La Souffel 1815 (Austrian Vs French).

Battle - La Souffel, Rapp’s Last Stand, 28th June 1815.

Media - Boardgame, hex and counter, Napoleon’s Last Gamble, OSG.

Special - All the battles in this series offer the actual battles themselves and in addition, have an Approach to Battle option that usually starts the game on the previous day, so as the combatants enter the battlefield, they ‘may’ march and deploy differently than the fixed set-up of the ‘Day-of-Battle’ historical scenario. Also, the game has two card decks (this is not a card driven game) that are optional to play. 

I am going to play this once as a ‘Day of Battle’ scenario and then again, expanding it to using the 'Approach to Battle' option, plus the cards, just to compare the two experiences.

Background - ‘Three days after Waterloo, Rapp began a slow withdrawal from the Rhine, pursued by the vanguard of Schwarzenberg’s Army. On 26th June, the heavily outnumbered Rapp skirmished with the Austrian III Corps. Two days later he made a stand along the Souffel River and the Austrians attacked.’

I do like anniversary battles and with next month being June, something big from the 100 Days campaign begs to be played. This boxed game by Kevin Zucker offers the four main battles fought 16th - 18th June, plus the unusual action outlined above and the four battles can be combined into a campaign game.

I will use the Souffel battle just as a bridging game, to keep my hand in on the system, intending to play one of the bigger waterloo scenarios some time in June. I am also playing a scenario from thuis system on Friday face-to-face, so that will further embed the system for things to become absolutely second nature.

It is a convenient sized scenario, using just a ½ map (17” x 22”) and a relatively contained order-of-battle. I am hopeful that this will sit in a single gaming session. I am now set up and ready to go and will likely play this initial bash tomorrow.

The photo shows the approach of the Austrians and encircled are the three objectives on the river line. Victory is determined as a combination of casualties and objectives taken / held.

In the latest Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy magazine (issue 135), Roy Harper has penned an article called ‘General Victor’s determined stand’, that covers the three Austrian attempts at taking Marengo, in which Roy outlines how Victor’s outstanding defence around Marengo played a significant part in giving Napoleon the time he needed to prepare his later counter-attack …… the one that famously saved the day!

This is a lovely collection of three scenarios, nicely set out and each being an escalation of the previous one in terms of the size of force and each fought over the same terrain.

The first attack has just 5 - 6 units per side and is playable in a small space and this is the game that we are playing today. 

The Fontanone stream is fordable to infantry, but a unit will halt for one turn in the stream and once on the other side will be marked disordered.

To win, the Austrians by the end of play must have at least one unit on the other side of the stream or at any point in the game, have captured the village of Marengo. The Austrian part of the table is covered with vineyard, which I have represented with trees.

The author says he tends to use General de Brigade rules for this scale of game, but the stats provided are for Black Powder. I used my own home grown rules.

On the face of it, this looks a fairly impossible task for the Austrian force as they do not seem strong enough to overpower the defence, however the French left flank of two battalions are fixed in place for the whole game and the Austrian axis of advance is towards the other flank - so who knows, though there is likely good reason why two more scenarios follow!

The Austrians are allowed two rounds of pre-game artillery fire and this causes the battalion at the bridge to temporarily fall back. The Austrian line advances … and then one of those quirky moments, a Random Event generates ‘Confused Orders’ and the French guns pull out of the line …. Oh No! This is the moment that with open fields of fire, they should be hurting the Austrian advance.

The first Austrian assault on the bridge is repulsed.

The Austrians enter the stream in front of Marengo, but likewise, they are thrown back by good musketry.

The 1st Battalion of IR53 are in front of the French guns, the gunners must have panicked, because despite the close range, their fire was ineffective and the return fire from the Austrian line was devastating (3 hits) and the guns pulled out …. again!

