The Portable Napoleonic Wargame - Battle of Helmstedt (the Division game)

The Battle of Helmstedt: For the last of my playtests of the rules within The Portable Napoleonic Wargame I took on the Battle of Helmstedt.

This is the example battle for the rules for Divisional combat, featuring a Prussian force attempting to stop the advance of a French division.  These Divisional rules are very similar to the rules designed for Brigade-level battles but one base represents a couple of battalions, a regiment or a small brigade. 

The Prussian Detachment:

Commander: Gen von Klucke
2 Regts of Infantry (Average)
2 Regts of Infantry (Poor) (I used Landwehr)
1 Regt of Light Cavalry (Poor)
1 Bn of Artillery (Average)

The French Division:

Commander: Gen Janvier
2 Regts of Infantry (Elite)
2 Regts of Infantry (Average)
1 Regt of Light Cavalry (Average)
1 Regt of Cuirassiers (Average)
1 Bn of Artillery (Average)

The Set-Up:

The village of Helmstedt occupies the centre of the battlefield.  The rest of the battlefield contains some scattered woods and a couple of hills (on the left and right edges)

Another shot

Another shot

And a closer look at the buildings (from the Leven range)

 The Battle:

The French arrived first and advance boldly (rashly?) straight down the road, light cavalry in the lead.

The view from the other side of the column.

The Prussians arrived more tardily, so the French Chasseurs a Cheval launched an immediate attack on the Prussian artillery!

The French Cuirassiers moved up the road to support then face to the left flank against the Prussian Hussars (left)

French infantry has rushed up to support the cavalry; the Prussian infantry launch a flank attack to try and disrupt them.  The French Cavalry has worked around the flank of the Prussian artillery (top).

The Prussian Hussars have evaded the French Cuirassiers (top-left) and are joining the attack on the leading French infantry brigade

A wider shot of the same

The Prussian Artillery desperately trying to hold off the French light cavalry (top)

...and fails!  The Prussian artillery is overrun (top).  The French infantry has been pushed off the road but has not been seriously damaged by the Prussian attack

The French Cuirassiers crush a brigade of raw Prussian infantry (top-left)!  Prussian morale collapses...

The position at the end of the battle

Game Notes: Another good, fun game that rattled along at a fair old pace.  The mechanisms are quite similar to those in the Brigade game.  Two different systems of activation are proposed: one card-based, one dice-based (i.e. copy DBx!), although the option is also given to ignore activation (as in the brigade game).  The main apparent difference is that two infantry units can share a sqaure and adopt some formations specific to regiments/brigades: mixed order, double columns and double squares.  There are also some more subtle changes: units are relatively slower and less flexible: they can move or fire or change formation, and so on.  Personally I feel that these make more of a difference to the game play, because they make cavalry much more useful relative to the other arms compared to the brigade game, especially in a meeting engagement.  I don't think that my refight was entirely a fair test: I used the DBA system and the French were much more fortunate in their rolls early on, so as well as being the stronger force, with the stronger cavalry, they were already putting the pressure on the Prussians from practically the beginning and the they could never get themselves organized.  That said, I don't think that I am wrong about the power of the cavalry: their powers are largely intact whilst the powers of the other arms are reduced.  Of course, as mentioned in other reports and by the author himself, the rules are very, very easy to tweak to taste; and the tactical usefulness of cavalry in the Napoleonic era has been disputed ever since the actual wars themselves...

Figures by Baccus 6mm, buildings by Leven.