Spanish Napoleonic Artillery #4

A fourth and final battery of Spanish foot artillery  rumbles off the painting table. 

This time it is a heavy, 12 pounder battery. 

Brigade Games French 12 pounders  were used for the ordnance. 

The bulk of the crew are Brigade games as well.

I use 4 crew figures per stand for heavy artillery (versus three for others); the extra figures came from  surplus officer and standard bearer figures from my Three Armies order. Flag once again is by Adolfo Ramos. 

La Gendarmerie!

These wonderful Paul Hicks sculpts of an unusual subject were released by Brigade Games a number of years ago. I had my eye on them at Historicon for several years in a row before pulling the trigger to buy enough of them for a full unit about 2 years ago. 

They came onto the painting queue this month, as they are needed to act as a counter to the Guerrillas infesting the Spanish countryside in our upcoming Campaign-in-a-Day.

There is a wonderful plate in the Funken books illustrating the Gendarmes. Their uniform is a dark blue jacket with scarlet lapels, cuff, and turnbacks. Some sources show the collar to be scarlet, others dark blue; I went with the blue. 

The cuff flaps were dark blue, buttons pewter, and red epaulettes, silver for officers, silver mixed with red for sergeants. All ranks had chamois waistcoats and breeches. The black bicornes trimmed white were  especially indicative of the Gendarmes. 

Insurgents and refractionaires beware!

Season of Battle - play test campaign - Set Up

   Brent Oman sent me the semi final draft of his new, simple short, if somewhat abstract campaign rules, titled, "Season of Battle" for some final play testing. While intended for use with his own  Field of Battle rules, they should be fairly easy to adapt to use many other rules sets More about that as things go along.

    I have, of course, chosen to set mine in 1809, in the Spring "Landshut" phase of the Danube campaign. I chose to model my forces on those of Massena's Corps for the French, and Hohenzollern-Hechingen's Corps for the Austrians. I gave the Austrians a 10% advantage in troop points, to help compensate for their poorer commander quality. I actually set the forces up first, and then added up the points, and I was amazingly close just by Gestalt - only a unit or two needed to be changed to make it work out right!

The forces I set up were as follows:

French National Will  78

Marshal Massena  LD 12

1st Division, GD Legrand  LD 12

Unit Name	DD	CD	Notes/Changes
Baden Jagers	D6	12	61
Baden IR #1	D6	10	61
Baden IR #2	D6	10	61
Baden  IR #3	D6	10	61
Baden  IR #4	D6	10	61
8# Foot Artillery	D6	12	64

2nd Division, GD Molitor  LD 12+1 ** Charismatic**

Unit Name	DD	CD	Notes/Changes
10e Legere	D8	12	95
3e Ligne	D6	12	61
57e Ligne	D6	12	61
72e Ligne	D6	10	61
105e Ligne	D6	10	61
8# Foot Artillery	D6	12	64

3rd  Division, GD St. Cyr  LD 12

Unit Name	DD	CD	Notes/Changes
13e Legere	D8	12+1	95
173e Ligne	D6	12	61
30e Ligne	D6	12	61
Hesse Liebgarde	D6	10	61
Hesse Lieb	D6	10	61
8# Foot Artillery	D6	10	64

Light Cavalry Division, GD Maraluz  LD 10 ** Heroic**

Unit Name	DD	CD	Notes/Changes
2e Hussar	D8	10	95
6e Chasseurs	D6	10	68
Bavarian Dragoons	D6	12	71
6# Horse Artillery	D8	12+1	95

Corp Artillery Reserve,  GD Senarmont LD 12+1

Unit Name	DD	CD	Notes/Changes
12# FA	D6	12	72
12# FA	D6	12	72

Heavy Cavalry Brigade, GB St Sulpice  LD 12

Unit Name	DD	CD	Notes/Changes
1ier Carabiniers	D8	12	100
10e Cuirassiers	D8	12	100

26 units, Points: 1848

Austrian National Will:  84

FML Hohenzollern - Hechingen  LD 10

Advance Guard, Vukassovich  LD 8

Unit Name	DD	CD	Notes/Changes
Jager Bn #1	D8	10	95
Grenz Rgt #9	D4	12	38
1st EzH Karl Legion	D4	10	38
1st Vienna Volunteers	D4	10	38
Hussar Rgt #1	D6	12	68
Hussar Rgt #4	D8	12+1	95
6# Cavalry Battery	D6	8	64