A second assault over the bridge was repelled, but this time Austrian combined losses have been so great that the battalion wavers and falls back, unfit to return to the fray. There will be no further attacks here, the Austrians must now rely on forcing the stream around Marengo.

Generally the attacks fail and the Austrians seem to be picking up a lot of disorder markers, but are having real trouble in rolling them off, resulting in them becoming increasingly disordered.

I should say at this point that after a couple of turns of too and fro, this came down to two single, connected events. One Austrian battalion having crossed the stream assaulted the village, they were narrowly repulsed and that was followed up by a French counter-attack by an infantry reserve battalion that had moved across from the bridge. It was enough to throw the Austrian battalion back across the stream and with the rest of their force retreating, they had lost the capability to press the attack further.

So a French win, but the Austrians did get their moment … it just needed some kinder dice.

Looking at scenario 2, this is played in the same space, but reinforcements arrive for both sides, which will allow for a renewed assault and new vigour.

That all worked very well. I like with the smaller scenarios how the impact of single events cary so much weight and bring a sense of increased importance as to what happens at any one location.

Here there were two moments when fire inflicted 3 hits on the enemy and that is a big deal, not fatal, but very unhinging. Also, the French artillery on a couple of occasions drew curses from the French commander. 

There was an instance when the defenders at Marengo scored just one hit on an approaching Austrian battalion, but the battalion failed their capability test (like a morale test) and retreated back across the stream, effectively setting them back for two turns. Each of these things added some welcome narrative to what on the face of it looked like a fairly certain outcome.

I very much enjoyed the game, which was small enough to give one of those elusive opportunities for a mid-week outing … thank you Mr. Harper.

Quote

All three remaining tanks came into view simultaneously, but from a different direction. While their gun barrels swivelled back and forth, searching for us at our old position, Valeriy struck at the central tank. The tank caught fire, but at the same moment our tank destroyer was violently rocked, spattering us with bright flame from the right side. The thought flashed through my mind that there was no smoke inside the vehicle – it meant we were not on fire! Raising the morale of the men, in a firm voice I ordered: ‘ At the left tank - fire!’

Having just painted a couple of SU 122 self propelled guns for my Soviet Pocket Army force (see April 28th post), I was unsuccessfully trawling the internet to find some examples of SU 122 actions, particularly against StuG IIIG’s, when I came across a wargame blog called Steven’s Balagan and he has some good information  on the SU 122 being used at Kursk.

I was wondering how he had found such good detail, when my own trail had gone cold and then I saw his reference to a book by Vasiliy Krysov called Panzer Destroyers, Memoirs of a Red Army Tank Commander, published by Pen & Sword, which he said was available on Amazon.

So I checked that out. There was a hard copy for £137 (Yikes!) and a copy on the Kindle for 99 pence. Obviously it would have been rude not to get the Kindle version! :-)

Anyway, it is a very helpful book. The language is slightly on the stilted side, but the information is very good, there are even a few hand drawn situation maps that look like like they have been drawn with wargamers in mind :-)

I’m sure I will find some scenario inspiration within the book and these sort of ‘tanker’s memoirs’ are excellent for taking source material to inject some realism and better feeling into my rules.

Regardless, at 99p, the Kindle download is superb value for money …. Thank you Steven’s Balagan wargame Blog! 

Over the past few days, I have been playing out the last moments of the campaign, which has seen the Graysville Campaign 1863 folder in the left margin updated with the final three posts.

The first covers the actions on the Morning of Saturday 20th June 1863, the second covers the manoeuvres during the early afternoon and finally there are some campaign / playing thoughts in a post called the 'The Diaries of the Divisional Commanders'

Thanks to everyone who followed or dipped into the posts. I will leave the folder up for the forseeable future, so that it can be read as a cohesive whole.

I'm not quite sure how these things rise back to the top of the viewing lists, but on visiting  my Battlefields & Warrior Blog this morning, I had noted that an old Piggy Longton post from November 2021 has resurfaced asa post of interest.

