We are approaching 5.30 PM on the first day of a battle that lasted for two days. In the boardgame, the French have just been ejected from Aspern Village by Austrians from Bellegarde’s column.
The photograph below shows the situation and we are going to concentrate on those four hexes marked on the map, taking the units and terrain from within that location as the basis of a new scenario.
In addition there are two stacks that have been marked with white circles. These although situated off-table, may provide some influence on our battlefield. The lower circle shows a French stack containing cavalry (Piré) and artillery (Lasalle). The Upper circle contains an Austrian infantry brigade (Henneberg).
In the boardgame, the French at this location are on the ropes and the next Austrian attack is expected to be very successful, but it doesn’t do as well as hoped. The photo below shows the post attack positions.
The French, located behind a stream and amongst woods have held. The two upper circles show that Bellegarde’s two brigades have become disordered and the counters flipped to their weaker sides. In the lower circle, Koller’s Brigade has destroyed the French guns that were in front of him and he has moved his brigade forward, further isolating the French position.
Note the first number at the bottom of the counter is the attack value. Black numbers show the unit is a brigade and white numbers a regiment. French 26th Léger have a charmed life, will they be so lucky in our figures game?
The first thing we need is a map. Below is a good schematic of what we need, it has essentially straightened out any contortions caused by the hex grid.
The buildings represent just the part of the lower end of Aspern village that rub shoulders with our location. We have straightened the river out and represented the soft ground and woods that sit behind it.
Now we need to dig deeper into the order of battle and do a bit of research to discover how the brigades and regiments are constructed in terms of total numbers, training / morale and component battalions. A variety of sources are needed to get the full picture and to do some cross referencing.
Next we need to populate the map with units in a way that reflects the situation in the boardgame.
If we take the French first;
F1? is the off-board cavalry (Piré) and artillery.
F2 is a 6 pdr artillery battery belonging to Legrand’s Div (part of F3)
F3 is Leguay’s Brigade (2nd Line and 16th Line regiments = 6 batt).
F4 is 26th Léger (it has 1367 men spread across 3 battalions of light).
Now the Austrians;
A1? is off-board Henneberg (IR17 and IR36 = 6 battalions in all).
A2 is Shaeffer’s Brigade (IR42 and IR35 = 6 battalions in all).
A3 is Koller’s Brigade (IR25 with 3 batts and IR54 with 2 batts).
A4 is Stuart (IR18 with 3 battalions)
The Terrain features. The waterway is a stream, crossable along its entire length. In the boardgame, attacking across it does give the defender an uplift benefit so we should reflect that. As many systems might keep stream crossings a thing of just movement that is separate from actual combat results, it may be more helpful here to rule that units entering the waterway must immediately end their movement for that turn and take one level of disorder. They can move normally next turn. This will likely translate into the French getting an extra opportunity to fire before any physical contact, thus getting some sort of an advantage just as we see in the boardgame.
The buildings offer protection to an occupant to both fire and melee attacks - using whatever value the rules of choice give, though I doubt fighting in Aspern is about to break out any time soon in this scenario. :-)
In the boardgame, a hex containing woods gives a defender an uplift against both fire and melee. For us, units in a wood can gain the normal defensive benefit of being in woods that the rules used allow. Note the 26th is a light unit so will be able to operate freely in the woods in skirmish order. Each wood can only hold 1 unit at any one time.
The boggy area should count as ‘Difficult Ground’. In my own home brew rules this slows a unit down and attracts disorder markers.
Troop Quality - in the boardgame this is of some importance and the centre number on each counter represents quality when taking the various and frequent tests. Most figure rules offer at least 3 levels of troop quality, whatever they call them i.e. Poor, veteran and Seasoned or Inferior, Capable or Superior etc. We will need three such relative states to describe our forces.
Using the counter information for reference, we can treat all the French units as Capable, except their cavalry, which are Superior. The Austrians by comparison will have all units treated at the lower level i.e. Inferior, except for Koller’s Brigade, which seem to match the French, so they will be treated as Capable.
We now need some special rules to reflect some aspects of the boardgame situation.
French off-table units - these are not fully free to act as they may have faced their own enemy influence during the boardgame turn, so we shall allow Piré to release just 8th Hussars (449 men) to enter our battlefield. He will retain 16th Chasseurs á Cheval, plus his artillery will stay off table, but be free on every turn, until the Hussars arrive, to bombard onto our table. Add 10” onto their range from the table edge to represent their distance from the battlefield. Starting from Turn 2, roll a D6 at the start of each turn. If scoring less than the current turn number, the Hussars will arrive on the table and be allowed a full move (and can even charge) that turn from the table edge at point F1.
