Campaign Orders of Battle

Map of 6 corps armies

A few months ago I decided that I would like to increase the size of the tabletop wargames from two to three corps per side.  My wife Jan and is my only wargame opponent, and games can get a little predictable given that we play a few moves almost every day.   This would give us a larger army to command and a wider choice of tactics and options.

My wargames are derived from my 1813 campaign, so the order of battle is the same for both.   There are five campaign areas, each with one French and one allied army.  So there are ten orders of battle.  

Each army deploys on a map with 9x9 squares.   Each army has an operational area of 3x9 squares, with two corps in each area.   Photo 1 shows the campaign map for the battle of Arevalo, which is the white star bottom centre.

Wargame with 2 corps per side

Photo 2 shows the same battle on the wargames table.   You will see that there are two corps per side, each corps has four infantry brigades, one cavalry brigade and corps artillery.   Each corps occupies one of the three scenic squares, so there is a lot of space to manoeuvre.

Map of 9 corps armies

To increase the number of figures on the table, I had to increase each army from six to nine corps.   Photo 3 shows the campaign map for the battle of Avila, the three white stars top right.   You will see that each army has three corps, occupying one square each.   So the new nine corps armies occupy the whole of the nine squares from top to bottom.

Wargame with 3 corps each side

Photo 4 shows the battle of Avila on the wargames table.   The whole width of the table is occupied by the three corps – British at the top and French at the bottom.   There is less room for manoeuvre, but more opportunity to create reserve under the commander and take advantage of any initial success in any of the three corps areas.

So far so good.  But I had not appreciated just how much work was involved.   The figures were already there, but the orders of battle all had to be rewritten.   There are two orders of battle, one for each campaign and a more detailed one for the campaign blog.     

It was relatively easy to add the new corps to the existing casualty sheets which are on my computer and used to record battle casualties.   These are not available to view on the campaign blog, and consequently have less detail.   

However there is also a more detailed order of battle shown as part of the campaign blog.   This is designed to explain to anyone interested how the various armies are organised and what the capabilities of each brigades are.   Given the size of the campaign there are a lot of brigades and each had to be rewritten.   This was designed to allow players in my PBEM phase of the campaign to determine the exact combat ability of each of their brigades.

In addition I like to include photographs to illustrate the complicated orders of battle.   When I set up the campaign I arranged each army of two four corps on the table and photographed them.  It would be a huge job to do the same for the new orbat.  So I photographed each corps on their storage stands.   The effect is not so impressive.  But given that I now appreciate that probably no one, or at least very few, bother to look at the campaign orders of battle I wanted to reduce the work load.  

I am reasonably happy with the result, and at least I feel that I have made some effort to illustrate the whole order of battle.   Even this limited effort took about three weeks, which I consider enough given the very limited general interest.

If you would like to see the end result you will find the ten new orders of battle here http://1813pbemcampaigndiary.blogspot.com.es/