Hannover Campaign Introduction

 

1813 Campaign Map

 

The next phase of our campaign is set in Hannover in Northern Germany, where Napoleon faces Blucher.   Each army has nine corps divided between three army groups.   Blucher has invaded Hannover district from his base in Brunswick.    His aim to take the French base in the city of Hannover.   They will fight six major battles to determine whether he is successful or not.

This is the 100^th campaign phase since the campaign started in April 2009.   It has run non stop since then, but has had six major adjustments.   These have been caused by changing the campaign from solo to PBEM, and then back again.  And also when game play suggested a major rewrite of the orders of battle.   Another reason was the creation of new campaign maps.   I find it difficult to think of a suitable word to describe each of these “campaigns”.   The overall title is the 1813 campaign, and each stand alone campaign is called a phase.   But I struggle to come up with a title for the six reorganisations.   I am considering coalition, which was how the historical Napoleonic campaign is divided.

 

Sixth Coalition Campaign Map

The last major reorgination, or “coalition”, was when I redesigned a whole series of maps for northern Europe and Spain.   This abandoned any effort to recreate the physical and political maps of the area, and replaced them with military Regions and Districts.   Names of cities and major towns were used, but no attempt to recreate actual terrain or even rivers.  

This is the 26^th campaign phase of the Sixth Coalition, and the map shows the location of winner of each of those phases.   It is the sixth phase set in Northern Germany, where t he French have won three and the Prussians two.   Blucher is hoping to make that three each with this phase.

  

French Old Guard

French Imperial Guard

The aim of the campaign is to allow me to use all of the model soldiers in my collection, plus all of the buildings and scenery.   This would include all of the command figures, including Wellington and Napoleon.   It would also include the famous Imperial Guard, both Old and Young Guard.

The campaign is designed to provide enjoyable tabletop battles, where both Jan and I would have an equal chance of winning each one.    So there is no room for brigades of “supermen”.   This creates a problem with Napoleon’s Old Guard, or Wellington’s Riflemen.   When used their metal representations on the table must have a flavour of the original, but must not give too much advantage to the player commanding them on the table.    This has been an ongoing problem since the start of the campaign, and has resulted in many minor adjustments to their combat or morale advantages. 

Even more of a problem is when Wellington or Napoleon is defeated on the wargames table.   It is a strange fact that whilst I can accept a completely fictional representation of Europe, I find it hard to accept that the Old Guard can be defeated by a Prussian militia brigade on the wargames table.  

It is ok in the heat of a wargame action, but I sometimes pause when writing the battle report.   I found it hard to justify, to myself, how a cossack brigade could defeat the horse grenadier brigade.   I doubt very much whether anyone reading the report would give it a second thought, and indicates how all of us serious wargamers must come to terms with enjoying our tabletop battles whilst still trying to recreate a feel for the historical battle itself, and in particular how much we must be prepared to compromise.