It is ages since I have had the Wars of the Roses troops to the table and reading the post and enjoying the article has made me quite keen to get another Piggy Longton' game done soon,

Anyway, for anyone look for a medieval coffee moment and a reminder of what lord Darcy has to put up with, I have copied the link to the post here.

Link

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2021/11/festival-of-osrics-chapel-piggy-longton.html

The latest Wargames illustrated mag hits the UK high street shelves today, bagged with a free Epic 'Celt Warriors 2' sprue. Apparently the sprue is worth £10, so if it is your sort of thing, the price of the mag is off-set.

I have recently been looking at my Hannibal Epic as I research and draw up a scenario for Trebia, one that will need fewer bases than the scenario provided in the Epic Hail Caesar rule set, to get get the scenario closer to a 'pocket army' battle.

I am going to look at incorporating this Celt sprue into that plan and since the sprue comes with a chariot, it might be nice to make up one interesting large base that has the chariot sitting amonst the infantry warband. Anyway, it is a very nice looking thing with good figure detail.

As for the mag, there is a rather nice 7 page article on the Celts and one on Spanish Napoleonic Infantry 1808- 1811. There is also a substantial article on 'Gaming in the world of Irish Myth'.

For me, overall a worthwhile issue, especially with that sprue.

I have started a new day of ACW battles in Graysville Campaign, but a disappointing escalation in my back / leg pain makes it difficult to do much, so this is being left set up and I return to it every few hours to do a turn, which go very quickly with these low unit density battles.

Hopefully sometime over the weekend, I will have done enough to update the  campaign folder here and that will likely be my next post.

Funny how things work out. Yesterday I pulled the Pike & Shotte Epic figure set from the shelves for a browse. That took me to pulling the Warlord Games’ ‘TO KILL A KING’ supplement down and reading through the various actions.

I have always enjoyed this supplement as it covers some of the very small actions as well as the ‘main battles’.

Anyway, I was in a quirky bookshop today and saw this title. At 430 pages before reaching appendix 1 - 11,  the book covers in some rather nice detail the various Civil War actions in the County of Lancashire.

By necessity, scenario introductions to their subject are often short bland affairs and this book puts the meat on those engagement, plus it gives an account of the war from a Lancashire perspective, including the involvement of local families.

The boundaries of Lancashire at the time were enlarged compared to the present day, so we have the additional context of the involvement of Liverpool, Manchester, up to Lonsdale / Furness.

I was hoping that Stephen Bull might have done other similar titles to cover other counties, but it appears not, so I assume him to be a local author to Lancashire, which may be what sits behind his command of the subject.

Anyway, I think this will be a useful companion once my Pike & Shotte games start to reach the table.

Perhaps a surprising choice for the initial vehicles in the Soviet collection.

With attention now turned to getting a Soviet mid war Pocket Army up and running to mirror the German force completed a couple of weeks ago, while the first five bases worth of Soviet infantry are still on painting sticks, these two SU 122’s have pushed their way into the front of the painting queue.

For their vehicle support, the Germans got three StuG III’s and I suppose one might have expected the Soviet starter force to have T-34’s or even SU 76, but I like the character of the more unusual SU 122.

These are 1/144 resin prints from Anschluss wargames, with nice detail and they hold the paint well. The transfers have been taken from my Victrix 1/144 SU 76 kit.

I did do quite a few stages on them to vary that green, but in the final analysis, the eye doesn't really pick that up, so I think in the future I would cut those out and save time.

I did particularly like the Pegasus model (see below) of this vehicle that I had in 1/72, but you could fit four of these little fellows in the same footprint (if that's what you want), so the 1/144 (12mm) is a good fit for my table, though  I am unlikely to want more than two of these models.

I rather miss the 1/72 stuff, but on the flip side, there is something compelling  aboute the 10mm / 12mm models, I just need to get more of them done and get a few games to the table.

