Review: The Portable Napoleonic Wargame

THE Portable Napoleonic Wargame is the third in a series of Portable Wargame books by veteran wargamer Bob Cordery.
I have the previous two books, The Portable Wargame and Developing The Portable Wargame, and have gone through the latest offering twice.
I bought it direct from the publisher, Lulu, in paperback format for £10.98, which includes £2.99 shipping.

Attractive cover

The book has some 170 pages and contains FOUR sets of rules, although one set is more of historic interest, being a modification of Joseph Morschauser III's rules from his pioneering 1962 book How To Play War Games In Miniature.
Morschauser fought his battles on a gridded table-top using figures and scenery that emphasised the toy aspect of the hobby.
Cordery follows very much in this tradition, although he has greatly developed the concept, adding layers of realism without overly complicating what are genuinely quickplay rules.
The great advantage of using a grid is it massively speeds movement and firing calculations. The price for this is a reduction in flexibility, and the obtrusiveness of the grid markings.
Cordery gets around the latter problem to a large extent by using hexagonal terrain produced by Nottinghamshire-based Kallistra. The terrain looks fabulous and, while the hexagonal lines are clear, they are not so "in your face" as you might expect.
Hex terrain works really well for 20th-century and later wargames, but I am a lot less keen on it for games set in earlier times when straight lines were usually such an important feature of how armies formed. A square grid, as used by Morschauser, works better, in my view.
Cordery goes into some depth on the pros and cons of hexes and squares in his original The Portable Wargame book. He does not repeat that discussion but you can get a clear picture of the issues by studying the three battles reported in great detail in The Portable Napoleonic Wargame.
Why three battles? Well, in addition to the modified Morschauser rules, Cordery includes three sets of his rules to cover Brigade, Division and Big Battle engagements. The differences between the three sets are not mere tinkering but reflect the very real differences in the scales depicted.
Each set comes with its own battle report - Division on a squares battlefield, the other two on hexes. The battles include numerous black-and-white photos and a complete turn-by-turn account of what happened.
These reports get repetitive at times, especially as the language used is somewhat long-winded, eg there are far too many sentences like: "The 2nd US Light Dragoons rolled a D6 to resolve what happened and a D6 die roll score of 4 meant that the unit lost a further 1SP [strength point]."
This could easily be reduced to: "The 2nd US Light Dragoons rolled a 4 to resolve what happened, losing a further SP."
Cordery is also addicted to endnotes. The book has 178 of these, all of which could have been incorporated into the text without any interruption to the flow of the narrative.
But to an extent these criticisms could be seen as nit-picking as there is so much to commend.
Even if you are not particularly interested in the Napoleonic period you might find the book worthwhile just for its appendix on two command-and-control systems using playing cards. These are in a way stripped-down versions of Bob Jones' famous - infamous to some people - Piquet family of rules.
Cordery's original playing-card system was detailed in The Portable Wargame. I used it in my refights of the Battle of Chotusitz http://timspanton.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-battle-of-chotusitz.html and the Battle of Sahay http://timspanton.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-battle-of-sahay.html with mixed results.

Looking from behind the French lines at the Battle of Sahay

He now calls this The Random Method and has added a similar, but much less random, Turn-By-Turn Method, which he uses in the book for his Division battle. It seems to work well for engagements using a small number of units, but then so does the system of orders he adds to his Big Battle rules.
None of the three sets of rules is meant to be sacrosanct, and I can well imagine a user wanting to add flavouring, one way being by adding so-called national characteristics (for example, the rules make no difference between the musketry of a two-deep British line and a three-deep French one).
Will there be more Portable Wargame books? I certainly hope so, and the obvious next step would be The Portable Ancient Wargame.
If so, I hope Cordery takes a leaf out of Neil Thomas's marvellous Ancient & Medieval Wargaming book by showing how Portable Wargame rules can be used to refight historical battles.
But that is for the future - for now I heartily recommend The Portable Napoleonic Wargame and feel sure it will make for pleasant browsing for many years to come.

Battle of Mollwitz - The Set-Up

YOU might think that when refighting a historic battle, the terrain should be laid out first, followed by the troops.
But I believe a better way is to first lay out the troops in their historic starting formations, or at least at the point where you wish to start the refight, and then make the terrain fit around them.
Mollwitz was fought in mainly open country. Even though it was nearly the middle of April, there had been a fairly heavy fall of snow overnight. This was enough to interfere with long-range vision but otherwise had little effect, with Frederick's well-drilled infantry reportedly advancing as if on a parade ground.
Accordingly I have decided the only difference the snow will make to the rules is to deduct one from every die thrown for artillery roundshot (the deduction coming before the score is halved to reckon the potential number of hits).

Bird's-eye view of the battlefield from behind the Prussian lines

The Kleinerbach on the left is a minor stream that can be crossed by horse and foot in a quarter move, without disrupting formation, and by guns in a half move.
The trees along the Kleinerbach have no effect on movement or firing, but the copses between the lines and behind the Prussian army count as cover, slow foot to half-speed for any turn spent partly in them and are impassable to horse and guns.
In the background is the village of Mollwitz - now Małujowice in modern Poland. You might just be able to make out traces of snow on the roofs (actually a sprinkling of talcum powder).

