THE 'JUNE' ONE

[sharnydubs]

I don't know if they ever left Russia, but they are a colourful addition to any Russian force. I will research and revert. You are more than probably right.

[Greystreak]

They never left Russia: they were either state-owned serfs, or serfs owned by the nobility. Nor did they ever really serve more than 'rear area security' in 1812-13, freeing up regular troops and trained militia for other duties. The English-speaking wargamer's fantasy of legions of pike-armed opelchenie striding across the main battlefields of Europe is both overly persistent, and rather annoying. Dominic Lieven's recent work, Russia Against Napoleon, may help dispell popular misconceptions over time.

[Angus Konstam]

Well, worrying about fantasy legions won't stop this lot. As we speak Dale will be dusting off exclusively Old Guard army, and choosing which Marshal to lead which brigade! Besides, I rather like the image of the ogre Bonaparte on home turf, being skewered by a toothless pike-armed peasant!

My dark green legions of Russkoi will be there, eager to drink, loot and shag their way to Paris... if, of course, they make it safely off the Orkney ferry first!

[barr7430]

Well chaps.. I've done it.. produced sort of Army Lists for the 1814 game. I will upload shortly. There will be the following:

French Infantry Division
French Cavalry Division
French Imperial Guard (Old, Middle & Young)
Prussian Infantry Brigade
Prussian Cavalry Division
Austrian Infantry Division
Austrian Cavalry Division
Russian Infantry Division
Russian Cavalry Division
Russian Cossack Host
Russian Guard
Freikorps/Small State Force


All have 3- 6 options included as a supplement to the core mandatory element. I will build in the 'fantasy football' Opolochenie option just for Pyotr!

They will clearly be useful for any player of R2E and so I'll make them available to all who want them.

Should appear as a download tomorrow..

[Dale]

IIIII''''llllll be there,
To Love and comfort yooouuuu!
As long as you are French of course.

Colin, I have four decent Austrian battalions of 48 and a grenadier battalion of 32. There are other battalions of scabby dogs which I should have touched up, gunked, repainted and rebased years ago. Also quantities of Austrian cavalry and a few guns. Peter N has much nicer stuff and he will probably want to provide the main Austrian force supplemented by my first listed figures if needed.

Yes, all of my French battalions will be composed entirely of French marshals, but only the best of the marshals of course. Now , to my marshal cavalry and marshal artillery. Should the front and back breastplates on the household servants be brass or steel? I'm not even going to ask where I should place my balloon observation corps or the reinforced camp kettle hussars. I can guess Angus' reply to that.

[barr7430]

Army/Force guides now posted in the WARCHEST. Suggest you download it chaps and then once you've decided on a force send it to Kev/Ade.

Enjoy

[Angus Konstam]

Barry, old bean,

Thanks for taking the time and effort to produce those "Army Lists".

I was sort of wondering though, if you might feel the need to build in a little more flexibility into 'em, so the organisations aren't so rigid.

For instance, many of us Russian players will probably have our troops in 32-figure battalions. I know Dave and I do. Losing 8 figures per unit as part of the paper tally seems a bit of a waste. Surely 4x24 is pretty much the same as 3x32? That way people won't have to faff about to fit the strange little unit sizes. The justification - if you need it - is your 24s represent worn down units. the 32-s are even more worn down - one combined bttn per rgt.!

There's another quirk. Each Russian infantry division has a brigade of grenadiers attached. Don't you mean jaegers? I thought grenadiers were concentrated into grenadier divisions....



Angus

[barr7430]

No I didn't mean Jaeger. The words infantry and jaeger are interchangeable as they performed the same role.

The qualification notes on P1 explain the anomalies. The lists were largely built around existing collections ie Peter's, so the inclusion of Grenadiers etc is merely a sop to what is available not an accurate historical represenation... when has that little fact ever bothered us much.

I am not the games meister here Ade and Kev are. I don';t want to do any more organizing than I have already done. This is about a day's work and all your getting from me I'm afraid

PIP PIP

[Angus Konstam]

Barry,

Fair enough - non-historic and built round Peter's collection sort of explains it! Dave O'B. and I will simply rebuild our Russian armies accordingly. In fact, we might as well go the whole non-historic hog and field armies of opolochnie!

