Attributes and States

In this post, I'll just talk about infantry.  Cavalry and artillery need something as similar as possible to do the same job, but most of the work is done by infantry.

Units

For now, Germans in Brigades of 4 stands, French in divisions of 6.  Each unit has a clear command stand that also functions as a combat stand.

Attributes


Size is automatic and not really distinct -- it is just the number of stands.  However, some rule may be needed to detach some stands, or to allow for the unit to be badly spread out.

Resolve will measure willingness to attack or hold.  Events in the battle will decrease or increase resolve.  A unit (army?) will have a starting resolve and a maximum resolve.  Units will have to test for control at various points.  If the resolve is too high they may attack when not ordered to; when the resolve is less than some value they will become reluctant.  At zero (perhaps) they will break.  This should be the only number we need to track. 

States

I think we can get by with just one -- Posture, which can be route-march, offensive, defensive, or routed.  Keeping routed units on seems a good idea, since they did tend to clog march routes and add friction to releaf or withdrawl.

Is formation a state?  I suppose so, since it is a limited set of discrete values and rules for moving between them.  Formations could be used to indicate posture - 1 rank defensive, 2 ranks offensive etc.  It could also have a continuum of values in which each stand has its own facing -- or perhaps that is a part of a defensive posture.

There is a temptation to give the stand a fair amount of latitude to match what battalions were up to in the smaller battles - but eyes on the prize, it's what the brigades and divisions did at the big battles that matter.

Rules for the last kilometer?

My thinking so far is to have a a sequence of play consisting, broadly, of

1. Grand-tactical movement, which would leave troops out of effective rifles range of their opponents (more or less).
2. Some sort of bombardment/counter-battery phase for artillery fire
3. An assault phase that covers movement through defensive fire and into close combat, with a resolution of the assault.

While we are looking at a 2 hour turn, most authorities agree that the time that men would stand actively exposed to fire is pretty limited - measure in minutes not hours.  That makes resolving the whole of infantry combat for a single turn quite sensible, and keeps the pace up so that we are not swamped with detail and fail to make our time target.

However, we do want the combat process to tell a story -- the process should drive out results like a repulse, or being driven to ground as well as varying degrees of success in taking or holding the position.

There should be some level of give and take as well - I could see a series of attacks and counter attacks as the two sides move and resolve combat until basically the front goes quiet.  Maybe something like this:

1. Players determine initiative.  I would suggest that whichever player has the most stands withing assault range of the enemy and in an offensive posture has the initiative, and must attack first.  Some mechanism should probably force some, if not all, such units to attack.  Let's call that player the "attacker" for the moment.
2. The attacker advances all units which will/must attack to within one inch of the enemy.  Some units may already be there because of previous results.
3. On a unit-by unit basis, resolve combat- ideally one roll per unit. Results would be

•  Repulsed - back to 4" from enemy, change various stats
• Go to Ground suppressed  - find a nice hole, and stay in it, 2" (500m) from enemy  Will need intervention to get moving again.
• Go to Ground firefight - find a nice position and stay an inch from the enemy, still scrapping.
• Close Combat Engaged - still fighting, indecisive
• Take ground - defender falls back and goes to ground - firefight
• Take ground - defender falls back and goes to ground -suppressed
•  Take ground - defender repulsed.

One the attacking player was finished, eligible defending units could/have to assault or counter-attack.  This would be followed by a counter-attack cycle for the attacker and that is that?  Or more such cycles?

Next post I'll muse on stats/attributes/whatever?

Mr Krupp's guns at war

I commend to your attention Dennis Showalter's book Railroads and Rifles.  Showalter goes into fascinating detail on the development of railways for war, the needle rifle, and the Krupp gun from roughly the 1820s through to the war of 1866, and at the employment of each in that war.  Long out of print, but I found a copy at the local university libary.

 Anyway a couple of points of application here:

• In one corner of Konnigratz, in a gun duel with Saxon and Austrian gun at 3,000m "the adversaries bombarded each other with virtually no result"  over several hours.  One Prussian battery lost two men and two horses over the whole engagement.
• Austrian rifled muzzle-loaders, and experimental Prussian bronze muzzle loaders used in 1870, were not particularly at a disadvantage compared to breach-loaders.  This suggests that the French guns themselves were not the real problem of the French artillery in 1870.
• Just before the FPW, in 1869, the Prussian technique for ranging a battery was to estimate the range (say 1500m) then "straddle" the target by ranging individual guns to 14, 15, and 1600m and adjust fire from there.
• According to Prussian analysis, a six gun battery was thirty times as effective than a company of infantry at 1000m range.

Artillery frontages

Living at the fringe of civilization and only reading English put two serious brakes on my opportunities to access research material; fortunately the local university with the best library did, in the 19th Century, consider the needs of potential British and Canadian officers.  I'm going to assume that the contemporary practices for the British Army is not totally out of line with continental practice.  If I can get actual French or Prussian numbers I will use them in preferences.

