Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Tomorrow marks the 210th year since the Battles of Liebertwolkwitz & Leipzig. I happen to be playing #068 from Campaign Leipzig now with a fellow member, Jim Pfluecke, one of the playtesters on my team for the game. Its been ages since I played this one.

Leipzig was the biggest battles of the Napoleonic Wars but gets scant notice from authors. Unlike the Battle of Waterloo which gets a new book every year, Leipzig has a dearth of titles for it and its a shame. See my list of books I used for the game in the Design Notes (Notes.pdf) in the Campaign Leipzig game. If I had time I would do a "Campaign Notes" section for the game that would dwarf the one I did for the Philippines '44 game! It would be something like 300-400 pages complete with illustrated OBs and images from the period of the major and minor battles from that campaign.

If you don't start up the battle or one of its smaller scenarios at least look over them. For me its a more important battle than the Battle Waterloo (and entire campaign) which for me was just a "forlorn hope" of Napoleon's and never really to be taken seriously. At Leipzig, had Napoleon been able to coordinate the movements of Ney's III Corps better, he might have pulled of a minor victory instead of losing so many men like he did.

One of my mini-projects I want to work on is to add in French formations from the Campaign Leipzig game to the Campaign 1814 game. I would have to check to see how many of the images from Leipzig need to be "ported over" but its not going to be a lot. The Polish corps, many of the French formations that were destroyed in 1813 at Leipzig, etc. Would make La Grande Armee more potent when cornered on the Bree Plateau and elsewhere that Napoleon fought the Allies. Of course some of the Allies would be added in too.

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Sounds more like a book, go for it Bill! As you said, there is just not enough about Leipzig.

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However, even in the case of a minor victory at Leipzig, I still struggle to see how Napoleon could have won the campaign or the war, for that matter. In the event of a minor defeat, the Allied armies would have continued following their successful strategy of avoiding direct confrontation with Napoleon and instead focusing on isolated parts of the French army led by his marshals.

Totally agree with the assessment that Waterloo was far less important from a military point of view. There is an opinion that Waterloo is where the modern concept of public relations was born. This is, of course, not to diminish the merits of Wellington and his Anglo-allied army.

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General-Leytenant Alexey Tartyshev
Leib-Guard Preobrazhensky Regiment (Grenadier Drum)
1st Brigade
Guard Infantry Division
5th Guard Corps


(I don't play with with ZOC kills and Rout limiting ON)

Who knows, the Austrians were not really dedicated to the war, at least not like the Russians & Prussians. If Leipzig would have been a success maybe other way could have opened.
Spring 1813 showed that Napoleon is far from being finished, and if he would have done so again in the Fall, maybe Austria would have bailed out, and what then? Maybe other like Sweden would have bailed out too and in the end it would be Napoleon plus his Allies against Russia & Prussia. At that point Prussia could maybe been persuaded by granting them certain areas back, and then it would be Russia alone against Napoleon and that without a direct border to the French Empire, at that point Russia would have to make peace too, or not?

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