Perplexed of Petersburg

[obriendavid]

Angus, the combined grenadier battalions from the 2nd battalions were often used to support their 1st and 3rd battalions. Grenadier regiments which are different were organised into grenadier divisions which is probably what you are thinking about. In most cases with Russian armies Jaegers were no different to line troops and generally very poor in skirmishing which is what they were intended to do.

I can understand why Barry doesn't want to re-do his lists because of the amount of work involved especially with his Francofile tendencies where his French battalions are bigger than Russian ones but having seen his dice rolling in action at Falkirk he probably needs all the help he can get
The French cavalry should also be very limited due to the lack of mounts and the quality of horseflesh and I also remember reading that they had trouble moving their artillery due to shortages of suitable mounts.

Feel free to make your own lists and offer them up to the organisers as an alternative.

Im sure Adrian and Kev will be able to sort something out because just using the lists of one division against another isn't going to give the feel of the 1814 campaign where smaller French forces were generally trying to stop the Allied steamroller which is why Nappy and the Guard were running about all over the place acting as a fire brigade.

Cheers
Dave

[barr7430]

As I have no idea what the scenario shape will be the lists were compiled with approximate equality in mind. The number of troops in each nationality force is there or thereabouts except for Guards. Where quality is better quantity is down. Where number of battalions per brigade is up OR number of brigades is up then troops per unit are usually down. There was a fair bit of thought went into it and I was also thinking of reasonably balanced games in the beginning to let people get a feel for the rules.
I know everyone will be a bit precious about their own collections so I have no problem with 32 model Russian battalions but of course 4 of them makes for imbalance when you roll it up with the number of brigades. That is a headache I don't feel inclined to deal with. I would think that the first scenarios shouldn't be too complicated.. we don't want Angus pulling out his copy of Black Powder when all the games grind to a halt on Turn 2 because R2E causes GdB type meltdown..

[Angus Konstam]

Chaps,

I don't think Russians have ever been accused of being precious. Many other things, but not that! Actually the two solutions are to turn four battalions into three (with the same total number of figures), or to simply rebase some of 8-figures stands as 4s, which will let the units break neatly into smaller battalions. No problemo.

As for the line that "R2E causes GdB type meltdown..", I think you're being a little harsh on Dave Brown's rules...

The proof, as they say, will be in the pudding.

I'm looking forward to giving R2E a decent spin - the last game I played that raj Marshal O'Brien launched a cavalry charge on turn one, whizzing across the table to ride down a brigade of British troops, before they got the chance to load their muskets! As long as the gamey old bugger is squared off against Dale, and you're on hand to curb both of their excesses, then all should be well!

Penned in the wilds of Orkney

[barr7430]

As a literary man I am surprised at your misquote Angus..

The proof is in the pudding is not actually correct

The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

is

GdB.. no disrespect intended to Dave B. who is a nice chap but as you were not at Kirrie when we attempted Dresden with GdB .. the phrase meltdown is not an inaccurate description. We barely got 6 or 7 moves done in 2 days with the same number of players we normally have. The calculations and mechanisms did not suit the scenario size.
Perhaps it was the guys running the game not having a grasp but Dale was one of the chaps and he knows GdB pretty well.

In fact, it was that VERY experience 5 years ago that prompted me to put the first pen to paper to write Republic to Empire. For that reason alone I am very thankful to GdB

[obriendavid]

I'm looking forward to giving R2E a decent spin - the last game I played that raj Marshal O'Brien launched a cavalry charge on turn one, whizzing across the table to ride down a brigade of British troops, before they got the chance to load their muskets!

Angus, that was the very first playtest of the rules about 2 years ago and they have been heavily refined since then and if I remember correctly your crap dice rolling meant that your infantry failed to react to the cavalry advancing towards them then failed to hit anything when the cavalry did charge them frontally. With bad dice rolling this can still happen but things like this did happen historically.

Cheers
Dave

[Blucher]

Chaps

Having discussed the weekend format with Kev, I've sent emails to you - (except Andy, Charles, Dale and Bob - sorry you Guys - IT upgrades have lost your addresses. The other Gents are supposed to be forwarding them on to each of you. If you 4 gents are reading this drop me an email and I'll forward on- sorry!)

Anyway....hopefully the contents of the email clarifies a few things.

Any queries, please 'post' on site.

Further updates imminent...........(if required)

Blucher