Leguay’s Brigade can deploy anywhere on their side of the stream at the start of play (26th will start positioned in association with directly defending the woods in the centre). Elements of Leguay’s Brigade can lend support to 26th.
Austrian off table units - Henneberg. At the start of every turn the Austrians roll a D6. On a score of 1 - 3 a single Regiment of three battalions can enter the table at point A1. The first regiment to enter will be IR17 under the command of Reuss-Plauen. The second regiment will be IR36 under the command of Kollowrat. There are only two regiments.
The boardgame uses chit draw to activate formations, this means that Shaeffer / Henneberg could never activate at the same time as Koller / Stuart, so those two groups could not co-ordinate their attacks at the same moment. To bring this limitation to our figures table, during the Austrian turn, do not allow units under Shaeffer or Henneberg to shoot at or melee with the same units that Koller / Stuart shoot at or melee with and vice-versa. Neither can they ‘support’ each other if the chosen rules allow for supports.
Game Length - The boardgame is representing a slice of action that fits in to 1½ hours of ‘real time’ with a maximum of 2 activations for each formation. We will limit our scenario to just 6 turns, so that the Austrians are under similar time pressures. At the end of turn 6, roll a D6, on a 1-3 a 7th turn is played.
Victory - In the boardgame, the winner had to have an advantage of more than 7 Victory Points than the enemy, otherwise the game is a draw. This is quite demanding on a winning player, so we will also be demanding here and say that to win, at the end of 6 (or 7) turns, the Austrians must have captured the wood in the centre from the French AND not have lost any more units than the French side has lost, If at the end of play the French still hold the central wood - they win regardless of losses, anything else is a draw.
Rules - ‘go to’ rules that can manage divisional sized games are preferable. I have some options here. Soldiers of Napoleon, which I have just started to use, offer an advantage that they encompass off-board activity and they activate forces one brigade at a time.
Black Powder also activates brigade by brigade and the order / failed order system would likely bring some dynamism into this closed situation and add to Austrian time pressures when units fail to activate.
My home brew rules are second nature to me, so will play quickly and as units lose cohesion, they will at first lose offensive capability, but still hold okay up in defence - this aspect might help the rather overwhelmed French here.
Shadow of the Eagles have an advantage that the units pretty much get one attempt to do something, such as to run an attack and then often they need to be rotated out to recover cohesion if they are to remain viable, this will put a natural brake on the Austrians.
Now it just needs the game to go to the table and see how all this goes, hopefully getting a connection with what the boardgame was offering.
In terms of game scale, there are three ways of presenting this. Austrian units are significantly larger than their French counterparts, but that aside, if we represent the forces at the battalion level, we would need 9 French battalions and 20 Austrian battalions. This is probably the ‘most right’ way to do this, but neither my current figure collection, figure scale (28mm) or table size could cope with this, so I will be bath-tubbing for a more representational presence.
Choice two is to have each regiment reduced from 3 battalions to 2. This one third reduction would keep the relationships between the forces correct. I have enough French to do this, but not Austrians. It would be a tight fit on the table, but do-able otherwise. I could of course use proxy figures or ghost (blank) bases to pad out the Austrian force.
Finally, I could take a sort of Neil Thomas approach as per his ‘One Hour Wargames’ book, with just the regiments themselves represented to give a low unit density game. This would need 7 Austrian infantry regiments which would be classed as large, with the French getting 3 Infantry regiments and one gun battery, plus one off board gun battery and the arrival at some point of a hussar regiment.
This would be close enough, certainly initially, to the 2:1 type of ratio that the scenario needs in terms of Austrian advantage, but we are not quite there yet. These Austrian formations have artillery in their researched orders of battle, however, in the boardgame, the artillery, which is represented, was not in forward positions and so not captured by our scenario frame - but we could and perhaps should allow Koller’s force to have some off table artillery support from his guns, perhaps declaring all of that fire as being at long range and not allowing it if an Austrian infantry unit is within 10” of the target.
Anyway, we shall see. At the moment I am inclined towards option 2, but practicalities may see the third option being used.
I quite enjoy converting boardgame situations to the table-top, but there is a bit of work to it, to get the connection with events that have already been experienced in the boardgame, which this post is intended to show. I find that having played the situation in a boardgame and then spending some hours researching the units and ‘that moment’, lends itself a certain realism to these sort of scenarios, as though they nearer to real events as opposed to a thrown down game.
I have another bit of webspace called COMMANDERS which is a bit more snippet based than here, though may send you to sleep just as quickly as this place does :-)
Here is the link if interested;
LINK to part 1 of what will become a 3 part series.