Square Lobositz

Der Alte Frtiz' excellent blog proved as entertaining as ever on 27 December when he presented us with Lobositz on the grand scale. I think most British wargamers only get to use such a large table at a club and few have such a wonderful collection of figures.

Lobositz itself is such an intriguing battle, if it hadn't actually been fought no doubt C S Grant would have made it up as a "wargames scenario".

Having a spare hour before lunch  I decided to have go at using a two foot table as opposed to DAF's fifteen footer. For speed I went back to the rules I originally though of a few weeks ago. For the OOB I used the original Volley and Bayonet ruleset.

Austrian troops set up in an excellent defensive position behind the Morellenbach and around Lobositz, whilst Croats swarm over the Lobosch (top right). The Prussians advance onto the Homolka and in the valley.

Move 1 - Austrian cavalry move forward to meet the advancing Prussians

Move 2 - the cavalry clash...

and the Austrians come out on top: routing two Prussian cuirassier brigades.

 The Prussians advance towards the croats on the Lobosch

Move 3 - The Austrian cavalry press on

whilst on the left the Austrian horse pull back out of artillery range and the Prussian horse advance

The white coats move right to reinforce Lobositz





Back in the centre the few remaining Prussian dragoons rally behind their infantry.

 

Move 4 - the Austrian cavalry rallies back in the face of advancing blue coats whilst the Lobosch is reinforced by Austrian foot.

 

Move 5 - the Prussians advance all along the line

 but come off worst against the Imperial forces behind stream and sunken road.

It becomes apparent that any further assault would be futile against such defensible terrain.

The Prussians fall back.
The Saxons are rescued.
Austria wins the war and Frederick is exiled to Massachusetts where, in 1775, he becomes the first president of the new country of USA - possibly.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

... and a Happy New Year

I had quick run through Twilight of the Sun King with only a few units. It quickly got bogged down, as it often did in Marlburian battles and having only a few units on table was a bit dull. After a couple of dozen dice throws only a two or three “hits” were inflicted. I don’t think these rules are what I require for this type of game but I think we’ll try them out for large games over a few hours, which is of course what they were written for.

I also got out old favourite Volley and Bayonet (which has a grid variant on the helpful Volley and Bayonet site) and was having a good game but after an hour had only really just got started. Moreover the multi dice throwing and record keeping wasn’t they way I wanted to go either.

So it was back to the original rule thoughts but with a few embellishments. Some sort of attrition needs to be introduced and possibly reintroducing musketry fire. However I do want to keep single dice for combat resolution.

Sounds familiar

I spent quite a bit of my spare time thinking about the Portable Wargames Rules for the C18 and came up with what I thought was quite a nice set.

However when I read through them again they seemed quite familiar. Yep I had almost managed to rewrite Twilight of the Sun King. We had a look at these a while ago using the free set available on Steve's Balagan (but nothing came of it and we stuck with Volley and Bayonet). They must have remained in my subconscious.

The free set are still here:

http://www.balagan.org.uk/

There is however a more recent iteration available from The Pike and Shot Society. I ordered these for the princely sum of £3.45 (inc p&p). They arrived the next day - excellent service. 

At this price you don't get a Black Powder type book, more like the basic rule books of old. They are a grand tactical set of rules based on the brigade - 1cm =100 paces with combat resolution based on a simple morale test. With a couple of tweaks for the grid system they should make a quick game. 

And, if you like that sort of thing, there is an active Yahoo group.