This means I have been able to borrow "The Elements of Field Artillery" by Captain Henry Knollys of the Royal Artillery, published by William Blackwood and Sons in 1877.

Three batteries might be deployed on a frontage of as little as 114 yards (close intervals), or as much as 345 yards (full intervals).

A single battery in column of route is 208 yards long. 

If we look at our stand front, the smallest on which a gun looks good is 2cm, while wider than 3cm will be out of place with other frontages.  I want to use 2cm; it is very much in line for 2 batteries, probably acceptable for 3).  At 4, we are really starting to push things in wheel-to-wheel.  On the hand, it is a lot easier when the base stand frontage is the narrowest possible rather than the widest.

Lets do another calculation.  The Prussians had about 600-700 guns at Sedan.  If we divide that into stands of 24 guns with 2cm front, that gives a total of 25-30 stands,  with a total front of roughly 20-24".  Given the importance of the Prussian guns, I do not see that as a problem in terms of how it will look on the table.

The stand depth will be 3cm - assuming 600 m for three batteries, that will meant we need to fit the limber in 3cm.  That is optimistic for most 10mm models.  I like limbers; if we can fit them in a 5cm deep base, that would give is a nice 800m (8cm) total for 4 batteries.

Knollys  also states quite flatly that the longest possible range (given the limitation in human eyesight) is 3000 yards.  However, he also cites a Special Committee of Rifled Field-Artillery, which suggests 4000 if the ground is at all open, with villages unsafe at longer ranges.  The first British rangefinder is still "about to be introduced" in 1877.

He also says that under 800m the gunners are too close because of the risk of rifle fire on the gunners.

A Prussian division on the march

Henderson describes a Prussian division (Kamecke's, 5th August) on the march

The Van consists of a squadron of cavalry and an infantry battalion; reserve follows the van and has the rest of the infantry regiment, a light gun battery, and pioneers with light bridging equipment.  The main body follows well behind.  The whole thing occupies 6-7 English miles of road, say 10 km - 40" in our scale.

Of course, route marches should not concern us very much -- there are more compact and flexible ways to maneuver in a tactical context; but they can be how troops arrive on the battlefield.

But lets see how this compares to Chadwicks's  version of a march column is Volley and Bayonet.  We have 8 stands of infantry and one of cavalry - 9 * 15mm = 135mm, + 1 artillery at 30mm = 16.5 cm  For march column, V&B multiplies the base depth by 4, so 66cm or 26" give or take.  If you then represent   the intervals (a total of about 5") with simple empty space, you get a total of 32" - probably close enough for government work if you add in logistic stands.

I am not sure how we will in fact represent this, or how for example this will translate into revealing blinds.  It is worth keeping in mind, however, that if you decide to concentrate a division in column on the advance guard, the lads at the rear are a full turn away,

Should divisions have a command stand?

Why they should not:

•  We are only talking half a dozen stands, the basic building bock of the game.  If you need to designate a particular stand for command functions, why not just use a specially-marked combat stand?
• And related to that, why add 20 or more stands to each side?  They will slow things down.

Why they should:

•  If we let the German division operate as brigades, a division is starting to look like a small corps with cavalry, guns, and 2 infantry maneuver elememts
• It gives us a way to represent the command/control center of the division  - this may be important if we let elements start to wonder about.
• It gives us a place status and order markers without cluttering the main line of the action.

A related question:  Are French and German divisions different enough in capability that there are two different answers?

Divisions, brigades, fronts, words

From Howard:

• Kameke's attack on the Rotherberg at Spicheren; Six battalions attacking on a front of 4 km.  Decisively defeated.  An 8-stand Prussian division spread across 16" actually looks OK.  For 4 stands of a Brigade to do that they have to be 5" apart.
• This brings another question along with it.  Can we better represent German tactical flexibility by letting them either (1) Operate in 4 stand brigades instead of 8 stand divisions (2) allow wider movement to the Germans say in 2-stand "regiment" units - but still operating within the divisional mission.  This would let us get a bit more details in to smaller battles, would it cost too much in the big ones.
• In a couple of other points in Howard's account of Spicheren, attacks by 6 battalions are mentioned.  This re-enforces the idea that the Brigade is a key tactical layer.

A sidebar about words.  I have been thinking about phrases like "posture" or "intent" for what binds the actions which a division is allowed.  Posture works well for me for the current state, and gets at phrases like "changing from a defensive to an offensive posture"  -- but whatever the current posture, a division would have a mission from the corps commander.  I think this should be concrete and tied to a geographic point; it should dictate the postures that the unit can voluntarily assume and provide a "leash" that ties it to the orders from higher authorities.  And the German leash, in that analogy, should be longer.