Wörth-Specific Rules

REINFORCEMENTS

The French start with their full force on the table - four brigades of infantry, one of cavalry, and a gun.

The French in position, with the gun in the village of Frœschwiller, ie in the same hex, and so enjoying cover

The Germans start with both guns on the table, but only three brigades of infantry

Three brigades of Prussian infantry will arrive from the east, and two brigades of Bavarian infantry and one of cavalry will come from the north.

At the start of the second and subsequent turns, dice for each off-table unit: 5+ means it arrives this turn, and should be placed on the table at the start of the turn, but will be unable to further move or fire until the next turn.

No units in this scenario are elite - partly because the small number of units would give elite ones a disproportionate effect.

But also because the French are partly demoralised following early reverses in the war, and the Germans because I am already allowing them a higher proportion of Prussian troops than they actually had in the battle.

The French gun naturally counts as French imperial artillery. My crew with the long-barrelled gun are non-Prussian German; my other crew are Prussian.

TURNS

I consider a turn to encompass 45 minutes of action. The fighting at Wörth started around 10am on an August day, which left about 11 hours before darkness would bring a halt, so the refight will last a maximum of 15 turns.

Weather was not a factor.

Wörth - The Rules

WE have been very pleased with the rules, which are based around Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame series of books, in particular the late-19th century rules from his original publication, The Portable Wargame (Eglinton Books, 2017).

I am using 54mm toy soldiers on a Hexon II grid, formed of hexes 100mm across, from Nottinghamshire-based Kallistra.

You will need Cordery's book to understand the brief summary of my rules that follows.
I have changed a few of his concepts - sometimes to fit in with how I like a wargame to work, sometimes adapting ideas from Neil Thomas's Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe, and sometimes to give the rules a more-distinct flavour of the Franco-Prussian War.
The summary below mainly covers the changes I have made to Cordery's core rules, and below that I give my reasons.

UNITS
Type                                                           Strength Points Move Weapon Range
French Infantry                                                      4                2             4
German Infantry                                                    4                2             3
Cavalry                                                                  2                3             0

French Imperial Artillery                                        4                2             6
French Republican & Non-Prussian
German Artillery                                                    4                2             9
Prussian Artillery                                                   4                2            12
There is no separate commander figure as I think the huge numbers of men involved in battles of the Franco-Prussian War would make such a figure disproportionate.
VICTORY (replaces Exhaustion Point)
An army is defeated once it loses more than half of its strength points OR more than half of its units.
TURN SEQUENCE
Turns are alternate (aka IGOUGO). Defender goes second. If neither side is obviously on the defensive, dice for who goes first in turn one, continuing with alternate half-turns.

Phases:
1. Artillery fire.
2. Move activated units. To be active, a unit needs to roll a minimum die score.
Prussians and Garibaldi Redshirts: 2.
Others, including non-Prussian Germans: 3.
Elite: +1. Poor: -1.
3. Rifle fire (available to inactive as well as active troops).
4. Resolve melees.

