The Loose Association of Wargamers

grizzlymc wrote: ↑Wed Feb 05, 2020 11:48 pm ET, are your drawers on the Wikipedia Leipzig page? I dare not look.

That was an unfortunate turn of phrase!

"Unfortunate"???? Have you never come across Grizz before?

What goes on between consenting adults is no-one else's business, unless they have the photographs.

Stage 2. Random events. There will be two: the defection of the Bavarians (I don't have any Saxons) and the premature blowing of the bridge.

Rather than making them purely random, these could have triggers from the battlefield to get them started. eg. The blowing of the bridge, would never need to be made if the French are in control of the town area, so maybe we set a perimeter on the town and say if the opposing army has 4 units within a certain distance from the town or maybe if the ratio of opposition to defenders reaches 2:1 then this is the trigger to start rolling percentage dice: start at 100 & each turn drop 10% with a roll above triggering the event.

Similarly with the Bavarians maybe the dice only gets rolled if the are less than x number of French units within a certain distance of them that this triggers the percentage dice to be rolled. Once triggered you can't stop the % dice rolls until you meet a certain stop criteria. ie the bridge dice roll might stop if the opposing units have been fended off and remain outside the perimeter for a turn or two, and with the allied units that they must have x+1 units of French now within distance for more than a turn.ie they are less likely to turn if there is a show of French force around them. This then ties these events to things happening on the battlefield and it not just feeling like a random event.

What do you think?

donald

Sounds good to me. I like this sort of event.

From my own knowledge of them, I would look at who the opposition is playing an equal part in triggering a Bavarian defection, not just the proximity of their allies - they would fight like hell against Austrians (because of the Tyrolean thing) but not so hard against the Swedes or Russians. You could end up with Bavarians trying to defect to Swedes who are themselves trying to have as little as possible to do with the whole sordid business!

We're working on army composition. We are going to go with "compartmentalising" our forces. This just makes things more manageable, particularly as there will be a gamer commanding each corps.

Each of the Allies (Austrians, Russians, Prussians, Swedes) will get a very similar sized forces. The French will get three(Line, Confederation & Guard).

This is the initial composition of the Austrian Corps:

CO + 5-7 ADC figures (we may need extra depending on CO quality; to be decided)

1. Cavalry Brigade -General
- 2 X Cuirassier regiments – Line- standard size @ 4 bases (ie 3 figures a base)
2. Cavalry Brigade- General
- 2 X Light cavalry regiments - Veteran- 1 x Standard size & 1 x large size @ 5 bases
3. Infantry Brigade – General
- 3 X Grenadier battalions – Veteran- standard size @ 4 bases each (ie 4 figures a base)
3 x Skirmish bases (ie 2 figure bases) (this is the brigade skirmish line, will use Grenz or Jager figures for this)
4. Infantry Brigade – General
- 3 x Line infantry battalions – Line- Large size @ 6 bases each
- 3 x Skirmish bases (as above)
5. Infantry Brigade – General
- 4 X Line infantry battalions – Line- standard size @ 4 bases each
- 3 X Skirmish bases (as above)
6. Infantry Brigade – General
- 4 X Landwehr battalions (or possibly Grenz who were good skirmishers but poor line troops)- Recruit- standard size @ 4 bases each
- 3 x Skirmish bases (as above NB 1 less for recruit-quality brigades)
7. Artillery
(either or both attached to infantry or cavalry brigades)
2 batteries. That’ll be 4 bases each & the gamer commanding the force will choose whether he wants Horse, light, medium or heavy.
NB Austrians don’t get a separate artillery brigade (& no general or ADC either)

This represents over 500 figures, so for the game, a total of something well over 3000 figures will be used (1/72 & 20mm).
Given that Leipzig had 600 000 combatants, it gives a handy ratio of 1 figure represents 200 actual soldiers. So before you cavil over "companies of skirmishers", a 6 figure skirmish screen actually represents 2 battalions of deployed light troops.
We will stick to our usual terms but as you can see, a Corps really represents an army.

Please comment.

donald