Something different – Les Marechaux III

For father’s day I got me this gem of a game:

From

From bgg: The Marshals III covers the campaigns of winter 1814 that took place in France north of Lyon and in Italy on the Mincio. These theatres of operation are considered to be minor since they occurred far from the Emperor’s view who was engaged in the north of France.

Glossary

… or how to write rules?

I am really struggling with  writing a rules document. I have a lot of scribbles all over my desk and a handfull of half written rule documents. Now I want to try something else. Instead of aiming vor a complete ruleset, i will Just define key terms and game concepts – one after the other. No pressure to get something completed for now.

Side

The game always has two sides: The player side and the non player side. A side can consist of multiple forces. Every force has a force morale level and one or more goals. A player force also has a commander.

Commander

He is the commander in chief of the player side. The non player side does not have a commander. A commander never moves alone, he must always accompany one or more columns. A commander who finds himself alone in an area due to the elimination of the column he accompanies is also eliminated from the game. Roll what happened to him after the game in the AA-table.

Column

Each column is a block. Ich the block is face up, it means that he is still available to perform an operation. Its status is “to be activated”. If it is placed  bottom Up it means that it has already been activated and can no longer perform any operation.

Non player columns only have one difficulty number between 1 and 6 for the areas scout, battle and siege. These are rolled for when the column is sucessfully scouted.

The player has a cardboard card in which are tracked strength points and information of its various columns. The top track shows the strength points of the column. This value is differentiated into scout, battle and siege strength.

The bottom track shows the exhaustion points accumulated by the corps. As soon as the column has more than 8 fatigue points, it is destroyed and removed from the game. If the column loses strength points, remove the strength cubes freely and shift the remaining cubes to the left. If the column suffers exhaustion right.

Scouting:

Whenever a npc column is activated the player can try to scout it. He does this by accumulating the scout points of all player columns in 2m perimeter, if the column could theoretically move to the location of the npc column. The accumulated scout points minus the scout strength of the npc column is the factor against which a test is made:

Scout test:

Nailed: roll for exact battle and siege strength of npc column

Pass: roll for overall strength, without knowing battle or siege capabilities

Fail:

Blunder:

Random thought about unit characteristics

In table top gaming we are living in a culture of numbers and calculations. Almost any wargame or miniatures deals with its subject matter by some sort of “numbers comparing”.

Units are arrayed on a 2 dimensional plane, which has a visible or invisible grid of coordinates. These units have characteristics expressed in numbers like morale, ability to inflict damage, movement distance and so on and so forth. The player changes the game state by announcing an action and feeding the numbers through an engine to get a result.

Maybe it is time to break this paradigm of number crunching by swapping it with a narrative description engine. Well this is just a hazy idea at the moment, but when reading the beta rules of the Drowned Earth I immediatly questioned my gaming efforts in the last months.

Eastern Pyrenees 1793: the game

A few photographs of my first “real” campaign game:

The winter had thinned out the French ranks in Spain and now with spring 1793 arriving the French army of Catalonia found itself in a precarious position. Threatened by the Spanish counter attack and a possible British landing in it’s back, the only hope were the reinforcements from central France. Read all about the situation here.

Situation report: Eastern Pyrenees​ early 1793

The map:

The theatre shows the coast along the eastern Pyrenees from Carcassonne and Narbonne in the north (right on the image) to Gerona in the south. The border between France and Spain goes right through the middle along the spur of the Pyrenees. The biggest city in the area is Perpignan just north of the border. Perpignan and Carcassonne are classified as fortified cities the other cities and the mountainous areas are classified as defensive terrain.

The strategic situation in 1793

My operational maps are based on a series of historical maps in the David rumsey map archive. There is also a composite showing most of western europe in the database, which I printed in a4 to act as my strategic overview map. Each sector on the overview map is also an a3 operational map, in which I can play a campaign game.

French army of Catalonia: 1793

The army is made up of 20 divisions. Every divison is represented by a single d6 – combining personel, supplies, morale, cohesion and other factors into one number. My initial role – thanks to DiceRoller – gave me the following result:

5 1 1 2 3 2 5 2 3 5 5 2 1 1 2 3 4 4 4 6

In game terms this means something like:

Guard or well equipped fresh divisions: 6 5 5 5 5

Worn or new divisions: 3 3 3 4 4 4 4

division low on numbers or hurt through prior fighting: 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 2

Officers of the french army of Catalonia 1793

French Army of the Eastern Pyrenees

I finally had enough time to build my army for my french army of the eastern Pyrenees. Spain will be the first test for commanding officer Lecoque. Let’s hope he is up for the challenge, as officers that were unpatriotic or unsuccessful were often arrested and guillotined.

