An action at Jena 1806 played out with DBN

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about a situation that had occurred in a boardgame, which I thought could be transferred to the tabletop for a figure game with the DBN rules. Here is the boardgame situation;

A link to that previous post, which is basically the scenario builder, is in the Resource section below.

Here is the Schematic diagram that fell from that;

And here todays table. I have gone for a 4’ x 3½ space for 28mm figures on 80mm bases. I am still building up my Warlord Games Epic forces specifically for this scenario, so for the contest today, my 28mm Austrians will be acting as proxy for the Prussian / Saxon side.

The following shots show the starting positions from the French Perspective. Firstly, the French middle (below). This is a line of 4 units (brigades), the one on the French left has been designated elite.

Below is the French left wing, there are four bases and they are in base to base contact with each other. That means the whole group can be activated for movement (if they stay together) for one Command Point - instead of separate command points for each unit.

Below is the French right. This wing is weaker with just 2 bases (2 brigades), but there is an elite artillery unit just behind them.

The Prussian Force is represented by Prussians forming the left wing and the Saxon allies forming the right. In the game the Saxon line infantry are counted as militia which gives them a -1 in fighting, but that is countered slightly by a +1 they get for close combat. The whole army has its musket range reduced because of their lack of skirmishers. Below is the Saxon right.

The Saxons do though have light infantry and attached jägers sitting at the rear of the woods, they just hope that they can support their comrades at the front in time

Importantly, when a side roll for their command, the French get a +1 and the Prussian / Saxons get a -1 ….. such is limitation of an 1806 Prussian force!

AT START

The attack opens with the French centre (below) assaulting the slopes. The left of their line attack in column of brigades with the elite unit leading. 

The Saxon cavalry and infantry (below) in the centre take casualties from the enemy advance and are compelled to charge down the slopes into the attacking French.

The cavalry do well, pushing the French back, but the infantry charge is badly mauled as it contacts the elite French and they retire back up the hill …. Shaken!

ABOVE - The Saxon light infantry emerge from the woods, led by the jägers. The Saxons position now feels a little less exposed.

On the French left, their light cavalry charges uphill at the Saxon infantry, but they recoil. That Saxon wing is holding.

The Saxons struggle in the centre ….. The previously successful Saxon light cavalry are chased off, now shaken (shaken on 2 hits, 3 destroys) and the French elite unit has pressed home the attack and what was the shaken Saxon infantry unit, flee the field. The Saxon light Infantry that had just emerged from the woods, move to counter the French advances in the centre.

Overall view as Turn 4 starts - The Saxon right is under pressure, but holding firm. Their centre has broadly collapsed. On their left the Prussians have hardly been engaged. The French below have had to drift to avoid the Prussian artillery and so the French assault here has been delayed. As a consequence, the village of Lutzeroda, defended by a lone Prussian unit has not seen any action.

Suddenly, everything changes - The elite French unit on the left routs the Saxon light infantry, then over on the French right, their light infantry destroys a unit of Prussian guns that were in the process or re-orientating their cannon to follow the French movement (drift). And then finally, the French assault on the right takes out another unit (line infantry), with four Prussian / Saxon units now routed from the field, the French automatically win the game.

That was a dreadful turn for the allies, as they watch three units collapse. The reason was that in the game, combat work on opposed die rolls. If (with modifiers) one side scores better than the other, then they inflict a hit. If they win the combat by at least twice as much, the defender is destroyed.

Such was the extremes of these three sets of die rolls, that in each case the allies were removed from play. You could repeat this game several times and that might never happen again, the allies have been very unlucky and straight away, I want to play this again.

In some respects, the Allies are on the back foot from the start, but they do have some things going for them. Other than in the centre, the French units do not start in the best positions and they generally need a few turns to unravel that. The Allies are uphill, so benefit in close combats and the French are up against the clock (10 turns ….. which I might reduce a little for the next game).

Had those three devastating losses not happened, the battle would have rumbled on. I think in the time frame available Lutzeroda would have been safe, it may have come under pressure, but would have likely held. In the next game, I think the French might be better to prioritise that village as the main objective, forcing the allies to respond with manoeuvres that would be difficult because of their comparatively restrained number of Command Points.

The star of the show was the French elite infantry unit, but then they were up against militia! It should be noted in despatches that the Saxon jägers game a good account of themselves (below photo).

RERSOURCES

An early post that played out the building of the scenario, from boardgame to tabletop. LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/10/converting-boardgame-to-figures-jena.html

Converting boardgame to figures - Jena

 

Firstly, thank you to those who have recently started following the blog, your visible support is appreciated.

Following on from the last post (link below), having played the Jena - Auerstaedt scenario from the Napoleon at War boardgame, a situation occurring in that game has been lifted from the game to create a DBN figures scenario.

The below photo shows the part of the boardgame map and the included units that caught my interest.

The situation has the French on the attack, their immediate aim is to cause casualties (victory points) and capture the village of Lutzeroda, which stands in their way. It is turn 6 in the game, so the early morning fog has lifted.