Close-up of the Austrian army

Screening the Austrian forces are the Nagy-Károly Hussars.
In the front line, reading left to right from the Kleinerbach, are the Hohen-Ems Cuirassiers, Cordova Cuirassiers, half of the artillery, Los Rios de Guiterez Foot, Deutschmeister Foot, Rios-Deutschmeister Grenadiers, the rest of the artillery and two squadrons of Modena Cuirassiers.
In the second line, again reading from the Kleinerbach, are the Prinz Savoyen Dragoons, Batthyány Dragoons, Marquis de Prie-Turinetti Foot, Karl von Lothringen Foot, Liechtenstein Dragoons and Sachsen-Gotha Dragoons.
The Austrian commander, von Neipperg, is with the Lothringen Foot.

The Prussians

The Prussian artillery is concentrated to the front-right of the infantry.
Behind them, left to right in the photo, are the von Buddenbrock Cuirassiers, Leps-Glasenapp Grenadiers, von Leps Foot, von Lehwaldt Foot, Brandenburg-Schwedt Foot and, beyond the Kleinerbach, Brandenburg-Schwedt Cuirassiers and King's Hussars. King Frederick is with the von Leps Foot. Note that the grenadiers are not in firing order but, like the infantry battalion directly behind them, are bunched together - a formation caused by the Prussian senior officers not leaving enough space between the cavalry flanks. This mistake was apparently a result of distances being misjudged because of the glare of the snow.
The Prussian second line, again left to right as we are looking at them, consists of von Bayreuth Dragoons, two battalions of von Glasenapp Foot, von Röder Foot, von Grevenitz Foot and, again beyond the Kleinerbach, the Porzellan Dragoons.
The national characteristics, for want of a better term, in force for Mollwitz will be as detailed in earlier posts, namely that Prussian foot add one to musketry throws and suffer no movement penalty for wheeling, while Prussian horse take half a turn for any wheel and inflict melee casualties on a throw of 5 or 6 instead of the usual 4-6.
Before the refight starts, each player will be allowed to adjust the starting position of up to three units. This is done by first writing the planned adjustments down on a piece of paper so neither player can react to the other's changes (at least not before the refight properly gets underway).

Adding The Armies

AS very much expected, my opponent, a dyed-in-the-wool Francophile, chose to take the Franco-Bavarians, and to sink his identity in that of his hero, Maurice de Saxe.
I was tempted to put the famous von Kornberg is charge of the Pragmatic Army as he served me so well in winning our refight of Blasthof Bridge from Charge!, and in leading the Austrians to victory over Frederick's Prussians at the Battle of Christmas Eve (both engagements were covered extensively in my previous blog).
But the Pragmatic Army was really a mostly British-run affair, so I plumped for being represented on the table by the illustrious figure of King George II.
We diced for choice of long side, and I won 6-5 after the first roll resulted in a 6-6 tie (perhaps the dice should have been checked at this point for loading).
I chose the side with the Einsamenhügel, and we proceeded to make sketches of our intended deployments before enacting them on the table.

The Pragmatic Army

Because I had the Einsamenhügel in my deployment area, I went for an aggressive formation as I was able to site my two batteries of Royal Artillery on the crest. From there they could survey the whole battlefield and be high enough to fire over friendly troops in front of them, at least until the armies came too close together.
In the front line, left to right in the photo, are Austrian Csáky de Keresztszegh Hussars and Modena Cuirassiers. Then come four battalions of British foot: Royal-Buff Grenadiers, Royal Foot, The Buffs and the 5th Marines, and on the extreme right is a squadron of the King's Own Horse.
Both the Modena and King's Own squadrons have cuirasses, and the combined grenadier battalion counts as elite for morale purposes.
The 5th Marines are a tribute to my paternal grandfather's regiment (he was a sergeant in the Royal Marines and won numerous fencing trophies at The Royal Tournament). They count as regular line infantry but can also fight as light infantry if needed.
In the second line, again left to right, is a second squadron of Modena Cuirassiers, a battalion of Dutch Buddenbrock Foot and, after the guns, two Hanoverian units: a battalion of Friedrich Wilhelm von Klinkowström Foot and a squadron of Von Aldeleben Dragoons.
My opponent, whom I shall refer to as his chosen alter ego Maurice for the rest of this battle report, selected an even more aggressive line-up, no doubt worried about my terrain advantage.

Looking from behind the Pragmatic lines to Maurice's Franco-Bavarians

In the front line on the far left are three squadrons of horse:  Bercheny Hussars, Cuirassiers du Roy and Colonel General Cavalerie. Both the squadrons of heavy horse have cuirasses, and the du Roy are elite. Maurice has positioned himself with them.
Between these cavalry and the two batteries of French 8pdrs are two battalions of foot: Grenadiers de France and Picardie. The Grenadiers are elite. Behind these battalions are two more: Navarre and Champagne.
Maurice has tasked the Bavarians with holding his clearly refused left flank. There are two battalions of Kurprinz Foot and two squadrons of Hohenzollern Dragoons.
There is a general view that the firepower of British foot at the time of the War of the Austrian Succession was superior to that of most other nations, but almost certainly not a match for the Prussians.
Accordingly, for this battle at least, the four battalions of British foot will have a 50:50 chance of adding 1 to every musketry throw.