A third post will cover the pending two flank battles. I did intend everything to be wrapped up in this post, but my play has been interrupted, so I thought I may as well do a more detailed account of the centre battle and allow the other two battles to follow in due course.

Once the other two battles are played out, I will put together a PDF of the process described in the last post and tweaked after the three plays and share it on my DropBox (thank you DropBox). I will put links for it in the Resource section of each related post.

RESOURCES;

The scenario creator process in the previous post can be found here - LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-three-table-battle-not-part-i.html

I also have another bit of webspace called COMMANDERS which is a bit more magiziney than here - LINK

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html

28mm Austrian Jäger

I started this little group of 9 figures on 5th April, which turns out lucky, as the three table battle that I am working through at the moment, has Austrian Jägers appearing on one of the flank battles. So I have put a bit of a wiggle on to get these over the finishing line and ready for action.

My normal napoleonic 80mm bases have two ranks of 5 figures giving 10 fairly closely packed men, so just putting three to a base here, compared to the rest of the force really opens up the base to give a good open order look.

They can do double service when not acting as companies of jäger, deployed as line skirmishers thrown out by the battalions.

They are all plastics, mainly Victrix (I think).

One final job is to give a light spraying of matt varnish, but I will wait for the weather to warm up a little more before trusting the rattle can.

I am trying to keep the French and Austrian armies fairly evenly matched in unit types as they added to, so the vacant positions on the painting corks will now be taken by 9 French Voltigeurs. 

These are metals (Eagle Figures) that were rattle can primed white last year as part of the autumn prepping for the winter painting.

Gathering 10mm Forces - how to base?

I recently mentioned doing an experiment with Pendraken 10mm figures, with the core design principle being a fast assembly of forces with very minimal time spent with a paint brush. This would be about getting a functional army to the table quickly. It needed a break of mindset of always feeling compelled to paint the detail that is on the figure.

I recently abandoned a couple of the Warlord Games’ Epic projects, being over faced with a painting challenge and never seemingly being able to adjust my painting technique to the three foot rule that I think the benefits the scale, plus over time I became less of a fan of the formulaic look of ranked infantry, with each figure merging into the next - so time for a re-think.

I like the idea of the figures being based very close together, but remaining individual and then painting after basing. For speed, just undercoat in black, dry brush white and pick out highlights that the paint brush could reach, which would mostly default to the front of the front rank and the rear of the rear rank getting more attention that those hard to reach places between the ranks.

I am reminded of how many years ago I was buying ready 4 ranked bases in 6mm from Irregular Miniatures and that is exactly how you had to paint them.

Just to try this out, I ordered a packet of line infantry, one of line command, one of dragoons, one of artillery and a senior command pack. The intention was to use one pack per unit.

Per pack, Pendraken give you 30 infantry, 15 cavalry or 3 guns with crew.

So, firstly, how to base? this has been my most pressing question. In the end I just pinched my nose and jumped in, but already I am having second thoughts on the Infantry basing.

For infantry, there are 3 bases per unit on 40mm x 20mm plastic bases (Kallistra). For line, this gives a frontage of 120mm with 36 figures. Because this exceeds the pack size, I have had to create two command based (flagged) from my stash, but one of these bases will be installed in a second unit if I press on with this project.

The three bases behind each other give a good impression of an assault column, with plenty of heads in there (36). What it doesn’t do well is march column or form the ideal square, but I can get around this with markers.

Why am I having second thoughts - perhaps just two bases at 50mm frontage each might help with table constraints and going for the ‘small game’, giving a unit frontage of 100mm and being a better fit with what I have done with the cavalry and artillery. Also IF I decide to go with Kallistra hexes again, the 100mm frontage will at least fit their hex.

For the artillery, the 3 models and 12 crew in a pack, works well to give a sense of a deployed battery. These are on an 80mm x 40mm base. The black priming while based works okay with a rattle can, but is best done with two light coats to better catch the undercuts.

Note the cannon on the left has lost its barrel in action! I can’t find it anywhere, so I have replaced it with a piece of cocktail stick sanded down. I doubt anyone will notice once painted and I won’t tell if you don’t!

Cavalry - I like the look of single big cavalry bases. This will count as a single unit, regiments in big games and perhaps squadrons in skirmish level games. The 14 models here are on an 80mm x 60mm base. They are ranked in straight lines and I wish now that I had done them just slightly less formed, to give a sense of motion.

Command stand - These are on a 40mm round base, which I now feel is a tad too big, but I will treat them as army or corps commanders, so their status befits the bigger base!

Painting

To stop me doing detail, rather than painting on sticks, I mounted the figures on their bases and then primed with a black rattle can. The infantry were dry brushed twice to accentuate the white. After that I just dabbed with the paintbrush onto the accessible parts of the figures.

These are Napoleonic Austrian infantry, so they have white tunics and trousers, black boots and helmets and then yellow to the sides of the helmet crest. Muskets are brown with steel bayonets attached and exposed skin is limited to hands and face. Backpacks are brown with a grey roll on top.

All the worrying things like belts, straps, buttons, water bottles, bayonet scabbards, collar colours and other trim etc etc either  can be ignored. 

Pretty much everywhere the colours have been suggested rather than carefully detailed. An example being the yellow sides to the helmet crest. This was slapped on and then a black stripe was placed over the very top of the comb and each helmet got a ‘dab’ of black to its sides, by the end of that process, there was still enough yellow showing to give the right impression.

What surprised me was that I completed the three base paint job in 1 hour and 15 minutes. The prep, priming, varnish and ground paste are what they are, but 1:15 for a unit for the painting bit, I thought was very good. My Epic were taking around 5 hours and my 28’s for 20 figures are generally takin 13 - 15 hours!

So - with the three foot rule, I am thinking these will be fine. My worry will be getting the cavalry to look good enough, with ‘rough’ painting and trying not to have too much primer left exposed, but I’m sure they will be fine.

What next?

I don’t know really. Initially this is an experiment for me just to see if it has the basis of something that I want to take forward. I just can’t decide whether this is something I want to pursue. On the same painting tray are 9 x 28mm Austrian Jäger for skirmish stands and they look so nice and I just want to finish them and perhaps that tells its own tale.

In the short term, I could move this to a Neil Thomas style army, so just 3 more infantry units would give a 6 unit army for his one hour battle scenarios and then make an opposing army. After that, doing double of everything would give a couple of handy pocket armies.

I might just order the figures needed to make up those bases, prime them and use them as they are, while I get a feel for them on the table and can then paint them over time, as it seems that a single unit could be painted in a single session.

Resources;

Pendraken website. LINK

https://www.pendraken.co.uk/

I have another bit of web space (COMMANDERS) that is a bit more magaziney than here and is likely where the small updates on the project will appear. LINK

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html