Read all the details and a short bio of the officers further down in the post. Now only performance and a bit of luck will decide their fate. We will see who rises to the highest heights of generalship and earns eternal glory and who falls to the dust failing in the mission of carrying the revolution over the border of France.

Analysis of second test game

I just posted a rough outline of what happened in the second test game right here. All in all it was satisfactory from a system standpoint. Let’s reflect on three things that …

… worked:

• I finished the game in 1 hour. One week of campaigning in northern France. At the end of the game/hour supply would’ve been checked, attrition and new troops calculated and media/politics effect randomised and experience allocated. After that a new game woukd’ve begun other on the same board – fe Austrian counter attack- or another board – fe adfter their success french commander s ordered to cross the rhine.
• The bot moved well even on the attack. Generally I feel like defending is easier for the hot than attacking. Moving a decisive force to a specific point to “win” actively is harder to simulate than the reactive movement of moving forces to the defensive position in danger. Overall it kinds worked. The Austrians could’ve attacked Nancy in force, which probably would’ve been enough for an Austrian win. That they did decide to change orders for their leading column in the last moment was brilliant and rather Austrian at the same time.
• The asynchronous and non linear passage of time for the bot produced enough operational friction for me to feel like i was in command. As a player I knew roughly how far my columns move in one phase. I am never sure whether my scouts and subordinate commanders tell me what’s happening though. A3 moved extremely fast through the middle of the map – a surprise move – a triple activation. In narrative terms the french scouting cavalry went to the inn instead of doing the job thus the commanding officer of the french only got the message of the approaching Austrian column when it was right at the door step of Nancy, leaving almost no time to react. This relativ Passage of time for different columns, combined with the fact that the limited resource is one’s ability to change orders really emphasises the huge delays in the ooda loop experienced at the very top of 18th century armies.

What didn’t work:

• Combat takes way too much time. Multiple steps and a lot of dice rolling just isn’t for me. I want to know the outcome and that’s it – or is it? Still not sure about this. Combat in the age of Napoleon was not a linear affair. The bigger force didn’t win and inflict x amount of casualties 90% of the time …. Different battle tactics and actions could change the outcome dramatically. Now I don’t want to simulate this as my focus is operationally on the other hand I need a system that can produce a wide array of possible outcomes.
• Morale system should be further integrated with what columns do. The threat to the Austrian supply line should’ve lowered the morale, making them switch to defensive orders. The Austrians especially were renowned for over protecting their supply lines.
• Some parts of the rules are still too wishy washy leaving room for me to interpret them creatively. Especially the beginning and end process for the “campaign” needs to be fleshed out.

What i still didn’t do:

• The characters still do not have names, characteristics and qualities that carry over from game to game. Before my next test game I need to design me some characters to lead the french.
• Supply still is an afterthought, as i didn’t play long enough for it to become an issue – basically at the end of a turn a number of supply checks is to be done but i did only play one turn
• Divisions are just numbers, they too should be infused with some character.

I am positive that my next test game will be game 1 of my campaign. The campaign will start in early 1792 and will cover the rise and fall – depending on my luck – of a young fictional general. Each play will deal with one campaign season in a distinct theatre. Depending of the success or failure of the young officer the theatres will either become bigger and more meaningful to the overall fate of france or he will be relegated to obscure and unimportant parts of Europe. Let’s wait and see. Oh and the notebook has tags now. Hurray!

Next test game: defending north/western france

In this test game I will try to defend france from my hopefully challenging austrian bot.

It is the year 1792, the french republic has declared war on Austria. For want of material and funds the young republic is on the defensive in eastern france. General Dumouirez is charged with summoning any troops he can get a hold of, for a strong allied force seems to be heading for Metz and Nancy.

The french plan is to hold Strassburg with most forces (5 divisions) and swing around the right flank, along the western side of the Rhine, if the Austrians decide to attack Metz or Nancy. General Dumouirez idea ist to cut the supply of the Austrians if they move to recklessly for the two fortresses.

