Austro Prussian Wars of 1866 Rules

[Leman]

Wawro can be notoriously wrong on all sorts of stuff. If his is the only reference I'd treat it with kid gloves.

[cameronian]

Yes I'm no Wawro fan myself but nevertheless he's quoted a primary source which we either accept or verify ourselves. Good work Andrew.

[holdfast]

So, dear Cameronian, the friend of Gunners, rather than just rubbishing everyone else's efforts, let's have a proposal for what the number of shots for long range artillery ammunition might be. Remember that we take one point of artillery fire as what is fired over 12 minutes. Our number of 8 rounds allows for an offensive long range fire and a defensive long range fire each move for 48 minutes. I am sure that you will back up your ideas with meticulously researched work into the number of rounds of what sort in each limber and caisson.

[mollinary]

OK Guys, let's put this into perspective for Wargames rules. Ever time we allow a battery  to fire, we have a chance of causing casualties on the enemy. A single base in our scale is 80 men. The Prussians at Trautenau suffers some 1400 casualties. So, if we assume that EVERY SINGLE Prussian  casualty at Trautenau was caused by this individual battery, they scored a rate of of about .6 of a casualty for every round they fired. Exactly what is it about our rules that fail to represent this success rate?

Mollinary

[Hertsblue]

Why don't you simply restrict artillery fire to the effective range? Yes, this is a fudge, but it does achieve the desired result, cuts out a whole lot of book-keeping and speeds the game up in the initial moves. If there's one thing I've learned in forty years of writing wargames rules, if you make a mechanism too complicated the players will ignore it.

[holdfast]

You are absolutely right that 'fudge' or 'about right' is needed when your rules are trying to span a large period. Keeping artillery fire to effective range avoids speculative long range fire that, with unlimited ammunition, allows unrealistic sniping at no cost; but it does not cater for the moments when it is an option if there is a high value target of opportunity, or when the chance to begin attrition at long range presents itself. I don't think there is much market for a bespoke set of rules for 1866, because the very specific circumstances of that war were never repeated in Europe, so we are left with tweaking a well tried and tested rules set to cater for period specific circumstances.

Restricting everything to its effective range is hard on the Austrians in 1866 because almost their only advantage was the longer range of their weapons, and especially their generally better artillery. So the challenge is how to represent the opportunity to fire at long range, which the Austrians certainly did, and sometimes with some advantage, while not allowing gamers to blaze away at long range in an unrealistic way. We use 'dial dude' counters to show the number of shots left, which avoids paperwork. It suits us, and in running the large games that we did to produce Vol 8 we felt that the results were 'in the right ballpark'.

As we prepare to stage the extensive series of games of segments of Koniggratz at a number of different scales that we will need to produce the narrative of the next book, we are certainly open to suggestions that will hep us get realistic results. The fact that there are very few moments when infantry report that they ran out of ammunition gives us confidence to allow limitless small arms ammunition in most circumstances. But there are quite a lot of mentions of Austrian artillery having to retire either with low ammunition or with barrels 'shot out', so we do need a mechanism of some sort, and a marker is the best way to date that we have come up with that avoids paperwork and is player and umpire friendly.
There are almost no mentions of Prussian artillery running low, but this can be explained by the Prussian habit of leaving the guns back with the gulaschkanone in the order of march, a habit which they changed for 1870.

[cameronian]

A polite disagreement between friends does not constitute 'rubbishing' John.
As far as getting a satisfactory outcome using RFF is concerned, I really don't know. Having looked at all the rules available for this period I elected to write a modified version of FOB, some features of which were later incorporated into FOBII. Its certainly not right yet, simply haven't had the time to test them properly, but the feel is better and the issues you raise re artillery don't occur. There is no sequenced turn structure so if your guns are loaded they can fire at any point of the game. This reduces any temptation to bang away at extreme range because a better target may hove into view at any time; also the Austrian in the 1866 variant (and the Prussian in the 1870 variant) will want to form a grand battery and having formed it, will want to fire it but unless he holds two Arty Fire cards he can't, this is very effective in persuading the Austrian player to exercise a self denying ordinance in respect of his - ahem - ordnance    sorry, couldn't resist that.
Most of the accounts of batteries burning their tubes as far as I can ascertain refer to X Corps; I wonder if this is due to Gablenz's prodigious use of his guns at Trutnov and Burkersdorf.
If you remember Andrew, Grof said that about a third of the Austrian shells didn't detonate due to faulty ordnance or operator error so you'll need to factor this into any arithmetical hypothesis.
If you haven't played this period using FOB II then I recommend it to you; if you're interested in the house rules they are available on the YAHOO PIQUET site, sign in, go to files, then go to Field of Battle 2nd edition, then Field of Battle 1866 2.doc; the cards can be downloaded at the same site(go to Field of Battle, the cards are clearly described and can be printed off) or purchased from ARTSCOW. If you play the variant I would be interested in any feedback. Remember it is very much a work in progress.

[Leman]

Play nicely boys.

[holdfast]

Got my font in a muddle here. Lets try again:
If you remember Andrew, Grof said that about a third of the Austrian shells didn't detonate due to faulty ordnance or operator error so you'll need to factor this into any arithmetical hypothesis.
This is a good point but limited to the anecdote of one battlefield archaeologist on one site. What evidence do we have that this happened elsewhere? Mollinary will know if anyone does.

[cameronian]

Indeed but he's a very knowledgeable battlefield archaeologist; if he's take the bait and write the booklet on the Austrian artillery of 1866 we'd have all the answers.

[cameronian]

Thought I'd link the card site. These are available for, I think, about $15 a pack. You'll need a set - or you can download a free set (though not so nice) - if playing our FOB 2 variant; see earlier post if interested. The Prussian pack contains cards for 1866 and 1870.

http://www.artscow.com/gallery/playing-cards/austrian1866fob-u7as57cqj7e6

http://www.artscow.com/gallery/playing-cards/prussian-1866-1870-fob-w6znj4jr8ceb

http://www.artscow.com/gallery/playing-cards/french-1870-fob-g1fgjpx03444

[Leman]

I can also recommend these for FOB II. Although the rules come with cards that you cut out yourself they are very generic. The Arts Cow ones are illustrated for each army and handle like proper playing cards.

[cameronian]

You'll find they don't exactly replicate Brent's cards, I've introduced some period specific ones like the Prussian 1866 and French 1870 withdrawing batteries for refit, French deployment of reserve artillery, Furia Francese and a few others. The 1870 house rules are still to be written up, why don't you give it a go.

[sdennan]

About to start on my first lot of Prussian Infantry. I am going to do 1 Jaeger and 3 Infantry units and 3 arty pieces.

Hopefully, that will give us a start and a two or three hour game. My chum has already got a pile of Austrians.

I also have knocked up a mountain pass and a village.

Simon

[Leman]

Had two FPW battles last night using Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames rules. Very good knockabout fun, but on a more serious note it is still necessary to plan and set up an attack otherwise the opposition gangs up on individual units and destroys them. Nerxt  time I'll try them with the APW and take some photos.