The DBN rules (for figures) for napoleonic corps level battles, use armies of roughly 12 bases per side. The situation here was close to that, with three French Divisions worth of troops and also it offered an independent action from everything else occurring on the map, allowing us to easily isolate it.

The next photo (below) shows the initial sketch that I made which set the groundwork for the conversion.

There was an immediate problem. The boardgame does not have any command and control rules that causes divisions to be kept together. So even though the counters are give designations such as the 1st Infantry Brigade of Suchet's Division, the integrity of that division doesn't matter in the game and so the hierarchy of units / formations quickly becomes a bit of a mess during play, as individual units are allowed to do their fancy footwork to get them in positions that the players deems the most useful and a lot of intermixing of units goes on.

So my first attempt at creating an exact order of battle based around two or three unified named divisions failed.

Anyway, not only did this complicate matters, but it stopped being true to the situation that the boardgame had given us, as it got rid of things like the presence of guard units that had got caught up in the mix etc. 

In fact, I needn't have bothered worrying about this as DBN's command structure is from the corps level (army level for bigger games) looking straight down to a collection of individual brigades, which may group together. The thing of actual divisions within that hierarchy doesn't strictly matter in the system, rather units will start the game grouped into blocks, which I suppose in one respect is very similar to what a divisional organisation looks like and is handled abstractly here. The advantage of these blocks are that all units within the block can be activated as one force, with just a single command point and that is very efficient.

The question then became where and how should blocks exist at set-up? I decided to look for locations where two or more units from the same division existed and to then build each block around them. 

So, (a) consider their positions in the boardgame and then (b)  loosely place those units into blocks that match in our minds eye as to where the various divisions might sit.

So ..... next (below), we are able to have a simpler schematic of what is needed by putting the units present into divisional sized blocks. DBN allows a block (group) to comprise of up to 7 units, but it seems that 3 - 4 units is a typical average. 

Now the schematic fits the map without anything being forced. For example in the French centre, the game had two infantry brigades from Gazan's division, so we can take those two units, plus a couple of other nearby units and group them into a block and in design terms, think of them all as being Gazan's Division.  

It turns out that we can visualise our French force as comprising of three divisions, Suchet, Gazan and Desjardins, and so we end up with three 'blocks' of French units at the start.

In the real battle, Suchet and Gazan were is Lannes V Corps, so we may as well have him as the French commander for the sake of giving the commander a name (don't forget, the boardgame does not have command). The Prussians are a bit more fragmented as mentioned below.

And so it is time to start building up a scenario, which of course needs a map. (Below) An area was marked out on watercolour paper and the key terrain features were added in simple form. In essence the Prussian / Saxon forces were broadly on high ground, the boardgame hill is quite irregular and a little convoluted, but we can simplify it here. A contour line was penned in and a slight change to colour was used to show that higher ground. Some watercolour paint was added to give a coloured map. In the photo, the paper is still wet, so it is a little bowed. It does dry flat though.

Finally, I photographed this and ran it through Logoist 6 (Mac) to add units and text and then cropped it to get the final graphic (below), which I think serves well to represent what was going on in the boardgame. 

We have already described the French force. The Prussian force is in two parts. Hohenlohe is the commander. All units to his left are Prussian. One line infantry unit occupies Lutzeroda. All units to the right are Saxon allies. We might think of this total force being organised around two divisions(one Prussian, the other Saxon), though it is divided into more groups, as the Saxons are a little stretched to cover the frontage of the centre / right adequately (see the gaps between units in the original boardgame situation) making initial control a little more awkward (costly in command points).

DBN uses 'groups' as part of its command system. The Prussian army starts with 5 groups. There are a group of 4 units, (being physically adjacent to each other is important in defining a block) on the left flank. A lone unit is in the village and a lone light infantry unit is behind the woods. In front of the woods are 2 blocks, each of two units. 

This fragmented force will be expensive in command points to direct and so on most turns, with limited Prussian command points likely (a D6 minus 1), only the units that most urgently need command (to move) will get it.

Now we need to look at the DBN rules together with the situation in the boardgame and the official orders-of-battle to build this scenario. The following are to be taken into account;

The maths of unit numbers involved means that once an army suffers 4 units destroyed, it loses the game.

The situation on the map involved a French attack, it was a bit pedestrian to get going in the boardgame, but over several turns, the Prussians were pretty much destroyed as a fighting force. To encourage the French to take the battle to the Prussians, we shall say that if they capture the village of Lutzeroda, they instantly win.

The hill slope in the boardgame has a defensive bonus and in DBN units on the higher ground get a bonus in melee, so that all works without further tweaking. Making the hill difficult terrain would be overkill.

In the real battle, the troops under Hohenlohe had some jägers (light skirmishing infantry), so we will give one company of jäger to the Saxons. In DBN, jäger must start attached to a light infantry unit, so they will be placed touching the unit already behind the woods. In terms of points and unit numbers, this brings the armies closer together. In the figures game, this is an addition, bringing something to the party that the boardgame doesn't recognise at its scale.

