Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

To all Allied officers!!!
Recently I checked my sources and found out the quantity of Prussian Light troops in the game is vastly and expressly cut down.
Rifle Schuetzen/Piquets: in 1806 every Musketeer Btn. have 50 of them, and every Grenadier Btn. - 40 (10 men in every Company); in 1807 the number was doubled.
In "Jena" the whole Prussian Line regiment have only 10-40(!) of those Riflemen instead of 120 at least.[:(!][}:)][V]
Help!Fraud![:0]


General-Adjutant Prince Vladimir Repnin
2nd Grenadier Division
8th Corps
2nd Russian Army,
His Imperial Majesty
Chevalier Guards' Chief

Hear hear! More Prussians!! [:D]

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General der Infanterie Scott Kronprinz "Vorwärts" Ludwig von Preußen
(Old Windy) (Windbagfrankfurter) (The Mad Prussian) (Herr Windbagenführer)
Generalquartiermeister der Preußischen Armee
Kommandeur Garde-Grenadier-Korps
Königlich Preußische Armee am Niederrhein
Webmaster & Club Cabinet - Public Relations Officer
Vorwärts Meine Kinder, Vorwärts!!

[url="http://www.prussianarmy.com/"]Königliche Preußische Armee[/url]
[url="http://www.networkforgood.org"]Network for Good[/url]

[url="http://napoleonicwargaming.com"]Napoleonic Wargaming - INWC[/url]</center>

Fraud - imposter: a person who makes deceitful pretenses

Yup, that's me! [:p]

Here is what you can do: open up the OB file in a text editor and add in more light troops. Make sure you put them at the END of the brigade or you will mess up the scenarios.

Then add them in for all 400 of the scenarios that come in the game.

Then publish them.

You will instantly become the hero of everyone in the club.

And make me out to be the bad guy!

I revel in that and it just increases my image!

Ok, some background on all of this. As a young guy growing up in the Empire III miniature community I was first told (by the Bowden-ites) that the Prussians didn't DEPLOY skirmishers as a rule. They had them but didn't USE them.

Then came the real shock - we would play with 1813-1815 Prussians and according to Scott Bowden only ONE stand of Fusiliers could deploy. This set off an argument in our group - one of our guys had painted alot of Prussians, he was of German origin and well read. He and I both had Prussians (I painted the X Corps of Napoleon's 1812 Grand Army) and he said that one STAND of EACH line battalian and ALL of the fusilier stands should be able to skirmish. At one point in a game he told me point blank, "Bill, just deploy the stands," and our other friend that was the Bowden-ite just said nothing.

So I know something about the skirmish ability of the Prussians.

Now as to how I decided to model them.

First, the Prussians DIDN'T use skirmishers on the same level as the French. They did HAVE them but as an army they were meant mainly as sharpshooter and not to SCREEN the main body.

Second, with the squadrons and Russian gun sections I became a bit concerned about all of the small units. If I added in all of the Schutzen sections I would end up giving you a game that had a ton of units. However, allowing each Prussian/Saxon bn. to breakdown on company was a bit much.

Thus I had to compromise on the issue. And its right where I think it should be.

The OB files in our series are not locked. You can add in the skirmishers and more power to you. Or even easier you could allow the Prussians/Saxons to deploy one company per regiment (have one of their bns. coded as "I"). That is up to you.

Obviously I thought of that too ...

But frankly in my games of Jena its the French infantry trying to hold off the Prussian/Saxon cavalry. And the Prussian/Saxon infantry is outnumbered but can stack two bns. per hex and thus make it almost impossible to beat in a melee.

Thus one or two more skirmishers really didn't seem to be a way to balance the scenarios.

I would agree that giving ONE bn. per regiment the "I" ability would work.

If you think that this would satisfy those of you that would like more Prussian/Saxon skirmishers please let me know. I will be doing an update eventually and its easy to recode an OB rather than add in those companies (independent ones) to the entire set of scenarios.

BUT - as everyone knows not all of the Prussian heavy cavalry had 200 troops per squadron. Now I would like to hear from this same bunch ... that they are too LARGE ... and that I need to REDUCE them! [:D]

I mean all is fair in love and war.

And in wargaming![:P]



Colonel Bill Peters
Armee du Rhin - V Corps, Cavalerie du V Corps, 20ème légère Brigade de Cavalerie, 13ème Hussar Regiment
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

Correct me if I am wrong but I think I recall that the Prussians rarely used skirmishers at all in 1806. They were bound to the Frederickian concept of linear firepower and lacked the inherent flexiblity of the the French.

That's not to say units per not designated for the job they just were not used that way.

Indeed I think this was considered a decisive difference between the Prussian army of 1806 and the Grande armee.

By 1813 though the Prussian reforms ensured a new organisational and staff structure was in place. A feature of this numerous use of skirmishers and a more all arms based approach to fighting. Prussian brigades were like mini corp from 1813 on.

Actually looking at the Waterloo campaign I am thinking the Prussian's are under rated quality wise. I think many of their infantry could be rated higher morale wise.

As regards 1806 I like the way the Prussian army is simulated in HPS.

Bill you need to think of firepower based fighting if you are French which will get around those stacking issues. The main thing about Jena is the reduction of the French ability to rely on the shock attack.

However the French big btns are devastating when blazing away. If he stacks two btns move your guns up and canister him to. The low Prussian morale and poor leadership will soon lead to a lot disorder.

Salute!







General de Brigade Knox
Baron de l'Empire



2e Regiment Gardes d'Honneur (the regaled pheasants)
La Jeune Garde



CO. 1er Brigade, III Division Cavalerie Legere, III Corps Armee du Nord
http://www.aspire.co.nz/colinknoxnwc.htm

Colin - usually either the Prussians are setup in woods where cannon cannot fire on them OR they are out in the open with tons of cavalry and their own tons of guns supporting the infantry.

I rarely can get the right combination of terrain and troops to work in my favor. A good Allied defender can pick a place on the large map and make their defense there.

Anyway, as far as more skirmishers go I really couldn't care less as they are nowhere near as powerful now that we have the Single Phase as you can push them out of the way and then advance into the gap.

The old days of BG-killer-skirmishers are over.

Colonel Bill Peters
Armee du Rhin - V Corps, Cavalerie du V Corps, 20ème légère Brigade de Cavalerie, 13ème Hussar Regiment
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)