1st  Division, FML Lusignan  LD 8

Unit Name	DD	CD	Notes/Changes
I.R. # 10	D6	10	61
I.R. # 15	D6	10	61
I.R. # 21	D6	8	61
I.R. # 59	D6	8	61
6# FA	D6	8	64

2nd  Division, FML St. Julien  LD 10 ** Aggressive**

Unit Name	DD	CD	Notes/Changes
I.R. # 31	D6	12	61
I.R. # 34	D6	10	61
I.R. # 48	D6	10	61
I.R. # 53	D6	8	61
6# FA	D6	10	64

3rd  Division, GM Bieber  LD 8

Unit Name	DD	CD	Notes/Changes
I.R. # 18	D6	10	61
I.R. # 24	D6	10	61
I.R. # 38	D6	10	61
I.R. # 42	D6	8	61
6# FA	D6	10	64

Corps Artillery, Oberst Smola LD 8

Unit Name	DD	CD	Notes/Changes
12# FA	D6	12+1	72
12# FA	D6	121+1	72

Reserve Division,   GM Mayer LD 10 **Poltroon**

Unit Name	DD	CD	Notes/Changes
Grenadier #2	D10	12+1	123
Grenadier #4	D10	12	123
Cuirassier #5	D10	12	127
Cuirassier #8	D10	12	127
6# FA	D6	10	64

29 units, Points: 2038

National Will are essentially campaign level morale points, and are set to be roughly equal to three battle's worth for each side. If a side runs out of National Will points after a battle, they lose. The other way to lose is to lose a battle in your home zone.

   The zones are abstract, but can be superimposed upon a map for more flavor. I named the zones for period flavor, as Brent suggests; Zones 1 - 5 would work as well, but is awfully bland. The first battle of the campaign always takes place in the "Neutral Zone" (middle sector, here named Landshut.

Strasbourg

Abensburg

Landshut

Ebelsberg

Aspern-Essling

I also set up a simple graphic to track National Will points. 

NATIONAL               WILL
FRANCE	AUSTRIA
78	84

The National Will Points were the sum of three rolls on the table included in SoB; the highest roll on the table gives National Will equal to the number of units. hus if one wanted a longer or shorter campaign, one could use 2 rolls, or 4 instead.

French: 26 + 26 + 26 = 78 Austrian: 26 + 29 + 29 = 84

From a deck of 54 Battlefield Map cards, 10 each are dealt to each campaign zone, and the numbers thereupon in each Zone are noted for future reference. The remaining 4 cvards are placed to the side. Here's what it looked like when I set it up:

The 10 cards for the Abensburg Zone turned face up, and the numbers recorded. 

I did the same for each zone, swept the cards into a pile, and wrote the numbers on index cards for each zone. 

A D4 roll has determined that card # 1 (of the 4 "leftover" cards) will be the site of the opening battle of the campaign, which will take place in the Landshut zone (indicated here by the presence of a 54mm Napoleon striding across the "map"!). 

Although not a part of the SoB rules, we had fun with giving our Generals some special characteristics in our LANNES campaign, so I used a variation on that idea here as well:

D20 roll	Special Effects
1	Poltroon: DOWN 1 for all Rally rolls
2	Epileptic: LD roll of 2 also = no move. May re-roll failed leader survival tests
3	Fabian: DOWN 1 die type for MOVE rolls (Can go down to a D6!), BUT may *always*  expend 1 segment to change facing or formation.
4 - 17	No special effects
18	Aggressive:  UP 1 die type for MOVE rolls.
19	Charismatic: UP 1 for all Rally rolls
20	Heroic: all units in his Command Group get UP 1 in Melee while he is in charge, but roll for Leader  loss on D8 instead of D12!

Roll for each General lost in action at the end of every battle

D12 Die Roll	Result
1, 2	“He’s Dead, Jean!”Roll a replacement
3, 4	“I’m not Dead Yet” - Serious Wound
5 - 7	“It’s just a Flesh Wound!”
8	Impregnated by Elephant:Concussion
9, 10	Unhorsed
11	Bullet stopped by portrait of Mistress
12	Bullet stopped by brandy flask

Serious wounds in 2 battles of a campaign will also result in loss of the leader for the duration of the campaign, as will 3 light ("flesh") wounds, or a serious wound and 2 light wounds. Oudinot, anyone?

Concussion: LOSE Special Characteristic if present, or Roll for a new chance of acquiring one if the general has has none!