In the boardgame, the Saxon infantry units have slightly lower strengths. In the DBN army lists for 1806, the Saxons allies count as Militia (just dampens them down a tad with a -1), so that deals with that.

In reality, Prussian / Saxon cavalry were excellent, so under DBN they will have the status of 'Superior', but it only kicks in when fighting against French light cavalry. This is not represented in the boardgame.

All cavalry on the table is classed as light.

In the boardgame, the French have two very powerful units, which belonged to the guard. The foot artillery on their right has strength 10 and the infantry line unit left of centre has a whopping strength 11. Here we will simply describe both of those units as elite to reflect that, which is enough to give them a leg up in the DBN game. 

The DBN army lists require that French 1806 army commanders get a +1 to their command roll (good), while the Prussians get a -1 (bad). By chance this helps represent what was happening in the boardgame as there was a numbers advantage with the French having 56 strength points Vs 37 points for the Prussians, so we can use this command differential to recognise that French advantage by other means.

In DBN, an 1806 Prussian musket armed unit has limited range to reflect the lack of skirmishers. To avoid the French sitting off and just shooting, we can put a time limit of 10 turns on the game (that might need tweaking after a play test) and say that if a winner has not been established by the end of Turn 10 .... The Prussians automatically win! 

This should encourage some French aggression and perhaps have them move early to capture Lutzeroda, but who knows? our Prussians may feel obliged to counter-attack ...... which they did in the boardgame. In DBN, the Prussian infantry get an uplift in close combat .... so the game may default along the lines of the French wanting to fire and the Prussians wanting to close and fight ..... that is if the Prussian command limitations can get them to the right place at the right time!

And so there it is. I have no doubt missed something that a first playing will pick up .... and so a play test comes next.

Today I put together (mostly unpainted) the bases that are needed specifically for this battle to be fought using the Warlord Games Epic figures that I have recently bought. However the needed smaller scale terrain (buildings and trees) which have been ordered, are still on the way to me, so for a first game, I will likely use my 28's and proxy the Austrians for the Prussian force (at least the white uniforms of the Saxon allies will be hinted at :-) ). 

Much of this preparation will be commented upon over at my Commanders site over coming days.

RESOURCES.

I have another bit of webspace called COMMANDERS that is more snippet based than here and gets updated more frequently. LINK

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

Here is a link to the previous post that covers the playing of the boardgame.

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/10/jena-auerstaedt-1806-boardgame.html

All things Jena Auerstaedt

Starting out with the Epic scale for DBN armies, I have something of a blank canvas. My Napoleonic 28’s are French / Austrian, so I wanted to take the opportunity to field something different and the Prussians are where my gaze has fallen. So the Epic project will see a pairing of newly formed French / Prussian Pocket Armies.

Rather than just going with some generic forces to fight some generic actions (which is fine), selecting a theatre / battle might just impart some extra flavour on the play and so my shelves were scanned for inspiration. 

‘Boom’ as the cool generation are saying! Jena - Auerstaedt 1806.

I have a rather beautiful book on the subject, Jena Auerstaedt - The Triumph of the Eagle, from the pen of E.G. Hourtoulle and published by Historie & Collections. 

A 120 page hardback, it is chock full of illustration, including lovely full colour uniform plates and nice clear maps of the actions, while also supported by a very readable text on the battle and good orders of battle and organisation notes - it is a dream book for the wargamer!

Alone, that would be enough for me, but my beady eye noticed that I also have four boardgames on the Jena Auerstaedt subject;

The Coming Storm by Kevin Zucker from Operation Support Studies.

Trois Batailles en Allemagne by Didier Rouy from Pratzen Editions and Legion Games.

Jena - Auerstaedt, one of the old Napoleon at War Quads (SPI), recently republished by Decision Games.

Deux Années de Gloire, of the Jours de Gloire series, published by Vae Victis

If nothing else, this offers a ton of play opportunity and will allow me to really get a detailed appreciation of the battle(s) and also, there will be that thing of some situations created in the boardgame playings, being suitable for transfer to the figure table, where they might generate some interesting set-ups for the DBN armies.

Despite all of this marvellous detail in front of me, of late, I have enjoyed prioritising theme and flavour on the figures table above exact replication of history and so I will be using the Jena - Auerstaedt arena to that end.

Having a quick look at the characteristics given in DBN of my two 1806 armies, The Prussians get a -1 to their command point allowance, their musketry range is reduced to reflect their lack of skirmishing capability, they get a bonus in close combat and cannot use column for assault.

The French get a +1 to their command point allowance and an additional bonus when using column attack.

These differences might bring some additional interest to the table.

Anyway, this all seems fertile ground for a lot of near future napoleonic gaming on my table.

Resources;

I have other web space at the COMMANDERS site, where more on this will be written about over the coming weeks. LINK.

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