Refighting Wissembourg/Weissenburg (aftermath)

THERE is no doubt refighting the Battle of Wissembourg cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called a balanced scenario.

Indeed the battle would not get the attention it does in the Franco-Prussian War were it not for having been the first battle of the conflict.

But the lack of balance is not something that unduly worries me or my regular wargames opponent - we both enjoy recreating history more than fretting over the outcome.

However there are ways to make the scenario more 'fair'.

For starters the French could be allowed to receive reinforcements during the battle in a similar way to the German side.

There were French units within the sound of the guns in 1870, but their commanders, without orders from above, did not react in the same way as their German counterparts.

Allowing French reinforcements would certainly be an alternative history.

Another method of introducing balance is to refight the battle twice, with victory going to the player who beats the French in the shorter number of turns.

Naturally this assumes the French will inevitably lose, which is probably a fair assumption - the Prussians and Bavarians do have overwhelming numbers.

In our refight my opponent chose to more-or-less keep his forces in their opening dispositions, apart from manoeuvring with his dragoons.

But it could be interesting to see if General Douay would be better off reinforcing the town of Wissembourg rather than keeping the bulk of his forces on the heights.

One thing that did please us was that the rules, adapted mainly from Bob Cordery's The Portable Wargame, with a big assist from Neil Thomas's Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe, worked well and do not seem to need further tweaks.