Austria starts at +3 morale and subsequently all columns roll either attack or assault orders. This will be quite the onslaught, not a way of making war typical for the Austrians in this period.

Phase 1 french

Every phase starts with the french (the players) columns acting out their orders. If a column is on a move order, for example, it will move along the path indicated in its orders sheet until the qxhaustion threshold is reached.

F2 is on “scout” orders and decides to scout the northern column coming from Trier. All other french columns are on hold or reserve, thus they don’t move.

Phase 1 Austria

In the phase of the bot 5 d6 are rolled to see which columns act and how often they move. Every austrian column acts as often as its number shows up on the dice. This is because time is not a constant in this game. The different columns acting at different speeds, represents the fact that the commanding officer only know what is reported to him, thus an enemy column acting more than once per phase represents “hidden movement” or the failure of subordinates to report what’s happening.

Austria rolls no doubles in the first phase. Every column only acts once.

This also ties into the “special actions”. For every double the player gains 1 special action point which he can use in a number of ways. For isntance to change the orders of one of his columns. Thus while sudden fast movements of the enemy may unhinge the plan of the player, he also gains the means to get a new plan rolling.

As there are no doubles rolled this turn the player does not gain any special action points.

A2 crosses the river slowly moving on Metz

A3 moves quickly and suffers 1 exhaustion

A4 suffers 2 exhaustion

A5 finally only crosses the river and gains 2 exhaustion as well

Noone changes his orders

Phase 2 french

F2 moves north again

Phase 2 Austria

One special action for France: France decides to change the orders of f1 to attack Landau – Durkheim – kreuzach, which would result in all loc to the east cut.

A1 moves up to cross the Rhine at Speyer

A3 takes a double action and moves far forward

A5 continues to be extremely slow. This is a problem, i would like to test the strength of the Austrian columns but f2 is waisting its time while the austrians push through the middle:

Situation just before phase 3, with austrian supply network.

Phase 3 french

F1 moves up towards Landau. Looks like a1 and f1 will clash near Landau.

F2 scouts a5 discovering 4 divisions.

Phase 3 Austrian

Another possibility to change one order. F2 should move back. I need to find out the strength of the central austrian columns and maybe i get a chance to slow them down. I need to hold Metz and Nancy until the supply is cut.

A2 changes his order to hold

A3 moves right up to Nancy and reveals itself as being 3 divisions strong

A5 attacks and promptly ambushes f2 wiping the small scouting force off the table. If an ambush happens the enemy force can’t retreat, resulting in the loss of my small cavalry vendette.

-1 morale for the french

Phase 4 french

F2 takes Landau

Phase 4 Austrian

With a roll of 6 a1 attacks even though it’s contrary to character of the commander and force relation.

F1 employs a planned defense only getting one division unordered while a1 rolls 2 hits, has to fall back over the river disordering it’s last division

A2 still holds

A3 changes its orders to attack Strassburg. this looks almost historical: Austrians moving around aimlessly. Should the austrians reach undefended strassbourg though the loss would devastate french morale and cut of f1 from supply.

A4 moves up

A5 removes exhaustion by resting

Phase 4 french

It’s a race against time,if I cut enough supply roads before Metz or Nancy fall the austrian columns will just stop moving as they can’t rid off their exhaustion anymore. That Strassbourg is now undefended makes me quite nervous though. One daring dash forward would result in the loss of the city and would push my morale so low that there would be almost no chance of further offensive action.

F1 move up cutting even more supply roads for the Austrians. They only have one road left for their push. Meaning every column but one in the centre gains 1 exhaustion every turn.

Phase 5 Austria

One command change. Strasbourg is lost anyway if the austrians move at all. F4 shall press its luck and move on offensivly

A1 reorders one division

A3 and 4 both rest to remove exhaustion.

A5 acts twice moving southeast

Phase 5 Austria

Fight at Nancy

A4 starts an all out assault of nancy. Fortunately the Austrian troops are really bad quality and suffer heavy losses in the attack. Nancy holds

Phase 6 french

I decided to end the game here. The austrians are cut off from supply. Playing time was one hour. Game went rather well. This was a big test for the rule system as simulating an offensive bot is rather more difficult than a defensive one.