Another playing of Assault Sicily by Assault Games and Sound of Drums (working in partnership, one on design and the other on production).

This is not an official scenario, the modular nature of the game makes it very easy just to throw down an off the cuff game. Here I randomly selected a Formation Card (infantry) for either side. As chance would have it, the Germans were veteran and the U.S. were recruits, which fed into the play narrative.

I started each side at opposing board ends, with three buildings in the centre to capture. This was just enough to give a pleasant 50 minutes of game, while I try to get more of this system under my belt. This time I included Command Points, which in effect means that each turn a side will not get to use every unit.

Off-picture (lower left) is a US 81mm mortar. It has open views to the German Infantry unit that moved last turn amongst crops.

The mortar has fired on the German unit. Their view is slightly degraded because line of sight passes through some brush terrain. The end result is that the German unit suffers one hit (the red marker) and also a suppression marker.

The way suppression works here is very good. A unit is only allowed to take one action in a turn and when it does, it is marked with a counter that expresses which action has been taken. This German unit had not taken an action yet, but the suppression marker in effect becomes the unit’s Action Marker - that is, it has gone to ground and is hunkering down, so the German unit cannot act this turn, it is as some designs would describe as ‘spent’ or ‘used’.

Note the green square on the marker. This denotes that if fired upon, it will get an addition dice (green) for its defensive roll, to reflect the unit hugging the ground.

I have decided a couple of times to sell this game and packed it all away neatly ….. and then put it out on the table again! It certainly does have some compelling elements.

Anticipating that the Graysville Campaign might see Shield’s Union division actually reach Graysville itself, I bought a few more 10mm Battlescale buildings, to allow the representation of a slightly larger settlement.

As the campaign moves closer to that possible moment, they have hit the painting table.

These have been primed in Vallejo acrylic poly and then mostly dry brushed as there is plenty of detailed relief on them. they just need a thin wash to dampen down the brightness to match my other stuff and then they are good to go.

The left building is a water mill and comes with a water wheel, which if fixed would not be visible from this angle, so I have dragged it out into open view, just to give an idea of how this is going to look on the table.

In due course, it will get a base that will allow the building to knit in with my narrow river system, so that the water wheel itself looks like it sits either in the water way or next to it, with a diversion channel of water to drive the wheel. There are plenty of scenarios that need these sort of things.

I also have a bottle of Scenic Effects water which I will try to apply to give the sense of water running off the wheel's paddles.

It is still in the balance whether the campaign will generate a battle at the town as already, both forces are weary and there are a distinct lack of fresh troops about. 

This was just one of those lovely discoveries when browsing the shelves of a book shop (Waterstones UK) and a fine example of why book shops are so important and deserve our continued support ….. no money …. no book shop!

The slight downside is that some customers handle the books without due care and my copy has some wear along the bottom edge, which takes some pleasure away from it all,

This is 'Battlefield Panoramas' by Victor Ambrus. Apparently he has been the illustrator for over 300 books on classical and historical subjects.

He is best known to me as the illustrator supporting the Time Team T.V. programme. Time Team was a UK archaeological programme that visited sites of historical value, setting up a three day dig at them, bringing in experts to find out as much as they could about the site.

At the end of the three days, the discoveries needed some ‘imagining’ to bring them to life and that is where Ambrus would come in, with illustrations of say a typical busy Roman street of a group of monks in a religious setting etc.

Here, Ambrus travels through military history, with each subject getting a one page summary of text with a facing illustration on the next page. It is just a nice thing to own, pick up and browse.

My stash of unread books is getting a bit unwieldy, but this 'pick up and put down' magazine style title is a welcomed addition, with every few pages just being able to be read in isolation from the rest of the book.

The blurb on the back of the book explains it rather succinctly, ‘Battlefields Panoramas is a joy to browse through and will win a place on the shelves of all those with an interest in conflict - or simply a love of illustration’.