So Player A, for example, first fires any guns he wishes to shoot. Then, taking each unit in turn, he can try to activate it if he wants to move the unit. That unit can then shoot, whether it has activated or not, unless, naturally, it has contacted an enemy unit and so initiated a melee. Player A continues until he has activated/fired all his units, or at least the ones he wishes to activate/fire. Then it is Player B's half-turn.
ARTILLERY FIRE (guns that fire cannot also move that turn)
Line-of-sight firing only.
Roll a die, needing 4 to score a hit.
Prussian: +1
French Imperial: -1
Target in cover: -1
Firers have more than 3 strength points: +1
Firers have fewer than 3 strength points: -1
RIFLE FIRE
Roll a die, needing 4 to score a hit.
Firers moved this turn: -1
Target in cover: -1
Firers have more than 3 strength points: +1
Firers have fewer than 3 strength points: -1
MELEEING
A melee occurs when a unit tries to enter a square occupied by an enemy unit.
Both units roll a die, needing 4 to score a hit (if, with modifiers, the score is 8 or more, two hits are inflicted).
Attacking in flank or rear: +1
Being attacked in flank or rear: -1
Enemy uphill: -1
Enemy in cover: -1
Unit is infantry or artillery with more than 3 strength points: +1
Unit is infantry or artillery with fewer than 3 strength points: -1
Unit is cavalry with fewer than 2 strength points: -1
Unit is cavalry fighting infantry: +1
Unit is infantry fighting cavalry: -1
Unit is cavalry fighting artillery: +2
Unit is artillery fighting cavalry: -2
Unit is infantry fighting artillery: +1
Unit is artillery fighting infantry: -1
A unit that wants to break off from a melee (as opposed to withdrawing as the result of a hit) must move in a straight line directly away and end its turn with its backs to the enemy.
RESOLVING HITS
When artillery suffers a hit from firing and it is resolved as "lose a strength point or withdraw one square," this is replaced by: lose a strength point or be unable to fire or move next turn.
ALL OTHER RULES
As in The Portable Wargame, unless a scenario requires a rule to be modified.

THE THINKING BEHIND THE CHANGES
UNITS
Cordery uses strength points of four for infantry, three for cavalry and two for artillery. I have debuffed cavalry and upgraded artillery to make them in line with my reading of the Franco-Prussian War.
Weapon ranges are largely based on Thomas's figures.
I have removed the ability of cavalry to fight dismounted with rifles and/or carbines as that basically did not happen in the Franco-Prussian War, at least not at division or brigade level.
TURN SEQUENCE
Prussian staff work was ahead of its time, which is why Prussian units are more likely than most other units to activate. Garibaldi's Redshirts showed similar abilities.
ARTILLERY FIRE
Cordery's artillery need a 5 to score a hit, but guns using line-of-sight get a +2 modifier, meaning they only need a 3. I am exclusively using line-of-sight because howitzers were largely anonymous in battles involving many tens of thousands of troops, so it would make sense if my artillery only needed to roll a 3. I am making it 4 because I have also added modifiers for a unit's strength points, so an artillery unit at full strength, ie with four strength points, gets +1, which means it only needs to roll a 3 to score a hit. I have introduced modifiers for the number of strength points because it seems strange that a unit at full strength can fight as effectively as a unit with only one strength point remaining.
The modifiers for Prussian and French imperial guns represent the quality of the guns and the respective armies' use of said guns.
RIFLE FIRE
Cordery's units need a 5 to score a hit. But units that have not moved get a +1 modifier, meaning they only need to roll a 4. I prefer to to say units need a 4 (the same as for artillery) to score a hit, but with a -1 modifier for having moved.
MELEEING
Cordery has units meleeing when they are in adjacent squares. But at the scale of my battles, I think combat in adjacent squares should be determined by firing, with melees taking place when a unit tries to enter a square occupied by the enemy.

Wörth - The Battlefield

MAPS of the battlefield show a veritable jumble of terrain.

But it is important not to get bogged down with too much scenery, especially at 54mm scale, and even more so when a small number of figures is being used.

The Prusso-Bavarian force for our refight has 32 infantrymen, two cavalrymen, and two guns, with eight crewmen - 42 men in all.

The French army is smaller: 16 infantrymen, two cavalrymen, and one gun, with four crewmen - 22 men in all.

The salient features of the battlefield, over which they will be fighting, are the River Sauer, the villages of Wörth and Frœschwiller, and two dense woods - Niederwald and Hochwald.

Looking from the south, we can see the Sauer running through Wörth, with Frœschwiller to the northwest - on the west bank of the river is Niederwald, and in the northeast corner of the battlefield is Hochwald 

Infantry and cavalry take a turn to cross the Sauer (it is impassable to artillery).

The mechanics are that a brigade enters the river hex on turn one, spends a turn there, during which it cannot shoot, and leaves on the following turn.

