Second Sorauren

The Battle of Second Sourauren was fought in Spain on the 30th July 1813. Accordingly a hard core of Napoleonics buffs met at the Hall of Heroes, Campbelltown, to commemorate the 200th anniversary by refighting the battle using Black Powder rules.


2nd and 4th British Divisions at 1:20 figure scale.

The Battle, in overall terms, was an Anglo Portuguese counter attack to Soults last ditch offensive as the French were desperately trying to prevent being thrown out of Spain. Philip had put a lot of research into the scenario and came up with an interesting and challenging scenario.

6th Division contemplates the fortified town...

A keen Flames of War player, he had adapted the 'Fighting Withdrawal' scenario so that there were 3 objectives for the allies to take; the far bridge, the market place of Sorauren itself, or the French ridge. But the wrinkle was, at move 6 the French could declare one of the objectives null and void!

French Line - L-R, Perry plastic, the Calpe March Attack, Victrix plastic.

As Allied CinC, this really made me think. Which one would they remove? Essentially the 3 objectives were spaced about 10 feet apart in the shape of an 'L', with the town as the centre.

Rob's lovely Grand Manner Spanish collection, with a couple of my cheapo plastics...

Now this town was heavily defended. And I mean heavily! Normally in the games I have played with Black Powder a town consists of one or two 'blocks', each containing a Bn of infantry, and, if its garrison is lucky, a battalion gun or a tiny detachment of skirmishers....

But Sorauren was heaving with French battalions and what seemed like several batteries of artillery. And whilst its streets were too narrow to be charged down, apparently they were wide enough for these batteries to fire at will from any of the streets, commanding the whole area around! So I was reluctant to order an assault on the town. Instead it would be masked off, and the two other objectives taken first...

Brigades of the 2nd and 4th Divisions go in unsupported..

However poor command die rolling meant that Vic's assault on the ridge went in piecemeal, and Terry was on the recieving end of some extremely aggressive defence by Rob...

Eventually, despite some sterling defensive work by the French on the ridge, commanded by Cameron and Matt, the British attacks started to wear down the French units, aided by Philips scenario rules forcing the French to steadily withdraw units for the strategic pull back to France.



The Highland Bde go in, fierce fighters all; 79th Cameron Highlanders, 42nd Black Watch, 26th Cameronians.

Similarly on the far flung flank Terry eventually bested Rob, at which point the French cunningly called his objective the one to be ignored! So he started the long march to the town and we gritted our teeth for an assault on the fortress village of Sorauren...



The next generation - Young Cameron tries to talk some sense into Matt...

After the first wave was inevitably blown into a pink mist by the guns, and with only one turn remaining to both capture and clear the enemy 6 inches from both objectives, we conceded defeat. But we did all agree that it have been a fascinating and unusual scenario, and I agreed with Jason and Bryan that it would be worth a revisit afore too long...



Lions led by donkeys!

 



'Lets fight Leipzig'! - the initial concept...

The Charge of the Brandenburg Hussars by Richard Knotel

The title of this post is by way of homage to the shade of the late, great Peter Gilder, who famously abjured wargamers to do it 'In the Grand Manner!'. Now whilst his eponymous ruleset has dated somewhat, at least in my opinion, his vision of grand sweeping wargames have really come into their own with the availibility of finely detailed cheap hard plastic 28mm Napoleonic figures, and superbly streamlined rules like 'Black Powder'.

Another Leipzig painting by Knotel. Title - what am I an art historian?

I can remember as a youngster being inspired by an early series of articles by Peter Gilder, entitled 'Let's fight Leipzig!' which appeared in Miniature Wargames # 4 and 5. Mustachioed, suited and kipper tied 1970's wargamers met at a village hall and did indeed fight in in the Grand Manner - they formed several tables in the shape of a 'U', with the gap being the swamps and rivers to the West of Leipzig, and fought it all out over a weekend.
 

Another early influence on me was the Airfix box art of those days which so romantically portrayed the battles of this era. All my mates at school would collect these for Waterloo, so of course doing Leipzig one Founder's Day seemed like daring rebellion...Hey! It was an all boys boarding school for heaven's sake! Happy days though at the old school:



Dulwich College. Tuesday lunchtimes were pickup games in the Rotunda, but every Founder's Day we'd go Large!

So you get the picture - I've long had a yearning to 'do' the battle of Leipzig, in the Grand Manner.

 Whats not to like - the battle of the Nations, with French, Poles and Saxons fighting against Prussians, Russians and Austro-Hungarians.

Black Powder rules have facilitated mega games in the 'Grand Manner'!

Now I've been very lucky since emigrating to Australia to fall in with a great bunch of wargamers in the Campbelltown area of NSW centred around the Hall of Heroes FLGS. Matt who owns the store has been very indulgent in allowing annual Mega Games to takeover every aspect of his life and shop - but we've had ours for this year - Gettysburg for the 150th, and very memorable it was too - so we can't go overboard for the Leipzig game!

After all, until the Battle of the Somme it was the largest battle ever fought, over three days. So the concept I have at the moment is to concentrate on one sector of one day - the one in which all three allied armies fought shoulder to shoulder - Day 1, October 16th 1813, in the Southern sector:

But even this is quite a stretch - I can't really ask for much more than a 12' table, so we have to focus in a little more:

So taking the area of the Green rectangle as, roughly, a 12' x 6' table, this seems much more doable. Austrians on the left, Prussians in the centre, Russians coming down the right hand side of the table. The French Imperial Guard off table at the start....Still quite a spectacle, Peter won't be disappointed!