19 November 2010

A quick tentative OB for Gravelotte/St Privat - French

Based on the excellent OB from 1870 for the follow-on battle to Mars-La-Tour, this gives a picture of what the French unit structure might look like for a major game.




Infantry Guns Mg Horse
France





2nd Corps





1st Division 4 1



2nd Division 4 1 1


Brigade Lapasset 2

1


Cavalry Division


4


Reserve Artillery
3


3rd Corps





1st Division 4




2nd Division 4 1



3rd Division 4 1 1


4th Division 4 1



Cavalry Division


6


Reserve Artillery
3


4th Corps





1st Division 4 1 1


2nd Division 4 1



3rd Division 4 1 1


Cavalry Division


4


Reserve Artillery
3


6th Corps





1st Division 4 1 1


2nd + 3rd Divisions 5 2



4th Division 4 1



1st Reserve Cavalry
1
3

Imperial Guard





Voltigeur 4 1 1


Grenadier 4 1



Cavalry Division
1
3

Army





3rd Reserve Cavalry
1
4


Reserve Artillery
4



Totals
59 30 6 25




21 "divisions"






6 Corps





Figures 354 30 6 50


One immediate observation is that, at 3cm frontage, that is 3 running feet of guns. Guns were important, sure, but that is unmanageable and visually overwhelming. I am going to either have to find a way to get the guns on 20 or better 15m frontage bases, or I am going to have to re-structure the OB to drastically reduce the number of gun models.

2 comments:

  1. hmm a battery frontage would be what, 80 yards?
    Changing the frontage of the stand won't change the number of gun models.

    What about something like 1 gun stand for each concentration of guns with the strength varying with the number of guns so that if batteries from the corps reserve are deployed to support a division, the strength of that stand goes up without adding additional models. That way there is no loss of flexibility wrt how the available batteries are deployed as there might be if you , for example, took the total corps artillery and halved the number of gun stands.

    That's also 6 feet of French Infantry, wall to wall stands minus a reserve. Looks to me like 1/2 that number of infantry and artillery would be better for a 3-4 hour game.
    -Ross

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  2. Well, that's a count of double batteries - 12 guns each; so a 2cm stand in that respect would not be that far off. I think you are right, we need to cut the gun count. The stand count in general, but certainly the gun count.

    The trade-off is that we loose the gun stand in the French infantry divisions.

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