Both woods are impassable to all troops (in reality, small numbers of infantrymen could operate in the woods, but they would be insignificant at our scale).

Refighting The Battle Of Wörth

SO far in Project Kaiser we, ie myself and my regular wargaming opponent ('Reg'), have refought two of the three opening battles of the Franco-Prussian War: Wissembourg/Weissenburg and Spicheren.

Despite using 54mm toy soldiers, and fairly simple rules, both refights bore a strong resemblance to the original battles.

Now it is the turn of the Battle of Wörth, also known as the Battle of Frœschwiller, which, like Spicheren, was fought on August 6, 1870.

A French army under Patrice de MacMahon was holding a line parallel to the River Sauer, awaiting reinforcements, and also protecting a nearby railhead in case of a German advance.

His force consisted of about 45,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry and more than 100 guns (as usual, sources vary).

Trying to find and engage them was a larger German army under Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia, whose force had a significant number of Bavarian troops, and was particularly strong in infantry and artillery, but probably with roughly the same number of cavalry as the French.

For our refight the French receive one gun and crew

The North German Confederation, to use the official name of the Prussian-led army, has two guns and crews

Both armies have one 'brigade' of cavalry - French hussars on the left; Bavarian lancers on the right

The Germans have an impressive eight infantry 'brigades'

The French must make do with four infantry 'brigades'

More Elamites

Have painted a second lot of 10mm archers from Newline Designs

They will go with the Elamites I painted last month, meaning I now have 10 units of Elamites configured for Neil Thomas's biblical rules in Ancient & Medieval Wargaming.

Nine of the units are in open order, and one in close order, the latter being a possibility for elite status when an Elamite army does not include chariots.

Flats III

A FINAL selection of photos of zinnfiguren from Weimar.

Flats II

WEIMAR city museum held a major exhibition of zinnfiguren 70 years ago, which, as curator Marbot Gerstenhauer points out, was before the Berlin Wall was built, and an anniversary exhibition was held 20 years later.

Here are more photos from the current exhibition, which runs to April 12.

Flats

I SPENT a week in the former East German city of Weimar last month.

Weimar promotes itself as having been home to Goethe and Schiller

I fear that is of little interest to me, but what did catch my attention was that the last full day of my visit coincided with the first day of an exhibition of zinnfiguren in the city museum.

Zinnfiguren - the word is German for tin figures - are arguably best-known in the English-speaking wargaming-world for having been extensively collected by Tony Bath.

The Battle of Trimsos, in Donald Featherstone's War Games (Stanley Paul, 1962), featured 30mm flats from Bath's collection.

But, as I discovered at the exhibition, not all zinnfiguren were 30mm, and not all were 2D.

Unfortunately, information about the figures, many set in attractive dioramas, was only available in German, and my German is next to non-existent.

But, to a certain extent, the photos speak for themselves.

Summing Up My 3D French Playthrough Of Corunna

WITHOUT wishing to blow my own trumpet, I have to say my plan worked like a dream, although I felt far from sure of success at the halfway point, which came just a turn-and-a-bit before the sudden end.

Perhaps my activation dice fell kindly most of the time, but I do not think luck particularly favoured me.

Anyway, my 3D score against the AI is now 7-4, or 7-5 if you include the scenario I started a unit short.

At this stage first-time through I led 7-6, having played one scenario twice, but if the replay is excluded, I was tied 6-6.

Victorious - Marshal Soult (left) with his aide-de-camp

French Playthrough Of Corunna: Turn Seven

Map

Situation after six turns

My three activation dice land 6, 4, 2. I reroll the 4, but get a useless 5, and turn wildcard 6 into a 3.

I start in area 3, where the two-base infantry ascend the ridge and shoot at Sir John Moore. The three dice are decreased for firing at range after moving, but increased for being on higher ground, and I roll 6, 5, 3, eliminating the British commander, and so winning the scenario.